When I felt two hands push me softly, leading me back against the brick wall of a sidewalk café, I refocused on the being in front of me. “Was that you?” I asked, returning to our conversation. “Did you hurt Pari?”
He braced both hands on the wall behind us and pressed his body against mine. That’s what he did. When threatened, when intimidated, he pushed. He shoved. And he chose his opponent’s weakest point. Went for the jugular every time. Used my attraction against me with the skill of an artist. It was fighting dirty, but I could hardly blame him. It was what he’d grown up with. It was all he knew.
“That was nothing,” he said, his tone deceptively calm, “compared to what I could have done.”
“You hurt her?” I asked again, unwilling to believe it.
“Perhaps, Dutch,” he said into my ear, as if anyone else could hear him anyway, “I don’t like being summoned.”
And just as his mouth came down upon mine, just as the tingling of his life force lifted me from my body to be enveloped in his warmth, he was gone. The chill of late October slammed into me and I sucked in an icy breath, coming to my senses instantly.
He had hurt Pari. I was just as shocked by that as the fact that he would threaten to hurt an innocent man, namely Garrett, who was in front of me at once, and I realized I had fallen into his arms. I clutched on to him just to be safe as he led me away from the curious onlookers.
“That was interesting.”
“I bet,” I said, trying my best to figure Reyes Farrow out. Was he angry that I knew his name? His real name? Why would knowing his name make any difference? Unless … maybe it gave me some kind of advantage. Maybe I could use it against him somehow.
“So, I take it he doesn’t want me looking for him?” Garrett said.
“To put it mildly.”
We walked around Calamity’s, my dad’s bar, to my apartment building behind it. I was still clutching on to Garrett’s arm, not quite trusting my legs yet, when we arrived at my second-floor apartment.
Garrett waited while I fished the keys out of my pocket. “I saw his picture,” he said, his voice suddenly grave.
I inserted the key and turned. “His mug shot?” I asked, assuming we were still on the subject of Reyes.
“Yes, and a couple other photographs.”
That made sense, since he was supposed to be on the lookout for him. “You coming in? I just need to change real quick.”
“Look, I get it,” he said, stepping in behind me and closing the door.
“You do? Well, thank goodness someone does.” I really didn’t want to talk about Reyes with him now, his spine being so unsevered and all. “There’s soda in the fridge.”
I tossed the keys onto the snack bar and headed for my bedroom. “Hey, Mr. Wong.”
“He’s attractive, right?”
I paused and turned back to him. “Mr. Wong?” I looked at my perpetual roommate, at his utter grayness as he stood in my living room corner. He’d been there since I rented the apartment, and since he did have seniority, I’d never had the heart to kick him out. Not that I’d know how. But I’d never actually seen his face. He hovered 24/7 with his back to me, his nose in the corner, his toes inches from the floor. He looked like a cross between a Chinese prisoner of war and an immigrant from the 1800s.
“Who’s Mr. Wong?” Garrett asked. They’d never been introduced. This was all very new to Swopes, and I figured I should bring him into the fold slowly, let him absorb the new information at a comprehensible rate and save all the bells and whistles for later. Then again, he’d asked to be brought in, insisted on it, so screw him.
“He’s the dead guy who inhabits the corner of my living room. But I’ve never seen his face. Not a full-frontal anyway, so I really couldn’t say if he’s handsome.”
“Not him,” he said, “Farrow. Wait, you have a dead guy living in your apartment?”
“Living’s a strong word, Swopes, and it’s not as if he takes up a lot of space. So, you’re talking about Reyes?”
“Yes, Farrow,” he said, eyeing the corner I’d greeted, a mixture of curiosity and horror playing on his face.
“Oh, then damn straight he’s attractive.” I checked messages on my phone. “Wait a minute, are you coming out of the closet?”
A loud sigh echoed against the wall as I traipsed into my room and closed the door. It was funny. “I’m not gay, Charley,” he called out to me. “I’m trying to understand.”
“Understand what?” I asked, knowing full well what he was getting at. How could a girl like me get mixed up with a guy like Reyes? If he only knew the whole story. Not a good idea, though, since he’d have me committed for falling in love with the son of Satan.
“Look, I get the bad boy thing, but a convicted murderer?”
Surprisingly, the oil hadn’t soaked all the way through my pants, so I didn’t need another shower. Since my room was still in disaster-zone mode, I rummaged through a lump on the floor and found a pair of jeans that were tolerable, slipped those on with a pair of bitchen boots, and headed to the bathroom to freshen up.
“I think you need to water your plants,” Garrett called out to me.
“Oh, they’re fake.” He was looking at the plants I had along my windowsill. Either that or my mold problem was getting out of hand.
After a long pause, I heard, “Those are fake?”
“Yeah. I had to make them look real. A little spray paint, a little lighter fluid, and voilà! Fake dying plants.”
“Why would you want fake dying plants?” he asked.
“Because if they were all thick and healthy looking, anyone who knows me would realize they were fake.”
“Yeah, but is that really the point?”
“Duh.”
I heard a knock on the bathroom door that exited to my living room and opened it slowly. “Yes?” I asked Garrett as he stood there reading the sign on my door. The one that read no dead people beyond this door. This was my bathroom, after all, my inner sanctum. Not that the sign always worked. Mr. Habersham, the dead guy from 2B, completely ignored it on a regular basis.
He reached up and pushed against the door.
I pushed back. “Dude, what are you doing?”
“Making sure I’m not dead.”
“Do you feel dead?”
“No, but I thought maybe you had a sign that only dead people could see.”
“How on planet Earth would I have a sign only dead people could see?”
“Hey, it’s your world,” he said with a shrug.
I stepped out of the bathroom ready to face that world again. Or at least a small corner of it. “Look, Reyes is my problem, okay?” I said, grabbing my keys again and heading for the door.
“Right now he’s an escaped convict. And he’s my problem as well. Did he threaten you back there?”
I needed to steer Garrett clear of anything having to do with Reyes, and I needed to do it fast. As far as I knew, Reyes had never hurt an innocent person—not permanently, anyway—but it simply wasn’t worth risking Swopes’s spine. “I have a case I need your help on.”
“Yeah, well, I’m supposed to be tailing you.”
“Our deal’s still on.” I locked the apartment back up then started down the stairs. “Hi, Mrs. Allen,” I called out when I heard the squeaking of a door down the hall.
“Another dead person?” Garrett asked.
I paused and said with a heavy sigh, “Unfortunately, no.”
“So, our deal?” he asked as we headed out the front door.
“Like I said, totally on. You check out the origins of a dead guy riding around in Cookie’s car, and I’ll call you the minute I figure out where Reyes is.”
He eyed me with more doubt than I was accustomed to. And I was accustomed to a lot of doubt.
“Well, his body, anyway. The little shit hid it from me.”
“Farrow hid his body from you?”
“Yes, he did. The little shit. And we have to find it before it passes.”
r /> Garrett scrubbed his face with his fingertips. “I am so confused.”
“Good. Stay that way. Your spine will thank you.”
On the way to the office, I told Garrett all about Cookie’s stowaway and he took down the make, model, and VIN as we passed her car in the parking lot. He could track down its previous owners while I investigated my two missing persons’ whereabouts, Mimi and Reyes. I really needed Angel on this, but the least I could do was get Cookie to check the hospitals to see if any injured males—dark, early thirties, super hot—had shown up in the last few hours. Maybe he’d already been found and just didn’t want me to know. But I’d have to do it discreetly.
After Garrett took off, I strode up the stairs beside Dad’s bar, paused before entering Cookie’s office to scan the area, then snuck inside. Cookie looked up, and I immediately slammed an index finger over my mouth to shush her. Used to the departed showing up willy-nilly, she stilled, glanced around the room warily, then turned back to me, her brows raised in question.
I kept the finger over my mouth, tiptoed over to her—not sure why, it just felt right—and grabbed a pen and paper off her desk. After another quick glance around the room, I scribbled a note, asking her to check the hospitals for Reyes, and handed it to her. That’s when I heard a throat clear beside me. I nearly jumped out of my go-gos, scaring the bejesus out of Cook in the process, then turned to see Reyes leaning against the wall beside her desk. Damn he was good.
“Pig latin?” he asked, incredulity lining his handsome face.
I snatched back the note and glared at him. “It’s the only foreign language she knows.”
“You were hoping to stump me with pig latin?”
I looked down at the note and cringed. It really wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had. I turned toward him. “So, what? You gonna sever Cookie’s spine, too?”
Cookie gasped aloud, and I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingertips. She didn’t need to hear that, especially with the dead stowaway in her trunk.
Between heartbeats, Reyes dematerialized and rematerialized in front of me, anger clear on his face. “What’s it going to take, Dutch?”
“For me to stop looking for you?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “You don’t know what will happen if your body dies, Reyes. I’m not going to stop.”
I could feel frustration rise inside him, simmer and bubble just beneath his perfect surface. He leaned toward me, but before he could do anything, he paused, grabbed his chest, then looked back at me in surprise.
“What?” I asked, but he clenched his jaw shut, his body tensing to a marble-like state, almost as if he were waiting for something. Then I saw it. His image changed. Deep gashes appeared across his face, over his chest, staining his shredded shirt with blood instantly. And he was wet, soaked with a dark liquid I couldn’t identify. He grunted through his teeth and doubled over.
“Reyes,” I cried out, and lunged for him. Just as our eyes locked, he was gone. In an instant, he vanished. I slammed both hands over my mouth to keep a scream at bay. Cookie rushed around her desk and knelt beside me. The agony of what he was going through shone so clearly in his expression. And he didn’t want me to find him?
I would tear apart hell itself to find him.
Chapter Six
NEVER BE AFRAID TO DART AROUND IN PUBLIC,
HUMMING THE MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE THEME SONG.
—T-SHIRT
After parking my cherry red Jeep Wrangler, also known as Misery, half a block away, I swooped back into Mission: Impossible mode to traverse the dangerous domain tucked within the borders of the southern war zone. Gangs proliferated in the poverty-stricken area surrounding the asylum. And the asylum itself, abandoned by the government in the fifties, was now owned by an established biker gang known as the Bandits. For the most part, they were old school, their primary colors reflecting a loyalty to God and country.
I scanned the area, paying special attention to the Bandits’ main house beside the asylum, also known as a Rottweiler den of iniquity—the Bandits loved them some Rottweilers—then I started up the fence as fast as I could. Admittedly, it wasn’t very fast. In all the years I’d trespassed on Bandit turf, the Rottweilers had been out on patrol only a handful of times. The gang usually kept them inside during the day. Praying my luck would hold, yet keeping a weather eye, I clawed and slipped my way to the top of the fence, cringing as the metal wire dug into my fingers. Guys made this stuff look so easy. The only things I liked to scale on a semi-regular basis were those same guys who made this stuff look easy.
Dropping to the other side, I had to stop and regroup, partly to wallow in self-pity and partly to take inventory of my throbbing fingers. Fortunately, they were all present and accounted for. Losing a finger in the line of fence scaling would suck.
After another quick glance at the house, I dashed to the basement window I’d been using to gain illegal access to the asylum since I was in high school. Abandoned asylums had always been a particular fascination of mine. I toured them—also known as breaking and entering—regularly after accidently discovering this asylum one night when I was fifteen. I’d also discovered Rocket Man that night, a relic from 1950s science fiction, when spaceships looked steam driven and aliens were as unwelcome as communists. And I discovered that Rocket was somewhat of a savant in the fact that he knew the names of every person who had ever died, millions upon millions of names stored in his childlike mind. Which came in really handy at times.
I scooted through the basement window on my stomach and dropped into a somersault, landing on my feet on the cement slab of the basement. ’Cause that’s how I roll.
The times I’d tried that same maneuver only to land on my ass with dirt and cobwebs coating my hair didn’t count. I turned to latch the window from the inside. Avoiding Rottweiler jaws always took precedence while visiting Rocket.
“Miss Charlotte!”
For like the gazillionth time that day, I jumped, cutting my finger on the latch. And it was still early. Apparently, this was Scare the Bejesus out of Charley Day. Had I known, I would’ve ordered a cheese ball.
I whirled around and looked up into the grinning face of Rocket Man. He scooped me up into a hug that was soft and warm despite my assailant’s frigid temperature. My breath fogged when I laughed.
“Miss Charlotte,” he said again.
“This is like being hugged by an ice sculpture,” I said, teasing him.
He set me down, his eyes glistening and happy. “Miss Charlotte, you came back.”
I chuckled. “I told you I would come back.”
“Okay, but you have to go now.” He clutched me around the waist, and I suddenly found myself being stuffed back out the basement window. The same window I had just latched.
“Wait, Rocket,” I said, planting my feet on either side of the windowsill, feeling oddly ridiculous. And quite ready for a pelvic exam. I’d been kicked out of asylums before, but never by Rocket. “I just got here,” I protested, pushing against the sill. But holy mother of crap, Rocket was strong.
“Miss Charlotte has to go,” he repeated, not struggling in the least.
I grunted under his weight. “Miss Charlotte doesn’t have to go, Rocket. She promises.”
When he didn’t budge, just pushed me closer and closer to the window, I lost my footing. Before I knew it, my right leg slipped and I found myself being crammed against the tiny window.
That was when I heard the crack, the chilling sound of glass splintering beneath the force. Damn it. If I had to get stitches, Rocket was so going to pay. Well, not literally, but …
I was doing my darnedest to twist and maneuver away from the decades-old glass when Rocket disappeared. In an instant, I dropped to the cement floor, landing mostly on my left shoulder and a little on my head. Pain burst and spread like napalm throughout my nerve endings. Then I realized I couldn’t breathe. I hated when that happened.
Rocket reappeared, picked me up off the ground, and stood me up. “Are you oka
y, Miss Charlotte?” he asked. Now, he was worried.
All I could do was fan my face, trying to get air to my burning lungs. The fall had knocked the breath out of me. The fact that it was a non-life-threatening condition did little to lessen the state of panic I was slipping into.
When I didn’t answer, Rocket shook me, waited a moment, then shook me again for good measure. I watched the world blur, refocus, then blur again, wondering if the knock to my head had me seizing.
“Miss Charlotte,” he said as I gulped tiny rations of air, none quite large enough to fill the void of imminent suffocation, “why did you do that?”
“What? Me?” I asked, sticking to monosyllabic utterances. I’d work my way up to bigger words in a few.
“Why did you fall?”
“I can’t imagine.” Unfortunately, sarcasm rarely translated into Rocket language.
“New names. I have new names,” he said, dragging me up the stairs. He patted the crumbling walls like they were made of precious metals. That was what Rocket did. Carved name upon name of those who had passed, and while the asylum was huge, I knew he would eventually scrape through the cement-covered walls. He would eventually run out of space. I wondered if the building would fall, if it would crumble to Earth like the people who had been memorialized by Rocket’s hand. If so, what would that do to him? Where would he go? I’d invite him to my place, but I didn’t know how Mr. Wong would take to an oversized kid with a scraping fetish.
“I thought I had to leave,” I said, my lungs relaxing at last.
He stopped on the top step and looked up in thought. “No, you don’t have to go now. Just don’t break the rules.”
I tried not to laugh. He was such a stickler for the rules, though I had no idea what they were. Still, I had to wonder what all that stuffing-me-out-the-window business was about. He’d never tried to bounce me before.
“Rocket, I have to talk to you,” I said, following behind him. He patted the wall on his right as we walked through the crumbling building.
“I have new names. They should not be here. No, ma’am.”