Chapter 26 Feeding the Curse #2
I gripped the arm of my chair. I wanted nothing more than to jump into the car and drive to the scene. I looked to Viv in her hospital bed, a brilliant, crazy smile covering her face.
“What are you grinning about?” I grumbled.
“You. You’re my alibi for that death.”
I peeled my lips back over my teeth, not sure if I was snarling or smiling.
I retreated to the hallway to get some coffee from the nurses’ station and to text Monica to run down the girls’ whereabouts.
The nurses surrounding me knew Nick, and they knew me. They gave me sympathetic smiles, but they didn’t speak to me. They probably couldn’t. Not with Nick being under investigation for passing info to me. I didn’t push.
But Viv’s ER doctor came to the station and spoke with me. I noticed that he was speaking in view of a camera, and with witnesses.
“Viv’s dehydrated and has a fever, and her white cell count is up—really up. Her red cell count is abysmally low,” the doctor said. “I told her this, and she gave me permission to speak with you.” He was covering his HIPAA ass, clearly.
“So…she’s got a bad infection? Like mono or something?”
“The numbers are higher than that. I’m thinking lymphoma or leukemia, but that’s outside of my bailiwick.”
Fuck. I blinked. “What happens next?”
“We sent her CTs and labs to the university hospital in the city. They’ll be in touch to schedule an appointment and figure out what’s going on.”
“From what I understand, she fell ill rather suddenly.”
“It can happen that way in acute cases. She needs to rest.”
I nodded. “Do you think…”
I trailed off, hearing a woman’s scream from down the hall. I spun, ran down the hall, and flung back the curtain around Viv’s bed.
It was empty.
A nurse with a bloody nose shouted into the phone intercom, “Code gray on floor two…”
Fuck.
“Which way did they go?” I demanded.
He pointed to the left. “Two guys, and a woman in a hospital gown—toward the elevator.”
I sprinted down the corridor, skidding up against the elevator, then turned down the stairs. I thundered down them, taking steps two at a time. Ahead of me, the door to the outside swung open and the alarm went off.
Two guys were running toward the parking lot, one with a motionless woman flung over his shoulder, trailing severed IV tubes. What the hell were they hoping to accomplish by abducting Viv?
“Freeze! Police!” I shouted.
But I was unarmed. I had no power, and they ignored me.
I still ran after them, my injured leg shrieking in pain. The two men piled into an SUV at the curb of the emergency area. The SUV swept off, leaving me panting on the sidewalk.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I had promised Viv and Owen I would keep her safe.
I had failed spectacularly.
Again.
—
“Do you know where they might be going?”
I sat in Monica’s car while Gibby rooted in the back seat for snacks. She’d advised me to get the fuck away from the scene, so I’d retreated to a gas station a quarter mile down the road. I’d waited next to the ice machine until she’d pulled up and waved me in.
“I have some guesses.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “The Sumner house? The Hag Stone? The church?”
Monica drummed the steering wheel with her fingers. “I sent Detwiler and a couple other deputies down to sweep the Hag Stone. They haven’t seen any activity, but I asked them to keep watch. I fed them a line about teens causing trouble for the Fourth of July weekend.”
I didn’t like lying to Detwiler, but I didn’t think we had much choice. “Smart.”
“Here’s the video I got from the hospital.
” She opened her email and showed me videos of the getaway car.
I could get only a partial plate. A still image showed two men in the hallway, one carrying an unconscious Viv over his shoulder.
The men were dressed in jeans and T-shirts and had masks on.
They didn’t look like Lister or Sumner—one guy was too thin to be either, and the other was too short.
And neither of my suspects had a tattoo of a poorly drawn snake on the inside of his arm.
“I don’t know who these guys are. I’ll check to see if that tattoo rings any bells in the jail database, but it’s a pretty common tattoo.”
I frowned.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking these are tweakers hired by the Kings.
Or…” I stared at the snake tattoo. “Maybe witches.” I felt okay about speculating with Monica about flesh-and-blood people who thought they were witches, though I kept my thoughts about the Rusalka hidden.
We were accustomed to dealing with crazies, and I didn’t want to be one of them in her eyes.
“I mean, half the guys at the local biker bar have ink like it.” Monica frowned. “We’ve got a fuck ton of potential suspects, but no real leads. If we serve warrants on Lister and Sumner, they might never lead us to Viv.”
“What about that drowning on the news? If there’s a connection to Lister and Sumner there, maybe some evidence will—”
“The guy who drowned was Quentin Sims’s uncle,” Monica said quietly. “There are signs of violence.”
“What about the girls?”
“Leah and Rebecca were accounted for. I have alibis so far for three of the other six—something about a bake sale. It’s possible that the three I haven’t been in touch with drowned the dude.
Or they might say they were having a slumber party.
” She spread her hands. “They back each other up, just like the Kings of Warsaw Creek did back in the day.”
“This isn’t going to stop until all the Kings and all the Kings’ men are dead.” I stared at the clock on the dash. It was almost July fourth.
“Might not be such a bad thing.” Monica’s eyes were narrowed, and she was crunching some hard candy. “Seems to be wiping out church leadership. Not that I said that out loud.”
“But where are Sumner and Lister?”
“I’ve had Vice cruising by their houses. Nothing yet.”
Monica’s phone dinged, and she scanned her texts. Her eyebrows lost their perfect shape and twitched. “Just heard back on Fred Jasper’s alibi for when the kids nearly drowned and the cousins got killed.”
“Yeah? He said he was directing traffic at the Flower Festival.”
Monica frowned. “The festival organizer says he self-reported his overtime. Nobody actually had eyes on him the whole time.”
My brows drew together. “You think Fred—”
“This isn’t proof that he wasn’t where he said he was. But it puts Fred on the table as a suspect.”
I exhaled. “Yeah. I guess it does.”
“I’ll see if we can find any witnesses.”
“But it can’t be Fred,” I said. “That man in the retaining pond tonight…A dead guy can’t commit murder.” Right? My thoughts spun. I had Viv accounted for. Jasper was dead. That left the girls…
Monica chewed her gum thoughtfully. “He may have had nothing to do with any of this. Or he may not have been working alone. He had means, motive, and opportunity for some of these incidents.”
I sank down in my seat. “You’re gonna get in a helluva lot of trouble for looping me in, you know.”
Monica lifted a shoulder. “Maybe not as much as you’d think. You know that new radio system I’ve been so fucking leery of?”
“Yeah?”
“You notice I haven’t been using it to contact you?”
I exhaled. “It’s not secure.”
“No. I wouldn’t say anything on it that I wouldn’t post on a billboard.”
“This is why you’re Wonder Woman,” I said.
Monica nodded sagely. “Now get out of my car, Wonder Girl. I gotta go do an inventory of every meth head out on bond to try to find Viv. Go home. That’s an order, or I will have you picked up and put in jail for your own protection. Understand?”
I nodded. I had fucked up by losing Viv, and Monica needed me out of the way if anything was gonna get done. It wasn’t personal.
I took a bag of gummy bears away from Gibby, stepped out of the car with him, and stood by the ice machine once more as she pulled out of the lot.
At least Monica was covering her own ass.
But I had fucked up. Again.
And now I had to go admit it.
I shoveled the dog back into the rental car and called Owen Destin.
He picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”
I took a deep breath. “This is Anna Koray. I have to tell you…Viv was abducted from the hospital.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Who?” he asked at last.
“We don’t know. Not yet. I’m so sorry, Owen—”
“I should’ve known better than to call the cops,” he said quietly, then hung up the phone.
—
Heart heavy, I headed for home. There was one upside here.
I didn’t think Viv was my killer—she’d been in her hospital bed when the guy drowned in the retention pond.
She hated the Kings, but that wasn’t against the law.
She was a victim, just like her sister. And someone wanted to silence her forever.
Likely, I would need to sit tight until Sumner or Lister led Monica to Viv. Then we could—
I stopped myself. I had no authority whatsoever in this situation. I was just a civilian. Anna. Not Lt. Koray.
I frowned. Night had fallen, and I was zinging down two-lane country roads toward home. Beside me, Gibby sat in his harness, buckled to the seat belt, sniffing the air. I heard an engine behind me, but I didn’t see headlights in the rearview mirror.
Somebody behind me was running dark, and that was no good.
I rolled up the windows and stepped on the gas. If somebody meant me ill, they had another thing coming.
“Hold on, Gibby.”
I rocketed over the hills, my stomach pitching into my throat. I killed my own lights, intending on not giving the jackass behind me an easy way to follow me.
I knew these roads like the back of my hand; there was no way some rich boy with his sports car was going to catch me…
A shadow crossed the road. In the moonlight, I saw a fox on the road. I slammed on the brakes, swerved…
…and a car hit my rear left quarter panel, shoving me off the road. Trees flashed past and metal squealed, until we landed in the ditch with a thud and the powdery puff of airbags.
“Gibby!” I gasped, punching down the airbag and reaching for him.