Dying Dreams (Book 1 of Dying Dreams Trilogy) (7 page)

Sloane couldn’t dig up even a smile at that. “Why change what’s always worked?” And on some level, he wanted to go in there and be an asshole. He didn’t want her to like him, didn’t want to find out what would happen if she turned those big, brown eyes on him and showed him kindness or the kind of heat that had flashed in them when he’d shown up at her door.

Sloane walked out and knocked on the door of the interrogation room. He braced his shoulders, took a deep breath, and put on his best angry face.

“Come in,” Liza called, her voice sugary sweet and weakening Sloane’s resolve for just a moment.
Man up
, he muttered to himself. He threw the door open, slammed it behind him, and stomped into the room. Probably a bit over the top, but it got her attention, her eyes had somehow gotten wider and she was sitting up straight in her seat.

Sloane paced the room, throwing his weight around, trying to look intimidating, not daring to look at her face. If she started crying, he’d lose it and have to send in Fulsom. “Tell me how you know Louella,” he demanded, his voice rough and growly.

“Fuck you,” Liza said.

Sloane looked at her and, instead of tears, he saw her cheeks red, her eyes flashing. “Excuse me?”

“What? You can’t hear me over the sound of your own arrogance? Who the hell do you think you are? I called you. To help you. I skipped out on work and pissed off my boss, because you asked me to. Now, you’re going to storm in here like a spoiled toddler and expect me to tell you anything when you speak to me like that?”

Shit, he’d overplayed it. He hadn’t overplayed it since his first year. She’d just… and he’d… shit, he was screwed. But he couldn’t back down, or he’d look like the good cop and he was supposed to be the bad cop. She’d never trust him if she figured out the whole thing was an act. He had to carry it out as they’d planned. He turned and glared at her. “You expect me to believe you’re here to help? You give us the name of someone you have no way of knowing and you don’t think we’re going to pull you in and wonder who the hell you’ve been talking to? Who the hell you’re involved with?”

Her mouth dropped open and she just stared at him for a long moment. “If I was involved why would I call you and give you a name I’m not supposed to know? How does that make any sense, Agent Rice?”

Work with the fae long enough and all sorts of crazy things started making sense, Sloane thought. It wouldn’t be the first time a fae had implicated herself, just to laugh while he and Fulsom chased their own tails and the person they should have been chasing got away. Every fae he’d ever met, who had half an ounce of backbone, hated him and his organization, hated the registration, and took pleasure in fucking with him. Sloane could have explained all of that to Liza, but it served no purpose. Or he could have told her they suspected she might know someone who knew something and had overheard that name. Instead, he sat on the table, so close to her he could smell the sweet, flowery scent of her shampoo. He resisted the urge to sniff and try to place the brand or the flower. He leaned over and got in her face, feeling horrible when she sucked in her breath and clenched her teeth. “Just tell me everything you know.”

Liza smiled like she knew he was enjoying the smell of her. She leaned back in the chair and started to talk, her expression growing serious. As she told him about her dreams, she kept her eyes locked on his and, when the tears started down her cheeks, he wanted to pull her into his lap and stroke her hair and tell her it was just a dream. Thinking of her in his lap awoke other urges, but he pushed those aside and focused on what she was telling him.

“The strange thing is that the death in the second dream was different than the first, but I’ve never dreamed about the death of someone I haven’t touched. I’ve never had a recurring dream about a death before, and this felt real. She was so young… she didn’t want to die. If there’s anything I can do that might help to find her killer…” She shuddered and Sloane wanted nothing more than to take her out of there and make sure she never had to have a dream like that again. It was his fault she was there and it didn’t matter if she was innocent if she had fae blood.

He’d seen it happen before. Two or three times over the past ten years, he’d brought in fae for questioning, innocent fae who’d just happened to have unique abilities or blood, and they’d been sent away and never seen again. The first time it happened, he’d still believed in his government and he’d wanted so badly to impress his boss that he’d been proud when he dragged in a witness to a murder. The man, younger than Sloane, hadn’t wanted to talk, but Sloane had gained his trust and had made him promises of safety, promises Sloane believed he could keep. That had been back before mandatory blood testing and registration, back when the agency was new and just figuring out how to handle the fae. The only reason Sloane had been on the case was because it had looked like the victim had been fried and the powers that be thought some sort of magic was at play.

In the interrogation room, where the fae glamour didn’t work, his boss saw the bumps on the witness’ skin and the slight tinge of green, and she’d ordered his blood tested. Sloane hadn’t known what that would mean for his witness. Even when they sent the man to West Virginia on an all-expenses paid vacation to keep him safe from retaliation by the murderer, Sloane had been so proud of himself. He’d believed he’d solved a case and saved the witness. It wasn’t until six months after that man disappeared that Sloane had discovered there’d been no murder at all. The victim had been accidentally electrocuted.

Three years after that, he brought in a respected business man who’d been accused of embezzling. There’d been no real reason for them, the supernatural protection agency, or SPA, to be involved, but his boss had told him that local law enforcement needed assistance. By that time, Sloane had begun to suspect he’d never get the promotion he dreamed of and he’d seen enough to know that the government rarely took the side of the fae. Still, he’d believed that the ultimate goal of SPA was to help the fae and he could be proud of that. So he brought the business man in, giving SPA an excuse to test his blood. Sloane had found him innocent of the crime he’d been accused of, but he’d been sent to West Virginia anyway. When Sloane questioned it, his boss explained that the business man had harpy blood and was believed to be dangerous. He was sent to the testing facility in West Virginia to determine just how dangerous. Sloane had heard of the testing facility, but he’d believed it was more of a forensics lab for fae, where deceased fae were studied and murders were solved.

After the business man was sent away, Sloane started to ask questions. Not many people knew about the research facility in West Virginia, and Sloane didn’t have many friends at SPA. Most of Sloane’s co-workers had more fae blood than him and worked there because they had no other options, not because they believed in the government. By that time, though, Fulsom was Sloane’s partner and Fulsom was very good at getting answers. They learned that West Virginia was a huge facility that researched and studied the fae to discover just how big a threat they might be to humans. Sloane also found out that the kid he’d sent there on a vacation, for his protection, had died there during an unnecessarily invasive test. On public record, his death was listed as a car accident, but Sloane discovered the truth using his clearance codes and Fulsom’s charm.

That was really the beginning of the end for Sloane. He understood, for the first time, just how expendable the US government felt the fae were. When he brought in a single mother who’d killed a man with her bare hands after he’d broken into her home, Sloane knew what would happen to her. He did everything he could to keep her out of West Virginia. Fulsom switched her blood samples and Sloane went easy on her in the interrogation, but it hadn’t made any difference in the end. The woman was sent to West Virginia and her children were placed in foster care. He checked up on her kids when he could and made sure they were placed with a good family, but they’d been registered as potentially dangerous fae, and there was only so much he could do. He started to truly hate his government and his job that day.

He should have known better with Liza, and it was his job to get her out of it if he could. In order to do that, he couldn’t let anyone who might be watching, through the glass or the cameras, know he believed her story. It was better to let them think she was involved with someone who knew about the missing mermaid, then to let them find out she was fae.

“And you expect me to believe that you never heard the name Louella somewhere else? That you dreamed of a woman you’d never met?” Sloane stood and slammed his hands down on the table. Liza jumped at the sudden sound, and glared at him, but there was heat even in her glare and he liked it so much he almost smiled. Instead, he glared right back at her, got in her face, so that the cameras couldn’t see his own and he mouthed the words,
Lie to me
. Liza looked confused for only a moment and then her face cleared, but she didn’t stop glaring.

“I agree, it doesn’t make sense. I never have more than one dream about a death, and–”

Sloane shook his head so slightly that it would be barely perceptible to the cameras, but Liza caught it.

She paused for the briefest moment before continuing her story. “I mean, I’ve never been able to prove that my dreams about death were real, they just feel so real.” She waited until Sloane gave her a tiny nod. “It might have just been a nightmare caused by seeing that poor woman on the beach and the name…” she tapped her chin. “I wait tables and there was someone, someone was talking about a woman named Louella who’d died in a car accident last summer. I’d completely forgotten about that until you intimidated it out of me.” She smirked at Sloane, teasing him. He growled at her in a tone so low the camera mikes wouldn’t catch it. Liza’s breath hitched at the sound and a smile tickled the corners of her mouth for just a moment, before she returned to glaring. “The nightmare was just so vivid, and I wanted to help that poor woman on the beach. I was wrong. I’m sorry if I wasted your time.”

“That’s funny,” Sloane said, his voice gruff and as angry as he could make it. Even though anger was the last thing he felt facing down that woman. “There’s a woman missing right now and her name is Louella. She vanished from the same costume party as the dead woman on the beach. You expect me to believe it’s just a coincidence that you knew her name.”

Liza’s eyes widened at that information. But a knock stopped the interrogation. Sloane straightened and went to the door, hoping his attraction to Liza wasn’t as physically evident as he suspected it was. On the other side of the door was a familiar woman, a biologist who studied the fae and worked in the same building. Sloane couldn’t remember her name, and he couldn’t be bothered to smile at her. He knew what she was there for. He threw one last glance over his shoulder at Liza, before walking out and letting the biologist in behind him.

He went back to the viewing room where Fulsom was pressed against the glass. “That was… weird,” Fulsom said. “Did you just–”

“The blood sample,” Sloane hissed at him, not wanting a lecture on how badly he’d screwed up the interview. “Can you do something about that?”

“I’ll try,” Fulsom said. He’d had a thing with one of the lab techs, in the days when he was still single, and might be able to pull some strings. He’d done it before but never at Sloane’s request. “You like her.”

Sloane didn’t respond. He watched Liza’s face twist with suspicion as the biologist explained why she needed a blood sample. Sloane had no doubt she’d convince Liza that blood was found at the crime scene and she needed to rule out the possibility that it belonged to Liza. If his bosses found out what Liza could do, they’d put her to work touching bodies for them as often as they could, and Liza would have those terrible nightmares every night. She seemed so compassionate, to have felt so deeply for those women and he couldn’t imagine such a job would be anything but the worst torture. And that was probably the good scenario for her, the bad would be that they’d send her to West Virginia.

Fulsom disappeared as soon as the biologist finished taking the blood sample. Sloane watched Liza, who was again staring at the mirror, and debated his next move. He pushed aside his wants and thought about what he would do if she was a regular suspect. He knew he would wait for Fulsom to return and play nice cop, so that’s what he did. He had to act as normal as possible, so his boss had no reason to suspect they switched the blood samples. He stood and stared back at Liza staring at him. He must have gotten lost in her eyes, because a tap on his shoulder nearly made him jump out of his skin. “No luck, buddy,” Fulsom said, appearing much happier than he should.

“You couldn’t swap the sample?”

“They took it straight back and started testing it. They are
very
interested in this one.”

“Shit. Got any other ideas?”

“Why do you care?”

Sloane lowered his voice and leaned close to his partner. “What would you say to this job offer, Fulsom? Every day you touch a dead body and every night, when you close your eyes, you re-live their death.”

Fulsom shuddered and looked at Liza. “I’d say hell no, but I’m not the one being offered the job. So I ask again, why do you care? I mean she’s hot, but–”

“She feels it, Fulsom. She really cares. Do you want to watch that get burnt out of her?”

Fulsom was still staring at Liza. “Yeah, I get what you’re saying. We’ll figure something out. I’ll go talk to her, but you know I might not have much time.”

“Try to make it clear to her not to sign anything.”

Fulsom nodded and left him.

*LIZA*

Liza knew he was on the other side of the glass, she could feel his gaze heavy on her. At least she imagined she could and she kind of liked it. He’d come in there all blustery, trying to play the tough guy and all she could think about was how good he looked. He walked in the room and it felt like she’d woken up from a long sleep, and all she wanted to do was touch him and hear his voice and wrap herself around him.