“Not at first.” She trembled, then shuddered. His lips were moving lower on her body. A pit of something like lava seemed to boil inside her, ready to streak through her, awakening every nerve in her body. “Not really.”
“Kind of? Almost?” The heat of his whisper tickled her ear.
“I noticed you, I will say that.”
“Only noticed?” His kiss landed on her throat. “You weren’t the least bit interested?” His next kiss landed on her midriff; his fingers teased her flesh.
She laughed, despite the sensations sweeping through her, or maybe because of them.
“Noticed—and not in the best light,” she teased.
He dropped a kiss on her abdomen.
“And there I was, dreaming away,” he whispered.
She threaded her fingers through the thick darkness of his hair. “Liar,” she murmured. He looked down at her, and she touched his face and said, “But I think maybe, just maybe, there was always something there.”
“Always,” he said. “We just had to pay attention.”
She felt the pressure of his thighs between her knees, and wrapped her arms and legs around him.
Then they looked at each other in simultaneous alarm.
“I’m not on any birth control,” she murmured. A flush rose to her cheeks. “I haven’t...seen anyone in a long time, and...”
He winced and rolled to her side. “I never intended to stay,” he said softly. “Much less for anything like this to happen.” He turned and caressed her cheek. “There are other things we can do.”
“Wonderful things,” she agreed. “Though it will be almost like torture.”
“Good torture,” he said, and smiled.
She leaned over him and pressed her lips to his shoulder, then trailed them along his flesh until she felt the sharp contraction of the muscles in his belly. Then she moved lower, only to feel his grip tighten on her shoulders as he shifted her onto her back, his face above hers, a smile on his lips as he kissed her mouth, and then her throat and her breasts. He moved his liquid caress lower and lower until she was gasping and writhing and trying to escape his hold, but only so she could stroke and kiss him in return.
And then, to her amazement, he leaped out of bed, and for a split second she wondered what in hell she had done.
“My wallet!” he said.
“I’m, uh, sure it’s still in your pants. Why?”
“Sex education.”
“What?”
“Always be prepared. Stuck in the back, behind the credit cards.”
She stared to laugh, and when he dug the condom out of his billfold, they were suddenly as giddy as children.
“A treasure,” she said.
“Better than gold.”
“And diamonds.”
“Way better than diamonds.”
“Actually, I don’t even like diamonds. Better than...all the tea in China, all the fish in the sea, all—”
“The dolphins in the world?” he asked.
“Don’t push it,” she told him, and they fell together, kissing and laughing.
And then the laughter was gone, and they made love in earnest.
When they climaxed, Lara knew that the reason she hadn’t been interested in other men for a very long time was because she’d always wanted it to be like this. She’d wanted someone like Brett Cody.
And when he touched her, everything in life seemed worth the wait, and even the struggle for truth seemed like an easier task.
And when early morning came and they made love again, she prayed she’d been right and together they might actually solve this string of horrors. She was glad when he asked, “We’re not making any pretenses, right? I’d feel like an idiot trying to pretend I slept on the couch.”
“No pretenses,” she told him. And she smiled suddenly. Little did the lovely Sonia Larson know that the little white lie she had told Grant Blackwood at the fund-raiser would turn out to be the truth.
* * *
Each of the long rows of bricks set flush in the ground had a number, as did each brick. This cemetery, unlike the one they had visited the day before, was in the middle of the city, down in Kendall, and situated between a fire station and a telecommunications company. There was no impression of grace, no flowing sense of peace here, no feeling of history; it was no Woodlawn or Bonaventure.
Still, it wasn’t ugly; it was a park, of sorts. There were trees and trails—and the rows of bricks with their numbers.
This was where the unclaimed, the forgotten, were taken. It was a potter’s field.
They had decided it was time to use the city’s records to try to find Antoine’s final grave.
Brett closed his eyes for a minute. The knowledge that so many people had died unknown, unremembered, was disheartening.
If he closed his eyes, he could pretend he was somewhere else. And, standing there, even in such a place, he almost smiled. Because last night had changed everything for him. Life could be hard and brutal, and he spent his days pursuing evil, so it had been incredibly good to have a night in which he’d felt as if he’d touched something that was exhilarating and purely good.
And waking up to see her face...
To touch her cheek, to see her eyes open and a smile curve her lips...
Diego cleared his throat, and when Brett opened his eyes he saw his partner frowning at him as if he was afraid there was something wrong.
“What?” Brett asked.
“Your eyes were closed.”
“The better not to see,” Brett said drily.
It was bright and early, and there weren’t many people around, not that many people were likely to come here anyway, even though the highways were clogged with people heading to their jobs. This being Friday, most of them would be looking forward to the weekend.
A man walked by with his dog, despite the no-dogs-allowed sign just outside the gate. But standing there, with Diego, Phil Kinny and the work crew, Brett thought that walking a dog in a cemetery seemed like the pettiest of crimes.
“There was an autopsy, and I have the records,” Kinny said as the cranes worked to dig up the poor pine coffin holding the man who had been buried with a number rather than a name. “Cause of death was listed as a heart attack.” He hesitated. “There are a number of tests that weren’t done because, believe it or not, the morgue works on taxpayer money and there’s never enough of it. Certain tests for poisons and other factors aren’t done, not when cause of death appears to be obvious.” He turned to look at Brett. “I may learn something for you. Then again, I may learn that this man died of a heart attack while walking down the street.”
“I know. But paranoia on the streets about zombies is growing. This is the information age. The public knows a lot more is out there than what we’ve shared with them. Thing is, what used to be word of mouth now becomes word of internet. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this, Phil, and as quickly as possible,” Brett said.
“I’ll do my best,” the ME promised. “I’ll get right on this, and I’ll call you as soon as I know something, but I’ll be asking for a number of lab reports, and even if I put a rush on them, they’ll take time.”
When the coffin was in the county hearse and headed for the morgue, Diego turned to Brett. “We going back out on the bay now?”
Brett nodded.
“And the ghost hunters think we’ll find a body out there?”
“Randy Nicholson is out there somewhere. Zombie, dead man...who knows? The bay is as good a place to look as any.”
“I have no problem with spending the rest of the day diving,” Diego assured him. “The Bureau and county legal departments are still wrestling with Diaz-Douglas, but they tell me they’ll win in the end. It will just take time. I’m with you, certain those people sent an empty casket
to the cemetery. They have to answer for it. But the paperwork is killing me. Don’t you wish we could go rogue sometimes? We could say screw the law and make the bad guys talk. Or not. I don’t really see me torturing old Mr. Douglas.”
“No, but bureaucracy is a pain in the ass,” Brett agreed. “Still, if we find Antoine Deveau in this casket, that’s another step toward finding out what’s going on. I’m really hoping we can find at least part of Randy Nicholson in the bay somewhere, because that will give Kinny three bodies to work with. Matt is with Pierre Deveau now. We’re hoping he can identify ‘Boss Man’ from a sheaf of photos Bryant has been keeping on suspected members of the Barillo family. If he can, we can make an arrest and just maybe get him to talk.”
“Yeah—if torture was legal. No one in that family talks.”
Brett shrugged. “They may not talk, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be tripped up. And we have to solve this one.”
The good thing was that no one intended to let up. Even without the paranoid populace, they had the full support of the powers that be.
Murderous zombies were not good for tourism.
They reached Sea Life ahead of their ten o’clock appointment to meet the Coast Guard and headed up to the offices, where Rick, Lara and Meg were waiting. So were their wetsuits, and the two men changed quickly; the rest of their gear would be supplied onboard.
“How’s Cocoa doing?” Brett asked, trying not to look at Lara, because it was impossible to look at her and not smile like an idiot.
“She’s swimming around and around. It’s as if she knows. As if she’s waiting for us to get the show on the road,” Rick said.
“We should probably head down, then,” Brett said. “Lara can start talking to her to calm her down or even get in the water with her.”
“Sure,” she said.
He noticed from the corner of his eye that she didn’t look directly at him, either.
He was eager to get out there, praying that they could find a needle in a haystack. He realized he was also anxious for the day to go by and for it to be night again.
The Coast Guard cutter Vigilance, again with Lieutenant Gunderson captaining, arrived at precisely ten. Rick and Lara started off in the water, leading Cocoa out of the lagoon.
Brett was grateful to the geeks once again; they’d run the calculations for the night Antoine had been buried the first time, adding in the coordinates where they’d found the other body parts and taking into consideration the different timing, the tides, the currents and the weather.
Their first two dives proved to be futile, but on the third Cocoa chittered away at Lara, trying to lure her down. They were just off a sandbar. Seaweed and sea grasses grew around broken branches of old coral. The water here was deeper than he’d expected, because at one time the area had been dredged to allow for the passage of larger boats. Lara managed to free dive down to about twenty-five feet, but the dolphin still seemed agitated, as if she was trying to lead them farther. Lara went up for air, but Brett, with Rick and the Coast Guard divers, headed down to the area that seemed to be disturbing Cocoa.
He wasn’t the one to find the decaying and half-eaten torso, and neither was Rick. It was one of the Coast Guard divers.
They bagged the torso and headed up with it. Breaking the surface, Brett lifted his mask and looked over at Lara. She was treading water without any trouble, even though it was choppy, waiting for them. He could see one of Miami’s infamous almost-daily summer storms on the horizon.
He nodded at her without smiling and told her quickly what they’d found. The nod she gave in return was equally serious. The find had been a grim one.
Cocoa broke the surface, squealing loudly, and Lara praised her effusively.
Back on the boat, Lieutenant Gunderson warned them that they had time for just one more dive that day, because the storm was coming in quickly. “That dolphin is amazing, like a cadaver dog,” he said.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love dogs. But dolphins are much smarter,” Rick said.
“How much time do we have?” Brett asked Gunderson. “Another hour?”
“About that,” Gunderson told him.
“Good. We have one more sandbank where we think something might have gotten caught. If we move, we can make it.” He looked questioningly at Lara.
She nodded. “I’m game.”
They sat drinking coffee until the cutter reached the specified coordinates.
Brett was grateful they’d had time for this last shot. Cocoa led them to an underwater ridge heavily covered with refuse. It was near an embankment popular with boaters, too many of whom threw beer cans and other garbage into the water.
They found most of the rest of what Brett believed would prove to be Randy Nicholson’s body strewn among the debris.
Most important, they found what remained of the head.
* * *
As soon as they got back on the cutter, Lieutenant Gunderson told Brett that Matt Bosworth had asked him to call when he was back aboard. After he hung up, he told the rest of them what had gone on while they’d been in the water.
First, Pierre had given them a tentative identification on Boss Man.
His name was Jose Acervo, and he was a known associate of Anthony Barillo. He wasn’t in the upper tier of the family business, but he wasn’t a peon, either. The way Brett explained it to Lara, Barillo himself was the king, his family were the heirs to the kingdom, the second tier were like the nobility and had real power and the third tier—which included Jose Acervo—was being groomed to become part of the aristocracy. The problem now was to find Jose.
An all-points bulletin had already gone out; all they needed now was for someone to spot him. The scary thing was that he might have heard he was a wanted man and already be in the wind. The area was full of private planes, and it was easy to slip off to the Caribbean or even South America.
On top of that breakthrough, Matt had received a call from a mystery woman who was trying to reach Brett, because Brett had set his phone to forward unanswered calls to Matt, in case something important happened while he was underwater. The woman had been too nervous to reveal her reason for calling when she’d realized that she wasn’t speaking to Brett, but Matt had managed to trace the call to one of the city’s few remaining pay phones.
“It’s on Bird, near the Diaz-Douglas Mortuary Chapel,” Matt had told him.
“I’ll be damned. Someone there means to talk,” Brett had replied.
“I doubt it’s Mr. Diaz,” Diego said drily when Brett told the group.
“That leaves just one person,” Brett said. “Jill Hudson, the makeup artist.”
“And she’s scared, I’ll bet,” Diego said.
“I hope she’ll call back, but I don’t want to count on it,” Brett said.
“We certainly can’t go see her at the mortuary,” Diego said.
“We’ll wait for her to leave. And it’s nearly four now. We need to get the hell down to Bird as soon as we’re back in port,” Brett said. He looked at Lara. “When you and Meg are finished at Sea Life for the day, head straight to your place. We’ll all meet there as soon as we can.”
She nodded. His hair was still wet, his shoulders bronzed and sleek. On one hand, she was anxious for the day to end.
On the other, she wasn’t sure he would notice her if she did a naked tango right in front of him.
He was so focused on the case right now, so determined to solve it before things became worse.
Before they had to go out looking for more bodies.
“Of course,” she said. “Straight home.”
Once they returned to Sea Life, Lara didn’t even have a chance to talk to Brett. According to Meg, he and Diego had spoken briefly to Phil Kinny, who’d been waiting to take possession of the remains, then rinsed off in the kids’
spray play zone, thrown on their clothes and left, still buttoning up their shirts.
She and Rick had swum the last little way with Cocoa, making sure she was well rewarded for her efforts with love and fish. By the time Lara was out of the water herself and ready for a shower, Meg was waiting for her by the lockers.
“Itching to get back on your computer?” Lara asked.
“That obvious, huh? I need to see if there’s a connection between someone at that mortuary and someone who’s part of the Barillo family. When it comes to something petty that you think you can get away with, you’d be amazed at what people are willing to do—sometimes for money, sometimes to keep someone else safe or out of trouble, or to cover a debt they can’t pay.”
“Who do you think it is?” Lara asked her. “I don’t know any of them, only what Brett has told me.”
“I didn’t meet any of them, either. But as far as I’ve been able to find out so far, no one there has a criminal record. That’s why I think someone was bribed or someone close to them was threatened.”
“Well, I’m going to hop in the shower. Then I’m going to work on some last-minute preparations for Sunday. It’s going to be a big day for us here,” Lara said.
“I’m glad my job is to hang with you, because I’m looking forward to it. It’s impossible to really pay our soldiers back for everything they do, but what you guys are doing is really wonderful.”
By then they’d reached the offices and headed upstairs.
Lara wanted to head straight into the shower, but she needed to get some things first. As she walked into her office, she paused.
There was something on her desk.
She walked over, frowning, puzzled.
It took a second.
And then she realized what it was.
Blue paper had been cut up to simulate waves.
And strewn over the paper were the pieces of a doll, a fashion model doll. Someone had taken the doll and dismembered it, then painted it in red. Bloodred.
The doll had once had blond hair, but now that was scarlet, as were all the joints where the head and limbs had been ripped off the torso.
There was no note.