Guilty by Association (Judah Black Novels) (39 page)

“Reed,” I screamed, though I knew his power had been expended inside the incinerator just like mine.

Valentino growled and heaved his hind legs with an amazing level of strength, sending LeDuc flying back. He struck his head on the incinerator door. “You...” LeDuc hissed and jumped back up. “Do you have any idea what you're doing? Any at all?” He stood and dusted himself off.

Valentino didn't give him the chance to finish his speech. He charged and hit LeDuc with a gut shot. LeDuc stumbled backward, teetered for a moment, and then fell into the incinerator. I rushed forward, baby in hand, to swing the door shut. It was heavier than all hell. I wouldn’t have been able to budge it with one hand, not if Hunter hadn't come forward to help. The door slammed shut just as LeDuc bounded against it. I spun the lock. “Burn, you bastard.”

“You're making a mistake,” he pleaded through the door. “If you kill me, you'll never stop Han. If you think what I’m doing is monstrous, just imagine what he’s doing behind closed doors with all the resources of the wealthiest governments in the entire world!”

“Reed, light this asshole up.”

Reed, who was doubled over next to the control board, pale as the undead, nodded. “With pleasure,” he said and slammed a fist down on the big red button. LeDuc screamed and pounded on the door for all of ten seconds before the whole room was silent of everything but our sighs of relief. It was over. Andre LeDuc was dead.

* * * * *

We walked back to LeDuc's bedchambers. Most of the glass had come down. I handed the baby I'd been carrying, which just happened to be Leo, off to Hunter, who somehow managed to juggle both babies, and turned the wheelbarrow back over. Zoe's baby was still there. She was weak and hungry but otherwise unhurt. I held her tight for a moment and whispered a generic prayer of thanks. Then, I wandered over to the remains of Andre LeDuc’s bed to finish burning Zoe’s remains.

When I was within sight of the bed, though, I paused. The mattress and sheets were covered in blood and gore, just the way I had left them, and a few shards of glass and cave rocks had tumbled down onto it. None of them were large enough to conceal a body, however, and that was the one thing missing from the bed. I glanced around, looking for a trail of blood to track her with but I found nothing. Zoe was gone.

“Uh,” squeaked a little voice on the other side of the room. “A little help here?”

“Ed,” I exclaimed and shoved Zoe's baby at Reed without thinking. Father Reed took the child and Valentino and I rushed over to pull the bookcase off of Ed. Somehow, Ed had managed to take the fall with a little grace. He'd landed in just such a way that his skinny body actually fell in between the shelves and so he managed to get away without any additional injuries. He smiled up at me when I pulled the bookcase away. “It's over,” I told him. “We got him.”

Valentino leaned in and sniffed Ed's face and then promptly snorted at him.

Ed laughed. “I know, right?” Then he extended a hand and I pulled him up, letting him lean on me.

When we turned back, Father Reed was holding Zoe's baby at a distance, examining it with a frown while she screamed bloody murder. “Is there a problem?” I shouted across the room at him.

Reed raised his eyes to mine. A dark shadow passed over his face. “I'm sorry, Judah. This isn't what I wanted or how I wanted to do it but you must understand that I answer to a higher authority.”

“What are you talking about?” I stammered starting across the room.

Reed took a step back, tucked the child against one shoulder and lifted a rosary from his pocket. “Forgive me,” he said and waved the beads. A swirling vortex of light appeared beside him: a Way. He stepped inside and closed it behind him.

“That son of a bitch!”

I took a step forward. Something above me creaked. Behind me, Ed shouted, “Look out!” Instead, I looked up. A large piece of the glass ceiling was hurdling through the air, straight for my head.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a hospital bed with a series of very annoying beeps going on behind my head. Tindall was standing over me, though I hardly recognized him all clean shaven and hair slicked back nice and neat. It was as if someone had taken the scruffy version of the detective, dipped him in a vat of choir boy and polished him off with a confession. It didn't look good on him.

I started to ask him why he was there when a nurse tugged on my arm. “Gotta keep that straight, honey,” she said in a pleasant tone. “Bending your arm like that causes a kink in the IV. Makes the machine go haywire.”

I stared up at the nurse who was offering me a fake smile, my brain still trying to piece together what had happened. I remembered LeDuc, us somehow surviving the incinerator...Reed took Zoe's baby and then...and then a huge piece of glass came crashing down on my head. “What happened to me?”

“You had a pretty bad concussion,” she said. “A bunch of cuts and bruises, too. Dislocated shoulder, dehydration...You're not looking too shabby now, considering.”

“I'll guess I'm lucky, huh,” I answered in a hoarse voice I barely recognized as my own.

“I'm sure they'll be releasing you soon, honey.”

“Great.” Satisfied, she patted my shoulder, adjusted something on a monitor behind my head and left. I rolled my head back over to look at Tindall. “Wedding or funeral?”

“Huh?”

“You look like Heaven warmed over. I figure you shaved and dressed up for something. So, is it a wedding or a funeral?”

“Grand jury, actually.” Tindall scowled and jerked the physician's stool over so he could sit on it. “Someone had to go and talk the D.A. into not charging you and your merry band of vigilante werewolves with murder and kidnapping.”

“Great,” I said closing my eyes. “No good deed goes unrewarded, does it?”

“You dodged a bullet this time. If BSI hadn't had your back though, Judah, this could have gone a hundred shades of wrong. The state would have preferred locking up psychos like LeDuc.”

“Bodies,” I muttered, my head still a little blurry. “Did they find any bodies? Specifically, a woman…insides cut out?”

Tindall grimaced and glanced at all the tubes coming and going from me. “They must have you on some good drugs, Black. There were some bodies in those tunnels but nothing like that.” My heart sank but I nodded. Tindall continued in a careful tone. “Zoe Mathias is missing along with Sara Greenlee, though we did locate the Garcia boy and the Summers girl.”

“How'd I even get out?”

“Valentino. Carried you halfway back to town before we caught up with him. Everyone thought you were dead for all the blood. Turns out, you're more resilient than most. Least, it seems that way.”

“Valentino,” I rubbed my head and tried to file away a mental note to push the paperwork on through to make Leo legal. The same for the Summers girl and every other illegal on the reservation. I'd catch hell for doing it after the fact and probably ruffle enough feathers back at headquarters to get me put on a watch list but I didn't care. There was no reason for the children to have to pay for their parents' mistakes, not again. “How'd he even know where to find us?”

“Valentino caught your scent. He led us to the general area and then took off like a bat out of hell. Took us damn near four more hours before we stumbled into that cave system. Quite the setup he had down there.” Tindall fidgeted with the brim of his hat. “Listen, Black, things like this, they can't keep happening. You've got to start trusting the department more. Next time, I might not be able to talk the D.A. down. I don't mean to tell you how to do your job. I just need to know that you know where the line is.”

I turned my head toward the door and away from Tindall. My whole body ached. My shoulder felt like it had been run over by a truck and I was exhausted. The last thing I wanted at that point was a lecture from him about how to do my job. There wasn't any way around killing Zoe and LeDuc. Or Ozzie, for that matter or Thomas. Hell, I hadn't even killed LeDuc, not actually. That had been Reed. He pushed the button.

And yet, people had died. I should have felt some sense of responsibility, some kind of loss. I should have felt guilty. Some of those people, I could have saved them. That should have made me feel bad but it didn't. I was glad they were dead. Given the chance to do it all over again, the only thing I would change was that I would have stood over LeDuc and watched him burn to a crisp. I thought about what Zoe had called me: cold and calculating. Maybe she knew something I didn't.

“I know where the line is,” I said through clenched teeth at Tindall.

“Good, because that's what I told the grand jury and your superiors when they called.” He stood as if to leave.

“Wait. You're not going to ask me for a statement?”

Tindall shrugged. “I assume it'll all be in your report, Black. As your agency has been so kind to repeatedly remind me, you don't have to report to me or answer any of my questions. You're a federal employee and my cooperation is not only expected but required. How was it they put the last part? The details and specifics of your investigations are matters of national security and will be made available to local law enforcement on a need to know basis.”

I laughed. It hurt. “Or over beers. When I get out of this bed, how about I buy you one and tell you all about it?”

“Love to, Black, if you make it a root beer.”

“Still?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “With the job you do? How the hell do you sleep at night without nursing a bottle?”

“We all have our demons,” Tindall said, placing his hat on his head.

He walked toward the door, pausing only when I called after him. “Tindall, what happened to LeDuc's research files?”

Tindall made a sour face. “Drive was wiped clean by the time we got there, everything downloaded to some secure, off site location. Why? What the hell was he doing out there?”

I closed my eyes. LeDuc and Maria were right. Marcus probably had mined the data. There was no good use for those kinds of experiments. Eventually, I knew I would have to confront Marcus Kelley but it didn't have to be today. Today, I had to rest and get better.

“Nothing,” I told Tindall.

He turned his head sideways, the pale blue light of the monitor holding his face in profile. “Whatever it is, Black, let it die,” he said to me in a hushed tone. “Please. Just take those doubts and tuck them away. There's dangerous people about.” Then, he walked out.

I settled back into my bed, determined to go back to sleep until a nurse came by. Then, I'd pester her about my condition and expected release date and time. As bad as I felt, I was fairly sure there wasn't anything wrong with me that I couldn't treat at home.

A knock on the door jerked me out of my semi-sleep. Not two seconds later, a pair of familiar arms wrapped themselves around my neck. “Mom!”

“Hunter!” I said with both relief and surprise and hugged him back as best I could without bending the IV in my arm. “Are you all right? How's your finger?”

He raised his hand proudly, showing that his pinky finger was one knuckle short. Good. LeDuc hadn't taken the whole thing, then. “The doctors told me I could get a prosthetic to stick on it if I wanted. I think it's actually kind of cool. Oh, and Valentino, Ed and Leo are fine, too. Valentino told me to tell you to stop by when you get out. He wants to talk.”

I glanced over to the doorway to see Sal leaning against it. He gave me a casual nod and moved away from the door frame to go. “Wait,” I said. “You don't have to go.”

Hunter leaned back away from me finally. “Guess what? Sal let me ride on his motorcycle!”

“Only in the driveway,” Sal was quick to add when I gave him a stern look. “And with a helmet on.” He tucked his hands into his pockets. “You've been in and out for a few days. With Chanter still here, I've been looking out for Hunter.”

“Thank you,” I said and smiled.

“You're welcome.” There was an awkward silence for a moment before he started patting himself down. “Hey, kid, do me a favor. I could use a cup of Joe. Maybe you could sneak one in for your mom, too, huh? I'm sure all they're going to feed her over the next twenty-four is going to be that nasty green Jell-O.”

Hunter made a gagging sound. “I bet that's even worse than your eggplant, mom.”

“Just for that, eggplant Parmesan is the first thing I'm making when we get home.” I ruffled his hair and he wriggled away before I could hug him again. Sal handed him four bucks as he passed by and gave him some quick directions to the cafeteria before sending him on his way. “Thank you,” I said again as soon as Hunter was gone. “I mean it.”

“Not a big deal. Gives me something else to do besides fight with lawyers and insurance companies all damn day.” He paced over and sat on the same stool Tindall had sat on.

“Lawyers and insurance?”

“Yeah. If you ever thought a divorce was a legal mess, try having your ex disappear.” He rubbed his forehead. “Apparently, despite the divorce, I was still the sole beneficiary of her will and life insurance policies. Problem is, with no body, nobody wants to execute her last wishes without an investigation. I’ve been working with them but I have a feeling it’s still going to be months before anybody is satisfied enough to leave me alone. I don’t even want the money. I just…I want to know what happened, you know?” He sighed.

I swallowed and tried not to remember slicing into her. “Sal, I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. The Zoe I knew has been dead a long time.” He gave a bitter chuckle. “You know what's funny? Everyone keeps saying how sorry they are for my loss, as if they expect me to be in mourning. I'm not. Maybe I should be but I'm not. I already grieved over losing her. You know what I felt when they told me she was missing and presumed dead?” He paused as if he was waiting for me to ask. “Relief,” he continued when I didn't. “I was relieved. As if her death was more real than us splitting up ever was. I should be more upset, shouldn't I?”

I understood what he was saying. Sal wasn't saying he wasn't upset or hurt by Zoe's death. He wasn't angry or sad. He was numb to it, the same way I'd gotten used to it, the same way doctors and nurses do. When you see so much death and pain, it's harder to continue to pretend to feel than to just go through the motions. Even back when I lost Alex, I felt the same way. Sure, the first few months were hard. Eventually, though, it got old, people asking me if I was going to be okay. The way people would smile and ask how I was in gentle, hushed tones, as if I were some sort of fragile soul about to shatter at any second. Every time they asked how I was, I knew what they really meant to ask was whether or not I was still grieving over the loss of my husband. Alex's death didn't break me. In a lot of ways, it made me stronger.