All Deacon could think was that Faith better not have any evening appointments. He was getting awfully warm watching Scarlett gentle Marcus O’Bannion.
Deacon cleared his throat and began the exercises again. Marcus followed along, drawing calming breaths from the scent of Scarlett’s hair. By the end of the first round, he was very chill.
Not having a date or time to work from, Deacon had to start with Marcus’s state of mind at the time of the defining event. ‘So how are you, Marcus?’
‘A little scared, actually.’ It was a hesitant admission.
‘Let’s back up and do one more round,’ Deacon said softly. Once they’d completed another set of breathing exercises, he asked the question again. Marcus’s shoulders seemed broader somehow, and Deacon wondered if Marcus’s upper body might appear as wide as Stone’s if he wasn’t so uptight all the time. ‘You’re seeing this face.’ Deacon touched the sketch, watched Marcus recoil, but slowly, like he was moving through honey. Perfect. ‘How are you, Marcus?’
‘I couldn’t breathe.’ He made a face. ‘Antiseptic.’
‘So you were in the hospital?’
‘Yeah.’
‘As a patient?’
A slight tightening of his jaw. ‘Yeah.’
All right. That could mean that this incident had occurred nine months before. He wished he had access to Marcus’s medical history, but that would have to be their plan B if this didn’t work. Scarlett opened her mouth to speak, but stopped herself before Deacon said anything. He gave her a nod of approval.
‘Were you cold, Marcus?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Too warm?’
‘No.’
‘Sad?’
Marcus swallowed hard. ‘Yes.’
‘Floaty?’ Deacon asked, taking a chance that this had occurred while Marcus had been on very strong painkillers. He’d had a collapsed lung, after all.
‘Very. You came to me.’
Deacon started to say that he’d been in the hospital at the same time and hadn’t visited Marcus, but he realized that he meant Scarlett.
She caressed his cheek again. ‘I did,’ she murmured in a smooth voice Deacon hadn’t known she was capable of.
‘You stood guard, but then you left.’
‘I put a policeman at your door,’ she said quietly, sweetly.
‘He left.’
Deacon knew that the guard had been dismissed because they’d caught the man who’d put Marcus in the hospital and killed so many others. They’d thought the danger was past. Apparently they’d been wrong.
‘And you were alone,’ she whispered. ‘In the dark?’
He nodded. ‘He came.’
‘The man in the sketch?’ Deacon asked.
‘Yes. Sat in my room.’
Scarlett’s mouth opened, her eyes growing frightened. But she kept her voice smooth. ‘What happened, baby?’
Marcus’s body stiffened, his head snapping up to stare at Scarlett as he caught hold of the memory. ‘It was a pillow. He covered my face with it. I couldn’t breathe.’
Her eyes had grown wide, her lips firm with anger. Her breathing had become choppy. Frightened. ‘He tried to kill you, Marcus.’
Marcus straightened in his chair. ‘Why?’ he asked, frustrated and bewildered.
Scarlett’s gaze drifted to the side, her brows furrowing. ‘Nine months ago. What was happening nine months ago? Who was angry with you then?’
‘Nobody was mad enough to suffocate me with a pillow,’ Marcus said. ‘There was the one cop that Diesel and I had to escort away from his family, but he died on his own. He never even put a threat in writing.’
Scarlett went still. ‘Wait. That one threat. The one that was so bad that it made Gayle have her heart attack. Mc . . . McSomebody.’
‘McCord,’ Marcus said grimly. ‘Woody McCord, high school teacher and collector of kiddie porn. He was the target of our investigation, but Leslie, his wife, wrote the letter. She was dead by then, though, remember? Gayle said she OD’d on sleeping pills.’
‘What are you two talking about?’ Deacon asked.
Scarlett broke away from Marcus’s gaze to look at Deacon. ‘Last night I mentioned a list of threats. People who got mad at Ledger articles exposing things they’d done. Remember?’
‘Usually domestic abuse or child molestation,’ Deacon said. ‘Are you saying that Woody McCord was one of these threats?’
‘Yes,’ Scarlett said. ‘Well, his wife was. Leslie McCord wrote the letter after her husband committed suicide in jail – he hanged himself. Said she hoped that Marcus lost someone he loved. When Gayle read the letter, they were looking for Mikhail. At that point only Stone knew he was dead. Gayle thought Leslie McCord had something to do with Mikhail’s disappearance.’
‘It was such a shock, her heart failed,’ Marcus said. ‘She went into the hospital, and when she got out, she looked up Leslie and found the woman was no longer a threat because she’d OD’d on pills. Her death was ruled a suicide.’
‘But that’s where it doesn’t make sense,’ Scarlett said. ‘If Woody was dead and Leslie was dead, who is that guy’ – she pointed to the sketch – ‘and why did he try to kill you in the hospital?’
‘It doesn’t fit, Scarlett,’ Marcus said with a frown. ‘It doesn’t have to be anybody I pissed off nine months ago. It could have been somebody I pissed off five years ago who was just waiting for me to be a sitting duck in an ICU ward.’
Scarlett sighed. ‘You’re right.’
‘Who actually wrote the article about this McCord guy?’ Deacon asked.
‘Stone did,’ Marcus said.
‘That doesn’t explain Phillip’s attack then, other than trying to lure you,’ Scarlett said, disappointed. ‘Damn.’
‘Phillip wasn’t even working that case,’ Marcus said. ‘That one was Stone and Diesel.’
‘Diesel is his IT wizard,’ Scarlett explained.
Deacon leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed. ‘How did you find McCord’s kiddie porn stash?’ he asked, and watched the other two exchange a glance. Then Marcus nodded.
‘Diesel has a knack for finding things on people’s computers,’ Scarlett said.
‘He’s a hacker,’ Deacon said flatly.
‘That’s such a pejorative term,’ Scarlett said. ‘He’s an . . . explorer.’
Deacon stared her for a long moment, then chuckled. ‘Damn, girl. When you fall, you fall hard.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t care how he got the information. I just wondered why Marcus gets the threat if Stone wrote the article and Diesel the Explorer got the goods.’
Scarlett turned in her chair to look up at Marcus’s face. ‘Yeah, I wonder that too.’
Marcus drew a deep breath. ‘I may have gone to see McCord. In prison.’
‘Oh for God’s sake.’ Scarlett rolled her eyes. ‘You gloated, didn’t you? Went right in there and said, “Hi, I’m Marcus.”’ She pitched her voice ridiculously low. ‘“And I’m the one who just fucked up your life.”’ She shook her head and her voice was back to normal. ‘You didn’t want anyone threatening your people. You told everyone on that list that you’d done the investigating, not just the McCords. You gave them all a face to hate. Yours.’
Marcus’s eyes had grown wide. ‘Damn. You are scary good.’
‘I’m just plain scary,’ she snapped. ‘Especially when people I care about do stupid shit like that. Don’t do that anymore. Promise me.’
Marcus grinned. ‘I promise. I won’t do that anymore.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, disgruntled. ‘So Woody and Leslie hated you, but they were both already dead when you were in the hospital. So who is Mr Pillow and how does he fit into the picture? You had to have crossed paths with him, either physically or during an investigation. And if this Demetrius guy is your Mr Pillow, then you’ve somehow managed to snag the attention of a ring of human traffickers – nine months before you met Tala.’
‘Nine months ago, you were dangerous to this guy somehow,’ Deacon said, tapping the sketch. ‘You still are. You saw something, heard something . . . maybe something you don’t even know you saw.’