Inked Magic (38 page)

He smiled, thinking about the black girl she’d been tattooing, and how when he squinted, he could see a golden thread touching both of them, connecting them so she had to be a choice
,
too.

Tonight, he told himself again. He didn’t want to wait any longer.

Queasiness rippled through his stomach with the decision. He dropped what was left of the red licorice vine he’d been sucking onto a pile of candy in the passenger seat.

He still didn’t believe in psychics, but what if the news reporters were working with the police? What if the story was all made up, so he’d know about her, and want her? What if this was a trap?

He pulled over so he could think. It felt like the wind was howling inside his chest.

If he went back to Kevin’s apartment, the fear of getting caught might take hold. He might be forced to make another choice.

He couldn’t give her up. All day long, she was all he thought about. He even dreamed about her, something he’d never done with the others until after he’d been with them.

The snake between his legs started to wake up as he remembered all the times he’d gotten close to her without her noticing him, when he’d passed her on the street as she visited tattoo shops. He wouldn’t give her up. He couldn’t.

If there were policemen watching her apartment or her, he would have seen them by now. Besides, all the others had been taken close to where they worked and no one expected him to take her
yet.

The wind howling inside him went quiet. He licked his lips and reached for the red vine, seeing the black sleeve of his jacket and thinking about the mask and gloves he’d bought today to replace the ones that got bloody last time.

They were still in their separate bags underneath his seat. They were right next to the Taser he shouldn’t have in the car, but
did.

It was a sign. He was meant to take her tonight. He would go inside and wait for her there like he did in New York.

The queasiness returned as he thought about her bringing one of the men home with her. Angry pounding started in his chest, raging until an idea came.

He’d be ready, just in case. He’d do what he hadn’t been able to do when he was younger.

If she brought someone home with her, he’d make them both sorry. He’d make her watch as he cut off the thing between the other man’s legs.

A giggle escaped. He almost hoped she did bring one of the two men home.

Pulling away from the curb he started cruising, looking for a car exactly like his. He’d figured this out for himself after choosing the very first one in New York. Most people didn’t know what their license plate numbers were, or didn’t notice the difference as long as the plates looked normal.

If he’d known ahead of time that tonight was the night he would take her, he would have planned a little better. But he didn’t dare drive on her street another time or park close to her apartment without changing out the plates again.

It took him a while to find them. He checked the list he kept so he could be sure he wasn’t stealing plates he’d already used. When he saw they were different, he swapped them out, his mouth going dry and his heart beating fast as he got back in the car and headed toward her apartment.

D
enis pressed his eye to the scope and the world narrowed to the front window of a house in the Sunset District. A teenage girl
passed through his sight. A heavyset woman. Another teen, this one a boy but not the right one.

In the darkness of the car, Denis shifted the barrel of the assault rifle silenced for sniper work to focus on the front door. He didn’t want any innocent victims here. So far there hadn’t been any.

Only with the first, Adam, had he taken care of things up close. The diplomat’s son he’d hit at the beach, using a long-range weapon, and the boy, Carter, with a shot through a bedroom window.

The door opened and the target stepped outside, ball glove in hand, uniform crisp white. The woman joined him there, giving him a hug then remaining there, watching as the boy headed toward a car parked on the street.

Through the scope Denis followed him, giving the woman a chance to get back inside. Sparing her from witnessing the boy’s death, self-preservation and altruism both factoring into his reason for waiting.

He hadn’t remembered it at first, but later, after he started gathering information, it came back to him. Brian saying his friend’s tag-along brother played baseball and football. Telling him the kid was good enough at both to have scouts already sniffing around after him.

Owen, that was the boy’s name. He was almost to his car before the woman stepped into the house and closed the door. It was a clear shot. An easy one.

Denis took it. Watching the boy drop, the back of his head gone, leaving no possibility of survival.

Four dead. One to go.

E
taín rounded the corner, slow and cautious. Ready to spin the Harley around in case she was wrong about reporters being able to find her apartment.

The street was quiet and clear. Tension left her in a rush, a testament that emotions suppressed didn’t mean turmoil gone.

She pulled into the driveway and parked the bike in the garage, then took the steps two at a time to her apartment. At the doorway she remembered the last time she’d been home, when Cathal had been with her, angry because of Eamon, a jealousy leading to amazing sex and intense feelings of intimacy.

Inside the apartment she purposely avoided looking at the mattress on the floor. The day had definitely turned into a bust when it came to men.

She checked her phone, realizing it was still off. She’d powered it down as she made her way to the church and never turned it on again.

A check of messages showed Cathal had called more than once since she’d left him with his uncle.
Distance is better
, she told herself, even if this time her gift wasn’t the reason for it. Hadn’t she seen the mess love made out of people’s lives?

Draping her jacket over the back of a chair, she sat at her desk, opening a tablet and selecting a pencil in the hopes of losing herself in her art.

The only image to come was the design she’d worked on before, honeysuckle and thorn laid onto Cathal’s skin. Coming with a little more detail, as if the full truth of it was being rationed out in ink.

She set the pencil down and closed her eyes. Elbows on the desk, she pressed her eyes to those on her palms, willing the tattoos to go away. She didn’t want to think about men or magic.

Leave
, her mother’s voice whispered through her. A new city, a new name. Run and keep running. Hide and keep hiding.

A part of her was tempted by the ease of it, more than she’d ever been before. But it wasn’t a soul-deep longing. She knew she would never outdistance herself or her gift. Or a truth that would have seemed unfathomable days ago. Eamon and Cathal had become important to her, necessary enough she had to see whatever this was with them
through to the end, even if anger dominated her feelings when it came to one of them, and frustration when it came to the other.

T
he closer he got to her street, the more excited he became. He touched himself through his pants. It didn’t matter now that the snake was wide awake and swollen to its full size. It was okay, because it was her and they’d be together soon.

Excitement and nervousness twisted inside him. All along he must have known he was going to do this. That’s why he’d broken so many of the rules.

Kevin would be so, so mad if he found out that he’d come here when he knew no one was home, sticking Kevin’s painting signs on the van and pretending to be a painter who was showing up for work. He’d wanted to look at her door lock and make sure he could open
it.

He could.

Imagining Kevin’s expression, he started giggling. But that was choked off when he turned the corner and saw the light in her window.

Frustration swelled up inside him. He felt like a balloon that was ready to pop until the air came out of him in a howl. “No! No!
No!”

He slammed his foot down on the gas pedal. Lifted it, almost doing the same to the brake but stopping himself in time.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

He gently touched the brake pedal, slowing the car down. He passed her apartment and pulled over so he could use the binoculars and see if she was alone.

A police car turned the corner and came toward him. He froze, not even daring to breathe until it had passed.

In the rearview mirror he saw another police car, coming from the opposite direction. It stopped in front of her apartment, blocking the garage where she must have parked her bike.

A dark sedan stopped along the curb and the other police car stopped, too. Men got out and moved toward the house, hands on their guns.

One policeman went toward the door of the people who owned the house. The others concentrated on her apartment.

His bladder felt full. He realized he was whimpering.

He wanted to stay, but now he knew this was a trap after all and they thought he was inside with her. He needed to leave. He’d be in trouble if they started looking for him nearby when they didn’t find him with
her.

He was glad he hadn’t turned the engine off. They weren’t paying any attention to the street.

He pulled away. It would be okay. Nothing had really changed. She was still his choice and there were other places he could take her from.

E
taín lifted her head on a sigh. The image wouldn’t be banished no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on creating something else.

She opened her eyes and took up the pencil again, only to still at the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs. Her heart gave a betraying lurch as she wondered which one of them it was, Cathal or Eamon.

The involuntary, welcoming anticipation at the prospect of seeing one of them made her curse and slam the pencil onto the desk. She gathered her anger like a shield but that emotion fled with the pounding on the door and a man’s voice yelling, “Police! Open up!”

Caution had her looking out the window first. The sight of the cars, their lights flashing, sent fear racing through her, tripping her heartbeat into a furious throb and her mind into a nightmare from her own past.

“Open the door! Police!”

She opened it and a man in a suit immediately grabbed and turned her, sending her to her knees and then onto her stomach in a practiced move of suppressed violence. He jerked her arms behind her back, handcuffing her, his anger and grief slamming into her so forcefully that instinct took over and she began struggling, fighting to get away from the skin-on-skin contact despite knowing better.

He wrenched her to her feet, pulling her up by her forearms, the leverage sending pain screaming from her shoulders downward. “Get her out of here,” he said, thrusting her roughly at a uniformed officer.

Her mind cleared with the loss of contact though adrenaline raced through her so the vines on her arms felt alive, the eyes on her palms turned into deadly weapons once again.

“What’s this about?” she asked.

The uniformed cop jerked her from the apartment, not answering.

She saw a second suited man standing at her desk, leafing through a sketchbook before she was propelled down the stairways so quickly it took all her concentration to keep from tumbling to the bottom of them.

Her heart pounded in her chest and ears as she was marched toward the police car blocking the garage door. She staved off panic by looking around. Desperate, hoping to see Liam, when earlier she’d been infuriated by the revelation he’d been following her at Eamon’s command.

Seeing no sight of him, she asked again, “What’s this about?” And was ignored.

She dug in her heels only to be pulled off her feet to stumble the last few steps.

The uniformed officer opened the back door of the patrol car, shoving her in.

She struggled to a sitting position, aware of her ragged breathing.

Calm down. Calm down.

Calm down. Calm down.

She matched the words to her heartbeats.

It helped. She hadn’t been read her rights. They hadn’t patted her down. She knew to lawyer up when it seemed smart to say those magic words.

This was all about intimidation. Not a stretch given the fury and anguish that had poured into her when the suited cop put her on the ground.

Why? The answer came in the solitary confinement of the car, with the image of the cop standing over her desk and the open tablet, looking at what she’d drawn.

Denis Dunne. Her mouth went dry and her mind seized, freezing on that instant when she’d wondered if he intended to give the drawings to the police.

Not my business
, she’d thought then.

Not my business
, she told herself now, thoughts spiraling, jumbling as she wondered why they’d come to her at all, remembering those moments just inside the door, when she’d given Denis the sketch pad as Cathal stood next to them both.

Pain stabbed into her as it occurred to her Cathal had been aware of what his uncle intended. Suspicion sharpened and twisted the blade. Had he known all along about her gift? Had he sought her out because of it?

The suited cops left her apartment, descending the stairs empty-handed. Other men emerged from the shadows, going to cars and getting in them. Engines started. The patrol car she was in backed up, joining a caravan to San Francisco and the Hall of Justice, a building she hadn’t been in since the day the captain had her taken off the street and locked in a cell overnight.

Panic flared. Intense, nearly paralyzing.

She forced breath into her lungs. Reminding herself she hadn’t been read her rights. She wasn’t under arrest. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

She’d be questioned and released. And if she wasn’t—