Third Grave Dead Ahead

  I felt him, his heat and energy. I pried open my eyes and spotted him instantly, balancing on the back of a chair in the corner, his robe sliding along the floor like a black fog, creeping up the walls and around the instruments. His hood was back as he watched me, his powerful gaze unwavering.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, the cotton still in my mouth.

  He jumped down, his robe swallowing in on itself. When it settled around him, he turned to look out the window at the lights of the city. Or the Dumpsters out back. Who knew?

  “This is my fault.”

  My brows slid together. “This wasn’t your fault.”

  He glanced over a wide shoulder. “You really need to figure out what you’re capable of,” he said, scanning me from head to toe.

  I was suddenly self-conscious. I had a huge gash in my face and an arm in dire need of therapy. Walker had actually cut the tendons in my arm and partially cut them in my leg. Speaking of Walker … “Where is he?” I asked.

  “Walker?”

  I nodded.

  “He’s in this very hospital.”

  Alarm leapt within me. I’d never been afraid of anyone in my life—well, besides Reyes—but I recoiled at the mere mention of Walker’s name. And because of it, I felt as though he had taken something very valuable away from me. An innocence. Or possibly an arrogance. Either way.

  “He won’t be going anywhere or hurting anyone ever again.”

  I was certain he was right, but for some reason, that didn’t help much. He stepped to me and ran his fingertips over the arm that I could feel healing already, my fingers moving ever so slightly.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Reyes—”

  “I had no idea he would go to such lengths when he came after you.”

  My thoughts screeched to a halt, and I took a mental step back. That was an odd thing to say. “What do you mean?”

  “I knew he would try something,” he said, closing his eyes in regret, “but this. I just had no idea. And since I was bound—”

  “What do you mean, when he came after me?” He lowered his gaze and like a baseball bat hitting me upside the head, realization dawned. “Oh, my god, I’m so slow sometimes, I astound myself.”

  “Dutch, if I had known…”

  “You set me up.”

  He bowed his head, pulled away from me.

  “I was bait. How amazingly slow can one person be?” I tried to sit up, but pain shot through my arm. And rib cage. And leg. And, oddly enough, my face. It was still too early, even for me.

  “I didn’t know where he was or how to find him. You had bound me, remember? But I knew if we rattled enough cages, he’d come running. I planned on being with you when that happened. I followed you everywhere. Then I lost track of you.”

  “Reyes, he threatened Cookie and Amber. He would have killed them.”

  “Dutch—”

  “This wasn’t just about me. Or you, for that matter.”

  “Had I known … had I thought for a moment—”

  “You didn’t think. That’s the problem.”

  Anger spiked within him. “You bound me,” he argued.

  “I bound you two weeks ago,” I said, the side of my face throbbing with the workout. “Why didn’t you go after him before that?”

  “I didn’t know.” He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I thought he was dead, just like the rest of the world.”

  “Then how did you find out otherwise?”

  He seemed embarrassed. “The fact that I’d spent ten years of my human life behind bars for something I didn’t do was a source of great entertainment for the demons when they were torturing me. Until they told me, I had no idea. Then you bound me, and I couldn’t go after him.”

  “So you set me up?”

  “I set us up, Dutch. I was going to be with you every step, but your boyfriend was on your ass everywhere you went. If I’d just hung out with you, I would have been arrested.”

  The irony of the situation was not lost on me. First my father, then Reyes. When would I learn? What would it take for me to see the true nature of a man? Me. The one person on the planet who could see into men’s souls. Who could feel their deepest fears and see the color of their worth.

  “I just have one more question.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me? Honestly, you’re as bad as my dad. What is it with men and their inability to just be open and tell the damned truth?”

  He pressed his lips together before answering. “I didn’t trust you.”

  “What?”

  “You bound me, Dutch. And quite frankly, if you had the slightest inkling of what you are capable of, you could do a lot more than that. Which, by the way, you need to figure out.” He pierced me with a cold stare. “This war isn’t going anywhere.”

  “What war?” I asked, appalled. “Your war? The one your old pals from the underworld started?” I shook my head as much as I dared. “I don’t want anything to do with that. I’m done. With you. With all of it.”

  “Dutch, you’re all they want. They want the portal, and you’re it. And they’ve found a way to detect you. They have a way to find you.” He leaned over me, his brows drawn together in what could have been anger or pain. Or both. “You have to figure out what you’re capable of, really capable of, and you have to do it now. No more screwing around with these humans. You need to concentrate on your real job.”

  “These humans are my real job.”

  “Not for much longer,” he said, about half a second before he looked over me toward the door and disappeared. Just like a man. Utterly unable to stand up to a fight.

  I scanned to the door as well to see a police officer standing there. Not really in the mood to give a statement, I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep.

  “You’re awake,” the officer said.

  “No, I’m not.” I opened my eyes and looked at him, but the light at his back made his features too dark to recognize. He stepped into the room, and the glow from the instrument panel illuminated the face of Owen Vaughn, my archenemy. He was most likely there because kicking a girl when she’s down was fun.

  He picked up my chart. “You keep coming back,” he said, surprise evident in his voice. “You get knocked down again and again, and you keep coming back.”

  “Are you here to finish me off?”

  He leveled a startled expression on me, one that turned to resolve. “I guess I can see why you’d think that.”

  After the day I’d had, making nice with the guy who tried to kill and/or horribly maim me in high school was super close to the bottom of my things-I’d-most-like-to-do list. In fact, he was right under shove bamboo shoots under my fingernails and right above get betrayed by someone I love. Again. Cleary, it was a long list.

  I studied him a moment, my curiosity burning despite his position on the list. “What did I do to you in high school?” I asked, barely moving my mouth.

  He shook his head. “Nothing. That was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter now.”

  The dam broke at last, and emotion of every shape and size poured out of me. “Just tell me,” I said, not above begging. “Just tell me what I did wrong so I won’t do it again. What I keep doing wrong, over and over and over.” My breath caught in my chest, putting a stop to the overs.

  “Charley—”

  “Owen—,” I covered my face with the one hand I could lift and bit down hard to keep from crying. “—just please tell me.”

  He exhaled slowly. “You took my pants.”

  I lowered my hand just enough to see him over my fingertips. “What?”

  “About a month before I tried to run your ass down until you died a prolonged and painful death, I’d spilled orange juice all over my pants. When I went to the restroom, I took them off to rinse them in the sink, and one of the guys grabbed them from me, joking around. He ran out and threw them into the girl’s restroom. And you took them.”

  “I don’t
even … Wait, that’s right. Larry Vigil opened the bathroom door and threw in a pair of guy’s pants. So—” I leveled an apologetic gaze on him. “—I took them. I just thought they were from the locker room. And the next day,” I added, hating to say it aloud, “I wore them. As a joke. Owen, I had no idea they were yours. I figured they’d taken them out of someone’s locker and whoever they’d belonged to had sweats or something else to wear.”

  “They weren’t and I didn’t. They left me there, and later when you wore them, I thought you knew they were mine.” He glanced down, embarrassed. “You looked right at me and laughed the next day as you walked past.”

  I ran a hand through my hair and winced when my fingers brushed over stitches. “Owen, I wasn’t laughing at you. I was just, I don’t know, laughing. Probably at something Jessica said.” Jessica had been my best friend growing up before I made the mistake of telling her too much about me.

  “Well, I know that now,” he said. He stood and stalked to the window that overlooked the college campus.

  “But there’s more to that story, isn’t there?”

  He nodded and turned away. “I couldn’t leave the restroom. It was the end of the day and everyone went home, and I was just there, stuck in the restroom with no pants. So, I waited for all the buses to run, tied my jacket around my waist, and started walking home.”

  I cringed. The embarrassment he must have felt. “Oh, my god,” I said, as the memory of that time rushed back, “you were the kid. The South Nines beat you up.”

  After a long moment, he nodded. “They caught me in an alley and basically kicked my ass for not wearing pants.”

  “But you were at school the next day.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t tell anyone. I told my mom I crashed my bike. If the Nines had kept their mouths shut, no one would ever have known. Then when I saw you wearing my pants the next day and everyone laughing…”

  My hand covered my eyes, trying to block the memory. “Talk about adding insult to injury.”

  “I just couldn’t forgive you. The Nines never left me alone after that. I had to face them every day.”

  “Owen, I’m so sorry. That’s why you withdrew. Neil Gossett said you just kind of drifted away from them.”

  “Being harassed on a daily basis has that effect. Still doesn’t change the fact that you’re a bitch.”

  “That’s true.”

  He turned back to me. “But you just take this shit and take it and keep coming back for more. The guys in my division can’t figure out if you’re really good or really stupid.”

  I peeked out from between my fingers. “It’s a fine line.”

  He lowered his gaze. “I wanted you dead.”

  “Yeah, I got that when you came after me in your dad’s SUV.”

  “I wanted to drag your lifeless body down the street, dropping limbs along the way.”

  “Okay, but you’re over that, right?”

  “Not really. But you’re all fucked up, so I can’t give you a hard time. We can pick this back up when you’re better.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  * * *

  The next day, I woke in the late afternoon, a soft sun filtering through the window. Uncle Bob was there as well as Cookie, her eyes rimmed with a redness that hadn’t been there before.

  “Are you getting enough sleep?” I asked her.

  “You’re one to talk,” she said with a sad grin. “Everyone’s been here. And it’s all over the news. About the man who’d been in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. I think Reyes is going to be famous.”

  “So he doesn’t have to go back to prison?”

  “I talked to your friend Neil Gossett,” Uncle Bob said. “They’re going to keep him in minimum security until all the paperwork goes through.”

  “But why don’t they just let him out now?” I asked, alarmed. “The man he went to prison for killing isn’t even dead.”

  “For one thing, they have to prove that really is Earl Walker. Then papers have to be filed and a judge has to review the case. It’s not like in the movies, hon.”

  “So how is he?” I asked.

  “Farrow is fine,” Ubie said. “He’d called the police before he ever got to your place and was there when we got there. He surrendered with no complications. And that is really the man he went to prison for killing?” he asked at the last.

  I knew he would take it hard. Sending a man to prison for a murder he didn’t commit would wreak havoc on the heightened moral codes of a good cop. “There was no way for you to know, Uncle Bob. Wait.” My brows slid together. “What do you mean he surrendered? He didn’t really have much of a choice, did he?”

  “Actually, the first officers on the scene were a little busy. They had no idea who he was. He identified himself and told them the guy lying in a heap of broken limbs was Earl Walker.”

  “He told them? With the gunshot wounds?”

  Ubie and Cookie exchanged glances. “He wasn’t shot, sweetheart,” Cookie said.

  “Oh, my gosh, he’s faster than I thought. I could have sworn he was shot. I mean, I saw Walker pull the trigger. I saw the bullets head straight for his heart.”

  Again with the glances. Cookie took my hand. “Hon, that wasn’t Reyes.” She bit her lower lip, then said, “That was Garrett Swopes.”

  I blinked in confusion, closed my eyes, and replayed the memory. A tall man came bursting through the door, and Reyes had been on his way. I’d just assumed.

  “Swopes?” I finally muttered. “Garrett came through the door?”

  “Yes,” Uncle Bob said.

  “Garrett Swopes was shot?” I simply couldn’t wrap my mind around it. “No, that was Reyes. It had to be. He crashed through the door and … the gun went off.”

  “Sweetheart, why don’t you get some rest.”

  “You must be mistaken.” Shock and denial fought for a front seat in my convertible to la-la land. They had to be mistaken. Garrett was shot? Because of me? I struggled to get out of bed. “Is he here? I have to see him.”

  Uncle Bob lowered me back onto the mountain of pillows. “Charley—”

  “I can’t believe I got him shot. Again. I need to see him. He’s going to be so pissed.”

  “You can’t, hon.” Uncle Bob lowered his head, sorrow and regret coming at me in white-hot waves.

  I glanced at Cookie, at her red-rimmed eyes, and the dread that crawled up my spine was so cold, so crushing, it swallowed me where I lay. I forced myself to look at Uncle Bob. And waited.

  He visibly struggled with what to say, how to word it; then he raised his lashes and whispered, “He didn’t make it, hon.”

  And everything else slipped away.

  26

  Sometimes that light at the end of the tunnel is a train.

  —T-SHIRT

  Slowly, and with a sharp pain that echoed off the hollow walls of my heart, the realization that I’d actually gotten a man killed, a friend, sank in. There comes a time in every woman’s life when she has to reevaluate her priorities. Did I really want to kill off all my friends one by one?

  Another thought surfaced, one that centered on the fact that the men in my life found me incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. True, my track record didn’t instill a lot of confidence, but I’d solved case after case, I’d weathered ridiculous odds, and damn it, I’d looked good doing it.

  A momentary sense of pride swelled inside me until I once again remembered I’d gotten a man killed. Not just a man. Garrett Swopes. My Garrett Swopes. A bond enforcement agent with more talent in his little finger than I had in my whole body. I replayed the scene in my mind, the bullets heading toward him, too fast for him to react. And I’d watched, like a voyeur. Thinking it was Reyes, I figured he could react, he could defend himself against those odds. Had I known it was Garrett, would I have done more? Would I have tried harder? Could I have?

  If Reyes had just trusted me. That was another thought that played itself over and over in my mind
. If he had just trusted me. If he had just filled me in on the freaking plan. Quite frankly, Reyes Farrow could bite my ass.

  When I started pulling needles and tubes out of every available surface of my body, Uncle Bob jumped up from a chair in the corner.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, trying to stop me. And succeeding with minimal effort.

  “I need to go home.”

  “You need to lie back.”

  “Uncle Bob, you know how fast I heal. And I’ll heal even faster at home. I just want out of here. I’ve been here for two weeks.”

  “Hon, you’ve been here for two days.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked, more than a little appalled. “It seems like forever. And then some.”

  “Charley, let’s just talk to the doctor first, okay? He’ll make his rounds again in about an hour.”

  With a heavy sigh, I fell back, opened my mouth in a silent scream at the pain shooting through every molecule in my body, then clamped my jaw shut because silent screaming hurt, too. Holy crap, I hated being tortured. I hated that Reyes didn’t trust me. And more than anything, I hated getting my friends killed.

  “I killed him, Uncle Bob.” I plastered a hand over my eyes so he wouldn’t see the evidence of how pathetic I could be.

  “Charley,” he said, his voice soft, “that wasn’t your fault.”

  “It was entirely my fault. Maybe Dad was right. Maybe I need to be a plumber.”

  “Your dad wants you to be a plumber?”

  “No,” I said, my breath catching between sobs, “he just wants me out of this business.”

  “I know. But since he essentially got you into this business, I’m having a difficult time with it.” A hardness seeped into his voice, and I blinked past the tears to look at him.

  “I don’t want you to be mad at him.”