The Dirt on Ninth Grave

  I looked past the cleaners. The next building was vacant, and there was a wine shop beyond that. It was a very popular store. Tourists loved wine.

  Who was I kidding? I loved wine. Who didn’t love wine?

  Seeing as how the men were risking so much to tunnel into a dry-cleaning business in the middle of the day when they could be spotted and/or heard, there had to be something pretty spectacular in that building. But my mind spun with a thousand questions.

  Why dig during the day? Why not wait until night? The noise, perhaps? The lights? Unusual activity could draw unwanted attention faster than if Mr. V just happened to be doing renovations. But why not use the vacant building to tunnel in from instead of essentially taking a man hostage? Maybe what they were after was closer to Mr. V’s shop? That made no sense either. Once they were in the building, they could go anywhere they wanted. Then again, why tunnel? Why not just break in?

  None of the situation made any sense. Not that it mattered. All that mattered was getting Mr. V safely back to his family. If he were being held hostage —

  I stopped at the entrance to the café and considered the magnitude of fear I’d felt radiating out of him. It was one thing to be afraid for your life, but could Mr. V’s entire family be at risk? Were his wife and kids hostages, too?

  I had to report my suspicions, but what if a cop started poking around and got Mr. V killed? Or worse, his entire family? The situation demanded delicacy. A cavalry galloping to the rescue with lights flashing and guns blazing was not the answer. Sadly, I didn’t know what was.

  A blast of arctic air urged me inside. I stepped into the gentle roar of a full house, and my gaze instantly shot to Reyes. His back was to me. Probably a good thing since I couldn’t think clearly when I looked at his face. Or his shoulders. Or his thick, unkempt hair.

  I took out the money Mr. V gave me and headed toward the register to ring it in. Sweet Mr. V and his lovely family. Who could I go to with this? I needed someone high up in the law enforcement food chain, like a detective or even the police chief. I’d gotten to know a couple of the cops, but again, the situation demanded kid gloves, not boxing gloves, and the cops I’d met so far did not inspire that kind of confidence.

  But that brought me to problem number two: What would I tell the person I did go to? I saw these Middle Eastern guys and got a bad feeling? Racist much?

  I glanced at Garrett as I walked by and considered asking him. He did something coplike, though I wasn’t sure what. There was Mr. Pettigrew as well. He was a former detective. Maybe I could talk to him, but again, what would I tell him? And how much could I count on him what with that demon lurking in his innards?

  I spotted Cookie looking at me with a huge smile on her face. An appreciative smile. Like a really big one. I slowed as she walked toward me. Her arms opened, and I half expected her to plant a big wet one on me. Instead, she planted one on her husband, which made more sense. He’d walked in right behind me.

  “Hi, Janey,” he said when Cookie stopped accosting him. Weren’t there laws against X-rated PDA?

  Robert, or Bobert as I liked to call him, but that was Cookie’s fault, had warm eyes and a charming, full-mustached smile. He seemed to like me almost as much as Cookie did. They were always inviting me over for dinner or to a movie. At first, I found their enthusiasm a bit intimidating. But once I got to know them – and realized they weren’t swingers – I was grateful for it. They were a grounding force in my antigravitational life. A cord that kept me tethered to earth.

  “Hey, Bobert. How’s it hanging?”

  “Little to the left. You?”

  He pulled me into a giant bear hug, swallowing me in his arms. It felt wonderful despite our conversation about the trajectory of his manly parts. Some might have seen that as awkward.

  I had a thing for awkward.

  “Same,” I said when he released me. “Your wife tried to service another customer today.”

  He glanced at Cookie, his expression sympathetic. Her cheeks flushed a soft pink. They’d only been married a couple of months and were the cutest newlyweds on the planet. I was certain of it. Especially Bobert. To be so old, so elderly and decrepit, practically on his last legs, to find love where he least expected it, at a rave in the Mohave. At least that was what Cookie told me. She’d been lying when she said it, though. If she lied about meeting her future husband at a rave, she had to believe that the truth would sound worse. The truth must have sucked. They probably met at a strip club. Or a human sacrifice. Or a tractor pull.

  Bobert took a table near the drinks station, while Cookie and I decided to do what we were paid to do. Weird how that was expected of us.

  I rang up Mr. V’s order, feeling much better about the whole situation. A solution had come to me the moment I’d walked in out of the cold. Bobert. I could ask Bobert what to do. Cookie said he was a detective of some sort in New Mexico. I didn’t know what they called detectives in Latin American countries, but he spoke English really well. Surely he’d know who I could talk to. Who I should talk to.

  And he didn’t have any ties here. He wouldn’t send the cavalry in and risk Mr. Vandenberg’s life. I could ask him who in the department would be the most likely to take my concerns seriously and keep the investigation under the radar.

  Bobert normally stayed for the better part of an hour. He hung around until Cookie had a break and could eat with him. It was so sweet. Hopefully by then, the café would’ve cleared out a little and I could talk to him in semi-private.

  I couldn’t decide if I should bring Cookie into it. He might be the type of officer that kept his professional and personal lives completely separate. He might not want Cookie involved in any of his investigations for her own safety. I’d try to approach him about it before Cookie took her break.

  I glanced toward Reyes. He sat at a booth, eating a sub and reading on his phone. He was doing the same about five seconds later. Five seconds after that, he took another bite, then started reading again. Approximately five seconds later —

  Francie sauntered up to him with the dessert plate we used to tempt unwitting customers into ordering just a bit more than they could safely stuff into their stomachs and asked him if he saw anything that he liked.

  She was not talking about the dessert. She’d undone the top two buttons of her blouse and leaned in to give him a better view.

  I so could’ve done that. I had fantastic boobs.

  But Francie was laying it on thicker than usual, becoming more desperate. It was sad.

  It was even sadder when Reyes took note, causing me to almost drop a plate of spaghetti in a customer’s lap.

  After a pause that had Francie and me both in breathless anticipation, he said, “I’m good for now.”

  Disappointment washed over Francie. Triumph rocketed through me. Triumph mixed with a sweet shot of euphoria. I rarely heard him talk. His voice was like being bathed in warm caramel. Not appealing to some. Scary appealing to me.

  “What do you think of that one?” Dixie asked me, nodding toward the issuer of my future restraining order.

  “Who?” I asked, all innocence and myrrh. “Oh, Reyes?”

  “Mm-hm,” she said, refilling my customer’s iced tea.

  “He seems… nice.”

  A grin as wicked as my darkest fantasies spread across her face. “I think so, too.”

  Saucy minx. Dixie made the rounds, often gravitating toward either Garrett or Reyes, which would explain why she was making the rounds at all. She rarely waited tables.

  I started taking orders, beginning with a table of thirty-somethings. All female. All dressed to the nines. All salads and lemon water. Poor things. I took the orders of two more tables and two booths. All female. All dressed to the nines. Thankfully, not all salads and lemon water.

  I wound my way back to the server’s station to put their orders in and ran into my oldest and dearest friend. Cookie was busy tapping in orders, too, her nails clicking on the screen. As far as rush hours went,
this was a doozy. And they seemed to be getting doozier every day. I would’ve thought December a far cry from tourist season. Apparently not.

  “Is it just me, or are there a lot of women in here?” Cookie asked, closing out her order.

  I scanned the area and concurred. There were a lot of customers in general, and they all seemed exclusively focused on one customer. The tables of women. A couple of tables of men. Even a businessman sitting alone pretending not to be interested in tall, dark, and delicious. I couldn’t blame any of them, but it did up the competition.

  Not that I was competing. Reyes was evil. And he hated me. I would never entertain the idea of us hooking up. Of him following me to the storeroom, pressing his body into mine, pulling my skirt up and my panties down so he could bury himself inside me.

  Nope. All that was more of a… a caveat for something I most definitely did not want to happen. He was like a panther in the wild. Beautiful to look at. Far too dangerous to approach.

  Cookie took off to do God knew what. I entered orders. Erin, the server who despised the fact that I dared to breathe air, and Francie, the server who pretended not to despise the fact that I dared to breathe air but who I suspected was right there with Erin, hurried past me for this or that, and the lunch crew behaved like a well-oiled machine. A well-oiled machine with one tiny clink: a loose cog named Cookie. Other than the occasional hiccup, however, we performed like a pit crew at the Indianapolis 500 despite our differences.

  Cookie walked up to grab a couple of plates off the pass-out shelf.

  “Do you see that?” I asked her, nodding toward Reyes.

  A velvety fire licked over his skin, the undulating waves mesmerizing. That was nothing new. The fire he left on the table was. While he scanned his phone with one hand, the other rested absently beside his plate, his fingertips drawing lazily on the smooth surface. His touch left a trail of soft flames in its wake, as though he were igniting the wood beneath his hand.

  No one but me seemed to notice. Still, I had to be sure we weren’t all about to be burned alive. Maybe he was a pyromancer. A supernatural arsonist.

  By the time Cookie turned for a look-see, her arms full of plates, he’d shifted and put his hand down. Yet the table was still on fire where it had been.

  “I do indeed,” she said, her tone appreciative.

  “You do?” I asked, surprised.

  The flames slowly died away, leaving wisps of smoke drifting heavenward.

  She smirked. “Honey, I’m married. Not dead. How could any woman not see that?”

  I scooped coffee into the basket, remembered it needed a filter, poured the granules back out, and started over. “True. But do you see anything out of the ordinary? Anything – I don’t know – hot?”

  “Sweetheart, that is the definition of hot.”

  “No. Well, yes, but do you see anything unusual?”

  “You mean the way he sits?” she asked, her voice growing husky. “His legs always slightly parted with one hand resting on his thigh. How can any man make something so mundane as sitting so damned sexy?”

  She clearly did not see the fire.

  Before she took off again, she asked, “Is it wrong that every time he comes in I want to straddle him?”

  “Only if you act on your desires. In front of your husband.”

  She chuckled, narrowly escaped a head-on with Erin, then took her customers their lunch.

  But she was right. So very, very right. The guy defined the hyphenated euphemism sex-on-a-stick, and I had to get the fuck over it. Dating him would be like playing Spin the Bottle in a nuclear reactor. He should’ve been wearing a biohazard sign, because I was so not tapping that. I had no intention of going anywhere near it. One hundred percent off-limits. Soooooooo not happening.

  I grabbed the water pitcher to see if he needed a refill, which was not so much me going near him but me doing what I was paid for. I had a job to do, damn it. And I lived in a constant state of denial.

  Actually, the reasons for my approach were threefold. One, I wanted a closer look at the table. Did he really burn it? Two, I wanted to test a theory I’d had for a long time. Every time he walked into the café, the entire area seemed to grow warmer. It made sense, him being made of fire and all, but was he really causing my hot flashes? I was way too young for menopause, so I had my fingers crossed on that one. And three, how close could I get? If he really was hot and he touched me, would I burn like the table? Would he set me on fire – in the nonmetaphorical sense? Would his touch blister as much as his presence?

  I walked toward him with purposeful steps but slowed as I got closer. Cookie stopped what she was doing to watch me, surprise evident on her face. Francie had a similar reaction when she spotted me heading for her customer. Not that it was all that unusual. We each saw to all the customers as needed, and this one was most definitely in need. The poor guy was on fire, for crap’s sake. If anyone needed water…

  Twenty feet. I was now about twenty feet away and closing fast. Ish. The heat that I felt whenever he walked in increased exponentially with every step I took until it became almost unbearable by the time I stood beside his table. Standing next to him was like being too close to a blazing furnace. His heat radiated out in white-hot waves.

  “Can I top this off for you?” I asked, my voice only a little wobbly.

  He didn’t look up at me right away. He’d seemed to sense my approach, though. His sparkling gaze landed on my lower extremities as I’d walked up, but he didn’t move then and he wasn’t moving now. What was moving was the fire that forever sheathed him. It sparked to life. Swelled. Consumed him completely until his muscles contracted beneath it. His jawline sharpened. His forearms corded, hardened to the density of tempered steel as though he were fighting something inside him. As though he were fighting for control.

  I took a minuscule step back. After a few seconds, the fire died down to the soft glow of his everyday armor.

  I waited a moment longer, a moment that seemed to stretch forever, before taking the hint. He really did hate me. His emotions were so dense, so tightly packed, I couldn’t distinguish any one in particular, but I was certain at the middle of it all lay a seething kind of hatred.

  Embarrassment rocketed through me, and I prayed for a sinkhole to appear beneath my feet. On the bright side, no one knew who I was. Including me. I could leave town anytime and all this would be forgotten.

  I’d have to change my name. Janey Doerr – because Jane Doe was so last week – would become nothing but a memory. And I didn’t have many of those. I could use a few more.

  Mortified, I started to step away, but then slowly, methodically, he lifted his lashes. His gaze raked up my body, leaving heat trails everywhere it touched until it met mine. The effect of that meeting was like being hit by a freight train, his presence was so powerful. So raw.

  He nodded, the movement barely perceptible, and I’d almost forgotten the question. The cold pitcher in my hands reminded me. I swallowed hard. Tore my focus off him. Bent forward to top off his water.

  He monitored my every move, studied me with the intensity of a hungry jaguar, and I suddenly felt like prey. Like I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book and had been lured into a trap by the deadliest of predators.

  My hand started shaking. Embarrassed once again, I pulled it back and tried to ignore the heat spreading over my cheeks.

  Then I noticed the entire café had grown quiet. I glanced around to realize we’d somehow become the center of attention. The spotlight flustered me even more, and the pitcher slipped from my hands. It didn’t go far. Reyes caught it, his movement too fast for my mind to comprehend.

  He held it for me, waited until I had a good grip on it. Once I did, he stood. I stepped back but still had to crane my neck. He towered over me in the best – and most frightening – way possible.

  And then he spoke the very first words he’d ever spoken to me. His deep, rich voice dissolved my bones. I almost responded with “Of course I’ll ha
ve sex with you before you sacrifice me to your gods.” Then I realized he’d asked me where the restroom was.

  I cleared my throat and pointed. “It’s just down that hall and to the right.”

  That could’ve been embarrassing.

  His gaze swallowed me a moment longer, his expression almost unreadable if not for the faintest hint of sadness. Or perhaps… disappointment? Before I could grasp the emotion exactly, he stepped around me and headed to the back.

  I filled my lungs at last. With cool air this time, realizing just then how his presence scalded me both inside and out. Talk about things that go bump in the night. Metaphorically and literally. I also realized that the onlookers were no longer paying attention to me. Every head turned toward Reyes as he walked past.

  “You okay, sweetie?” Cookie asked from beside me.

  But something I’d seen in my peripheral vision pulled my gaze back to the table. There, branded into the wood, was a word written in an ancient Celtic language. A language that was no longer used. It was a word that referred to the people and culture of the Netherlands. In a literal and modern-day translation, however, he’d written the word Dutch.

  4

  Being an adult means never having to show your work on math problems.

  —T-SHIRT

  Cookie glanced at the table and back at me. “What is it, hon?”

  She couldn’t see it. He’d seared the wood, but not in the tangible world. How was that even possible?

  Another realization hit me. I knew a Celtic language, a dead one, and there was only one possible explanation. I faced Cookie with eyes rounded. “I think I know what I am.”

  “You do?”

  “Cookie, I am a genius.”

  She chuckled. “You are?”

  “I am.” She followed me back to the prep area. “I’m smart. But not just smart.” I took a quick sip of my coffee before explaining. “I’m, like, stupid smart. I’m probably a prodigy of some kind.”