Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (Charley Davidson)

20

It puts the lotion in the basket.

—T-SHIRT

Five more demon-possessed people lunged out of the shadows like crazed mental patients as Reyes separated into two distinct beings. His incorporeal body dematerialized, reached into the Englishman, and ripped the demon Hedeshi out with a ferocious twist. His corporeal body dived into the darkness, taking on the biggest of the demons approaching, a male who looked like a sumo wrestler. They landed hard and quickly blurred into a tangle of arms and fists.

Unfortunately, Artemis used my body as a launching pad, ridding me of a kidney named Percival and quite possibly Harold, my spleen. I cradled my stomach, then scrambled to my feet and reached for the closest thing at hand—a leaf rake leaning against the building.

That’s when I realized Mrs. Allen had come outside to let PP the miniature poodle go potty. PP went berserk at all the action. Mrs. Allen yelled at him to get back inside, but PP was beyond listening to anything she had to say. I scooted back in surprise as he attacked a burly man headed toward me. The guy had enough weight on him to be taken seriously. Not as much as the sumo wrestler, but I wouldn’t have challenged him to a thumb war if my life depended on it.

He crept forward, literally crawling on hands and knees, stalking me in a slow methodical march, victory so close, so sweet, he must’ve wanted to savor the moment. PP barked and leapt off the ground, sinking his toothless gums into the man’s ear.

He cursed and shook off the dog, but Artemis took over from there. She’d already disposed of another demon, leaving a guy around my age lying unconscious in the small square of grass that lined the apartment building. Now she pounced on the heftier man, her snarls of rage enough to cause goose bumps to jut out all over my skin.

I glanced at Reyes and the demon. One incorporeal being against another, his enveloping black robe making much of the fight impossible to see. But what I did see was surreal, otherworldly, and my mind had difficulty pro cessing it. Their movements were so fast, so fluid, it was like watching two oceans collide. Then I looked at his physical form. He had the sumo wrestler in a headlock, one knee jabbed into the man’s back. In the next instant, the man’s head snapped to the side with a sharp crack. He slumped to the ground instantly. But I knew from experience that wouldn’t last long. He’d be back up in a matter of moments.

I tore my gaze away. The Englishman’s body lay limp on the paved lot. I gripped the leaf rake and started toward him as PP went after another possessed woman. Hunched a few feet from me, she seemed confused. She wanted me but didn’t seem to know why. And when PP nipped at her fingers, she appraised him with a vacant stare as though trying to figure out exactly what he was.

I took the break to check on the Englishman, but the instant I started toward him, I could tell he was already dead. That’s when I realized another of the possessed had picked up the knife, his eyes glistening with hunger as he came for me. I met him halfway, pitching forward and lashing out with the rake. Just to stop it. To slow it down.

The bristles of the rake scraped harmlessly across its face, doing little damage, but I did manage to knock the knife out of his hand. He looked to the side, and the distraction granted me enough time to crash into him, another male in his early forties. He seemed unable to believe his luck as we tumbled to the pavement and skidded across the lot. Dirt and gravel ground into my shoulder. He straddled me, took my head into his hands, and started to twist.

He was going to break my neck, and I hated having my neck broken, so I lifted my legs, leveraged my feet up and around his head, then jerked back, knocking him off balance long enough for me to almost make it out from under him. But he threw his weight on top of me.

I fought his hold, elbowed him across the face, and crawled forward, fighting for every inch I gained. Before I knew it, his hands were gripping my head again. He really wanted the kill. When he twisted, I rolled with it, forcing him to go for a better hold. But Artemis finally ripped into him, hurtling herself right through the human’s body and dragging the demon out with her as she landed. The man went limp on top of me, and I lay pinned to the ground.

I looked over and realized Artemis had already taken care of the demon inside the man Reyes had been fighting, the sumo wrestler. Only one demon remained. The woman. She came into view as I lay right in front of her, easing over me, drool dripping from her mouth and into my hair.

A mountain lay atop me, and a possessed woman sat studying my every feature as though I were a specimen in a petri dish. I looked to the side just as Reyes sliced through Hedeshi’s demon self, cutting him in half at the hips. He’d screamed and started back for more, when Reyes swung again. He severed its head, and with its death, it evaporated like smoke on dry ice.

When another drop of drool landed on my temple, I shivered in revulsion. But at least she wasn’t trying to break my neck.

I looked to my other side. PP and Mrs. Allen were gone. She’d probably call the police.

Artemis came into view then, her stubby tail wagging in excitement, ready for more. She hunched down by my side with a begging whine. Reyes stepped beside me, and his incorporeal body reentered his physical one. The robes settled around his shoulders, then disappeared as he dragged the man off. Grateful, I stood, wiped my face and hair, then stepped to the woman, who sat on her knees, now staring at the grass where I’d been.

I knelt down and talked to the demon inside. “This is not going to end well for you.”

She looked up at me, her lids fluttering, and said, “Let me go now and I’ll spare the woman.” Then her brows crinkled and she stared into space again. She was fighting it. The woman. She was fighting the hold the demon had on her.

Sensing the new danger, Artemis crept forward until her jaws were at the woman’s neck, her teeth bared and glistening, saliva dripping off her jowls. The demon flinched, and its head turned toward her. Artemis struck in the next instant with a ferocious bark that shook the windows. The demon didn’t stand a chance. She yanked it out and tore it to pieces until it was nothing more than a heavy vapor. From there, it evaporated, its immeasurable darkness dispersing in the air.

The woman collapsed into the cold grass, and I turned her head to make sure she could breathe. Reyes bent to help, and only then did I realize that he had fought a demon while his incorporeal self was out of his body. He’d never been able to do that. Normally when his incorporeal self left, he entered a seizurelike state.

I leaned back, regarded him warily. “You—You’re—You told me you couldn’t do that,” I finally said accusingly. “You fought a demon without—” I fought for the right words “—without your soul.”

Reyes was checking the woman’s pulse. “Couldn’t,” he said absently before turning back to me. “Can now.” He stood and offered me his hand. He seemed distant, hurt.

“That’s it?” I asked. “You just can now?” When he only shrugged, I asked, “Is that all of them?” I hoped that with the absence of Hedeshi, their leader, there would be no more demons to contend with.

“For now.” He frowned and looked past the building down the alley. “Until they figure out a better way to get at you.”

We were still at an impasse with the picture. And I still had to wonder if he had been cleared of murder charges only to become an arsonist. Why would he burn down that building? Any of them? He’d lived there, but why burn them down?

I had to remember what he came from. I’d been tortured by Earl Walker once and only once, and I had been changed mentally, physically, and emotionally. I became a different animal. What would years of that do to a person? De cades of living and breathing fear, day in and day out? Of being used and abused, beaten and starved, with no haven, no safe place to hide? The thought cinched my ribs around my lungs.

He watched me from underneath his lashes, his expression knowing. “You aren’t feeling sorry for me, are you? I would hate to have to remedy that.”

Yep, he was still mad. “And just how would you accomplish such a thing?”

The resignation on his face stole my breath. “Believe me when I say you don’t want to know.”

Before I could manage a reply, a thunderous crack exploded in the air behind him. He turned toward the sound and I looked past him, sensing danger instantly. The world thickened and slowed, but not fast enough. Reyes stepped in front of me as a bullet that had been rocketing toward my head tore through his chest instead. It exited out his back and continued its journey, the metal fragmented, but whole enough to finish what it had started.

Then, in a feat that stunned me to my core, Reyes turned, too fast for me to see, and caught it in midair.

I stumbled back and looked on as Reyes opened his palm to examine the bullet. But he was corporeal. When the bullet hit, he hadn’t had time to separate. To try to stop it with his incorporeal self. Blood spread across his T-shirt so fast, I grew light-headed at the sight of it. He coughed, and blood bubbled out of his mouth.

His gaze met mine as he fell to his knees and whispered, “Run.”

I rushed forward to catch him and caught a glimpse of the culprit cowering on top of a building down the street. I expected another demon. Perhaps one who’d wised up and decided to bring weapons of mass destruction to the party. But it was the blond biker from the bank robbery. The one who had been kicked out of the military, who hadn’t finished his sniper training. I stood there, beyond flabbergasted. Apparently, he really didn’t want any witnesses.

Anger surged inside me faster than the splitting of an atom. Like a volcano bursting through the top of a mountain, fury erupted out of me in one blinding flash. Windows shattered and shards of glass hung like a menagerie of shimmering color as I walked toward Blondie, determination locking my teeth together. He was reloading the rifle, his movements slow in the adjustment of time, sluggish. He brought the butt to his shoulder, leaned his head over until the image from the scope came into view. Just as his finger started to squeeze the trigger, I reached into his chest and crushed his heart. It beat once, twice more, then stopped altogether. And satisfaction coursed through me like cool water dousing a wildfire.

Blondie grabbed his chest, his mouth dropping open, fighting for air seconds before he fell face-first to the ground.

Reyes appeared beside me. He examined me, the blond, then turned back to where we had been. Where we still were. When I looked back, I saw myself kneeling on the ground, looking back at me, into my own eyes. Reyes’s body lay next to me. Before I could make sense of any of it, I awakened to my previous surroundings with a startled gasp, like I had never been outside my own body, like I had not just seen it from a great distance. I looked down at Reyes.

He curled into himself, his breaths hard and shallow.

“Reyes!” I shouted, scrambling toward him and trying to find the wound to put pressure on it. A bullet had ripped through his chest. Even the son of Satan wouldn’t walk away after an injury like that.

We heard sirens in the distance, and he struggled to his knees.

“Get me … into the shadows.” He nodded toward a trash bin. “Behind that Dumpster.”

“You need an ambulance.”

“No.” Anger hit me like a wall of fire. He grabbed my shirt with a bloodied hand and jerked me forward. “I’m not going back, and you’re not sending me there.” He pushed and fell onto his hands, trying to catch his breath. It reminded me so much of the very first time I saw him, when I was in high school and he was fighting for air beside a Dumpster after being beaten. I’d let him down then. I did nothing to save him, and his life took a definite turn for the worse. I would not let that happen again.

I touched his shoulder, forgetting that he was more wolf than canine, more panther than cat. There was nothing domestic about Reyes Farrow. He could turn in a heartbeat, had proved it a dozen times. But when he did turn on me, when he rocketed from prey to predator, my shock was complete.

He struck so fast, his movements were nothing more than a dark blur. I was vertical one moment and horizontal the next. And he was on top of me, his body rock hard, unbending, unyielding. He leaned into me until his mouth—his sensual mouth that had only recently sent shivers of passion thundering through me—hovered at my ear. The warmth of his blood spread over my chest and shoulders and pooled in the divot at the base of my throat, and I wondered how much longer he’d live. Surely no one could survive that much blood loss. Not even a supernatural being. He sent a thigh between my legs, parting them for a better fit.

“I told you,” he said, his voice like a low growl, rippling through me in white-hot waves. “Don’t—” One hand wrapped around my neck as his mouth nuzzled my ear. “—ever—” The other slid up my shirt, the pleasure of his touch leaving heat trails in its wake. “—pity—” His hips pushed my legs farther apart; my hands cupped them in reflex. “—me.” His mouth crushed mine, the kiss raw and needy. I wrapped my arms around his waist, then sent one over his steel buttocks, pulling him into me, wanting him inside. Despite our situation. Despite our circumstances.

Only Reyes Farrow could do this to me. Could make me beg for him, no matter the setting. No matter how dire the predicament. And he knew it. He knew exactly what he did to me.

I felt a smile behind his kiss a microsecond before he lifted off me and vanished into the dark. A rush of cold took the place of the heat that had blanketed me. I dropped my arms to the ground. Closed my eyes. Breathed. A whimper sounded beside me. Artemis lay in the distance, watching. Every few seconds, she’d inch closer, crawling on her stomach. Then she’d stop and focus on something in the distance, pretending not to notice me.

One of the men woke up then, his movements slow and lethargic as he rubbed his head, the back of his neck. He tried to make sense of his surroundings, but couldn’t seem to manage it. No telling where he was from. Two lay dead, and three others lay unconscious still as the first patrol car skidded to a halt in the parking lot. Right in front of the Englishman’s body. And on a building top down the street, they’d find another body, that of a blond biker who was almost a sniper in the Marines, who’d wanted to serve his country but now robbed banks and tried to snipe people.

I covered my eyes with my arms. I didn’t care what kind of connections I had, no way was I getting out of this unscathed. This could even put Uncle Bob in the spotlight if he tried to cover any of it up. It could jeopardize his career. His retirement.

A patrolman rushed over to me. He said something I couldn’t quite make out, because another realization had washed over me, and I suddenly couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

I’d killed a man. I’d reached inside his chest and stopped his heart. Like I had the authority. Like I had the right.

My world tumbled back into a familiar place. One of darkness and desperation and denial. Then I was being lifted. Bright lights flickered past. Blue scrubs. Silver instruments. Somewhere in the fog of reality, Uncle Bob appeared. Then Cookie. I felt cool sheets beneath my body and warm hands cupped in mine, and I realized I was in the hospital for the second time in as many months. I heard familiar words: concussion, stab wounds, fractured ankle. The last one surprised me. I didn’t remember that part. But that’s what adrenaline did. It pushed pain aside and thrust you forward.

I forced my lids apart.

Dad was there, too. Close by. As was Uncle Bob, and I knew I could tell them. They would know what to do.

I pressed my mouth together, closed my eyes, and said, “I killed a man.”

When I looked again, they glanced at each other, worry in their expressions. “One of the men outside your apartment building? Because it looked like they fought each—”

“No, a man on a roof. A bank robber who wanted to kill me.”

Uncle Bob’s brows furrowed. “When, pumpkin? We don’t—”

“Tonight. Right after I was attacked. He was on a rooftop and I killed him. After he shot Reyes with a fifty-caliber rifle, I reached inside his chest and stopped his heart.” Soft sobs drifted out of me as Dad took my hand.

“Sweetheart, that’s impossible. If Reyes was shot with a fifty-caliber rifle from a sniper on a rooftop, he would not be alive.”

“He wouldn’t even be in one piece,” Uncle Bob agreed.

“You don’t understand,” I said, sorrow drowning my words, “I killed a man. I lost control. I killed him.”

“Shhhh,” Dad said, cradling my head against his shoulder. “You’re not like us, hon. I know that. And I don’t care who or what you are, I know one thing for certain: Your actions are above the laws of man. I’m sorry for saying that, but it’s the truth. You are here for a reason.”

“Robert. Leland.”

I looked up to see the police captain from Uncle Bob’s precinct walk in. Uncle Bob nodded to him, then leaned in and whispered in my ear. “You don’t remember anything.”

Ever the champion, he was still fighting to keep me out of jail. Or prison. Or the nut house. But this was bigger than any of us. There was simply no explanation for what had happened. Then again, what was I supposed to tell them? The truth?

Special Agent Carson walked in right behind the captain.

“You’re quite an asset,” he said, eyeing me suspiciously. He glanced at Uncle Bob, then back. “You managed to solve four cases in one day. I think this is a new world record.”

“Four?”

He counted on his fingers. “The disappearance and death of Harper Lowell. A missing persons case from over two de cades ago. The disappearance of several people who seemed to have been drugged and dropped on your doorstep. We’ve had a rash of those lately. And the apprehension of an escaped serial killer. But come to think of it,” he said, looking at his hands, “that might technically be five. Or maybe even six.”

“A serial killer?”

He nodded. “You’re about to make us one of the most respected departments in the country. One of our consultants single-handedly took down the Englishman, a convicted serial killer who escaped from Sing Sing three months ago.”

It figured Hedeshi would have chosen a serial killer as his host. I wondered how on Earth he got him out of Sing Sing.

“And he’s not even from En gland.”

I blinked in surprise. “He wasn’t English?”

“No, he was originally from Jersey. He just spoke with an English accent. No one knew why. But I have to admit, I think it’s odd that all this would happen to you in one day, especially considering the other guy,” the captain said.

“The other guy?”

“Yes,” Agent Carson said, “it would seem one of the Gentlemen Thieves died of a heart attack on the rooftop of a building on Central. He had a fifty-caliber rifle in his hands, and it looked like he was getting ready to do some damage. It’s odd that he would just drop dead like that.”

Uncle Bob shifted in his chair.

“That is weird,” I said, biting my bottom lip. “I mean, wasn’t he pretty young?”

“Thirty-two,” she said. “And he just happened to have an uncle whose wife works at the branch that was robbed yesterday. Seems those three were in it together. Something about it being Edwards’s idea to blackmail his friends, certain members of the Bandits motorcycle club, in the first place. I don’t have all the details yet, but we have the uncle in custody. He’s filling in the blanks now.”

If my shock didn’t show that time, I was going to Hollywood. What a scumbag. Dad and Uncle Bob were busy looking elsewhere—too elsewhere—but no way could this work out so easily. Life wasn’t a stack of cards that just magically fell into place when dropped. Unless life was named David Copperfield.

That was it. I would name my life. The minute I came up with a name for my sofa, which might or might not go by the name of Sigourney Weaver, I would name my life. Now I had something to live for. And I had a decision to make, a big decision. What name would incorporate all that life entailed, every aspect of uncertainty, of beauty and surrealism and encounters with crazy people? It would have to speak of the ups and downs life had to offer, like being too broke for daily mocha lattes. If I lived through that, I could live through anything.

After another few minutes of conversation that had my head throbbing, the captain and Special Agent Carson left, but not before one last look back. Agent Carson smiled. The captain eyed me like he really, really, really wanted to get to the bottom of my involvement. That couldn’t be good.

I turned to Uncle Bob as we waited for the discharge papers. “This is all way too neat. Way too tidy. They’re going to figure out this couldn’t possibly have happened the way it looks, and I don’t want you in trouble.”

“Neat?” Dad asked. “Tidy? That is exactly the way they like it, pumpkin. All wrapped up in a bow. Trust me, it means less paperwork, and that’s always a good thing.” Dad helped me to my feet. “I got the phones at the office turned back on. And I had Sammy’s wife clean the place up.” He was bound and determined I’d move back into the offices above his bar.

“So, how are you?” I asked, pretending not to care.

A smile lit his eyes anyway. “I’m okay. It seems I don’t have cancer after all.” He looked around, then whispered, awe evident in his voice, “Did you have anything to do with that?”

I tried to smile. “No, Dad. I don’t have that kind of power.”

“It’s just—” He bowed his head. “It’s just, I had pancreatic cancer.”

His words sent a piercing pain through my heart.

“They did every test known to man, and I had it. Then after you found out, after you touched me in the office … well, it seems to have vanished.”

“When did I touch you?”

“You poked my chest with your index finger when you were chastising me for trying to shoot you.”

Oh, right. I only wished I could do cool stuff like that. “It wasn’t me, Dad. But I’m glad.”

“I’m glad, too,” he said, placating me. He didn’t believe me for a minute.

Gemma rushed in like a whirlwind on meth. “Well?” she asked, looking from Uncle Bob to Dad to Cookie, then finally at me. “What happened this time?”

After a long moment of contemplation, I said, “Fine, I’ll accept counseling, but only from you.”

“Charley, while I’m thrilled, completely and totally thrilled, I can’t treat you. That would be in violation of my code of conduct.”

“Screw the code. Get a new code. I can’t see anyone else without them trying to lock me away.” I clenched my teeth and said, “Grim reaper, Gem.”

She almost giggled in delight. “No, I know someone. I promise, it’ll be okay.”

“I swear, the minute they bring out a straitjacket, I’m crossing your name off my Christmas list.”

“Deal,” she said, a satisfied smirk on her face. “But if they do put you in a straitjacket, can I take your picture? You know, for research purposes?”

“Not if you value your cuticles.”

She jerked back her hands. “That’s just mean.”

I shrugged my brows. “You mess with the reaper, you get the scythe.”

“You don’t really carry a scythe.”

“So not the point.”

Before we went home, I had Cookie drive me to the convent. Dawn had just barely peeked on the horizon, but this was important. Quentin had to know he would be okay. That it was safe to go out. He needed that weight off his shoulders.

We were met by a very austere-looking mother superior, and I couldn’t help but wonder what qualifications it took to become the supreme mommy figure. Clearly a mean death stare was a prerequisite, but what else? Surliness? Advanced algebra?

She showed us into the kitchen again as Sister Mary Elizabeth brought Quentin down. He looked half asleep in his pajamas, and his hair had been trimmed, but it still brushed his shoulders. He rushed into my arms, then realized I was hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his signs and expression sincere. He put on his sunglasses and pointed to a bandage on my arm. Thankfully, the knife had barely grazed both it and my side. “What happened?”

“The same thing that happened to you, only from the opposite end. Other people who were possessed attacked me, but I wanted you to know, it’s safe now. It’s okay. They won’t come after you again. The being that instigated it all has been killed.”

Relief washed through him, and I led him to a table to sit down.

“Are you okay here? Have they been slapping your hands with rulers or anything? I’ve heard nuns do that.”

The mother superior cleared her throat. Apparently, she knew sign, too.

“We enrolled him in school,” Sister Mary Elizabeth said, hardly able to contain her excitement. “At the School for the Deaf in Santa Fe. He’ll live there during the week, then come home on the weekends.”

Quentin didn’t seem quite so thrilled. He pressed his mouth together.

I leaned into him. “Are you okay with that?” When he shrugged, I asked the sister, “He’ll come home on the weekends?”

She smiled. “Here.” She put a hand on his arm. “He’ll come here until we can find a more permanent home. Oh!” She looked at me. “And he can stay with you every so often, too, if you’d like.”

“I’d love,” I said. I glanced over my shoulder at Cookie. “I have a feeling Amber will be wanting to learn ASL.”

Cookie nodded and offered me a dreamy expression. “He is darling.”

When I signed what she said to Quentin, he blushed and offered a soft thank-you, only he spoke it, his vowels clipped and his voice deep and soft.

“Okay,” Cookie continued, “I’m in love.”

Quentin tapped my hand. “I have a name sign for you.”

I straightened in surprise. “Really? Wow.”

He took his right hand, splayed his fingers, and formed a modified eight where his middle finger was bent forward slightly more than the rest. Then he touched the tip of it to his right shoulder and twisted it up and out away from him, shaking it ever so slightly.

I put my hands over my heart. It was the sign for sparkle, only from the shoulder. He was telling me that I sparkled. I felt a sting in the backs of my eyes, and he dipped his head sheepishly. I couldn’t help it. I threw my arms around his neck. He let me hug him a solid minute before asking, “Can I stay with you sometimes?”

“I would love for you to stay with me sometimes.”

I leaned in and kissed his cheek to the abrasive sound of the mother superior clearing her throat again.

“Well, that boy is a living doll,” Cookie said as we made our way to the third floor of our apartment building.

“Isn’t he?”

There were still cops outside, still investigators combing the area inside and out of yellow caution tape. They had taken my clothes as evidence, but the only blood on them, besides mine, was Reyes’s. Would they know that? Was he in a DNA database somewhere?

“How’s your head?” she asked. “Are you okay?” She was such a dear friend. She put up with so much from me. And it was a wonder she was still alive, all things considered.

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Good.” As I turned to unlock my door, she slapped me upside the head. Fred thrust forward and knocked against the doorjamb.

I turned back to her, aghast. “That head is concussed, I’ll have you know.”

“I know. And I’m glad, for your information.”

“That’s not a very neighborly attitude.”

“You almost die right outside the apartment building, and you didn’t think to, perhaps, yell my name? Call out for help?”

“And what would you have done, Cook, besides get attacked coming to my rescue?”

“You know, that excuse is going to get old one of these days.” Her eyes watered, and she looked down. “Do you know how I felt when I found out Earl Walker had tortured you not fifty feet from me?”

The chambers in my heart squeezed shut.

Against my better judgment, Cookie needed to know the truth about what it really meant to be in my life.

I leaned back against my door and folded my arms. “Amber was there,” I said, my voice a mere whisper.

Alarm rushed through her. “What? Amber was there last night?”

“No. That night. When Earl came.”

Her alarm ebbed, and she took a step back. “I don’t understand.”

“When I walked into the apartment,” I said, unable to stop a floodgate of tears as they pushed past my lashes, “Earl was there. And so was Amber.”

Cookie’s hand flew to cover her mouth. She’d had no idea, and I’d been too much of a coward to tell her.

I wiped at my cheeks, angry that all I seemed to be able to do lately was cry. Because crying helped so much. “She was asleep on my sofa.” I saw the image in my mind so clearly, and my stomach lurched with the thought as bad as it had that night. “He had a gun to her head.”

She covered her whole face and shook as a sob wrenched through my chest. I tightened my arms and curled into myself. I was about to lose one of the best things that had ever happened to me, but she had to know the truth.

“As long as I was quiet and cooperated, he said she’d live. You’d both live. He let me lead her to your apartment. She was so sleepy, she never saw him. But he was there because of me, Cookie. Amber almost died because of me.”

After a long moment of contemplation, she took a deep breath and tilted her face toward the heavens. “No,” she said, steeling herself. “No. Earl Walker used Amber to get you to do what he wanted. And it worked, Charley. He knew it would. This is not your fault.”

I gaped at her. “It’s entirely my fault. All of it.”

“Charley,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder, “I told you this before. You do incredible things, and I get to be a part of it. That incident was one in a million. And it’s over. We have to move past it. The odds of anything like that happening again are astronomical.”

“Do you even pay attention?”

“That captain said it himself. You solved four cases in one day. Four, Charley. That’s—that’s unheard of. And you captured an escaped serial killer. You saved who knows how many lives. And I got to help. We’ll just have to be more careful in the future. We need better locks, right? We’ve already talked about that. And a security system.”

It would hit her later. Anger. Regret. Despair. And she might even hate me a little. Better to hate me for almost getting her daughter killed than for actually accomplishing the feat.

In the meantime, I’d just turned Cookie into a slightly older version of myself. She’d probably be up nights, checking and rechecking the doors and windows, turning the tiniest of sounds into a full-blown home invasion. I could totally see why she liked being my friend. Working for me.

“Is everything okay, pumpkin toes?”

I turned toward Aunt Lillian as she melted through the door. I was just about to answer her when the landlord walked by. “Ladies,” he said, a lecherous grin on his face.

“Traitor.”

He chuckled and knocked on the door to the end apartment.

Cook and I perked up, our interest aroused. I wiped my cheeks, and we leaned together, hoping to get a look at the new tenants.

“I got that other key for you,” he said. Then he ogled us from over his shoulder, wiggled his brows.

I rolled my eyes until they were staring into the face of Barbara.

The door opened, slowly at first, and I fought back a bizarre kind of excitement. It was like opening a present, trying to discern the contents inside, guarding your expression not to show disappointment if it came to that. And perhaps it was the concussed state of Fred and Barbara, or the delicate state of Betty White, her fragile chambers beating between pangs of pain and desperation, but when I saw Reyes Farrow open that door, I was pretty sure I seized.

Cookie inhaled so sharply, Reyes looked past the landlord and directly at us. His eyes glistened in the low light as he looked me over. I did the same to him. He had a bullet wound in his chest from a fifty-caliber that would have ripped another man apart, and yet I felt no evidence of pain or signs of physical weakness from the blood loss. No doubt he was covered in duct tape underneath his dark red T-shirt. The one where the sleeve openings weren’t quite large enough to hang loosely over his arms, so they formed to his biceps instead, caressing them, embracing them.

After he finished examining me, he spoke, his voice like warm brandy on a cold night. “You can just give it to her,” he told Mr. Zamora.

“Oh.” Mr. Z stammered a bit in surprise, then handed me the extra key to Reyes Farrow’s apartment with a delighted leer on his face.

Reyes nodded toward Cookie congenially. “Cookie,” he said, addressing her with reverence. He moved to Aunt Lil. “Lillian,” he said, and if Aunt Lil had died with her dentures in, I was pretty certain they’d have fallen out at that point. Then he leveled his smoldering gaze on me, tilted his head in interest. “Dutch.” He offered me one last look—a look full of promise and desire—before stepping back and closing his door.

We stood there, the three of us, our jaws firmly planted on the floor. Aunt Lil recovered first. She nudged me with her elbow and said with a cackle of delight, “I think you guys should make some more of those brownies, ’cause that boy looks hungry.”