The Hexed

  Jack let out a sigh. “All right. I’m going to go home and get a few hours of sleep. But if anything comes up, call me.”

  “I think we should try to get some sleep, too,” Rocky said.

  “Sleep?” Devin asked skeptically.

  Rocky smiled. “You’re coming with me.”

  “To sleep?” she asked.

  Jack coughed, grinned and turned away.

  “I’m getting you a room at the hotel,” Rocky said.

  She opened her mouth to protest, but he spoke before she could.

  “Please, I’m begging you,” he said, knowing his exhaustion was clear in his voice. “I’ve been up all night talking to your friend Brent, so no protests, okay? At least for today, you can’t stay here alone. Not after what just happened.”

  She let out a sigh. “What about Poe?”

  “He’s a bird,” Rocky reminded her.

  “Yes, but I can’t just leave him.”

  “He’ll be all right for now. We’ll come back and get him later if it looks like you’re going to be away for long,” he promised. “Hey, Poe and I—we’re close, you know. I’ll make sure he’s not neglected, I promise you.”

  It was as if Poe understood. He let out a caw and flew to his cage.

  He was ready to do his part in solving the crimes, even if that meant staying there alone—and standing sentinel over the cottage in the woods.

  13

  Rocky thought that he was dreaming when he first heard the knock on his door. It felt as if he had barely fallen asleep, and he knew he wasn’t thinking clearly.

  It was still early in the morning, but at least it was daylight. By the time Devin had gathered a few things and they’d gotten to the hotel, Angela had already seen to it that Devin had a room on their floor—one between the suite the Krewe had taken and Rocky’s own. They meant to keep her close.

  They’d all been exhausted. When his head had finally hit the pillow, it was past six. Many guests were already waking up to begin their days.

  He knew he’d left the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, so it couldn’t be a maid.

  And if it were an emergency, his phone would have rung.

  He jumped up, grabbed his Glock and walked to the door in his briefs. Looking through the keyhole, he saw that it was Devin.

  He threw open the door.

  She stepped back in surprise, and he realized she wouldn’t have been expecting him to open the door with a gun in his hand.

  “Are you all right? Did something happen?” he asked her quickly.

  “No. Nothing happened. I’m fine. And I’m sorry.” She indicated the Glock. “I guess that actually is a gun and you’re not so happy to see me.”

  He leaned out through the doorway, frowning, and scanned the hallway in both directions.

  “What is it, then?” he asked.

  “May I come in?”

  He opened the door and let her in. Backing away, he wished he’d taken a moment to grab one of the hotel robes, even though she herself was wearing nothing but a theme-park nightshirt.

  He was definitely glad to see her.

  “Hang on,” he said quickly. He slid his gun back into the small holster by the bed and pulled on the hotel robe.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, belting the robe. “You can’t be here just to say good morning.”

  She lowered her eyes for a long moment. “Wow, you’re making this kind of difficult.”

  “I’m making things difficult?” he asked.

  Difficult? He couldn’t even seem to belt the damned robe.

  Her eyes met his. “Yes. I guess I was having a fantasy thing going on in my head,” she said huskily. “I knock on your door. You open it. I step closer to you, and...and you whisk me into your arms. I thought you’d felt the same way at my place, except Auntie Mina always seems to appear at the most inappropriate times. I can’t stop thinking about you, and I just wanted—”

  She didn’t get any further, because he stopped attempting to belt the robe and pulled her into his arms.

  “Is this what you had in mind?” he whispered.

  Talk about a fantasy...

  “Yes...this,” she said.

  He let his hands fall to the hem of her cotton nightshirt and slowly drew it over her head. Then he shrugged off the robe; no sense hiding anything now.

  Her fingers slid along the waistband of his briefs, hovering lightly in front, a smile curving her lips.

  “The gun is gone—and I am happy to see you,” he said. Then he slipped easily out of the briefs and drew her to him again.

  “In fact, you’ll never know how happy,” he said huskily, tightening his arms around her, feeling the length of her against him, breathing in the perfume that was all her.

  For a brief moment he just held her in his arms, felt the silk of her skin, and thought that, yes, there were moments when he had to believe a greater power was smiling down on them. He remembered seeing her on the road when she’d flagged him down, how she had appeared almost mythical, black hair streaming in the breeze, shimmering in sleek darkness. He remembered her eyes, so blue, as if they contained all the colors of the sea and the sky. He had been almost mesmerized when he had first seen her.

  But then, of course, reality had intruded in the form of a body in the woods.

  But now there was a different reality. And he thought they both deserved the luxury of enjoying this moment in all its beauty.

  She was real, not some mythical apparition, and her hair was dark and rich and like velvet where it touched his naked flesh. Her eyes were a more magnificent blue, and the way she moved against him was raw and carnal, but still as elegant as a whisper of silk. The mere touch of her fingers as she stroked his face was arousing; the pressure of her lips against his shoulder awoke a storm of fire that shot through him, flesh and blood and bone.

  He threaded his fingers through her hair, tilting her head so that she was looking up at him again, and he smiled slowly.

  “I think this is witchcraft,” he told her.

  “What?”

  “Magic,” he said, and kissed her, feeling her lips part beneath his and sensing her hunger in the way her mouth moved, welcoming his.

  The kiss grew fevered, then he broke it off, gasping for air, and slid his hands down her back, along her arms, to her spine again, pressing her closer and closer to him. He needed to taste her flesh, and he let his lips and tongue taste her throat, her breasts. He felt the catch in her breath, felt the way she seemed to melt against him, and then he gasped at the way she touched him in return, every touch of her fingertips...lips...tongue more erotic than the last.

  He wasn’t sure how they reached the bed, but somehow they were there, and he lifted her, kissing her all the while and reveling in her answering hunger, her passion.

  In the delirium he somehow made himself pause; he hadn’t come prepared. She understood his hesitation and smiled, and whispered softly that she was on birth control.

  Then they were together again, on his bed, naked and entwined, touching each other, seeking each other’s most sensuous secrets. Their bodies twisted and turned; they couldn’t seem to get enough of each other. Urgency filled him, the need to touch her, to give to her, to be certain that she felt the same blaze that seemed to rule his every movement. His mouth teased down her abdomen to her inner thighs. She was liquid beneath him, arching, writhing, whispering, though he couldn’t make out the words. When he rose and straddled her at last, she wound her legs around him, and he thrust into her slowly, reveling in the way her tight flesh gloved his sex and in the look in her eyes as he leaned low against her, caught her lips in a kiss and began to move.

  They made love....

  And made love and made love.

  Finally they lay together, exhausted, spent, damp, still striving for breath and feeling the slowing thunder of their hearts.

  She curled against him. “You were right,” she whispered. “Magic.”

  He stroked her hair and lay there savorin
g the moment, just being there with her, lying naked together.

  He turned to speak.

  She was sleeping. Sweetly, at peace, her body still entwined with his.

  He closed his own eyes and found the mercy of sleep himself.

  * * *

  Devin could hear the shower running when she woke up and realized Rocky was in there, getting ready to face the day.

  She smiled, thinking she could just slip in with him....

  But a glance at the bedside clock told her it was already noon. Half a day gone—and he undoubtedly had things he needed to do. If she joined him, with the steam and the soap and...

  One day, she thought, she would be accustomed to him in the way all lovers inevitably became accustomed to each other. They might take showers just to get clean. They might see each other naked or dressing and not instantly feel the urgent need for sex....

  One day?

  Last night—or rather, early this morning—she’d walked in on the man and thrown herself at him. That didn’t mean there would be a next time or that they would ever be longtime lovers or spend enough time together to stop feeling the urgency of last night.

  Would he think that she was desperate, pressuring him?

  Did he do this often?

  Had she ever done anything remotely like this before? No!

  Suddenly she didn’t want to face him. Not here, not naked, not in his bed.

  She hopped up quickly and retrieved her nightshirt, slipped it back on and hurried to the door.

  Then she realized that, given the intruder last night, he would worry if she simply disappeared, so she scribbled a note and left it on the bed. It read simply “Thanks. Gone to get dressed for the day.”

  She heard him turn off the water and she ran to the door, threw it open and looked out into the hall. Luckily, none of the other agents was out there. There was a housekeeper with her cart moving down the hall.

  She stopped Devin just outside her door. “Miss?”

  “Yes?” Devin panicked and nearly snapped out the word.

  “Will you have service today?” the woman asked.

  Devin smiled. “Yes, I’m sorry. Later today, I think,” she said. And then she realized that in her mad “I’m going to play out a fantasy” mode, she hadn’t brought a room key.

  She looked back at the maid. “Can you open my room for me, please?” she asked.

  The maid looked at her. “You have ID?”

  Devin didn’t even have shoes—there were certainly no pockets in her nightgown.

  “I don’t. I—I swear this is my room. I went to...to tell my friend something and forgot to take a key. Please, can you help me?”

  Devin had a horrible picture of having to go down to the lobby in her nightshirt with her hair...

  Messed up as it could only be after a night of sex. No, she would buck up, go back to Rocky’s room and ask him to help her.

  She didn’t have to. The maid evidently decided she looked honest and took pity on her.

  “You bring me ID, please, to the door when I let you in,” the woman said nervously. “This, it is against the rules.”

  “Thank you, thank you, I understand. I’ll get my ID right away,” Devin promised.

  The maid let her in. She rushed to get her purse and ran back to hand her identification to the maid. “And my key—see, my key. And my name. And...thank you.”

  The maid smiled at her and nodded.

  Devin thought that she would be leaving the woman a very nice tip when she checked out.

  Once the maid was gone, Devin locked the door, sighed and hurried into the bathroom, grabbing clean clothes on the way, to hop into the shower. She hurried, seeing as the day was already half-over, drying her hair and dressing as quickly as she could. The minute she left the bathroom she stopped and stood dead still.

  On the table, along with the room service menu, was a medallion attached to a silver chain.

  A pentagram.

  She didn’t touch it, only stared, wondering in horror if someone had put it there during the night or while she was with Rocky, and she just hadn’t noticed it till now...

  Or if someone had come in and left it while she was in the shower.

  * * *

  Rocky called the station and found out that Brent Corbin had spent what had remained of the night before in lockup, still denying that he had even seen Barbara Benton at the bar, much less murdered her.

  He was just hanging up when he heard a fierce pounding at his door. He hurried and looked through the peephole. It was Devin, and she looked as upset as she’d been last night. The minute he opened it, she burst into the room. She’d showered and dressed, and he couldn’t help but appreciate how nice she looked in jeans and a light sweater. What struck him most, though, was that her eyes were huge.

  “Someone was in my room!” she gasped.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “Come on.” Without waiting for an answer, she rushed back into the hall.

  Rocky followed quickly, letting his door lock behind him, glad his wallet was in his pocket and his Glock was in the shoulder holster beneath his jacket.

  Devin unlocked her door and hurried the few feet to the table. Then she pointed. “This was here when I got out of the shower.”

  Rocky stared at the pentagram necklace, then turned to her. “Where did it come from?”

  “I sure as hell don’t know!”

  “When?”

  “I—I don’t know that, either. I didn’t even glance at the table when I...when I went to your room this morning or when I came back a little while ago. I went straight in to take a shower, then saw it when I got out. I don’t know if it was here before or if someone was in here when I was showering. Rocky, the killer might have been in here with me!”

  He walked over to her and pulled her into his arms. “We’ll find out,” he said harshly. “I’ll pull every piece of video this place has—we’ll find who did this.”

  She was shaking. “My house...my room. Why?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he promised.

  “But at least this means it’s not Brent, right?”

  “It certainly improves his odds. Meanwhile, hopefully we can trace this.” As he spoke, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He called Sam first, then Jack Grail, hanging the do not disturb sign on her door while he talked.

  He was supposed to be on his way to the station to take another crack at Brent Corbin, but that could wait.

  Taking Devin by the hand, he headed down the hall to the elevator.

  “Where are we going? What are we doing?”

  “Jack and Sam are on the way to meet us. We’re going to get the hotel surveillance footage and go through it. He pointed to the camera lens aimed discreetly at the elevator. “Most hotels this size have cameras in their elevators and hallways. Not because crooks leave things in the guests’ rooms, of course, but because they take them, and because there are cases of rape and murder in even the best hotels.”

  At the desk he showed the clerk his badge and, flustered, she went to retrieve the manager. He was a small man named Mr. Hogan, who listened gravely, nodding the whole while.

  After that Mr. Hogan led them to a back office where there was a bank of cameras, several for each of the hotel’s five floors. An elderly security guard was at the desk watching the screens. There were, the manager assured them, always two security guards on duty. One roamed the hotel while the other watched the office.

  “So there’s someone in this room at all times?” Rocky asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the manager assured him. “And if he blinks, we’re still covered, because everything’s recorded. We cover all three elevators and every hallway, along with the lobby and the entryway.”

  “What about the side entry?” Rocky asked.

  Hogan pointed to another screen.

  “We’ll need all the footage from 4.00 a.m. till five minutes ago,” Rocky told him.

  “Yes, sir,” Hogan assured him. “
Bobby,” he told the guard, “set up a computer station for the agent, please.”

  Bobby jumped on it, glad to show them the system. But when he went to play back the surveillance video, the screen came up empty.

  Hogan was baffled and had Bobby run diagnostics that revealed every bit of the footage from 3:00 a.m. on was nonexistent.

  “It’s impossible,” Hogan said.

  “We’ll get the police computer expert on it,” Rocky said.

  Within the hour, not only had Jack and Sam arrived, the department’s computer technicians were working, crime scene techs were at work in Devin’s room and both staff and guests were being questioned.

  But despite all their efforts, they ended up with nothing. Whoever had hacked the surveillance system had known what he was doing and so far they hadn’t found a thing to lead them to him. No one remembered seeing anyone enter Devin’s room, and there were no suspicious fingerprints in the room or on the pendant. And all Bobby could tell them was that he hadn’t seen anything unusual; everyone who’d entered a room had used a key, though if their intruder was good enough to remotely erase security footage, hacking a key card was probably child’s play to him.

  Rocky was frustrated, but he tried to keep his feelings in check.

  “We’ll leave someone working on the computer system,” Jack told them. “Jonah Smith is the best man I’ve seen with a computer, so fingers crossed he can come up with something.”

  Just then Rocky heard Devin gasp and turned to see what had upset her.

  She was looking at a local late-edition newspaper, which someone had brought in earlier and left lying around.

  He saw the headline that had disturbed her. The Devil’s Afoot in Massachusetts Again.

  Devin picked up the paper, scanned it quickly and looked at Rocky. “Facts and just the facts with a sensational headline.”

  He took the paper from her. The ridiculous headline went with a report on the fire that had been set in Devin’s yard. It mentioned that the house had belonged to Mina Lyle, a Wiccan, card reader and practicing medium in Salem from the days long before modern witchcraft had come to the city, and a woman descended from the original settlers of the town. The article went on to state that the house was now owned by Devin Lyle, author of the popular Auntie Pim series of children’s books. Police, the article read, suspected a prankster or perhaps someone frightened by the current murders into drawing parallels with the witchcraft trials.