Phoenix Read online

  Chapter 4

  “Well hell, Leah.” Sam’s desk chair creaked as he leaned back to prop his feet on his desk. “This one could blur the line between FBI and SINS jurisdiction. If she was just a Wiccan, well, that’s not really Supernatural.” He pursed his lips in thought. “But if she truly had powers of some kind…”

  “Then it’s in our court. You think they’ll play nice?” SINS was tagged the “Spook Squad” shortly after its inception. We don’t get a lot of respect or cooperation from other agents unless the monsters are knocking on their own door. This case had the potential to change that.

  “We’ll just have to wait and see. Until then…”

  “We need to play nice. Got it. He promised he send me everything he gets tomorrow. I’ll do some research…” My cell phone rang with a ring tone reserved for Ian’s calls. “You mind?”

  Sam waved me off. “Nah, go ahead. Just let me know when you find something.”

  “Hey,” I called into the phone.

  “My love, you must get to the hospital. Jessica is well but she was attacked.”

  I was running before he finished talking.

  * * * *

  I heard her voice from down the hall. She was pissed. I loved that about her and blew out a breath of relief.

  When I came around the corner and pushed back the curtain to the emergency room, she was half sitting up in bed trying to convince a nurse that she was fine.

  “Give her a break, Jess. She’s only doing her job.” I smiled as I crossed the room.

  Jess slumped back against the pillows in defeat as the nurse gave me a small smile of thanks. “I wasn’t out for more than three minutes. I looked at my watch just as I was digging for my keys, then again when I came to and used my cell phone to call the police.”

  “Whoa, slow down. You were knocked out? Did someone hit you?” I saw no evidence of a head wound, or any injury at all for that matter.

  “No.” She sighed. “I stopped at the drugstore to pick up some ibuprofen. When I was walking to my car,” her eyes glazed over for a moment, “someone put a cloth over my face and the next thing I know I was on the concrete next to my car. I pulled my phone out of my purse and called for help.”

  “They didn’t take your purse?”

  “They didn’t take a damn thing! I think they must have been scared away before they could grab my stuff. I’ve already filed the police report and other than being pissed off, I’m fine.”

  “We’ll take some blood just to make sure.” The nurse cut in and Jess rolled her eyes. “Purely precautionary.”

  “I have a court date in forty-five minutes.”

  “I think under the circumstances you can get a postponement.”

  “Leah, I’ve been working this case for months. If I can finish this, I’ll be clear for a couple weeks off with Oscar. I’ll give blood, but then I’m leaving.”

  The nurse tied a rubber tourniquet around her upper arm and straightened it out. “Do you take intravenous medications?”

  I zeroed in on Jess’s arm. A small, red, and swollen puncture mark was nestled on the inside of her elbow.

  “Or have you had a blood test recently?”

  Jess pulled her arm away. “I haven’t … I’ll be damned.”

  “Shit. Was that there before you were knocked out?” My mouth had gone so dry I had to push the words out.

  Jess shook her head slowly. “Why would anyone want my blood?” Her eyes widened. “Vampire?” she whispered.

  “A vampire would have left two marks and they wouldn’t be on your arm.”

  “Just take the blood. I have a court date to get to.”

  “I want the results immediately,” I instructed the nurse.

  * * * *

  Ian was waiting in the garage when I pulled in. I put the car in park and opened the door. I’d gotten into the habit of leaving the keys in the car. I mean, if I couldn’t feel safe living in the secured estate with my vampire fiancé, then where could I feel safe?

  Ian was silently leaning against the doorway to the house. He opened his arms as I approached and I walked right into them, breathing him in and letting my body relax against his.

  “Is she well?” He spoke into my hair.

  I nodded against his chest.

  “You didn’t get much sleep. Come on, I’ll tuck you in and you can tell me all about it.”

  “I gotta do some research first.”

  “Is it something Mouse can do?” he asked.

  Mouse was our resident tech genius. He worked for Ian and handled everything that has anything to do with the computers or electronics—both at our house and at Ian’s casinos. “I don’t want to shove my work off on him.”

  Ian laughed. “Are you kidding? If he can get his fingers on the keyboard he’ll be happy to help.”

  I was working on four hours of sleep and the offer was too tempting to pass up. I let Ian lead me upstairs and filled him in on the way.

  “They asked if it was demon possession.”

  “Demon possessions are not as uncommon as you might think, my love. Many violent crimes have been linked to demonic presence. It is, however, very brazen for the demon to expose his presence to a human, let alone speak to them.”

  “Brazen?”

  “They consider themselves above humans. It would be the equivalent of a human talking to an insect. That is how they see mankind.”

  “Great, a demon with a superiority complex. I don’t think it’s a demon. The puncture wound has to have something to do with it.”

  “Rest, my love. Mouse will find all possible reasons for this.”

  And he did.

  * * * *

  I awoke reluctantly having dreamed of pools of blood, black mists, and demons. You’d think that nightmares would be a common occurrence for someone in my line of work, but they rarely invaded my sleep. It was as if my mind processed enough horror in my waking time and blissfully gave me reprieve when I slept.

  A quick shower didn’t erase the fringe of the nightmare still nagging at my head.

  Mouse had been busy and filled me in on his findings while I downed coffee at his workstation. It seemed a demon was our least likely suspect. There are as many reasons that people go berserk and end their own lives after taking several others, as there are people that do it. Unfortunately, most cases of demonic possession were more speculation than documentation. The human world had spent so long ignoring its Supernatural elements that most unusual occurrences were chalked up to creative imaginations burdened with a traumatic event. In other words, bullshit. Stories were pushed off as fodder for the tabloids and campfire stories. Mouse had looked into mental illnesses and any pharmaceuticals that could have caused the old woman to go on a shooting rampage, but until we had the toxicology report from the coroner, we could only come up with possibilities.

  As Mouse scanned page after page of Internet speculations with the glee of a child given a new toy, my mind kept drifting back to my dream. Then, with sudden clarity it slammed into me. “Pull up stories of Tabitha Walden.” I said, interrupting Mouse and earning a raised eyebrow from Ian, who had been sitting in a chair listening patiently. “Something happened at her grave.”

  Ian came to look over my shoulder as Mouse’s fingers raced across the keyboard. Several news articles were available, each with a photo of both Tabitha and her grandfather, Arthur Walden. He read each one aloud as I paced the floor and reviewed the night Arthur Walden was killed. “That’s it!” I snapped my fingers and all eyes turned to me. “Arthur said he didn’t do it. He told Tabitha that it wasn’t really him.”

  “You didn’t expect him to admit it to her face, did you?” Mouse asked.

  “Exactly what I thought. But what if that’s true…”

  Ian finished my sentence for me. “Then this started with that incident.”

  * * * *

  After a quick stop a Jess’s place to check on her, I spent the day at the SINS office poring over the police reports from Tabitha and
Arthur Walden’s deaths. The coroner’s reports didn’t shed any new information on either case. Tabitha’s had been faked and I’d watched Arthur die. No one saw a need to conduct an autopsy on Arthur so I had no lab work to look at. Switching gears, I went over the information that Stark had sent me.

  There was nothing uncommon in the lab work. Gerty had simply opened fire in a public place then turned the gun on herself. I felt like I was spinning my damn wheels. Sam diverted all of my cases and incoming calls to other agents so I could give this case my full attention.

  That didn’t last long.

  “Leah!” Sam called from his office. “We have a wolf sighting in Coolidge. I need you on it.”

  “I thought I was cleared to work solely on this case?”

  “You were.” He flicked on the television that hung in the corner of the office. “Stark called. We’re off the case.”

  A woman so thin she looked nearly emaciated stood outside the FBI offices interviewing Agent Stark. I recognized her as the lead anchorwoman of a national news network. “…the incident in Peach Springs, while tragic, is being ruled a murder/suicide,” Stark spoke in his zero inflection voice. “I have no further comment at this time.”

  Reporters randomly fired questions at him as he disappeared back into the building. Sam flicked the TV back off. “We’re off the case.”

  I slapped my palm on my desk. “That’s bullshit, Sam! Do you really think that this”—I slid a picture of Gertrude Rothchild across my desk—“little old lady would commit murder/suicide?”

  Sam looked at the picture sadly. “No. But if you’d have asked me yesterday if I thought she could have walked into a diner and shot three people in cold blood, I would have said no too.”

  “How the hell does Jess fit into all this?” I rolled the kinks from my neck.

  “I don’t think she does. You said she was fine today, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No red eyes or sudden tendency to kill someone?”

  “Of course not! She’s pissed off about the whole incident, especially the part about her being late to court and the judge rescheduling the hearing to today. She plans on taking some time off to spend with Oscar.”

  “Then it’s just a coincidence, Leah.” He wasn’t patronizing; he was rationalizing. I respected him for it, but it was still frustrating as hell.

  “Shit!” I scrubbed my hands across my face.

  “Look, Leah. You’ve been at it all day. Go home. Get some sleep. I’ll put someone else on the wolf sighting. It’s probably just another damn coyote anyway.”

  I released a sigh that puffed out my cheeks. More than half our time was spent hunting down “ghosts,” and not the Supernatural kind. Humans are a panicky species and everything that goes bump in the night must be a monster.

  Sam smiled at me. “You look like shit.”

  I shook my head. “Thanks a lot, Sam.”

  “Anytime. Now go.”

  I went.

  Chapter 5

  Ian and I lay in bed discussing our wedding plans when a knock on the door interrupted us.

  “We have company,” Bear announced from the hallway. While I couldn’t see him through the closed door, I knew he’d have his back to it out of sheer respect for our privacy. He was one of Ian’s personal bodyguards and a bear shifter. More importantly, he was a friend.

  I heard the television click on and then turned to see Ian, sitting up in bed clutching the remote. I followed his gaze to the screen and jumped out of bed. Jess’s car sped up the driveway.

  I yanked on some clothes and headed downstairs. Ian and I had nearly arrived at the bottom of the steps when we saw Jess stride in. I smiled wide in greeting until I felt the anger and fear rolling off her in waves. Her eyes focused on something across the room.

  I followed the direction of all that anger to the family room where Ozzie, Ian’s newest vampire bodyguard, sat on a chair, flipping through the newspaper. He folded the paper and tossed it on the table, and then stood but froze in mid-motion. His eyes rounded and his jaw fell open slightly as a look of complete shock consumed his face. He recovered and his lips started to curve into a smile.

  Jess’s steps never faltered as she crossed the room and in one fluid movement landed a punch squarely across Ozzie’s jaw. His head reared back and he faltered to his feet; clearly, he wasn’t prepared for the blow.

  I sucked in a gasp and hated myself for checking to see if Jess’s eyes were red. They weren’t. She hadn’t shown any effects of the attack on her, but … Ian tensed behind me.

  “You son of a bitch!” Jess screeched up at him, then grabbed the lapels of Ozzie’s shirt and dragged his face down to hers. It would have comical seeing a five-foot nothing, thin as a rail woman shaking the shit out of a six-foot plus, linebacker built vampire if she wasn’t my best friend and obviously very pissed off. “Where is he?” Spittle flew from her mouth.

  Thoughts raced around my mind then faded like wisps of smoke, each slipping away before I could grasp any single one. Beside me, I felt Ian’s own confusion.

  Before Ozzie could open his mouth, Jess decked him again. This time, he anticipated the blow and only winced as her small fist made contact with his square jaw. It had to have hurt her hand more than his face, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Wha…” The word was barely out of his mouth before Jess started pummeling him with her fists, connecting anywhere on his body, over and over again.

  I ran down the remaining stairs but didn’t get to Jess before she’d worn herself out using Ozzie as a punching bag, with a few kicks thrown in for good measure. She whaled on his body while she screeched incoherent words. I got to her just as she crumpled. Ozzie caught her and kept her from hitting the floor.

  I glared at him as anger boiled in my veins. I didn’t know what Ozzie had done to her, but I’d damn sure make sure he paid for bringing my confident, self-assured best friend to this state.

  Ian had moved behind Ozzie, his body tight and poised for a fight. He looked to me as if asking what he should do.

  Jess’s head fell back on her shoulders, her eyes riveted to Ozzie.

  I expected to see anger but what I saw scared the hell out me. Her face pleaded with him before her mouth could even form the words.

  “Where is he?” Tears spilled out of her eyes and she stumbled back to her feet.

  I put my fingers on her cheek and pulled her attention to me. “Where is who, Jess?

  “He…” She flung another punch at Ozzie. “He took him!”

  “Took who?” I practically shook her. She was scaring the hell out of me.

  I looked toward Ian. He shook his head. He didn’t know either.

  “Where’s my baby?” she cried. “Where is Oscar?”

  Jess found a second wind and started pummeling Ozzie once again. He sank into the chair behind him and let her beat her fists on him.

  My heart stopped. It literally stopped as the smoky thoughts clouding my brain pulled into a coherent thought.

  Oscar was gone. Oh my God, Oscar; somebody took Oscar. But why would she think that Ozzie took him? The answer came faster than I wanted it to.

  “I have a son?” Ozzie’s eyes were glazed over, his face a mask of shock and confusion.

  Jess slapped him hard enough to bring an instant welt across his cheek. “I have a son, you bastard! What did you do with him? Where did you take him?” Her eyes were wild. She frantically searched his face and I felt her fear growing with each passing second.

  “I didn’t know.” Ozzie’s voice was distant. His wide eyes pinned Jess. “Why didn’t you tell me? My God! He’s missing? I have a son? And he’s missing?”

  “You really didn’t…” Jessie collapsed to the floor. “I thought you… Oh my God, if you don’t have him…” Her voice quaked as sobs shook her body.

  “No, Jess, I swear. I would never do that. I didn’t know…” He scooped her up off the floor and onto his lap. “We’ll find him.” All shock was gone from his voi
ce now, replaced by rage and determination. “Jess.” He tilted her face to look up at him. “We. Will. Find him!”

  Jess was hysterical. Her entire body quaked so hard I feared she’d pass out before we could find out exactly what happened to Oscar. It took some cold water and a shot of bourbon to calm her enough to understand her words. By that time, Ian had assembled us in the kitchen.

  Jess had worked late. When she went to the daycare center that evening to pick up Oscar, he was gone. A new employee said that his father had picked him up. Jess headed straight here to find Ozzie.

  Yes. Ozzie was Oscar’s father. Hence the family name. Ozzie was short for Oscar.

  I didn’t press for any information on that front, but Jess assumed that Ozzie had seen her and Ozzie at my engagement party. That was why she’d left so quickly. So, when the daycare told her that a man claiming to be Oscar’s father took him, she came here expecting to find Oscar with Ozzie.

  Ian summoned Bear from his office and Bear confirmed that Ozzie had been dead in his room all day and with him from the moment he rose. There was no way he could have taken Oscar and, by the look on Ozzie’s face when he found out that he had a son, I believed that he really didn’t know beforehand, much less plotted the kidnapping.

  It was instantly agreed upon that we’d head back to her house. We hoped to track Oscar to wherever he’d been taken. Once Oscar was safe, well, Ian and I would kill his kidnapper. The plan was conceived without any guilt or remorse. The man who took Oscar would die. I didn’t give a damn about my badge or my conscience. Whoever this was had endangered my godchild, the child of a woman who was like a sister to me. When we got Oscar back—and I said when because I refused to think Oscar had been harmed in any way—his kidnapper would die. If he had hurt Oscar, well, it would be a slow death.

  I didn’t fill Jess in on that last bit of information. I’d only told her that we’d take care of it. She accepted it without a word. Jess was a lawyer, a damn good one too. The only thing she argued about was that she had to stay behind. If this was a ransom issue then Jess needed to be at the house in case they called. I didn’t want her running off on her own should she get a call for ransom, and I didn’t think she’d wait around until we got back. Jess really couldn’t argue, so she grudgingly agreed to stay behind. When I left, she was clutching Oscar’s blanket, rocking back and forth as she stood staring at the telephone.