The Acceptance

Chapter 6

“Tell me what happened with Carver.”

Walking away from him, Gaby went to the building and slumped down to sit with her back against it, her knees up.

Even in the dim light, Luther could see the crotch of her plain white panties, her long calves, her pale thighs. Salacious heat set his blood to boiling. His dick twitched, but then, around Gaby, twitchy was a way of life.

But more than that, more than anything carnal, he felt Gaby’s isolation, and he hated it.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t give in to it. Not yet. Not now, with a murder to be solved.

Standing over her helped Luther keep the emotional distance he needed to think with clarity. “Tell me what happened, Gaby.”

“Fine.” She scratched at a bug bite on her shoulder. “Carver hurt one of the women.” She shrugged. “So I hurt him.”

Luther had known the facts, but still, the dispassionate, almost flippant way Gaby retold the story bothered him. He wanted to see her care. About something. About him. “Which woman? Give me a name.”

“Winnie.”

Luther searched his mind, but couldn’t dredge up a resemblance to go with the name. “You know her well?”

“No, but what does that matter?” Elbows on her knees, Gaby dropped her forehead down and crossed her wrists at the back of her skull. Voice muffled, she intoned, “No man has a right to hurt a woman.”

“I agree.” Abuse of any kind enraged him. “Unfortunately—”

“Yeah, they’re prostitutes. I know. And I accept their life choices, I really do. They let men knock them around as a routine part of their day. It’s as commonplace for them as eating is for other women.” Her hands curled into fists. “But there are always limits, and Carver took it too far. He hurt her.”

Aching to touch her, Luther whispered, “It wasn’t the first time.”

“No.” Her shoulders tightened. “But then Bliss was under his control.”

Ah. He’d realized early on that she and Bliss had an affinity, a bond of sorts.

And that meant . . . what? That Gaby had to get Carver in line? “You take responsibility for Bliss?”

“She’d lived on the streets for a long time.”

Another child society had ignored, and forgotten. Luther softened more. “Until you moved her in near you.”

“Something like that. I thought it’d be better, but with Carver still around . . . I won’t let anyone hurt her, Luther.” She made a small, choking sound, and Luther could tell it hurt her to admit, “She’s so young, and so sad, that I can’t help but care for her.”

Her distress proved more than Luther could take. Giving up, he sat down on the mucky, debris-covered concrete beside her. Being closer to Gaby, shoulders touching, helped.

A little.

“Let’s try this from another angle.” Staring at the moon-glow on her smooth skin, Luther asked, “Does Carver know for sure it was you who attacked him?”

Her shoulders twitched with a grunt. “How should I know? He’s dumber than a rock.” She lifted her face, showing Luther red eyes and total dejection. “But even if he does, so what?”

So what? Exasperated, Luther stared at her. “He’s an unconscionable degenerate out for vengeance.”

Gaby’s lip curled with disdain. “Carver can’t hurt me.” Not seriously. She was too strong, and healed too quickly.

But others . . .

Her insistence of indomitability kept Luther awake on too many nights. “If Carver was involved with the murder of that woman—”

“I’ll find out,” Gaby said as a matter of course. “I doubt if he was, but he won’t be able to lie to me.”

“No.” Luther couldn’t get more than that single word out of his mouth. Every muscle in his body clenched in denial. He’d raced here to protect Gaby, not to encourage her into harm’s way, not to send her after a sick bastard with a penchant for torture.

Gaby didn’t look at him. She picked through the gravel on the sidewalk beside her until she found a pebble that appealed to her. She rolled it between her fingers, pitched it away.

He could practically see her thoughts churning.

Finally, she looked at him, her gaze so exigent that he couldn’t look away. “I know this will be tough for you, but you’re going to have to trust me.”

He shook his head.

“Yes.”

Given her past behavior, how she’d disappeared on him without a word, she asked too much. Luther meant to remonstrate with her and instead, his voice raw, he asked, “Why the hell would I trust you when you don’t trust me?”

For long moments, their gazes clashed. “There is that.”

Damn it.

“So you need some reasons. Well, let me see.” Gaby stared at her hands as she dusted them off, then propped her elbows on her knees. “How about, because you care for me and you don’t want me hurt, and letting me do this my way is the best possible insurance you can get that I won’t be hurt.”

Seeking control, knowing it to be well out of reach, Luther closed his eyes. “Just tell me where I can find Carver.” He opened his eyes, willing her to try things his way for a change.

“Sorry, no.” Her eyes darkened with regret. “There’s no point. He won’t tell you anything. You and I both know that.”

Obstinate to the bitter end. “But you think you can make him talk?”

“If he knows anything worth telling, yeah, I can.” Her affect revealed no modesty in her ability. “For sure when I finish with him, he won’t want revenge on me. He’ll just want to stay the hell out of my way.”

Putting his head back against the rough bricks, Luther laughed. “Jesus, Gaby. You leave me no choices.”

Lacking concern for his dilemma, she said, “Yeah? Meaning what?”

Did he, and his circumstance, truly not matter to her? Could she be that indifferent to him? “If you’ll recall, I’m an officer of the law.”

“No shit. Trust me, you being a cop isn’t something I’m likely to forget.”

“Right.” She’d infused as much insult in that statement as she could. Luther glowered. “So you have to know that I can’t condone willful acts of violence.”

“Didn’t ask you to condone it.”

Throttle her or kiss her—it was a toss-up which one Luther wanted to do the most. “Now that you’ve told me, I can’t sit here twiddling my thumbs while you . . . you . . .” He trailed off, unsure how to phrase what she might have planned, when she was so capricious he couldn’t guess what she’d do.

He only knew it wouldn’t be good.

“What?” Gaby prodded, half-turning toward him, her skirt still hiked too high, her antagonism a live thing. “What did you think I was talking about doing?”

Her posture finally proved more than Luther could take. Curving his hand around her slender upper thigh, he said, “That’s just it, honey. With you, I never know.”

Gaby looked at his hand on the inside of her thigh, covered his fingers with her own, and—a shock of pain punctured her burgeoning concupiscence.

Luther felt the withdrawal, a commutation of combative-ness over sexual awareness. Gaby stiffened on a gasp of breath and her light blue eyes went first unseeing, then sharp with an insight that was strangely empyreal.

“Gaby?”

Clumsy with pain, she hurried to her feet and stared at nothingness as her chest heaved in an effort to draw in breath.

Luther tried to clasp her arms, but she brushed him off as easily as she’d shoo a fly. She took a step forward, then another.

“Damn it, Gabrielle Cody, don’t you dare—”

In the next instant, a bloodcurdling cry erupted from deep inside her, a shout of purest agony and harshest denial.

The fine hairs on Luther’s nape stood on end. He whispered, “Gaby?”

And she was off, running full out, her muscles fluid with grace and speed. Luther gave chase, shouting her name, giving it his all but oddly unable to catch her.

Arms pumping and legs churning, she rounded a corner, then another.

Where the hell was she going? The hard, full-out run left Luther’s lungs laboring, and sweat glued his shirt to his back. Lagging several feet behind Gaby, they charged past a drug deal turned battle, past a drunken trio who shouted obscenities at them, and past a homeless woman who almost tripped him up with her cart of discarded wares.

Finally, they hit a long, dark street and Gaby paused, posed in combat mode.

But not for long.

Her first step was tentative, her second long and sure. “Bliss.”

Luther saw beyond Gaby to where she was headed.

There in the middle of the road, clothes torn, neck bleeding, staggering with her eyes closed and her arms out, was poor, young, too helpless Bliss.

Oh no, Luther thought. Not again.

Gaby reached Bliss just as she went limply into her arms; Gaby didn’t stagger as she held Bliss mostly upright.

Even as he hurried forward to help, Luther surveyed the area. He saw a group of thugs hanging out, and knew he’d have to question them before they scattered. Across the street, an old white woman, hunched over from age and depression, scurried off.

Luther narrowed his eyes, but couldn’t make out the license plate on the dark sedan screeching away.

“Son of a bitch.” It needed only this. He loped up to the two women and relieved Gaby of Bliss’s deadweight. “Is she okay?”

Grim, furious, Gaby smoothed back Bliss’s hair. “No. She’s not.”

Supporting Bliss with one arm, Luther retrieved his radio and made an authoritative call for assistance and an ambulance. “I’ve got her,” he said to Gaby, and gently lifted Bliss into his arms. Her head lolled against his chest. Her hair hung over his arm. She was soft, warm, but so still it scared him half to death.

He headed to the curb.

Without moving, Gaby shouted, “Where are you taking her?”

Knowing she needed his control right now, Luther tried for a calm and even tone. “I’m just moving her out of the street, that’s all. An ambulance is on the way. We’ll get her to a hospital and have her checked over.” He looked up, caught Gaby’s stark, taciturn countenance. “It’s okay, Gaby. The paramedics will know what to do.”

Bliss roused herself to mumble, “No. Please. No hospitals.” Vomit clung to her hair and the corners of her mouth. Her pupils were wildly dilated, unseeing. “No, please.”

“Shh, Bliss. It’s all right. I promise.” Luther looked back at Gaby. Still, she hadn’t moved. She stood there in the middle of the street, heaving in impotence and paralyzing rage. Somehow, he had to reach her. “Come over here, Gaby. I need your help.”

She took a step forward, then halted again. Her hands fisted. Her face contorted.

Oh no. She couldn’t transform in that special way of hers. She couldn’t run off to do God knew what. He did need her. Here, and now.

More sternly, Luther repeated, “Come here, Gaby.” Bliss hung boneless in his arms until he lowered her to a bus-stop bench. Her arms flopped over the sides. Her loose blouse, now torn, nearly exposed a breast.

A raised, circular welt shone bright red on her throat. Hypodermic? Given the force of the needle’s puncture, not self-inflicted.

Bliss moaned, and Gaby was suddenly there, beside the bench, her knees on the rough concrete.

Luther waited for her to comfort Bliss.

Gaby caught Bliss’s face in her hands. “Who did this to you?” Her harsh, raised voice startled Luther. “Give me a name, Bliss.”

There was no answer.

Luther touched her shoulder. “Gaby, this isn’t the time.”

She didn’t relent. “Tell me, Bliss. Describe him.”

“Not . . . not a him,” Bliss said.

“A woman?”

Bliss’s fair brows pulled down and her face scrunched in pain. “I don’t know. A boy . . .”

“A boy?”

Bliss moaned. “No. I don’t know.”

Gaby gently shook her. “You’re not making any sense. Give me a target, Bliss. Man, woman, kid—you tell me, and I’ll do the rest.”

After another moan, Bliss’s head lolled to the side, as if she’d again lost consciousness.

“Let her rest.” Luther squeezed Gaby’s shoulder. “She’s been drugged.”

“I can see that,” Gaby snapped. “Someone tried to take her. Someone tried to—” Excess emotion strangled the words. She swallowed convulsively.

Bliss moaned again, tried to lurch away, and both Luther and Gaby went on alert.

“It’s okay, Bliss,” Luther told her. “Everything will be okay now.”

“I only wanted to help,” she murmured. “He . . . he said he needed help. Then he . . . she . . . oh God.”

Nudging Gaby to the side, Luther pulled out a hanky and wiped the vomit from Bliss’s face, tried to dab it from her hair. “You’re safe now, Bliss. You’re with me, and with Gaby. You’re safe.”

“I’m sick.” Pitifully weak, she curled her arms about her stomach and gagged again, but nothing more came up. “He stabbed me with something.”

“So it was a guy?”

“I don’t know . . .” She touched a hand to her head. “He seemed so nice, but then she was going to do awful things to me. She said it, but I already knew it. I felt it.” Bliss’s faint voice broke on a sob. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

“Two of them,” Gaby decided aloud. “There were two of them. A woman and a man.”

Bliss continued to sob. “No. Somehow he . . . he was a she. Or . . . I don’t know. I’m sorry, Gaby, so sorry, but my head hurts.”

Gaby stared up at the sky.

Luther locked both hands behind his neck. He wanted to kill someone. He wanted to know who would do this to Bliss. Damn it, he wanted to know why.

After a moment of internal struggle, Gaby put her palm to Bliss’s cheek, and the girl quieted. Luther could tell that Gaby was unsure how to console her friend, how to comfort her. Embracing was foreign to her.

Any signs of affection were anomalous to Gaby’s austere life.

Pulling himself together, Luther held out his hand to her. “Come here, Gaby.” He had no problem with affection, and right now, he wanted, needed, to hold her.

But, of course, she stepped away, stiff, angry, unreachable in her grief.

Sirens cleaved the mundane sounds of night in the slums. Flashing lights rebounded off brick façades, concrete and odorous filth.

Giving Gaby some time to herself, Luther spoke to the paramedics as they approached. He directed the officers in the cruiser to question the people standing around, taking in the scene with the same indifference they’d give to a television commercial.

As soon as Bliss was loaded into the ambulance, he turned to talk to Gaby—and found her gone.

Rank curses burned his throat, but he swallowed them down. He didn’t want the others to know she’d evaded him. Again.

Think, Luther. He paced . . . and it came to him.

Carver. She’d go after him, Luther knew it.

Now all he had to do was find him first.

Skin still itchy and too tight, lungs heavy with lead weights, Gaby strolled the dark streets looking for her prey. She asked numerous questions, gave innumerable threats, and finally got the answers she sought.

Carver would be warned; he’d be waiting for her.

She rejoiced in that certitude.

The arcade and pool hall next door to Carver’s abode overflowed with obstreperous activity. Gaby didn’t flinch when a bottle broke a few feet behind her. She didn’t slow when a drunken sot propositioned her.

When two leering punks accosted her, she laid them out with ease. One hit his head on the pavement and stayed still. The other held a broken jaw and slunk off in haste.

Rounding the front of the building, where Carver would least expect her, Gaby looked up at the structure. The second story had fire escapes, which would make it easy for her to gain entrance if she could reach them.

The gutters running down the side of the building barely adhered to the brick. They’d be of no help to her. But pipes of some sort ran along the exterior walls, and those should support her exiguous weight.

It wouldn’t be easy, but she didn’t want easy.

She wanted proof.

Upending a garbage can without care to the clatter she made, or the mess she left, Gaby moved it close to the building to give herself a leg up. Adjusting her fingers until she had an adequate grip on the thick pipe, she strained her muscles and chinned up. The toe of her boot caught in the brick, and she pushed up higher, stretching out with her left arm until she felt the cool iron of the fire escape.

After gaining that purchase, the rest of the climb was easy.

Ascending higher and higher, Gaby made it to the correct floor, crawled in through an open window, and passed through a home of devastation and apathy. She closed her ears to the crying babies, the blaring television, the drunken revelry in the kitchen. Without anyone paying notice, she walked on through and went out the front door into the hallway.

Two doors down, her knife in her hand, she knocked on Carver’s hideaway.

The door opened to a bulldog of a guy prepped to grapple.

Gaby watched him display his discolored teeth in an earnest smile of anticipation—and she slugged him in the temple with the hilt of her knife. He collapsed forward, she moved, and he fell into the hallway. Behind him, Carver stood in frozen disbelief.

Gaby narrowed her eyes at him. “If you run, I will catch you, and then I’ll make you a choirboy. Do we understand each other?”

He backed up, hit a wall, and looked around for assistance. Finding none, he nodded.

Hilarious.

If only Luther had even an ounce of this man’s reverence for her ability. But he didn’t. He accounted her no proficiency at all.

Gaby shoved the bodyguard’s heavy legs out of her way, shut the apartment door, and locked it. Still holding her knife, she glanced at Carver and pointed toward the tattered sofa. “Sit.”

Seething, Carver swallowed hard and moved to park himself on faded, flowery damask. “Haven’t you done enough? What the fuck do you want now?”

Silvery scars showed on his ruddy skin.

Scars she’d given him.

It was nothing compared to the hurt he’d inflicted on women throughout his miserable life. “I want answers. I want the truth. If you lie, I’ll know it. Do you believe me?”

“Yeah.” His nostrils flared. His mouth pinched. “I believe you.”

“Did you murder Lucy?”

His face went pasty white. He croaked, “Lucy’s dead?”

Tapping her knife blade against her thigh, Gaby stalked closer while measuring his honest response. “Dead, tortured, diced, and thrown in the river.”

Eyes bulging with fear, Carver shook his head. “I never touched her.” Just as quickly, he blanched and recanted that statement. “No, wait! That wasn’t a lie.”

“Sure sounded like one to me.”

He rushed into garbled speech. “I didn’t kill her. I swear it. I’ve slapped her around—you already know that. But I didn’t want her dead. I wouldn’t. I swear.”

Gaby tipped her head, studying him, but . . . she believed him. More than that, she knew he was telling the truth. “What about Bliss?”

Like a fish out of water, his mouth flapped open and closed until he managed to whisper, “She’s dead, too?”

Almost, Gaby thought. So close. In the marrow of her bones, she knew the person who’d tried to take Bliss, the person Bliss had somehow managed to escape, was the same who’d murdered Lucy.

Gaby inhaled deeply.

So why was she bothering Carver?

Because she’d desperately wanted it to be him? Because, in the end, she had wanted it to be that simple?

Rubbing her eyes, Gaby said, “She’s not dead. Someone stuck a needle in her neck and tried to kidnap her. She escaped.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” Sheathing her knife, Gaby said, “You had nothing to do with any of it, did you?”

“No.”

Of course not. She’d known it, but damn it . . . well, at least now she had it verified. “You still plotting against me, Carver?”

“No!” He shook his head hard. “I just want to be left alone. I don’t—”

A prickle slithered down Gaby’s spine, belying his words. She gave Carver a gentle study, and tsked. “Now you’re lying.”

Panicked, Carver lurched to his feet and held out both meaty hands. “Okay, okay, so I had wanted to get to you. You cut me all up! But . . . I don’t anymore. I consider us even. I swear.”

“Stop swearing.”

Losing control, he lunged for her. Gaby went to the ground with him, rolled, and buried her knee in his gut. He let out a “woof” but didn’t slow. With the palm of her hand, she smashed his nose, and at almost the same time, drew her knife.

That gave Carver pause. Quick and easy, Gaby put three additional slices on him—one on his right forearm, one on his chest, and one over his abdomen.

“You wanna play now, Carver? You feeling froggy enough to take me on? Well, come on then.” She egged him forward. “Let’s play. I’m more than ready.”

He wiped the blood from his nose, stared at the blood seeping into his clothes, and crumpled down on his ass to sit on the threadbare carpet. “No. No, I don’t want to . . .” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Damn you, woman, can’t you just leave me alone?”

Yeah, she should. She was wasting her time here. “Maybe. If you leave me alone.”

Before Carver could reply, someone pounded a heavy fist against his door. “Carver? Open up right now or I’m knocking down the door.”

Luther.

Damn, he was good. Impressed, Gaby bent close to Carver, snaring him in her gaze. “Tell the cop nothing about me, and then we’re even. You got that?”

“Cop?” He stared with horror at the rattling door. “But I don’t want to talk to no cop!”

“Tough tittie. He’s here, and you can take my word for it, he won’t be leaving until you’ve answered all his questions. Unfortunately for you, he won’t be nearly as easy to convince as I am.” Gaby grabbed his chin. “Do we have a deal?”

“Yeah, sure. You weren’t here.” Carver looked back at the door, turned again, and said, “But what if . . . Hey, where’d you go?”

Out on the ledge, Gaby listened, almost smiling. The door crashed in, Luther’s booming voice shouted her name, and Carver, true to his word, said, “There’s no one else here. What do you want? What do you mean, breaking in my door?”

As Gaby scampered back down the bricks, she didn’t hear anything else. But she pictured Luther’s red face, his hot temper.

Then she pictured him holding Bliss in his arms. A whore with puke in her hair. A woman bleeding.

And Luther had held her like a delicate child.

Gaby’s feet touched the pavement and she sighed. There weren’t many men like Detective Luther Cross, and it sure made him hard to resist.

But until she figured out what evil incarnate had tried to hurt Bliss, until she destroyed that evil, she’d do well to stay clear of the good detective.

Sometimes, most times, her life really sucked.