Текст книги "Tethered Bond"

Автор книги: Emma Hart

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

More to the point: Where is my coffee? I will hurt someone if I don’t get coffee. Being thrown into a truck at six a.m., by a hot detective or not, is not conducive to me hiding my bitchiness.

Worst of all? I can’t even get an explanation why. I just get a grunt.

Honestly, people say that I need coffee to be a human, but Drake is positively a demon without it. He gives a new meaning to the word zombie. I half expect Daryl from The Walking Dead to explode out from behind a building and shoot his ass.

The radio changes to an upbeat song, and Drake slams his hand into the switch. The volume goes right up.

“Fuck!” He hits it again and turns it off.

I wiggle my finger in my ear. “Could have been avoided if you’d just touched it like a normal person. You know. One who has coffee and clean underwear before they leave the house.”

“You should have woken up earlier,” he grumbles.

“It’s six in the morning! If I wake up any earlier, it’ll be the middle of the night!” I shuffle down in my seat, declining to mention that six a.m.? Totally the middle of the night, and a time I have seen way too much this week.

Dear six a.m., we’re gonna need to break up. I’m not even sure how we got into this relationship, but it is, quite frankly, ridiculous. I just don’t feel the same about you.

Drake pulls up outside the station and looks at me. “You were muttering about parrots in your sleep.”

I avoid making eye contact.

“And they were carrying panties. And bras. I think.” His lips twitch, and I catch the movement out of the corner of my eye. “One maybe had a garter belt. Care to explain?”

“No,” I say simply, getting out and walking toward the glass doors that will take me inside the station. I lean against the door and push it open with a moan. I almost walk right into a floating mug of coffee. When I stop, I see that a hand is attached to the mug, and that hand belongs to Charlotte. “Oh. My. God. I love you.” I take the cup from her hand and gulp down two mouthfuls.

It’s hot. I don’t care. It’s the elixir of life all wrapped up into one wonderful little package. It’s like an orgasm, but it has caffeine… And it doesn’t expect anything back.

Hellooooo, coffee.

Drake grunts again and takes the mug right out of my hands.

“Did you change into a pig overnight or something?” I grumble, reaching for the cup.

He holds it up high, where he knows I can’t reach it, and hits me with his icy gaze. “No, but I might buy a parrot.”

I narrow my eyes. “I hate you.”

“Remember who has your coffee.”

“Keep it. I don’t feel like pretending to be nice today, so if I’m a bitch, I’m directing all complaints to your personal line because it’s your fault.” I lean against the reception counter.

Trent comes out of his office with no tie on and his own cup of coffee in his hand. He smirks at me in that smug, older-brother way. “Trouble in paradise?”

“Oh, bite me.” I glance at his shirt and note that he missed a button. “At least I’m dressed properly.”

“With yesterday’s underwear,” Drake points out.

“Because you wouldn’t let me change!”

“I was told to get here for important news. You’d yell if I didn’t bring you.”

I glare at him. I can’t be bothered to talk anymore. Plus, the early birds of the police department are already scared of my wrath. Mostly because they’re actually all petrified of Nonna, and there might be rumors about how passionate I get.

Because I don’t get angry. I get passionate.

I’m writing that on my tombstone.

“Oh good. You’re all here.” Sheriff Bates strolls into the room as though he’s slept for twenty-four hours, although he’s probably had the least of us.

Maybe you get used to less sleep as you get older… Or he’s happy because he knows he can have an afternoon nap.

I, however, have a business to run. Although I probably could sneak a nap in …

“Sorry to wake—Noelle, you don’t have a coffee?” He looks at the mugs the guys are holding then at my empty hands.

“I did.” I point at Drake’s mug.

“Nash! Be a gentleman and give the woman her coffee back. That’s an order. Now, step into my office.” He turns away.

I raise my eyebrow at Drake and hold my hand out. Reluctantly, he passes me the mug back.

“Thank you,” I said.

“He only said that because he’s scared of a Bond woman without coffee,” he mutters, pushing me toward the largest office on the ground floor, just behind the reception desk.

“No, he made you give it back because I’m cute,” I argue.

Drake pinches my butt, and I squeal.

“Yep. You’re real cute in your day-old panties.” He laughs low. “Nah, he’s scared of you when you get angry.”

“I do not get angry!” I say. Angrily.

“Yeah, yeah. I know, cupcake. You get passionate. And deluded.”

“I swear to God I will passionate your ass in a minute.”

His answering grin is sexy, and it hits me exactly how he took those words. Dammit. I know better than to banter with Drake before coffee. It pains me to say it, but sometimes, my words can be misconstrued because I don’t always think them through. Like what just happened.

I huff, drop myself onto the sofa in the corner of the room, and tuck my legs under me. Hopefully I didn’t flash my panties, because you guessed it, I’m in yesterday’s dress.

Ugh. Mike, Dean, or Carlton better have cupcakes waiting for me.

Once Trent and Drake—and, apparently, Brody, who’s back on active duty—have filed into the office, Sheriff Bates takes a seat at his desk. A long moment of silence passes as he rubs a strong yet wrinkled hand down his face and loosens his tie. His heavy exhale fills the room, a chill filling the air.

The early morning sun casts a hazy glow through the window, but there’s nothing bright about it.

“We have a positive ID on both bodies from the parents. Toni and Melissa. Tim completed the autopsy on Toni Thompson at around two a.m.,” he explains, looking at each of us with a level gaze. “We’re waiting on the results of the tests he ran, but before the full report comes back, he wants me to tell you that we’re looking at a murder of a religious type.”

“Religious?” Trent questions.

“Satanic,” Sheriff Bates confirms, pulling a manila envelope from beneath a folder. “The markings etched into Toni’s skin, particularly the inverted pentagram, are symbols used by those who worship Satan. There was also the inverted pentagram burned into the grass beneath both of their bodies.”

I swallow. Oh boy.

“Were they…awake?” I ask hesitantly.

“Somewhere in between. Tim found berries in Toni’s stomach that he believes to be belladonna, meaning she would have been hallucinating and delirious. That’s one of the things we’re waiting to hear a definitive answer on.”

“Raped?” Drake asks.

“It’s believed so,” Sheriff Bates answers quietly. “We’re going out on a ledge and assuming the same circumstances surround Melissa’s murder. We’ll know when Tim carries out her autopsy this morning, but Toni’s results should give us enough to go on for them both.”

“What are we telling the news stations?” Brody pipes up, perching next to me on the arm of the sofa.

“We’re telling them that we’ve found their bodies. That’s it.” He pushes his chair back and stands. Then he moves to the window, gripping the windowsill, his back to all of us. “I know nothing about Satanists. I doubt anyone in Holly Woods does, but by the injuries, we’re looking at two killers. One person would have one hell of a job pulling this off on their own. We have two bodies in one week, both irrevocably connected. It stands to reason that whoever did this could be planning to do it again.” His shoulders heave, and he slowly turns to face me. “And you’re wondering why you’re here.”

“I… Yeah. Kind of,” I admit.

“McDougall wants you on this,” he sighs. “He refused to leave last night unless I agreed. He said he’ll have a contract on your desk with the same terms as per your last case with us.”

I open my mouth, but no words come out.

What did I expect, really?

I cut my eyes to Drake and narrow them. He didn’t pull me here because he knew I’d bug him. He was told to bring me. He knew exactly what was going to happen. Fucking little shit. Total bastard.

He has the decency to look mildly ashamed. Good. Now, I’m glad I got my coffee back.

I drag my gaze away from him and back to Sheriff Bates. “I don’t see that I particularly have a choice, so fine. But I refuse to report to his lying ass.”

The sheriff’s lips twitch. “All reports to me, Ms. Bond. We’re all aware of your tempestuous relationship with McDougall.”

“All right,” I sigh.

“Now,” he says, moving back to his desk and leaning forward. “Here’s what I want y’all to do.”

“I’m not happy about this.”

I roll my eyes and slide Drake’s mug across his kitchen counter. We weren’t kept for much longer at the station, and those are the first words either of us has spoken since we walked out of Sheriff Bates’s office. Naturally, the good sheriff decided to partner me with Drake once more, because that worked so well last time.

“I mean it, Noelle,” Drake continues, taking the mug. “I told him that, too. I’m getting pretty pissed off with the mayor putting you in the middle of these investigations.”

I wave my hand dismissively. “Please. If he didn’t put me here, I’d find another route in.”

“Like getting Carlton to hack the server?” He raises an eyebrow.

“Exactly. You can’t keep me out. I have people.”

Drake shakes his head and puts the cup back down without taking a sip. “I don’t know what I find worse: that you’ve been tasked with finding a killer who’s obviously male and attacking women or that you have to research Satanism.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. Yeah, the second Nonna finds out what I’m doing, she’s going to pray for me and probably put garlic by my front door.

No—wait. Garlic is vampires. It’s salt for demons. Isn’t it?

Hmm. I wonder if that’ll keep Nonna away from me…

He does have a point though. Aside from Nonna and the epic meltdown she’s guaranteed to have, Holly Woods is primarily a Catholic town. When most people think of foreigners in Texas, they immediately think about Mexicans. No one really considers Europeans—and there are plenty.

Hell, Holly Woods was founded by Europeans. Until the immigrants made their way to the Promised Land of freedom and prosperity and all of that shit, Holly Woods was a mass of land owned by everyone and no one. It was no man’s land, just kind of existing. Now, of course, there are no original founders living, but we’re all descendants. Even Nonna. That’s how the Bonds ended up here.

Well, that’s how the Bonds got a good dose of feisty Italian blood in their heritage, at least. Nonna’s father went back to Italy to marry her mom and stayed, just for Nonna and Nonno to move back here all those years ago.

I don’t understand the ping-pong moving-across-the-world thing, but whatever.

The point is, when Holly Woods was taken over by a good deal of Europeans, most of them were Catholic, thus Catholicism becoming the religion of the town, so to speak. While there are a good deal of non-Catholics here now, there’s only one church.

But, whether you’re Catholic or Christian, Satan is never good. Least of all satanic, apparently ritualistic killings right on your doorstep.

Holly Woods PD has a point about keeping that little gem private for as long as possible. Personally, I’m afraid the elderly may stage a protest at the bingo hall and pray for the murderer’s sins while they wave their Bibles.

Nothing is to be underestimated, especially if Nonna leads it. And she would. There’s no doubt about it.

Drake walks past me with a heavy sigh when I don’t respond. Honestly, I have no idea how to respond to his worries. It’s not that I don’t understand them, because I do. I may feel they’re slightly misplaced, given that I’m more than capable of protecting myself, but I simply don’t know how to deal with them.

Big-brother protectiveness? I get it. Fatherly protectiveness? Sure. Relationship protectiveness?

Working on it.

I’m trying. I am. God, I’m trying so fucking hard to give up a small bit of my independence, but it’s real hard when, in one breath, he tells me that I’m perfect the way I am but, in the next, wants to wrap me in cotton wool and keep me safe.

I guess this is why you don’t usually put dominant personalities together in a relationship. We clash on everything.

I follow him upstairs and hesitate by his bedroom door. He’s changing, and I watch as he pulls a freshly pressed white shirt from a hanger in his closet. The muscles in his back flex and ripple as he moves to put it on.

“I have to question Jessica this morning. She was too shaken to speak to anyone last night.” He turns to look at me, his fingers moving nimbly across the buttons, securing them. Of course he knew I was here.

“Okay.” I walk through the room into his en suite and grab my toothbrush. I steal his toothpaste and vigorously brush my teeth.

“Okay?” He appears in the doorway. “That’s all you’re gonna say? No glare or threat of bodily harm toward her?”

I shrug, my toothbrush still in my mouth. I spit the froth out. “What am I supposed to say? You’re going to be in an interview room with a camera and a tape recorder. Not even she’s that dumb, contrary to what she wants people to believe.”

“Again: No threat of bodily harm?”

“Fine!” I drop my toothbrush back into the frosted-glass holder and wipe some toothpaste from the corner of my mouth. Then I meet his eyes in the mirror. “If she tries anything, I will find out and I will hurt her. All right?”

His lips twitch. “Hurt her? You’re not exactly all there this morning, are you?”

“Well, I’m sorry, but when I woke up this morning, I was anticipating some stress-relieving sex, not a fucking contract to find yet another damn murderer.”

Drake’s eyebrows shoot up. “Sex? Why didn’t you say so?”

I bat his hand away and walk into the room. “Because you were too busy grunting and manhandling me like Fred Flintstone with your secret knowledge to even register that I tried to get my hands on your junk before you rolled out of bed with the finesse of a boulder!”

“You should have grabbed it harder.”

I put my hands on my hips and meet his eyes. “Short of handcuffing you to your bed and putting your cock in my mouth, I couldn’t have been more obvious.”

Seriously. And it’s not even like he didn’t wake up with an erection. Trust me. I know when he has an erection. The thing pokes into me and continues to do so until I give it the necessary attention.

Drake catches my hands and pulls me into him. Then he drops his head for a kiss. His lips touch mine roughly, and he bites down on my bottom lip. Lust shoots through my body, and I lock my knees before they buckle. I’m not so good at hiding the moan that escapes.

“I apologize profusely for ignoring you while you grabbed my cock this morning,” he mutters, diving his hand into my hair and pulling my head back. His other hand flattens across my lower back, his fingers splaying to hold me in place against him. “And if we didn’t have to go to work for real right now, I’d show you just how sorry I am.” His lips are like fire as they lick, nip, and suck their way down my neck. “So I owe you.”

“You owe me, huh?” I raise my eyebrows, ignoring the way my clit is aching.

He pulls back and looks into my eyes, the normal icy blue shadowed with desire. Desire I can feel pushing against my lower stomach. Desire my clit wants rubbing against it. I clench so I don’t try to climb him like a tree just to get rid of this awful throbbing sensation.

“I owe you. And you can collect any time.” He kisses me again, deeper this time, his tongue stroking mine.

Desperation explodes between my legs.

Mayday. Mayday.

Houston, we have a problem. The problem being that this isn’t fucking lift off.

“Can I collect now?” I croak, clamping my thighs together.

He smirks that smug, little upturn of his lips, and goddammit, I can’t decide if I want to slap it, kiss it, or sit on it.

As if he knows what I’m thinking, he licks his lips.

Not helping.

Where’s that minion with the fire alarm when you need it?

I need it.

Beedaw. Beedaw. Beedaw. There’s a fire down below. I need an extinguisher for my vagina, please.

“I hate you, you rotten bastard,” I hiss, smacking his chest with my hands and shoving him away from me.

He laughs and whips a black tie from a hanger. I grab my cell from the nightstand and make the mistake of looking up when he clears his throat.

He’s running the tie through his fingers, a half grin on his face. One that reeks of smugness.

Fucker knows exactly what he’s doing.

I pull my clean clothes from my bag and, looking him straight in the eye, strip down to my underwear. He stills, his smile dropping as I unclip my bra and step out of my panties. I take the new pink thong I bought last week, straighten the side strings, and slowly ease it up my legs.

Drake’s eyes darken until they don’t even resemble their original color, and shivers run through me at the heavy dose of lust sizzling in the air between us.

Oh, Victoria. Looks like I discovered your secret.

And I packed its matching bra. Excellent.

I put it on, adjust my boobs, then get dressed in the pencil skirt and the blouse I packed. He approaches me as I do up the top button. His tie is hanging loose around his neck, and ignoring the steady yet fast beat of my heart, I grab either side of the tie and knot it.

Slowly, I push it up to his neck. Then I wrap the stain length around my fingers and yank his mouth down to mine. His breath skitters across my lips, and I smile.

“Don’t fuck with me, Detective. I have lingerie on my side.”

He grabs my ass and tugs me against him. His cock is hard and straining against his pants, and I draw in a deep breath.

“You’re right,” he murmurs. “You do have lingerie on your side. But I have my cock on mine. You wanna play, then we’ll play.”

“Play what?” I tilt my head back, a smile teasing my lips. “We have to go to work. You have a darling woman to question and I have a staff meeting to attend. Looks like you’re gonna have to wait for me to cash in on that IOU.” I tap his nose and pick my bag up. Then I drop my heels to the floor in front of us and slide my feet in before walking to the door.

Shit.

I don’t have my car.

I peer back over my shoulder, and he’s grinning.

Dammit.

I dip my finger into the champagne frosting on top of the cupcake. Turns out both Bek and Dean went to Gigi’s and got a box of six cupcakes in light of yesterday’s news.

Telling them I’m working with HWPD again went down about as well as I suspected. I was met with stunned silence for a long moment, and then Bek cussed the mayor out. The only good thing that came out of my having to give a reason was that Mike vaguely remembered a case he’d worked on when he was in the FBI that had a connection with a satanic cult. He promised to put in a couple calls and see if he could get me the case files or, at the very least, enough details soI could find it on Google.

I’m not entirely sure I want to read it. Information on Satanists and rituals and the like is ridiculously hard to find. There isn’t even much to go by on Wikipedia or on any of the websites that give me a rundown of the most brutal murders linked to Satanism.

More importantly, I can’t find anything on any of the marks that were engraved into Toni’s body.

They’re significant. I know they are. You don’t just carve shit into someone’s skin because you feel like it. People aren’t tree trunks.

I sigh and dip my finger into the frosting again.

God, I miss adulterers. Give me a rogue penis or an overactive vagina any day.

Bekah pokes her head around my door. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to wash off the mental grime from reading about stabbings and rapes.”

She pauses, her hand holding her auburn bangs away from her eyes. “Well, aren’t you just a little ray of sunshine this morning?”

I drop my head back, groan, and flop it forward again. “I know.” I glance at the clock in the bottom right corner of my laptop. “One of my guys has a lunch break in forty-five minutes and he’s in Austin. I’m gonna go to my actual job before the autopsy results for Toni come in this afternoon.”

“Want some company?” she offers. “I have nothing to do until five except wait for Carlton.”

Hmm… Carlton.

No. I can’t bring his pure, innocent mind into this case.

Not that I believe his twenty-something-year-old mind is pure and innocent, I should add. Just that his mind should be dirty in the way every other guy’s should be. Not murder-grime dirty.

Oy. “Jesus. I need a drink,” I mutter, giving Bek a thumbs-up and grabbing my purse. Then I lock my door behind me and wait for her to grab her things.

Grecia waves when I tell her to take my messages and only call if it’s from the police, and we head out to my car.

“Who are we tailing?”

I pull the manila envelope from my purse before throwing it in the backseat and hand it to her. “Daniel Young. His wife is concerned that he’s blown off several lunches and sports events for their son lately.” I put the car into gear and pull out of the parking lot. “She works as an English literature professor at UTA, and he’s a lawyer at some big-shot firm. Live in a nice house in the suburbs. He just took on a big murder case—you know the shooting that happened a few weeks ago?”

Bek nods. “That hippie musician guy, right? Didn’t his ex shoot him?”

“Yeah. Well, Daniel was hired as the defense for the ex. Apparently, her daddy is filthy rich. Daniel’s been putting in extra hours, so Tracey never suspected anything until one of her coworkers was sure she saw him having lunch with another woman. Tracey assumed it was his client, but when she asked him, he dismissed it. So she hired me over the phone.”

“Found anything?”

“Not a thing. This is the first time I’ve followed him.” I laugh and make the turn for Austin.

“Did you find anything? Earlier? The Satan stuff.” She shivers.

“No.” I tell her what I found—that it’s hard to find. “I have no idea where to look. The rest of the squad are interviewing all the travelers and stall owners right now in case any of them saw or heard anything. The fields are close to where the travelers have set up camp, after all.”

Bek bites her thumbnail but quickly drops it and checks to see if she’s chipped the polish. “Hey, have you thought about going to Dina White?”

“The crazy mystic woman?”

“She’s not crazy. Not compared to your family.”

True that. I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who is, if I’m honest.

“I think she’s Wiccan. Or is it Pagan?” she frowns. “I’m not sure. It’s one of those.”

“What do either of those have to do with Satan?”

She shoots me a sideways glance. “What does Catholicism?”

“I don’t know. I never bothered to learn because it pissed off Nonna.”

“Oh, Jesus. We’re gonna be here a while.”

I roll my eyes. My religion is cupcakes and shoes. We all have our beliefs, and I believe that cupcakes and shoes could run the world.

“Every religion has good and bad. Most essentially believe that there is a devil in some form. Whether you call it Satan, Lucifer—”

“Nonna.”

“Or Nonna.” Bek smirks. “I don’t know the differences. I do know that Dina has a bunch of stuff from different beliefs in her store. I think I even saw some voodoo stuff there last time. You know those little doll things?”

When I nod, she continues.

“So she may know something about it. At the very least, she’ll know where you can find information.”

Yeah… If the woman is selling voodoo dolls, I’d rather use the library.

“How popular is Satanism?” I muse out loud. “It’s a recognized religion, so it must have a pretty big following.”

“Bit risky in Texas,” she points out.

Well, yeah. “Still, between Austin, Dallas, and Houston, there has to be at least one group, right?”

Bek shrugs. “I’ve never thought about it, to be honest. There’s probably a way to find out. Would they have a church or something?”

I suck my bottom lip into my mouth, grazing my teeth over it as I slowly release it. Would they? Isn’t that just asking for trouble? Mind you, it’d make for some fun over family dinner. Can you imagine that conversation?

“Wait!” Bek shrieks.

I just about stop myself from swerving. “What?”

“Aren’t Satanists those guys in the long, white robes? With the pointy hats?”

I park across the road from London Law, where Daniel Young works. “Uh, no. That’s the Ku Klux Klan, and they’re white supremacists. Not Satanists.”

“Ohhh,” Bek breathes. “Then I don’t know.”

“There has to be a record somewhere of satanic congregations, doesn’t there? If you can Google and get a list of every Catholic church in the country, surely there’s one for every religion in every state?”

“Probably. If there is, Carlton will find it.”

I tap her thigh with two fingers as Daniel Young exits the building, a young, black-haired woman beside him. “Text him and go into that coffee shop down the street,” I tell her, flicking my phone onto camera mode and snapping pictures. “If he sees us, we’re suspicious.”

With her nose in her phone and her thumb flying across the screen, Bek grabs her purse and gets out without question.

I switch my camera onto video and hold it to my ear, making sure it faces the law firm’s parking lot. Daniel Young leads the woman to his car, a very sleek, silver Jaguar, and kisses her passionately before he opens the passenger’s door for her.

I look away, my eyebrows shooting up. This guy is as discreet as a spider in a sorority house. Clearly, he doesn’t care who sees him screwing around on his wife.

These guys make me so annoyed, but they also make me happy in a sadistic kind of way because it’s an open-and-shut case. It’s never taken me more than three trips to get proof of a cheating husband when they’re this… I want to say careless, but not bothered is a better description. They just don’t care who sees them.

Good for me, bad for their spouses.

I suppose that’s the balance of the universe.

When Daniel Young gets into the car with his young, hot bit of stuff, I drop my phone back into the pocket in the door and wait for Bek to come back.

It buzzes almost as soon as I drop it. Sighing, I take it back out and open the text flashing on screen.

Get your ass to the station. 10-57.

Four numbers.

They paralyze me.

10-57.

Missing person.