Depths: Southern Watch #2 (11 page)

* * *

Erin was watching Hendricks’s door. She hadn’t followed Arch here because she’d made it away from the crime scene about ten minutes after he did, but she’d ended up in the same place as him, sure enough. She was just sitting outside the Sinbad’s parking lot, waiting to see if he came out.

She asked herself again what the hell was going on, but no answer really came beyond the obvious. They were probably just talking about something or other. But what? It wasn’t like Arch had run out here to tell Hendricks about her big promotion. Hell, she didn’t even know exactly why she’d run out here to do it.

Okay, that was a lie. She’d driven out here because her BFF had left town before the curtain had even fallen on their graduation, and she’d done the slow draw away in the year since. Frequent texts became less frequent until they never really came at all anymore, and Erin had been left palling around with the other townies or her coworkers. None of them were really close. More like drinking buddies. Occasional fuck buddies, maybe. Very occasionally, lately.

Hendricks was the first thing to show up in a long time that had interrupted her monotony. This temporary field promotion or whatever was the second. Two breaths of fresh air in a stale town she had gotten a little bored of. So she was pissed at him for being all mysterious.

He was still the only person she could think of that she was actually excited to share this with.

What the hell was Arch doing in there? Why did he leave the scene of the most heinous murder in Calhoun County history and head immediately for a seedy motel to talk to a guy he had just professed not to know all that well?

Erin ran a hand over her face as the rain-streaked window of the Crown Vic blurred in front of her. What the hell was she doing here, anyway? Hendricks was just a guy she’d met less than two weeks ago. A guy she’d made some exceedingly stupid decisions with.

Still, she didn’t put the car in drive and leave. She just sat there in the rain, watching the door to the motel, waiting to see if it would open.

* * *

Gideon circled around to the other side of the street where a gas station was damned near abandoned. He pushed in through the door and took a quick look around. Bored clerk behind the counter, not a patron in sight, no one filling up out at the pumps. The place smelled a little of mildew and the carpet squished faintly as he walked in. He went over to the candy, picked up something at random and went to pay for it. All the while he was watching the motel to see what the cop was up to.

She was just sitting there. He couldn’t be sure from this distance, but it looked like she was watching the place. Maybe she was just watching the other cop car. Or maybe she was watching for him.

His mind reeled. What could they possibly be after him for? He hadn’t committed any crimes, at least none anyone knew about. It seemed unlikely they’d already be on him for masturbating in the diner bathroom, even if someone had seen him. Besides, the cops hadn’t even showed up to the diner, just the paramedics.

No, this was something else, and he was straining to think of what it could be. Maybe something to do with what the Tul’rore had done? They had left a hell of a mess, and surely someone had found it by now. Gideon frowned as he pulled out a dollar bill to pay for his purchase. Maybe they were going to try and pin it on him. He was new in town, a stranger, and didn’t these small-towners like to do shit like that? Paranoid, xenophobic sons of bitches.

He stripped the wrapper off the candy bar when he was done paying, told the clerk to skip the receipt, and paused before walking out the exit door. “Hell of a storm,” the clerk said to him from behind the red counter.

“Sure is,” he agreed without thinking about it.

* * *

Arch left Hendricks a few minutes later, stepping back out into the rain from the shelter of the Sinbad motel’s second floor overhang. It didn’t help much because the rain was now coming sideways. It was a drenching downpour, absolutely soaking everything. The parking lot had been dusty before, the result of an abandoned construction dig just one lot over from the motel. They’d planned to build a restaurant there once, but that was before the recession caused the investment dollars to dry up. Arch didn’t care much about that, except it might have been nice to have another place to eat in town.

He got in the Explorer and out of habit checked the rearview. There was a sheriff’s car just behind him, out of the parking lot a little bit. He thought it might have been the sheriff’s own and turned around to check.

It was. But Reeve had been back at the scene when last he saw him.

The answer took him only a moment to come to—Erin. He wondered why she’d come out here, but only for a second, because it was fairly obvious. Why she was waiting out here was a little more puzzling, until he thought about how things might have looked from her end. He’d taken off on patrol but ended up stopping off here first? He felt an uncontrolled grimace. This was probably going to require an explanation but not until later. He hated lying anyway.

* * *

Gideon watched the big Explorer pull out of the parking lot and head down the road back toward town. He waited, and sure enough, the Crown Vic pulled into the space occupied by the Explorer only a few moments later. The girl got out and knocked on the door that the other sheriff’s deputy, the big burly black guy, had just come out of a minute before. It only took Gideon a second to remember that the cowboy had been in that room.

What the hell was the deal with the cowboy? He was a demon hunter but working with the law? Was he like a Texas Ranger? But for Tennessee, maybe? Was there even such a thing as a Tennessee Ranger?

He waited, staring out into the rain for a couple more minutes while he finished his candy bar. It didn’t look like they were interested in him, in any case, so there was no reason to hole up over here any longer. He had some thinking to do, anyway. The rain was getting worse, and that was all to the better.

* * *

“So …” Hendricks said as he sat back down on the bed. When he’d heard the second knock, he figured it was Arch coming back to tell him something else. It wasn’t, and he couldn’t decide if that made things better or worse. When he saw it was Erin, it sent a shot of butterflies right to his stomach, knowing he was going to have to answer questions he didn’t want to. Her raincoat was filling the room with a mildew smell, like it had been with the department since the sixties and hadn’t ever been cleaned. It wasn’t making Hendricks real happy to be next to her.

“So …” Erin said, and she sat down next to him. “What’s the deal?”

Hendricks tried to figure out what he could evade on this one. “With what?”

Her eyes grew wider for a second before narrowing back down again, and her nostrils flared. He got the feeling this conversation might end up having to get cut short. It wasn’t going to be pretty if it went that way. “What were you and Arch talking about?”

Hendricks laughed a little under his breath, and he saw her react again. Well, it wasn’t like he could tell her the truth. His logical mind was shouting the answer to him, and he was connecting the dots pretty easily. She was pissed at him anyway, so she was going to have to go. “You’re not my girlfriend, so don’t go playing like you’re a jealous one.”

He could see that one land, like he’d slapped her, and he felt a hard stab of remorse that he fought to keep off his face. This was why demon hunters didn’t get involved. He’d been stupid to get barnacled onto her as tight as he had so quickly. He wanted to kick himself, but her response did that for him. “Fuck you,” she said.

It was simple, it was direct, and it was followed by her standing, turning her back on him, and walking out with a slammed door that echoed in the room. He stared at the closed door, a wet palm print from where she’d grasped it presenting a dark spot, like she’d bled on it.

He put a hand up over his mouth, clenching his teeth tightly shut, and rubbed his face. Like he could somehow compel the words he’d said back in there and replace them with something smarter, something that wouldn’t have torpedoed the fuck out of the first real connection he’d felt with a woman in five years.

* * *

Gideon passed the blond sheriff’s deputy as she stormed out of the room next door. She didn’t even notice him, standing by his door, about to unlock it. She’d clearly had a tiff with the cowboy, and that made him feel even better. This really didn’t have anything to do with him.

He smiled as he unlocked the door and strode into his room, dripping on the carpet. He didn’t even bother to lock the door, just started stripping off his clothes. He kept his hands off himself, though, tempting as it was to relive the joy of watching that waitress die of the stroke again. He was going to save himself for tonight.

Because tonight was going to be even better.

Erin raced down the road in the sheriff’s car, sirens flashing. She didn’t need them on, it was a violation of regulations, but by God, did it feel good. She could feel the anger burning through her, pushing her foot down on the pedal as she headed out of town. The Crown Vic smelled of fast food, like the thousand burgers probably consumed in it were still sitting on the back seat.

Erin was a little surprised she’d gotten that heated that fast with Hendricks. The bastard had pushed a button, though, and she’d let him have it and stormed off. She could feel the tension across her skull and back, a forming storm of a headache, maybe one of those migraines she got every now and again. It was hard for her to believe some drifter passing through and making a stop of her was worth that much aggravation.

She kept the pedal down, though, the rain coming down in sheets across the windshield, and headed back toward town. There were a thousand mysteries about Hendricks running through her mind, questions that she still wanted answers to even though she’d told him “fuck you” pretty clearly. It was itching at her, causing her stomach to rumble. Or maybe that was just the lack of breakfast combined with the coffee doing the talking.

She kept on into the rain, the trees barely visible on either side of the road, not really caring where she was going.

* * *

Arch had wanted to go home. Getting around two o’clock he started feeling the urge, like it was a normal day and a normal shift. He’d started around seven, but he wasn’t clocking out at three this time around. He’d exchanged brief words with the sheriff a couple hours earlier, and it had been made clear to him that he was on a double today, straight through until eleven.

He’d left Alison a message telling her, but she hadn’t called back. This was not a huge surprise, given how much talking she’d done of late when they were at home. She was clearly of a mind to give him the silent treatment, and he was not all that sure of how to deal with it just yet. It was tough for him to wrap his mind around the idea that she’d gone so cold so quickly. She’d always been the warm half of the two of them, always the lovey-dovey one, while he was the cool, collected, aloof one. It worked for them. She brought him out; he stayed pretty well clear of entangling with anyone but her.

He was sitting in his Explorer on the side of the road close up by town. He had gotten eight speeders in the rain so far today between patrols. The weather just pounded the Explorer, gusts of wind rocking it from side to side every now and again. Arch sat there, smelling the new leather with every other breath, fingers drumming on the center console, listening to the roar of Mother Nature’s fury and thinking how it compared to Alison’s.

They’d fought before, of course. They’d been together since high school, after all; it wasn’t like they’d been perfectly happy every day of it. Usually it stemmed from Arch making some emotional misstep. Alison was sensitive, had lots of feelings and emotions. She was a songbird, shifting emotional states and making it clear by whatever tune she was warbling at the time. When she was mad, it came quick and obvious. When she was happy, the music was lilting, her affection was sweet and perfectly timed—and a little over the top.

But this dead silence for over a week? This was new.

Arch glanced at his dashboard clock for the first time in three minutes. He thought it had been an hour, but when he checked it was only three minutes. He sighed then wondered how quickly he could get to Hendricks and start hunting the things that had done this. They’d made a heckuva mess, after all, killed a lot of people. There was no way the sheriff’s department was going to be able to stop these things, whatever they were.

Next to that, mending fences with his wife just didn’t seem quite as important.

Or so Arch told himself as he kept thinking about what to do next, wondering if he should just go get Hendricks now. All the while, every here and again he felt the urge to drive to Rogerson’s to see Alison, but he snuffed that thought like a curse word about to pop out of his mouth.

* * *

Gideon was done waiting. He’d watched the old clock by the bed, the jointed red numbers gradually creeping up. It was four forty-five and he couldn’t wait any longer. It had been hours of anticipation stifled, of desire pent up. He hadn’t gone this long without gratifying himself in a year, probably. And that was after an orgy of shootings had been followed by a serial killer torturing someone to death. He’d been exhausted.

The Sinbad’s rooms were extra shitty, and it didn’t take him long to change into some new cargo shorts and a fresh shirt. Lingering around on the bed in nothing but boxers hadn’t made his resistance of temptation any easier. He liked to play with his belly a little, though, since it hung over his waistband some anyway. He pulled the cargo shorts over his hairy, spindly legs and zipped up, getting a little thrill at the thought of the zipper coming down again soon.

He walked out the Sinbad’s door once he was dressed, pausing only to grab the short blade knife he kept in his luggage. He’d never needed it before, but he carried it just in case. He pocketed in his shorts and stepped outside, his shoes still squishing with wetness. That didn’t really matter, though, because within a minute of walking out they were soaked through completely, and he couldn’t hear the squishing over the sound of the rain pouring down anyway.