by Jessica King
“Felt like a prayer for a minute,” she laughed. Her eyes were bright and longing. She wanted to stay.
“Hmm,” Jayda said.
She didn’t pause. Pausing to leave a party meant they could stay another hour to Marisol. Jayda and Sofia had learned that lesson the hard way.
“Don’t hmm me,” Marisol said. “I can believe in God and magic.” Jayda spotted the gem bracelet on Marisol’s wrist. She hadn’t been wearing it in the studio.
“Your mother might have something different to say.”
“My mother will think that we were at In-N-Out.”
“She will think that if you buy me In-N-Out.”
Marisol laughed. “You win.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tuesday, March 7, 2017, 10:10 a.m.
Ivy stared at her phone screen. Aline was live streaming, crying as she explained to the thousands watching that one of her close friends, an up-and-coming actress in the Hollywood circle, had been found dead along with several other women in the basement of a home on the outskirts of Beverly Hills.
“An hour ago, she was alive,” Aline said, her voice wavering with some cocktail of anger and sadness. “She had invited me to come, but I had decided to remain home due to my recent injuries.” Aline didn’t have to say that she’d been shot, had received subsequent surgeries, had to have physical therapy. The world knew. If they hadn’t been obsessed with her before her near death, they were now. “And what had she done wrong? Invited some other women interested in divination, only to have the tarot card reader shoot them all?” Aline shook her head. “My condolences to all the people who knew these young women.” Aline’s dog pushed her head through the space between the crook of Aline’s elbow and her silky dress. “Magic is a peaceful practice, and it’s not meant to be lonely. We shouldn’t have to wonder if the people we trust for guidance plan to hurt us.” Her light eyes were clear, even though her voice held a tremor. “Be careful, those of you who bravely continue to practice.”
“Aline found out before us?” Ivy asked. She put her phone face down on the desk. “Was there even a 9-1-1 call before it was online?”
“One day social media will do all the work for us,” Vince said, sliding a piece of paper with the names and faces of the identified victims. “None of them were on that old Kingsmen site.”
“Have we found the new one?”
“We have Ivan and IT working on it,” Vince said. There’s a lot of them, but most of them haven’t been updated in the last week.” Vince bit into an apple. “Should know by the end of the day.”
“So, we think one of them probably caught on, and they’re using it as a new base?” Ivy said.
Vince gave her a thumbs up, the apply audibly crisp through the too-big bite he took. He held up a finger and swallowed. “They’re sifting through all of them trying to find the one they’re using.”
Ivy rubbed her temple and returned her attention to the paper on her desk. “Any of these women followers of the Prophetess?”
“These two,” Vince said, two fingers tapping on two pictures.
“The rest were killed by association?”
“I’m guessing the Kingsmen are broadening their scope to anyone who practices magic of any kind.”
“Almost everyone believes in superstitions or luck,” Ivy said, throwing up her hands. She tapped her fingers on her desktop, feeling agitated. “This is ridiculous. Do they plan to kill children who believe in Santa Claus?”
Vince pressed his lips together. “Dunno where they’d stop,” he said. “But at least for right now, we’ve got a Kingsman posing as a tarot reader.”
“Good, there’s one of those on every street in the whole state,” Ivy said. Do we have any security footage from the woman’s house?”
Vince moved aside the top paper and showed her three images, slightly grainy around the edges. The first featured a slight woman with dark, stick-straight hair, her back always to the camera, with a spread of cards in front of her and the seven eager starlets leaning forward on the couches, hoping their future held success. In the second, the shooter held the women at gunpoint. The third showed the woman leaving and seven women dead in different phases of trying to run. Ivy dug her nails into her palms. Where the tarot cards had in the first picture were three small white rectangles.
“I bet you anything those are Kingsmen cards,” Ivy said, pointing to the table where they sat.
“They haven’t cleaned up yet,” Vince said. “Still looking for fingerprints or items left around the house. The killer apparently visited lots of the rooms before killing them—like she’d asked to go to the bathroom but went snooping instead.”
“Let’s go,” Ivy said, picking up her jacket.
Lindsey and the others scrambled behind them, packing up gear noisily. On their way out the front door, her phone rang.
“Hello?” she asked. She wrapped her fingers around the car handle and tugged. Locked. She searched for Vince, who was helping Lorenzo pack a boom mic.
“Ivy Hart.”
“Sorry, who is this?”
That caught Vince’s attention, and Lindsey queued her camera to start rolling.
“This is the Kingsmen ready to make sure you never come back, Mary Caste.”
“Who is this? Who is this?” Ivy said, her voice rising. She could feel the camera moving in tighter around her face and took a step away. “Did you send a bomb to my apartment?” Her voice was nearly a yell.
“We’ll be in touch.” The line went dead.
Ivy glanced quickly to the camera crew, and Vince remotely unlocked the car the two of them would be taking. “We’ll meet you there,” Vince said to the camera crew. Lindsey’s shoulders sank beneath her silk camisole straps, but she didn’t push and directed the crew into their van.
Ivy sank into the passenger seat. “What was that?” Vince said.
Ivy stared at the dashboard. “The person who is trying to kill me,” she said.
Vince ran his thumb across his lower lip, one of his nervous signs that rarely made an appearance. “Okay,” he said. “Do you think he’s the one who sent the bomb?”
Ivy focused on the keyhole of the glovebox. “I don’t know.”
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“They’re trying to scare you,” Vince said. The car started, falling into its engine purr as Vince put the car in reverse.
“They sent a very real bomb.”
“Yeah,” Vince said. “They did.”
The GPS beeped, ready to take them to the Tarot Killer’s victims, and Vince rolled out of the station. “Can you stay with your dad?”
“Not leading a killer to him and Sandra,” Ivy said.
“We’ll find you somewhere new,” he said. “At least for now.”
“Okay.”
The drive was silent, which was odd for them, but Ivy couldn’t help it. The silence wasn’t awkward between them, but rare, which made both of them sit up too straight. Ivy’s back ached from it.
“Are you going to be okay to see bodies right now?” Vince asked as he pulled into a driveway lined with light stones and flowerpots. Ivy figured he was trying to ask that the entire way over.
“I’m fine,” Ivy said. And she was. Her mind felt like a tangle of yarn and hot glue. A case would give her clarity. Dead bodies had a sobering effect that, as much as she hated to admit it, might actually help her focus on something other than the fact that she had moved from simply being recognized as a work in progress, to being assigned to a Kingsman. She had four days, maybe less, before another attempt would be made on her life. She knew their rule.
When they got out of the car, she looked over her shoulder, and Vince’s hand was on his gun when she turned back. “Jumpy,” she said, and Vince nodded, his hand still close to his gun until they were ushered inside the house by another officer.
“Think this is yours?” the officer asked.
“I want to check the cards first, but I’m pr
etty sure it is,” Ivy said, pushing her fear somewhere deep into her stomach where she could barely feel its tiny moth’s wings. The officer led them through the home. Clearly, it was inspired by the homes of the stars who had “made it” in Hollywood, though it was nowhere close to the mansions Ivy and Vince had seen leading up to the Oscars.
The officer opened a door that led down to a chilled basement. Two plaid couches sat at an angle, a table tucked into the corner between them. Another table sat in front of them, three cards laid carefully, evenly spaced apart.
“380 ACP shells left on the scene,” the officer said. “Fired eight, killed all seven.”
Vince whistled low.
“Not too shabby,” the officer said, though his voice was melancholy.
The women had obviously tried to escape, and Ivy could almost see the scene playing out in her mind.
The woman closest to the stairs was still in a seated position. She’d been first. Then there were the two next to her, who had been startled, but didn’t have the time to get up. The fourth was dead on the floor next to the table. The fifth had managed to back up against the wall, though it didn’t do her much good, considering where she was slumped against an old washing machine. The sixth had been shot, clearly trying to go around the back of the shooter, who had turned around, fired once into the wall, and once into her target. The seventh was slumped just a yard away from the stairs, and Ivy was careful to skirt the pool of blood with plenty of room.
“She would have been in close proximity, she was sitting here in the video,” the officer said, pointing out a folding chair that was close enough to the coffee table for the killer to have been reading cards for the young women. “No payment went through for it. We’re guessing she was paid in cash.”
“Let’s find out if any of them have a history of visiting a tarot card reader. Maybe this was a repeat client,” Ivy said. She sat in the folding chair and examined the Kingsmen cards, picking one up. “This paper isn’t as thick as it’s been with the other victims,” she said, examining the flimsy paper and the slight discoloration of the thumbprint with a K in the middle—like the printer had been running out of ink. She pointed this out to Vince.
“Like they maybe just gave away hundreds of copies of the cards, you think?” he asked.
“Or maybe thousands,” Ivy said. When Ivy’s phone rang again, she nearly fell out of the chair until she realized the caller ID belonged to Joyce.
“Hey,” she said, her voice bursting after holding her breath.
“Ivy, I just found a Kingsmen card with no body,” she said. “I’m working some event at the convention center, and there was just one on the floor in the bathroom like someone dropped it.”
“On our way,” Ivy said. She looked at Vince. “I think I know where they gave the cards away.”
Tuesday, March 7, 2017, 11:36 a.m.
Packed into the security room of the Los Angeles Convention Center, the house manager, Ivy, Vince, Joyce, Joyce’s partner Kenshin, and the camera crew struggled to all see the screens.
“We always offer our services throughout any event,” the House Manager, Morgan, said. Morgan was a tall, tan man with perfectly white hair and teeth and big muscles. “The show last night said they were providing their own security. I heard a lot of cheering and microphones and things like that from my office, but I’ve got to be honest, when big groups come in and they don’t need my stagehands or ushers or anything like that, I just wait to lock up and tell them where my office is if they need anything.” He smiled, his teeth blinding. “I was watching cooking videos.”
Vince grumbled something about a weak alibi, clearly disgruntled by no longer being the tallest and strongest in the room. Ivy stepped lightly on his foot.
They set the security footage to fast forward through two evenings before. A series of men in hats and sunglasses with ladders walked in. Within a minute, each security camera in the rooms that were used that night were covered with black fabric. They were taken off five hours later, by the same men with covered faces.
Morgan looked at the floor. “I had a new security guard on duty that night. It was his first shift alone.” He looked at Ivy, all the animation gone from his expression. “I’m guessing that wasn’t a coincidence.”
“I’m afraid not. Have you called him since?”
“He’s scheduled for a shift for tomorrow night.” He pulled out his phone and dialed. He slid a hand into his pocket, the picture of pretend ease.
Three loud beeps. “The number you are trying to contact has been disconnected. If you—”
The room was quiet.
“What about the client—did they give you a name?”
The house manager swallowed. “The number was disconnected, just like this. All it was booked was under ‘Lee Patterson’s Event.’ He said it was some sort of educational expo.”
“Lee Patterson has been dead nearly a week,” Ivy said. “So, whoever it was used that name as a fake identity.”
“I guess we have what we need then,” Vince said. He looked at Ivy. “We need to go find you a place to stay.”
“A place to stay?” Joyce said, and Ivy nodded.
“The death threats got a little … too real,” Ivy said.
At this, Morgan choked, coughing into the crook of his elbow.
“More real than a bomb?” Ivy pressed her lips together. “Tell me if you need somewhere, okay?” Joyce said. “Alex’s and my door is always open.”
“I know,” Ivy said, pressing up a smile.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017, 8:54 p.m.
A motel room would have to do for now, Ivy figured. She and Vince had gotten the things she needed, and checked her into a room near the stairwell, a request that had the concierge pushing her rolling chair backward, though a flash of her badge seemed to ease the tension.
They took the elevator to the sixth floor, walked down three sets of stairs, took the elevator down once, and then walked up two flights of stairs in an attempt to throw off anyone who might be watching the security cameras. The ordeal of it all had left Ivy tired and wondering how Jennings and her family were dealing with relocating with Witness Protection.
But after she’d assured Vince about fifteen times that she was fine, she was armed, and she would be trapping the front door, he finally agreed to go home, and she told him she’d see him tomorrow.
She set up a small camera outside the room and then rigged her own door with a simple bell and chair-against-the-deadbolt situation. It wasn’t quite the level of a trap she’d promised Vince, but she needed a moment to lie down, clear her head. She listened to the sound of rain promised herself she’d get up and get dinner in a few minutes before falling into a deep sleep, despite her jeans and shoes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tuesday, March 7, 2017, 11:49 p.m.
Edward Thorne stared at the body on his living room floor. A big guy with tattoos and a ridiculous amount of muscle mass sprawled across his floor. He’d be hard to move. And he’d have to throw the rug away. Burn the rug, probably. But that still required moving the rug. And that would be much more difficult than it would have been yesterday or last week.
His anxious traits had tripled since he’d seen his name listed as a work in progress—he’d hardly slept at all since then, always trying to be on guard. And then the site itself had entirely disappeared. Likely taken down by the police, but Edward wasn’t an idiot. He knew that the Kingsmen had found another place to communicate, another website. Whatever new information that was on that website didn’t interest him. He knew he was still labeled as a WIP, and that wouldn’t change until he was dead. This was just the first round. He’d have to go buy more locks.
He sighed, pulling on boots. He found a tarp in his garage and tucked it beneath the man and rolled him forward, taking out the wallet from his back pocket. The man’s name was Silas Owen, and he had a Kingsmen card tucked among the credit cards. He checked the man’s hand. A tarnished wedding ring sat on his finger, and Edward’s
eyes dropped. Part of him wished he hadn’t looked, but it was necessary. He slid the wedding ring off the man’s hand, as well as two thick rings shaped like skulls. He grabbed scissors and walked to the bathroom. He flushed the rings first. Then he cut up the ID and the credit cards before flushing those as well. He then painted the wallet with blue acrylic and threw it into the back of his attic. He texted from the burner phone in Silas’s pocket: Edward Thorne Eliminated.
He didn’t expect it to last long; someone would likely be sent to confirm his death and would find a mother who was not in mourning and a missing persons report saying where Silas Owen was last seen—but maybe it’d give him a few extra days to prepare.
The packing tape screeched as he dragged the tape across the bottom of a cardboard moving box. The man was at least two hundred pounds, so it would need the extra support. He stuffed bubble wrap into the box. If any blood escaped, hopefully, it’d protect the box from the moisture for long enough. He placed the box at the end of the man’s feet and maneuvered him into a ball position in the box.
He was hard to move, his muscles tight and tense, even in death. He taped the top and went to the kitchen. He wished he could simply down a bowl of spinach and have muscles pop from him arms, but all he could do was drink a glass of water and hope he didn’t throw it up.
The box barely fit in the backseat of his car. He had to slide the passenger seat all the way forward, and it still took all his strength to get it into the back. By the time he got the box out of the back and to the pier, he was sweating and paranoid from the drive over, during which he’d seen not only one, but two cop cars. He pushed the box along, praying the bottom—which he had coated in layers of tape—would hold. A young couple found him, their eyes immediately alarmed by the large box and the man profusely sweating behind it.
