“And don’t get in any fights, okay?” she warned once I had her tucked in safely at Olivia’s apartment. “You may be immune to mortal weapons, but a knife through my aura will kill me just as readily as if I was standing there.”
“I promise. And Luna will make sure no Shadows get anywhere near you,” I said, and bolstered the pillows on the day bed like a mother bird plumping a nest for her eggs. Nothing was going to happen to her. “Thank you, Jasmine.”
“Anything I can do to serve.”
Then she changed from that smooth-cheeked girl into the monster, and finally the smoky, elongated shade that all too eerily mirrored my own. It was like the sun was hitting me from behind and casting my shadow up in front of me. I stepped through it, and all that remained of our two images was a singular pale face, one I’d taken for granted for twenty-four years, and had been missing these past months.
“Welcome back, Joanna,” I said to myself, then pushed away from the mirror.
There was nothing in Ben’s bedroom to indicate he still thought of me, which I supposed was healthy. If he had possessed some artifact, a lock of hair or something, he’d probably be unhinged by now, and I definitely didn’t want that. I’d already promised myself to do everything in my power to make sure there was no lingering psychological damage from this visit, but as I rustled through his bedside drawer, finding nothing more interesting than an empty holster, I was mildly disappointed.
I found what I wanted in the study, though, tucked inside a vertical wire rack marked “Unsolved,” and a thick folder with my initials on it. The photo that had run almost constantly in the papers and on TV during the week after my apparent death was stapled to the inside flap, and a notebook filled with scribbled notes and theories was lying on top. It was fascinating, if disturbing, to see the way Ben’s thoughts, early on, had been a rambling jumble of conspiracy theories and conjecture before cooling more recently into a practical timeline of events and hard facts.
Strangely enough, the earlier entries were the closest to the truth, and I saw that he’d initially thought Olivia was the next target, which explained why-in those early days-I’d caught the edge of his shadow trailing me, a whiff of sorrow and desperation preceding him. I couldn’t remember exactly when that feeling had tapered off, but it had, slowly, until it was noticeable only by its absence. That’s when his mind must have cleared from the muddied disorder of his grief, and he was able to function again…which was how I knew he’d never know the truth. Reason was the last thing needed to understand what had happened to me. A healthy imagination and a full bottle of Scotch would have served him better.
I yelped when the phone trilled next to me, putting a hand to my heart. I’d completely lost track of time. I was calm by the time the answering machine picked up, but Ben’s message caused my heart to speed up again. I reached forward to play it again, just so I could hear that cool, clear voice, but the beep sounded, and then her voice piped into the room.
“Hey, Benny. I’m just calling to chat, no great emergency or anything. Uh, but I guess you’re not there. Anyway, I’m looking forward to Saturday. I hope you’re hungry. Call me later, all right? ’Bye.”
I glared at the machine like it was a mortal enemy. “Benny?” I said bitingly. My heart was pumping, my hands shaking as I pushed replay to hear the message again, but first I had to wait through another.
“Yo, B. The stakeout’s been moved to L Street and it’s an hour later. Bring a cup to pee in, it’s an all-nighter. And munchies, dude. I’m hungry. Later.”
“So that’s where he is,” I said. Well, he’d said he still helped out the department on an auxiliary basis. He was probably just acting as an extra pair of eyes on this stakeout. Even so, with that phone call my plans to seduce Ben in his home blew up in my face. So I strode to the kitchen and tossed my beer as Rose’s voice sounded again through the house.
“I hope you’re hungry,” I mimicked, and relieved Ben of one phone call to return.
What? Hunter had said to cut Rose off at the pass, but now that I knew where Ben was for the night-and now that the voice, that message, had made her real to me-I was going to do more than that. I was going to cut her off at the knees.
“Benny, my ass.” And I slammed the door shut behind me.
27
I was winging along L and Stone Street, trying to decide where to ditch my ride, when I spotted the first undercover cop. He was slouched in a nondescript Taurus, and I drove past him, circled the block, and came to a stop two streets south of where he was parked. Being an intelligent girl, I’d left the Porsche back at the condo and pulled out the old Vic instead. We were on the cusp of one of Vegas’s seedier projects, and while the Porsche would’ve screamed, Rape me!, the Vic was more of a I-double-dog-dare-ya sort of vehicle.
Or hopefully something a little more gangsta than that.
Through the violet tint of my new worldview, I checked out my reflection again, and satisfied with my dark hair, dark clothing, and dark eyes, pushed the car door shut with a slam that ricocheted through the weed-choked lot and into the concrete buildings beyond. I doubted anyone in this neighborhood even flinched.
It was one very nervous cop in that lone unmarked car. His anxiety was as sharp as week-old sweat as he sat, hardly moving, one hand clenched around a walkie-talkie, head turned toward the building across the street on his left. There was a portable receiver in the passenger seat, which meant whatever room in that building he was trying to maintain visual on was already tapped and live. I crouched in the gutter next to the passenger side door, praying he didn’t have a partner who would be returning soon. The pocked and ill-lit street was silent and unmoving.
“Where you think you goin’?”
I jumped before I realized the voice had come over the receiver. Fortunately the young cop inside had jolted too.
“None of yo damn,” a male voice returned, followed by a door slamming. The walkie-talkie immediately came to life.
“Suspect on the move. Stairwell. I’m on him.”
The young cop’s anxiety spiked, and the car jostled as he lowered himself further, giving me ample opportunity to raise my head and survey my surroundings. I was only using visual as a secondary sense, having already located the other four undercovers-including Ben-by scent. Visual confirmed they were all in the same locations; the first man two blocks down in a beat-up Eldorado; a second, female, standing in full view beneath the lone working streetlight a hundred yards away; another seated and seemingly dozing in a sagging lawn chair kitty-corner to the first complex, and Ben, lying beside a stack of overflowing trash cans, dressed in the same guise Warren liked to use, a street bum playing with less than a full stack.
“Suspect leaving through front entrance,” I heard, and then a pop as the front door flew open. It bounced off its hinges, ricocheting back, but by that time a man the size of a small vehicle-the suspect, I presumed-had already cleared out, and the door slammed shut behind him. He began to walk, slouched, hands tucked in his oversized pockets, heading in the direction of the Eldorado.
His head was down, a black bandana wrapped around his bald skull, but every once in a while he’d lift his chin like he was looking for someone, in almost a syncopated beat, before lowering it again.
“Headed your way, Collins,” my cop said.
“I see him.”
The man stopped next to Collins’s car, no more than a second, then bobbed his head again in that off-beat, and continued on.
Probably looking to score, I thought, watching as he crossed the intersection, past the lone streetlight and the female cop without so much as a glance at her long, exposed legs. When he’d disappeared around the chain-link fence, she began to follow. “I’m shadowing him.”