Chapter 16 #2
It had been almost a week since I walked out of Lettie’s kitchen, leaving her a note saying I’d be back in a few hours to take her to dinner, only to stand her up without a word.
A week of her thinking I’d used her and tossed her aside.
A week of her probably dreaming up new and creative ways to feed me to her hellhound.
Fuck.
“What do we know? Anything?”
“Agnes Mayfair is dead,” Adonis announced. “My contact in the sheriff’s department said the woman had been dead three days before they found her.”
“COD?” Asclepius asked.
“Not sure yet, but my contact said it was bad.”
“Beaten?” Ares asked.
“No. M.E. says it looks like strychnine poisoning,” Coeus said, eyes locked on the screen in front of him.
“Strychnine?” I questioned, not sure I’d heard him right. My blood went cold. The beer bottle froze halfway to my mouth.
“Yeah, he hasn’t officially ruled that as COD but given the scene and the state of the body... though three days in the Texas heat can do a number on a corpse.”
“What made him think it’s poison?” Zeus asked.
“He’s running extra blood work. After I spoke to him about Harlan, he upped his protocol.”
“Poison is a woman’s game,” Apollo muttered. “Have you found a link between the deceased?”
“Not really. I mean, everyone in Athens is linked in some way. What I did find when I dug into each of them is some shady shit.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. My heart was pounding now. Hard. Fast. Something was wrong. Something was very fucking wrong.
“Well, I started with Leanne Turner,” Coeus began.
“Why her?” Caishen asked.
“Because she had a husband and kids. She was a stay-at-home mom who, aside from cleaning the house and keeping the kids alive, didn’t have a stressful life.”
“Kids are enough to stress anyone out,” Hyperion muttered.
“I looked into her medical history first,” Coeus continued, ignoring Hyperion.
“No family history of heart disease. No risk factors for heart disease, stroke. Nothing. The woman was thirty-two years old, with an eight-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter. Both kids are in school during the day.”
Asclepius looked through the file Coeus had slid to him. I assumed it held her medical records for him to inspect. His face was blank. Professional. But I could see the tension in his shoulders. The way his jaw worked.
“Relationship?” Adonis asked. “How were things with the husband?”
“By all accounts, happy,” Coeus said.
“So you don’t have fucking shit,” Zeus complained.
“I didn’t say that.” Coeus looked down at the table. “I did something... that Dionysus might want to kick my ass for.”
“What the fuck did you do?” I asked. I could feel my blood pressure rising. Heat crawling up the back of my neck. Dionysus was the only brother who had kids—well, until we found out about Zeus’ son Gus. His old lady had passed away in a car accident, leaving him a single dad of two small children.
TJ was ten, and the kid was as ornery as they came. A fucking menace. If Dionysis didn’t get him under control soon, he’d end up just like Alex. Grief wasn’t an excuse to let your kids run rampant without consequences.
Mary Kate was five. She didn’t remember her mother. She was only two when Kiara died. But that little girl ruled us all. Even Orpheus, the crotchety old bastard who was a son of a bitch on a good day, couldn’t help but smile when Mary Kate was in the room.
“I talked to Mary Kate. She and Janie are in the same class at school.”
“And?” Zeus asked.
“And?” I repeated. “All you say is and? He used Dio’s fucking kid to get information. If Dio finds out, he’ll fucking kill him.”
“If Orpheus finds out, he’ll fucking kill him,” Hyperion muttered.
I pointed a finger at Hyperion. “What he fucking said.”
Orpheus loved that little girl, thought of himself as her unofficial grandfather. He’d gut anyone who put her in danger. Even one of his own brothers.
“There’s no danger in talking to Mary Kate about her class friends,” Apollo pointed out.
“What did Mary Kate say?”
Coeus took a deep breath. “I think Janie and Sampson were being abused.”
“What?” The word came out sharp. Violent. My hands clenched on the table.
“Mary Kate said Janie cried a lot in school. Said her mom was mean to her.”
Asclepius’ head snapped up. “Have you looked into the kids’ medical records?”
“Yeah,” Coeus admitted. He slid another folder toward Asclepius, who opened it and started reading. No one made a sound as Asclepius’ face grew darker. His brow drew together, and his hand fisted against the table until he slammed it down. The crack of bone against wood made everyone jump.
“Leanne Turner deserves to be in the ground, and I’m not sure her husband shouldn’t be right alongside her,” he growled.
“What does it say?” Zeus asked.
Asclepius ignored the question and turned to Coeus. “Did you look into the doctor?”
“Yeah. Dr. Finley Harrow died two weeks before Leanne Turner,” Coeus revealed. “M.E. listed COD as natural causes since he was older than fucking God himself.”
“And the others?” Apollo asked, his voice sounding resigned, as if he’d already figured out what we were dealing with.
“All had a history of abuse.”
“Harlan Troy?” I asked. My throat felt tight. My chest constricted.
“Turned out Suzanne had motive after all,” Coeus confirmed.
“Son of a bitch,” I cursed. The pieces were falling into place. A pattern emerging from the chaos. Someone was hunting abusers. Killing them. Executing them with cold, calculated precision.
“So we have a vigilante in Athens,” Zeus said.
“Not necessarily,” Coeus countered. “I spread my search out to the surrounding towns.”
The screen at the front of the room lit up, and dozens of pictures began to fill the space. Faces. Names. Dates. A fucking gallery of the dead.
“These are all men and women of various ages, races, occupations who have died suspiciously over the past few years.”
“Jesus Christ, there are hundreds of them,” Atlas said, his eyes glued to the screen like the rest of ours.
My stomach dropped. The room tilted. Hundreds.
Fucking hundreds. My heart slammed against my ribs.
My hands went numb. The air felt too thick to breathe.
This wasn’t a vigilante. This was a fucking crusade.
A systematic purge. Someone had been killing for years, and we’d never noticed. Never suspected. Never fucking knew.
“How many have you looked into? Are they all bad?”
“Every person I’ve looked into so far deserved to be put in the ground.” Coeus paused. “Including Professor Halston.”
The silence in the room was deafening. Heavy.
Suffocating. We all stared at the screen, at the faces of the dead, and realized we were looking at something bigger than any of us had imagined.
Someone out there was playing judge, jury, and executioner.
Someone was cleaning up the filth that slipped through the cracks.
And part of me, the dark, violent part that lived in the shadows, couldn’t help but think they were doing God’s work.