Deadworld (3 page)

Chapter 4

Nick’s hands slipped on the doorknob to the offices of Special Investigations, Inc., the rather bland name for his investigation agency. A second try brought a painful wince to his face, but the latch withdrew, and he stepped into the soft light of the front office and was immediately greeted by the familiar cool cylinder slapping into his palm. Blocking his way in was the crisply dressed Cynthia, far more imposing than her 5’5” frame would suggest.

“Damnit, Nick! You look like shit. I should smack you. You do realize it’s, like, after noon? When did you last drink? Six, maybe seven this morning?”

She spit out the words too fast for him to reply. After a moment of numbed silence, Nick unscrewed the cap and took a long draught, puckering at the bitter taste. It made lemons taste like pure cane sugar. One of these days, the guys at the lab would figure out a way to sweeten the stuff. He shrugged. “Thank you, Cynthia. Always prepared.”

She rolled her eyes and walked back to her desk, her soft, full mouth drawn into an angry, thin line. A colorful bouquet of flowers obscured half the work surface. “One of these days, I won’t be here, Nick. What are you going to do then?”

“Die, I expect.” He smiled halfheartedly at her, but at least it was truthful. Four hours without, and the doorway to the other side began to pull at you with an ever-increasing force until your soul was compelled to flee the world of the living. It was a constant and inviting temptation.

“So you’re a comedian now, are you?”

“Nope. Just honest, and thanks for being there. Really.”

The taught lines on her face faded, and the hint of a smile returned. “Always will be, whether you’re an ass or not.”

“I’m far too fortunate.”

She laughed. “Yes, you are. So is this the big case you’ve been dancing around telling me about for the past few months?”

There was that hopeful look in her eye, full of curiosity and a vague sense of worry. Nick had refrained from mentioning the case, the one bit of history he had been too reluctant to reveal to Cynthia over the years. She knew him about as well as anyone could, but the truth would have scared her, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. The time for secrets ended now, and Nick’s stomach tightened at the thought of sharing the news.

“Yeah, it is. A dead boy drained of blood was found in a park this morning.”

“Shit,” she said, eyes going wide. “Another vampire?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Did you get a hold of Shel and Reg?”

“Of course. She’ll be here by three, and Reggie will come when you’re ready.”

“Good. Thank you.” Nick walked by and gave her shoulder an affectionate squeeze. It was impossible to fathom what things would be like now without her around. “I’m going to kick back and relax for a few before Shelby gets here. It’s been a rather long day already.” Cynthia looked up at him with expectant eyes, but there was nothing to say, not yet.

“Okay. Here,” she said, handing him a note from off the desk. “Richard from the lab called, and I expect some . . . answers.”

He took the note and gave her a grim smile. “You’ll get them soon enough. What’s with the flowers?”

“Pretty, aren’t they?” She leaned forward and smelled them, smiling. “That sweet Mrs. Renfro sent them over.”

“Ah.” Nick appreciated the easy ones. Reggie had talked to the dead Mr. Renfro himself, who was hanging around because he had died without telling his wife about the lock-box full of cash he had been hiding in the backyard for the past thirty-seven years. The money had been significant and had certainly eased the pains of retirement on Mrs. Renfro. He had not had the heart to charge her for a two-minute phone call.

Pulling a cold can of Guinness from the mini fridge in the hall, Nick closed the office door and kicked off his boots. He pushed the shades up onto his head and savored the near darkness of the room. The beer was half gone before he managed to sit down.

Trust.

There was little of it to go around anymore. After 180 years of life, the principle of diminishing returns had reached its limit. One covenant of trust had never been betrayed, however. Cornelius Drake had said he would come, five times over, for deaths Nick had incurred back on that fateful day in the pouring rain, and, true to his word, he was here again to finish his twisted game of revenge.

The fifth and final set had begun at last.

Nick downed the last of the beer and crumpled the can into a ball like tin foil. His shot at the wastebasket hit the rim and bounced out. Leaning back in his chair, he closed faintly glowing eyes and sighed. “Yeah, I’ve got game, all right.”

Chapter 5

“Okay, so what do you figure?” Jackie said, polishing off her ziti and meatballs with famished zeal. Her body had settled enough by midday to realize it had puked out all its nourishment. Laurel, on the other hand, picked mindlessly at a Caesar salad, pushing the leaves of lettuce around and nibbling on a crouton. Her glass of sparkling water had barely been touched.

“About what?” The absent tone indicated how well Laurel was listening.

“The case, girl. The weird vibes, the bloodless boy, freaky fucking ghosts.” She finally caught Laurel’s gaze. “What do you think?”

She stared at Jackie, hard and quiet, until Jackie finally turned away. “Don’t take this case, Jack.”

Jack? Christ, it was serious. The last time Jackie had heard her abbreviated name from Laurel’s lips was on a four AM ride home from a brawl outside a bar. It hadn’t mattered that the asshole had it coming. “You serious? Since when?”

“Yes, since my bad-vibe radar pinged off the map into next week somewhere.” She leaned forward over the table for emphasis. “This is bad news, Jackie. Let Pernetti handle it. He’s been whining to get his hands on leading something big. This case is . . . It’s all wrong.”

Jackie spit the mouthful of wine back into her glass. “What the hell, Laur? They’re all wrong. It’s our job to make them right again.”

“No,” she said, stern and quiet. “Wrong as in someone is going to get hurt.”

“Oh.” Jackie rolled her eyes, though she could not exactly laugh that one off. The last time that feeling had happened, Jackie’s ankle had been snapped in a high-speed chase gone bad. At least the crash had involved the bad guys, too. “Well, we didn’t sign up for the safety aspect of this job, you know.”

Laurel shook her head. “No. This is not in the same realm, Jackie. This is ‘don’t touch with a ten-foot pole’ sort of bad. It has a big glowing skull and crossbones stamped all over it.”

“Really?”

Laurel frowned at Jackie’s sarcasm, but then, how could she not make light of such things? She wouldn’t leave the case to someone like Pernetti and his super-sized, glow-in-the-dark forehead. Seriously, the man had to polish the damn thing.

“You realize that sort of feeling is exactly the reason not to give it over to some goon like Pernetti?”

“I don’t care. I’d rather see Pernetti get wheeled into the morgue than you, and need I remind you you’re a goon, too? Albeit a much prettier one.”

Jackie studied Laurel’s expression. One didn’t joke about seeing another agent in the morgue. It was bad karma. She knew from the last time a ghost was involved that if the shit really hit the fan, Laurel might actually fight her to get off the case, and that was not a scenario Jackie could win. Fighting Laurel would be like taking a bulldozer to the foundation of her being. The consequences would be too dire.

Jackie grinned at Laurel. “That’s why I always win.”

“Uh-huh. Get over yourself, goon girl, and promise me you will be very careful with this one.”

The cell phone buzzed in Jackie’s pocket, and she pulled it out to see that Denny was calling. She hit the button. “What’s up, Den?”

“Hey, Jack, thought I’d let you know we found an old coin beneath the boy.”

“You mean like something a coin collector would have?”

“Yep, looks that way,” he said. “It’s sealed up in plastic, but it looks to be very old if it’s real. It’s going downtown with the little evidence we have for now.”

“Give it to the geeks when you get there. We’ll be in soon. I want to see those pics you took also.”

“I e-mailed them to you a few minutes ago.”

“Already? How?”

Denny laughed. “Technology, Jack. You know, the cool stuff without triggers attached to them.”

“Ohhh, funny, man. It’s a good thing I like you, otherwise I’d have to inflict some bodily harm.”

“Promise?”

Jackie smiled, clicked off the phone, dipped the last of her bread into the sauce on the plate, and ate it with a wide-eyed smile. “They found an old coin under our boy. So, why don’t we go back to the bureau and see if the geeks can find out anything regarding that penny.”

“Promise me, Jackie. Be very careful with this one.”

Jackie could feel the heat of the finger pointing at her chest. The seriousness of Laurel’s voice tightened her stomach. “Okay,” she said, laughing off the tense moment, but she knew better. Laurel was never wrong about these things. “I promise.”

Chapter 6

Nick sat against his mahogany desk, thumbs hooked in the belt on either side of the buckle that looked like two crossed revolvers. As the stress mounted, old habits tended to kick in, and the cowboy posturing was one of the oldest.

“Drake is back,” he said, glancing quickly at each of them.

Shelby sported cutoff denim shorts that revealed a good inch or two of ass, and a white tank top with no bra. Her nipples pushed up right into the fabric to say, “Hello, how do you do.” It was an annoying habit of hers, purposefully putting herself on display in front of him. Her dark hair had been drawn back into a simple tail, showing off the smooth, sensuous lines of her face, looking unchanged from the day he had met her seventy-eight years ago.

Reggie’s transparent form sat in the old leather wingback in the corner. He was dressed in the same old, faded overalls, T-shirt, and leather work boots he had died in, forever Nick’s right-hand man.

Cynthia sat in the chair immediately in front of him, her legs demurely crossed, gaze curious and calm. Only the arms crossed over her chest gave any indication of her seriousness. Nick knew that irritation lay ready in waiting, crouched just beneath the surface.

Shelby’s relaxed nonchalance evaporated. “How do you know?”

“Someone found a twelve-year-old boy, drained of blood, sitting up against a tree in Garibaldi Park this morning. I felt Drake on him. I sensed Drake . . . a couple days ago but had no luck tracking him down.”

Reggie made a low whistling sound, and Shelby straightened up stiff as a lightning rod. “Two days? And you didn’t tell me?” She pointed an accusatory finger at Nick. “You asshole! You promised you would tell me the minute he was back again.”

“There’ve been whispers lately,” Reggie said in agreement. “But these days, the restless folks whisper about a lot of things, and, honestly, I’d not been paying attention to them. I suppose I should’ve checked on things.”

Nick shrugged at them. Knowing two days ago would have served no useful purpose other than putting them in harm’s way even sooner. “It wasn’t clear, and more than likely you would have just gotten yourself in trouble before we realized what he is up to this time. I figured it was better to risk just one of us until absolutely necessary.”

“Ah.” Shelby’s voice teetered on the fine edge of fury. “And if you’d managed to get yourself killed before letting us know what the fuck was going—”

“Hey,” Cynthia’s calm and cool voice interceded. There was a hint of fear. This was beyond Shelby’s usual acerbic attitude toward Nick. She never got downright pissed at him. “Aren’t we a team here? I mean . . . what exactly is going on? I’m a little disappointed to be left out of the loop on this, Nick.”

He folded his arms across his chest, a futile attempt to ward off the negative emotions tightening up every muscle in his gut. How many times had he considered asking Cynthia to find another job, trying to find a good way of letting her go, and then not being able to do it? It was difficult to let go of someone who knew about the dark parts of your heart and accepted them anyway. And then part of it was just plain, old-fashioned honesty. He did not have the wherewithal to lie to Cynthia.

“Cyn. This case is potentially very dangerous, and it’s also very personal,” he said, forcing himself to look down at those wide, accepting brown eyes. “After today, if you decide to pack up and leave, there’ll be no hard feelings from any of us. Honestly, I’d feel better if you did.”

She leaned back, eyes narrowing. “You’re serious.”

“I’m not going to ask you to stay.”

Shelby laughed. “Oh, come on, Nick. Like Cyn would refuse you anything.”

He shot her a hard glance, which was met with equal fire.

“Why don’t you just tell me the whole story and let me decide for myself?” Cynthia said.

Nick shifted against the desk. Nothing like having the two people you cared about most in the world seriously annoyed with you at the same time. “You have to promise me, Cynthia. If you have any doubts, any reservations at all about this after today, you will—”

“Christ, Nick. Just tell her already, and make it the short version. The last time you sat down and told this sob story, it took five and a half hours.”

Except I was lying down in your bed and figuring I was dead.
Nick bit off the reply that burned on his tongue. “Fine. The short version. Stop and ask me a question about any of this. Shel and Reg know the story.”

Cynthia smiled. “Talk away, hon. I’m all ears.”

Shelby walked out of the office and returned a moment later with two more beers. In the meantime, Nick turned to Reggie. “Reg, when you decide to leave, I need you to go check out the FBI headquarters downtown. Typical snoop run. I want to know who is on the case, what they’ve got, etcetera. Be careful though. They have a medium working with them now, and she’s pretty strong. Might give the locals on the scene a look, too, just in case.”

His silvery head nodded. “I’m all over it, boss. Was just waiting for the go-ahead.” He waved his fingers at Cynthia and Shelby. “Bye, girls. Enjoy story time with Uncle Nick.” His body slowly sank through the chair and vanished.

With a fresh beer in his hand, Nick opted to stand behind his desk to allow for some pacing. Telling Cynthia this information was just too nerve-wracking to be parked in a chair. Shelby was the only other person he had ever told, and look what had happened. Sadly, it was too late to turn back the clock two days and fire Cynthia. Even then, it was possible she had already been marked. Cynthia sat on the edge of her chair now, hands folded neatly in her lap. She looked more curious than anxious, and Nick wished he could make her feel the opposite. She needed to be worried. She needed to know that leaving was the best option, and sooner rather than later.

Shelby sipped at her beer, standing with nonchalant grace in the corner. “Anytime, babe. Drake’s probably already planning number two as we speak.”

“Shelby,” he said but realized then that arguing was pointless. She was just looking for an excuse to jump down his throat for breaking his promise to notify her. Nick heaved a sigh and shook his head. “Anyway. The short-and-sweet version.” A long draught on the beer wetted his already dry throat. “Short, at least.”

“Nick,” Cynthia said, forever the voice of tranquillity. “Just tell me, please.”

“Right. I know.” He blew out his breath again. It should not have been this hard the second time around. “I was a sheriff in Wyoming back in 1862.”

And so his story began.