The Wolf, page 34
Another set of headlights rounded a curve in the road, coming toward her.
Snapping to attention, she threw the phone out of the window and into the opposite lane; then she punched the gas and continued on. She was in a stolen SUV, owned by drug suppliers, with a phone she’d lifted off a guy she’d shot and killed, stuck in an information vacuum where the wrong move could end her up where Roberts had.
Wherever that grave was.
Rio kept driving until she came into a little hamlet with a diner/grocery store combo, and a bank, and a gas station. She wasn’t hungry—but then she had no money.
At least the tank was full.
That gasoline, and this vehicle she didn’t own, were pretty much the extent of her assets.
God, what was she going to do? She’d assumed that as long as she could stay out of Mozart’s way until she could get to the station, she’d be fine. But now that was not an option.
She had to find a safe place to collect her thoughts and figure out what she needed to do. But like she knew this area at all?
* * *
As Lucan walked out of Willow Hills’s front entrance, the sense that things were closing in, smothering him, suffocating him, was like a tangible stalker, tight on his heels. He knew what he was supposed to do, knew where to do it, knew what he had to accomplish to be successful.
But in the very short distance between the Executioner’s private quarters and this very large, awfully decrepit exit, he’d made up his mind: Rio wasn’t going to be involved in what happened next. He was going to deal with Mozart directly. That way, he could make sure Kane stayed alive while not endangering her, and then he could…
Lose his fucking mind quietly and calmly.
Great plan.
But come on. She’d known she was in danger. He’d rescued her, for fuck’s sake. The conversation should have been about her getting out of the drug-dealing life, not him, but he’d been too distracted by emotion to be as smart and logical as he should have been. And wasn’t that always the way.
Closing his eyes with a curse, he slowed his breathing and got ready to dematerialize. Just get ghost and go. Leave in a scatter of molecules—
When nothing even remotely heading-out happened, he reopened his lids and looked back at the sanatorium.
All those lives stuck underground, suffering in lesser degrees until they dropped dead and were slung out of the building’s body chute to roast into ash by the sun. No one to mourn them, nobody missing them. Forgotten.
For fuck’s sake, most of the people in there couldn’t remember why or how they’d ended up in custody.
But they were going to have to wait for another savior to come along. He was not it. He was no hero, and never had been one.
Once again, with the closing of the eyes. Then the breathing. Deep breathing… slow. Easy—
When he still filled out his clothes and stayed stuck to the ground, when his body remained heavy and full in his skin, and the landscape continued to be unchanged, he lost his temper and started hoofing it. Another couple of hundred yards, he tried to dematerialize again. And then one more time, a further hundred yards along.
His head was just too fucked for him to concentrate enough to ghost away.
Long fucking walk to Caldwell from where the hell he was.
Man, this night just kept getting better.
Zipping his leather jacket up, he entered the scruffy tree line, pushing bare limbs out of his face, making his way to the chain-link fence. He was forced to claw his way up the thing and swing himself over the top. As he landed with a curse, he kept going.
Guess he was just going to have to “borrow” a human’s car off the county road.
Yeah, ’cuz there were so many people wearing out the pavement up here this time of night. He’d have a better chance of getting hit by a bus—
Monte Carlo.
Monte-fucking-Carlo, he thought as he fell into a jog.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
José pulled his unmarked over to the curb in front of Officer Hernandez-Guerrero’s apartment building. When he got out, he made sure his jacket was open so he could get at his gun.
It was that kind of night.
The neighborhood was quiet even though there were no private houses, but congregations of tenants, corralled under communal roofs. Then again, this was a working-folks zip code where nine o’clock was wind-down time, even on the weekends, all kinds of TV-blue light strobing in the sliding glass doors that opened to shallow, one-unit porches.
Hitting the sidewalk, he went up to the front door of the building in question and entered, passing by the mailboxes. At the second door, he took out the keys Stan had given him from before and unlocked things. It didn’t take him long to get to the missing officer’s apartment, and he snapped on gloves before breaking the seal he had put on the doorjamb.
As he hit the inside lights, he knew the layout like the back of his hand, not that it was complicated—and he went through each room, one after the other, turning on any lamp or overhead fixture that he came to. He looked under the sofa, the bed, and in all the cupboards, all over again. He went through drawers wherever he found them, in the bedroom, in the bath, in the kitchen. The closet got another deep dive as he checked the pockets in coats, and searched the floor under the hanging clothes with his flashlight. Going down on his hands and knees, he opened shoeboxes, and went through empty duffles.
Nothing.
Maybe he’d gotten her message wrong—
The knock out by the living area was soft. So was the “Hello?”
José got back up to his feet with old-man effort, his high school football injury squawking at the weight he put on that bad knee.
“Yup,” he called out as he came around into the living area.
A woman who was about six months pregnant was leaning through the main door. When she saw him, she smiled tentatively.
“Um, hi, I’m Elsie Orchard, I live across the hall.”
“Hi.” He got out his badge and flashed it. “Detective José de la Cruz.”
That smile disappeared, all kinds of worry replacing it. “Is everything okay?”
“We’re doing our best. Can I help you?”
“Yeah, so…” She brought forward something from behind her back. “I was getting my mail today, and the post office guy couldn’t fit this in Rio’s box? He said there wasn’t enough room because it hadn’t been emptied in days. I don’t know what it is. I promised him I would give it to her, but she’s not… here.”
As the woman held out an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven envelope, her hands were shaking. “Is she all right? She’s really nice. She always helped me if I were bringing groceries in—and when the lights went out from that storm back in August, she knocked on my door and made sure I had a flashlight. My husband was gone. It meant a lot.”
José wanted to make the sign of the cross as he accepted the piece of mail, but nothing good would come out of further alarming any of the neighbors, especially if they were pregnant. “Thank you so much.”
“Is there anything I can do to help? Where is she?”
The eyes that clung to his were scared rather than hopeful, and the woman ran her hand around the gentle swell of her belly, as if she were trying to soothe herself.
“Have you seen anything unusual in the building?” he asked, just to give her something to respond to. “Or at this apartment?”
“No, I haven’t. I wish I had. Our place faces the street that way and…”
José let her keep going, let her tell him everything she could think of. Sometimes, you just had to invite people into the investigation because it was the right thing to do. Caring neighbors and family members who were suffering deserved air space.
Plus, you never knew when a helpful tip would be dropped.
“Anyway,” she concluded sadly, staring down at his gloved hands.
“Here’s my card.” He held one out to her. “Call me if you think of anything else?”
The woman nodded and then went back across the hall. He held the door open and watched her until she gave him a wave and locked herself in. He hoped her husband was home tonight. She was going to need some support.
Closing Officer Hernandez-Guerrero’s front door, he took the envelope into the kitchen. Everything was neat and clean, so there was nothing to push out of the way to get a flat, clear space on the counter.
Unlike on Stan’s desk.
As a feeling of dread swamped him, he turned the piece of mail over. The name and address were written in fine-point black ink, and the penmanship was bad, everything scrawled and tilted to the left, like someone who wasn’t right-handed was trying to write like they were.
No return address in the upper left. Postcode over the stamps was Caldwell.
Heavy and stiff.
Photographs.
Ordinarily, he wouldn’t open potential evidence on his own, but this was not ordinary, considering what the hell he’d found in the sink cabinet in Stan’s crapper.
Taking out his Swiss Army knife, he slid the blade into the flap and cut carefully down the seam. The back had been taped in a sloppy fashion, the wide, shiny swaths pressed into a mess.
José put the knife down and slid out…
Black-and-white glossies.
At first, his eyes refused to focus properly on the two figures who were facing each other. When things finally became clearer, he found that the images had been taken at a distance, but from a telephoto lens, so they were laser accurate—
Stan was on the left.
And on the right, a tall, elegant man in a tuxedo.
Stephan Fontaine.
There were easily fifteen pictures, and the succession of them told a story. There was an argument going on, both men leaning in, gesturing with hands, throwing up arms in frustration. And then… there was one where a photograph changed hands. The first image of it didn’t register. But the second caught the old-school picture at just the right angle.
It was Rio. It was Officer Hernandez-Guerrero.
Why in the hell would Stan be providing the picture of an undercover officer, whose identity was known only to Stan and one or two others on the entire force, to a civilian?
Under any circumstance, it was a breach in protocol and confidentiality. Under the fact pattern that one undercover officer was dead—and had likely been the person taking the pictures—and Rio was missing?
The photographs looked like a negotiation, where Stephan was giving Stan something, and Stan… was providing the identity of Rio in return.
Now, José freely made the sign of the cross over his heart.
Then he turned the envelope back over and stared at the handwriting. He was willing to bet his almost-mortgage-free house that analysis would show the writing was Leon Roberts’s. If it didn’t, it was because he’d tried to disguise his cursive by using his opposite hand.
The man had been going to Rio directly because he didn’t trust internal channels, not even internal affairs.
And he’d known her life was in danger.
The question, almost as important as what Stan had gotten for the intel… was why Stephan Fontaine would need or want to know who Rio was.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Lucan would have let his wolven out to run if he hadn’t needed to keep a set of clothes on himself. As it was, he got through the woods as fast as his two-legged form could take him, even though under his skin, his other side chomped at the proverbial bit to get free and four-paw the ground.
Now was not the time for that.
And that abandoned farmhouse was only a mile or two away.
He was about two hundred yards from the property, scaling a fallen tree in a hurdle, when the scent first reached his nose. Slowing, he had to make sure he was catching it right.
Gasoline. In the middle of the woods?
And it was fresh—accompanied by oil and exhaust. The bouquet of it all was faint, but unmistakable.
Tracking the smell, he changed direction, moving laterally over the acreage to make sure he didn’t catch anyone’s attention—
There it was. Tucked into a thicket of brambles that was so dense, the silver SUV might as well have been covered by a tarp of evergreen vegetation.
Was it possible, he thought as his heart quickened.
“Rio?” he whispered as he closed in on the vehicle.
Circling the tinted windows, he couldn’t see much inside, but it was locked.
Lucan turned and looked through the interlacing branches of the tangle. That farmhouse was just in the distance—but he felt like it was across the country. Surging forward, he all but shot himself out of a cannon as he raced to the back door. But just as he grabbed the knob, he stopped and made sure his instincts weren’t sensing anything.
“Rio,” he said out loud. “It’s me. Don’t shoot.”
Lucan knocked. A couple of times. Called out her name again.
The door squeaked as he opened it, and he spoke up louder as he leaned into the kitchen. “Rio. Don’t shoot.”
His voice echoed around the abandoned rooms.
“Rio?” He stepped in. Closed the door. “It’s me.”
What if she were injured, he thought—
Across the way, the cellar entry opened a crack, and he put his hands in the air. “Just me. No one else—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence. Rio raced out and threw herself at him. As his arms wrapped around her, he held her so tight, he had to force himself to loosen his grip for fear of crushing her.
“I thought you were going to Caldwell,” he said.
She pulled back. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
When she just shook her head, he felt his fangs tingle. “What’s going on?”
Rio broke away and walked around the fallen plaster pieces, the discarded trash, the broken kitchen chair that was just organized kindling as opposed to anything you could actually sit on.
“It’s not safe for me right now. I came here because I needed a place to think for a minute.”
There was a temptation to get into her mind, to take all of her secrets and consume them because he was impatient and frustrated. But that would be a violation of her, sure as if he touched her when she didn’t want to be or spied on her when she was naked and didn’t know he was there.
It was wholly inappropriate.
“Mozart came after you, didn’t he.” As she looked over at him sharply, he knew he was right. “You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to. But you can’t pretend I didn’t save your life back in that shitty apartment building. It had to be him.”
“He’s a powerful man.”
“What went wrong? I thought you were his second in command.”
“Look, the less you know, the better.” She put her hands up. “And I may not be who you should deal with anymore.”
“But Mickie is dead. So who do I go to?”
“Mozart himself,” she said with a harsh laugh. Then she shook her head. “No, that was a joke. Do not go try to find him—”
“What do you know about the man.”
She didn’t even hesitate. “Nothing. He’s impossible to find, a ghost.”
“No one is that good at cover. No one.”
Rio came back at him, her eyes pleading. “He’ll kill you. That man is a soulless monster.”
He thought of those drawings she’d done of the building and knew the head of the guards was right. They were not mementos of her stay; they were blueprints for an infiltration.
She was using him. And yet… her body couldn’t fake arousal.
And was he any better than she was, with all he wasn’t telling her?
“I’m not worried about Mozart, I have some tricks up my sleeve.” Lucan brushed the side of her face. Then he paused as things took on a different intensity. “You know something, I love when you look at me like this.”
“Like how.”
“Like you want me to touch you.”
The next thing he knew, her hands were on his shoulders. And he was leaning into her.
“Rio…” There was no time for them. There was no future to be had. All they had was the present. “Rio.”
“Kiss me,” she moaned, like she’d read his mind.
Lucan dropped his head and found her lips like she was the air he needed, the food he craved, the sunlight he could no longer be in. And against his own, her mouth was as hungry as his was, the contact desperate and needy.
Without any rational thought in his head, and every sexual instinct in his body roaring, he maneuvered them over to the door she’d emerged out of.
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand.
As they started down the cellar stairs, he turned back and threw the dead bolt. It wasn’t copper, so it wasn’t going to do shit to keep out any vampires, but at least humans would be denied access.
For as long as it took for an intruder to break down the damn door.
Then again, it wasn’t like he and Rio weren’t armed.
On the lower level, he couldn’t not kiss her again. She’d lit a candle in a stout, corroded holder, and the fragile light was like a distant star in the night over by the bolts of fabric he’d first settled her on when he’d had nowhere else to bring her.
He helped her stretch out, holding her hand to steady her as she got down on her knees and lay on her back. Joining her, she arched her body and he kissed her some more, his hands finding their way under the shirt he’d given her.
The layers that covered her came off, melting away as he undid buttons, unzipped zippers, stripped off the shirt, her pants, and her bra.
No panties. He’d ruined them.
“You’re so beautiful.”
“You always say that.” She smiled up at him. “I’m thinking you’re biased for some reason.”
It’s because I love you, he thought to himself.
Lucan kissed her in a lingering way. Then he sat back and just watched the candlelight play over her pink-tipped breasts, and her stomach, and the graceful curve of her hips. As his eyes traveled down her naked body, she moved her legs together, her thighs shifting restlessly, like she was wet and hungry.
