Animal Instincts (Entangled Ignite) (3 page)

Chapter Four

My brother was buried on a day with no sun. Appropriate, for I felt the sun had been snuffed out of my life.

The mournful sound of bagpipes made my chest squeeze tighter.

Literally more than a thousand people had shown up at the cemetery, as they always did when one of their own was murdered on the job. In addition to the Chicago Police Department chiefs, the mayor, and other local and state politicians, there were the uniforms, mostly from Chicago, but many from the suburbs and neighboring cities and states, some from as far away as Minneapolis and Florida and New York.

Facing tragedy, they were all so stoic.

I remained outwardly stoic, too.

His graying red hair perfectly groomed around his florid face, Dad was surrounded by men in uniform at the other end of the coffin, including Shade’s partner, Ethan, and his lieutenant, Ryan Connelly. Dad kept looking at me. Any weakness on my part would reflect badly on him, so I choked back my tears.

I wanted to pull Shade’s body from the coffin and somehow breathe life back into him. Then I could tell him I was sorry that I’d told him to leave me alone.

But there was no going back. No do-over. No chance for forgiveness.

The rustle and chirps of live things around me reflected my anguish. Always drawn to me, animals commiserated. A squirrel stopped within yards of me and sat up, bushy tail twitching, staring at me with beady dark eyes. It chattered, sorrow evident in the pitch of its gunfire clicks and clacks. Its little heart thumping double time, a frog croaked its way toward me from the nearby pond. A flock of sparrows flew over my head, ruffling my hair before ascending on the gravesite in formation as precise as an Honor Guard.

I somehow held it together. The wind soughed along the headstones and drizzle splattered the graveyard.

“Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.” Though his skin was leathery, his white hair thinning, Father Costa had a strong, vibrant voice that carried across the cemetery. “And let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace.”

A weird sensation suddenly buzzed me. I started. It felt as if someone or some
thing
was trying to get inside my mind. Not an animal. Animals were open. This felt furtive. I shook off the creepy feeling and scanned the graveyard around me. All eyes were glued to the scene at the coffin.

Except…

I felt more than saw him. Like a dark wraith, he hovered in the distance, near-hidden in a stand of trees at one corner of the cemetery. He wore no uniform. No suit. His shirt and pants were as black as the hair that whipped along his shoulders, his face pale in contrast.

My knees bobbled as I recognized him, and I had to catch myself from collapsing.

The man who’d controlled the predators at the fight the other night was here.

My pulse thrummed.

Who was he, and why had he shown up at Shade’s funeral?

Remembering the mutual dislike so evident between the stranger and my brother, I wondered if he’d had something to do with Shade’s death.

I blinked, and as suddenly as I’d become aware of him, he was gone. Exactly the same way he’d disappeared outside the fight arena.

A lone bugler played taps. I tore my gaze back to the burial. Seven officers stepped forward, each firing three rounds. A twenty-one gun salute to honor a fallen hero. Twenty-one wounds cut through me, and it took all the strength I had left not to fall to my knees in surrender.

Connected in a way that most people wouldn’t understand, Shade and I had been two parts of a whole. Dad didn’t understand. Shade had been able to read people, the reason he’d become a copper. I’d always been connected to animals, the reason I worked as an animal rescuer. Even with our differences, Shade and I had always been in psychic sync. Although something had been off between us for a few days before his death.

And then a single shot to the head had ended my brother’s life.

Had ended me.

I wanted to weep again, but my eyes burned and remained dry as the city flag that had draped the coffin was folded precisely into a triangle and handed to my father.

My best friend and business partner Phoebe Hunt stepped up to hug me. Today her blue-black hair was braided in cornrows and cut with streaks the same purple as her summer sweater and slacks.

“Anything you need.”

“I know. Thanks.”

Phoebe’s deep brown eyes were watery and the tip of her broad nose was wet. She’d always crushed on my brother.

“Don’t worry about the shop,” Phoebe said. “I’ll take care of everything,” she promised. “Take as long as you need.”

I nodded, yet thought that I needed to keep my mind occupied with something other than my brother’s murder. The pet supply store Phoebe and I owned would give me a distraction.

The mourners dispersed. Lieutenant Connelly led many of the uniforms to their vehicles. They would head for a local bar where they could drink to my brother.

“We should get going,” Dad said, a whiff of whiskey on his breath.

“
I—I can’t face all those people. You go on.” I thought he looked commanding in his dress blues, no emotions apparent except his gloved hands clenching and unclenching the folded flag. I brushed nonexistent lint from his jacket, my futile attempt at getting closer. “I want to stay to say good-bye.”

“I can wait for you,” came a deep voice from behind me. “Shade wouldn’t want you to be alone today.”

I turned to Ethan, who’d been far more than Shade’s partner. They’d been best friends, as close as brothers. He appeared nearly as devastated as I felt.

“Thanks, but I’m fine.”

“I don’t mind waiting.”

His voice was as pinched as his normally handsome face.

“What went wrong, Ethan? How did this happen?”

Ethan shook his head and regret thickened his voice. “Something was off with Shade. I wish I had pressed him.”

I scared up a smile and said, “Please, take Dad to the bar.”

Unwillingly he did as I asked and the men walked off together, trailing the crowd.

I realized the cemetery crew was waiting for me to leave, too, so they could lower the coffin into the ground. One of the guys seemed to get that I needed a little privacy. He moved toward the backhoe, signaling the rest to follow him.

The drizzle turned to a light rain, and finally tears pooled in my eyes. My heart felt broken. Somehow, on shaky legs, I stepped forward, and with an outpouring of grief, at last allowed myself to touch the coffin, which had remained closed through the wake and the funeral.

If only I could see Shade one last time.

“Skye.”

For a moment, I wanted to think I was hearing my brother. I whipped around and came face-to-face with my mystery man. His face wasn’t as pale as it had appeared in the moonlight, but lightly bronzed, making him look rugged. My pulse surged as I wondered if he had anything to do with my brother’s murder.

“Who are you? What business do you have here?”

“I want you to know how grateful I am to your brother.”

“Grateful?” I said. “You and Shade didn’t like each other.”

“Maybe we didn’t. But Elizabeth Reyes is my mother.”

The breath caught in my throat, and my heart missed a beat. Elizabeth Reyes—the reason my brother was dead. “They told me he took a bullet for her.”

He nodded. “Your brother saved her life by giving up his own. I can’t soften the pain of your loss, but know that I am in your debt.”

“Why was someone trying to shoot your mother?” Unreasonable anger filled me. It didn’t matter that Shade had been dedicated, that he’d put his life on the line most days. Why did my brother have to die for his mother, whatever her deal? “Why was Shade with her in the first place?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Can’t or won’t? The fight the other night—why did you and Shade dislike each other?” I turned to the grave. “And then you disappeared.”

I glanced back, and once again, the stranger had vanished into thin air.

Whoever he was, Elizabeth Reyes’s son hadn’t told me his name.

He didn’t deserve a second thought. Not today. Today was about my brother.

I couldn’t help but feel totally alone as I said my good-bye.

“It’s always been you and me. When I said to leave me alone, I didn’t mean forever. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I said, my voice breaking.

I tried tuning into his wavelength as if he would answer as usual, but as had happened the night we’d fought, I couldn’t sense him.

Nothing.

Feeling a crushing weight on my chest, I let the tears fall as they would.

I would never see my brother again.

Never.

…

It was dusk by the time I arrived home. Shade and I had separate apartments, separate lives, but we’d always been close when it had mattered.

Now the building felt barren and gray, like a place I didn’t want to be.

Nevertheless I entered the foyer, all original, all wood but for the mosaic ceramic tile floor. Standing in front of the door to his first-floor apartment, I picked up the mail—mine and Shade’s—and as I stood there, frozen simply seeing his name on the envelope, I swore I sensed him. Not that I heard or saw anything tangible. Just a feeling that made my pulse skitter and my hand shake as I unlocked the downstairs door to the stairwell.

Heavy hearted, I started up the stairs toward a framed print of a black panther. The big cat’s eyes pierced me, reminded me of my responsibilities—rescued animals all waiting for me. The cats were whining, Peach throwing herself at the door. Boomer whistled through his nose. The three cats were mine, the dog Shade’s. And they all needed to be taken care of. The thing about having animals was that I would never be completely alone.

Once their needs were met, the cats settled down, but Boomer followed me around my apartment, toenails clacking against the oak wood floors. I’d tried making the dog understand that Shade wasn’t here anymore, yet Boomer kept looking at me through those melting dark-brown eyes as if he didn’t believe me.

“He’s gone, boy, gone forever,” I murmured, sitting on the floor with him.

Boomer was a sweet dog with fierce protective instincts, some kind of terrier mix with tufts of wiry fur. He yawned and placed his head in my lap. I leaned back against my bed, my heart wrenching with pain. Peach hopped up on the mattress. Phantom followed. I crawled into bed as Dreamer joined us. I settled down with cats wrapped around me. The dog settled down at my feet.

Surrounded by unconditional love, I let my mind drift.

I was in the cemetery again, distracted by the man who didn’t belong. The son of the woman whose life my brother had saved by giving up his own.

I stared at him. His power called to me, confused me. My pulse threaded unevenly, and my mouth went dry, and I felt an inexplicable pull that I couldn’t deny.

Not exactly a pleasant feeling. It tore through me, leaving me breathless and surrounded by a darkness that had a ragged, frightening pulse.

Who was he? What was our connection? I needed to know.

My mind was rushing toward him to better see his face when exhaustion won and darkness claimed me.

Chapter Five

When I awoke, Boomer made yawning sounds he normally reserved for Shade, and tore out of the kitchen to the enclosed back porch.

Sighing, I followed him and opened my back door. “All right, see for yourself.”

The dog shot down the stairs to the first-floor apartment and pranced as he waited for me to catch up. The second I opened Shade’s door, the weird sense that Boomer and I weren’t alone returned. I felt as if someone
was
there. Had someone broken into Shade’s apartment? The mysterious man from the cemetery immediately came to mind. Pulse hammering, I tried to catch the dog by the collar, but he was too fast for me. A sharp noise from the bedroom stopped the dog outside the door. He began barking hysterically.

My heart thundered. “Who’s there?” And then I choked out a big, fat lie. “I already called 911. The police are on their way.”

Grabbing a kitchen chair as a shield, I swung it in front of me and moved down the hallway as a dark figure flew from the bedroom into the dining room, whipping Boomer off his feet and tossing him across the room. The dog shrieked as he slammed into the far wall. His fear and pain engulfed me. That did it. I advanced on the thief, chair swinging. His head whipped around. He was young and tough-looking, with a scar that ran down one cheek.

Stupid bitch!
He reached out and easily ripped the chair from my hands.
Give that to me.

He hadn’t said the words out loud, but I’d heard them. Shocked, I stopped dead in my tracks. His black eyes focused on mine and I felt like something was probing my skull. I mentally pushed back. The look he gave me, like I confused him somehow, was followed by his fast retreat. He was out the front door in seconds, the dog snarling at his heels. He slammed the door on the dog’s nose.

“Boomer, honey, are you okay?”

I was shaking, but the dog’s tone shifted back into the familiar whine that told me my brother was around. And then another voice shocked me.

“Have you already given some strange guy access to my apartment?”

Boomer bolted past me.

Barely breathing, I looked into the living room. There, next to the fireplace, stooping toward his dog, was my supposedly dead brother. The sun suddenly came from behind the clouds and through the bay windows in a shimmering wave of light worthy of a resurrection.

A weight lifted from me. I couldn’t breathe and pressed my hands to my chest, as if I could keep my heart from exploding with joy.

“Shade, you’re alive!” I started toward him. “What’s going on? Why did you let everyone think you were dead? Why did you let me believe I’d lost you?”

My body felt electrified as I flew forward to fling my arms around my brother…

…and met nothing but air.

Was I going crazy, imagining him? I choked back a sob. Then Shade stepped toward me into the sunlight and his form lost its substance. I could still see him but he was translucent now.

Crying out in despair, I put out a hand to touch him.

Nothing.

My eyes stung.

Shade was here but not.

How could this be? Had I lost my mind? I wanted to believe he was here with me.

“I—I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either. I should be gone.” Shade looked upward. “You know, with the big guy. I should be up there getting busy in his service, doing whatever it is he wants.” He frowned. “Maybe there’s something I left undone here.”

A wave of enervating emotion swept through me. Maybe I was imagining his being here simply because I wanted it to be so. My pulse tick-ticked as I tried to think clearly. If I
wasn’t
imagining things and Shade’s ghost was here, there was a reason he was appearing to me.

“What happened, Shade? Who shot you?”

The smile faded and his expression turned grim. “Don’t know. I don’t even remember what I was doing.”

He was pacing the room, Boomer next to him. The dog’s love and happiness at being with Shade swept through me.

Ghost.
My brother was a ghost. Not so strange considering we’d always had a psychic connection and had communicated without words.

Without words.

“Wait a minute. That guy who broke in here. I heard his thoughts.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like he was talking to me. Only his lips weren’t moving. I don’t hear people,
you
do.” Suddenly, I realized I should be doing something about the break-in. “Wait! What am I doing?” I felt for my cell phone. “I need to report it—”

“Whoa, not so fast. Let’s see what he took first.”

Getting to my feet, I led the way to his bedroom. Drawers hung open. Shade’s things were scattered across the dresser. His diamond tie clip was still there. A gold ring. A couple hundred in cash.

I shook my head. “I don’t get it. Why would a thief leave this stuff behind?”

“Maybe he was looking for something connected with the case I was working on. Maybe
that’s
it. Maybe I’m not supposed to go anywhere until I remember. You’ve got to help me figure this out.”

This situation was surreal. I feared I was going to blink and Shade would simply disappear.

“Where do we start? Ethan gave me your personal things, but no casebook.” Shade always had his casebook on him. “Maybe Dad has it.”

“You know he’ll never give it to you. What about my cell phone?”

“Maybe Dad has that, too.”

“You know he doesn’t believe in full disclosure to anyone but another copper. Hmm, my online calendar.” Shade walked into the bedroom that held a desk and a couple of bookshelves.

In something of a daze, I followed. My mind was spinning with this new development. I was still having trouble believing I wasn’t imagining it all.

My ghostly brother tried to open the lid of his laptop. When his hands went right through it, he swore under his breath.

“Let me,” I murmured, sliding into the desk chair and flipping open the lid.

I went through the motions, but my mind wouldn’t focus, kept going back to the fact that this had to be impossible, that Shade couldn’t be here, that I was imagining him out of my grief. But every time I looked up, he was still there, either focused on his computer or on me with a worried expression.

Finally I found his online calendar, and together we deciphered his notes going back a month. Several entries were marked DF at 10 p.m., but each entry cited a different location.

“DF…” Shade murmured. “…DF…DF…DF…”

“Dogfight,” I said. “You were at one the other night. No actual dogs were fighting, though. More like wild animals. And where the heck did they come from?”

“Sorry.” He shrugged. “I don’t remember. Maybe Ethan would know something.”

“I doubt it,” I said, thinking of his denial at the cemetery, “but I can try again.” I started out the door and up the stairs, then turned back one more time to see Shade standing in the doorway, his expression frustrated. “Are you coming?”

“It seems I can’t leave.” He illustrated by trying to enter the hall. Any body part he tried to move through the doorway simply disappeared. “Seems I’m trapped right here. I guess you’ll have to see Ethan alone.”

I wasn’t looking forward to a confrontation with Shade’s partner, who, like Dad, would want me to stay out of anything that was police business.

…

I found Ethan at his desk at the Area office, photographs of murder victims before him.

“How are you doing, Skye?”

I took a deep breath. “I’ll be better when my brother’s murderer is brought to justice. Someone broke into his place tonight.”

“You called it in?”

“No. Nothing seemed to be missing, but the intruder was looking for something.”

“You saw him?”

“I chased him out.”

Ethan sat there for a minute staring at me. “I’m sending a team over there to dust for prints, see if they find anything else that could identify him.”

“Fine. In the meantime, give me an update.”

“There’s been another murder connected with the case Shade and I were working on. A woman. The wounds looked as if they came from an animal. This isn’t for publication, but the ME says it was some kind of canine. The wounds on two other recent murder victims were similar.”

Which made me think about the predators at the fight. That must have been why my brother had been there. Investigating homicides. He’d made the connection and had been following up on it.

“What about Shade’s casebook?” I asked. “And his cell phone.”

Ethan frowned. “The odd thing was that we didn’t find his cell phone on him.”

I narrowed my gaze at him. “Dad already got to you, right?”

His expression was confirmation that I was right, although he said, “I’m telling you the truth. No cell phone.”

That was weird. “He always had it on him. The casebook, too.”

“I know. And Roger said he spoke to him around seven, but Shade said he was late for something and couldn’t talk.”

“So what could have happened between seven and the time he was shot? Maybe it’s in his car?”

“We checked. Not there, either.”

“I didn’t find it in his apartment, either.” I hesitated only a second before asking, “Ethan, what about his casebook?”

“I, uh, have to copy it first before I can release it.”

Thinking he was stalling, I said, “Shade wants me to see his casebook.”

“You can’t yet.” He hesitated a second and then said, “You make it sound like he told you that.”

“As a matter of fact, he did. He’s here. Shade’s here. Not
here
here exactly. At his place. Apparently he can’t leave the apartment.”

Ethan raised his eyebrows. “Have you been sleeping?”

“This isn’t wishful thinking, I promise you.”

“After my brother Mike was killed, I kept looking in every corner of the house, thinking he would step in and talk to me any minute.”

I took a big breath. “I know my brother is dead.
He
knows he is. But he’s still here in spirit. Unfinished business. He thinks he needs to crack the case and find his own murderer. With my help, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Don’t humor me. My brother is in trouble. He’s stuck here, can’t move on until he finishes what he needs to do. Shade was your partner. Help me help him. Tell me why he was at that dogfight the night before he was shot.”

“What dogfight? He didn’t tell me anything about a dogfight.”

Why hadn’t he? I wondered.

“So Shade was working on a case without telling me anything about it? That isn’t like him.”

“Shade told me how to get into his online calendar and we saw several similar notations on different days
—10 p.m., DF
. That must stand for dogfight.” Or what my brother had expected to be a dogfight.

“What the hell was he thinking? What did he get himself into?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“I can’t let you involve yourself. This could be a dangerous situation.”

“I’m not going to wait for the wheels of justice to catch up, not if I can do something to help.”

“And get yourself killed like Shade did? Stay out of it. Leave it to me.”

I couldn’t agree to that, so I didn’t say anything. I’d thought my brother had shared everything with Ethan, even things he hadn’t shared with me.

So why hadn’t he told Ethan about the dogfight lead?