Under Wraps (21 page)

“Thanks, but I really think it’s about time I go. It’s been really fun….” I tried to struggle away, tried to fight Hank’s grip, but Malcolm took my other arm and my hands went cold as both men stopped the blood flow. “Guys, I’ve really got to—” But my protest was lost in the chorus of shouts and growls that started on the dance floor.

“Damn zombies! You’re nothing but hangers-on! Freeloaders!”

“Who are you calling a freeloader?”

“You, freeloader!”

Malcolm and Hank let go of me to watch the commotion just as the dance floor exploded into pushing, pulling, punching chaos. Blood bags were punctured, and drinks were splattering everywhere. I saw a Heat demon blow a mouthful of fire, incinerating the DJ stand. A vampire crumbled and turned to dust when an irate, six-inch pixie drove a wooden chair rail through his heart. Malcolm and Hank stood up, and I used the opportunity to drop down to hands and knees and crawl toward the back hall. Once I was sure the vamps weren’t missing their snack, I began yanking on doors in the hallway, looking for a way out. After three locked doors in a row, finally, a knob turned.

“Thank God!” I breathed.

I yanked open the door and was immediately pummeled. I heard the unmistakable crack of bone on bone and felt the searing pain of a head butt. Whoever had thrown himself at me had done so with all their strength, and I was pinned to the floor under his weight—his solid, dead weight.

I struggled underneath the body, and the skull that bonked mine lolled over my chest and gazed up at me with milky, sightless eyes. I howled and started kicking, skittering—anything to get the dead guy off of me.

“My God, my God!” I was panting when Parker and Nina ran down the hall and found me on the floor, my eyes wide.

“What in the hell is going on here?” Parker shouted.

“Get him off of me! Get him off of me!”

Parker rolled the body over, and I scrambled to my feet, rubbing my arms to get the dead off of me. “Don’t touch it!” I screamed at Parker.

Parker was kneeling next to the body, his fingers pressed against the guy’s neck. “Yup.” He nodded. “Definitely dead.”

“Of course he’s dead!” I said, exasperated. “Live people don’t fall out of closets and pummel … other live people!”

Nina sniffed at the air. “And he’s fresh, too.”

Parker grimaced. “Well … that’s handy.”

Nina knelt down next to Parker. “Do you know how he died?” she asked.

Parker slid the sleeves up the man’s arms, and I wanted to barf. He checked the man’s neck for bites, and my knees started to quiver. “You guys, I need to get out of here.”

“No bite marks,” Parker told Nina, both of them ignoring me.

Nina gave the man’s veins a once-over. “He’s bleeding though.”

I looked at my own heaving chest. “Oh, God, so am I.”

Nina and Parker stood up and rushed to my side, examining the heart-shaped smear of blood on my chest. Nina dragged her index finger through it and then sucked heartily. “Not yours though,” she said finally.

My heart skipped a delighted beat, and then my mouth went dry. “Should I be concerned that you know what my blood tastes like?”

Parker fell back on his knees, pushing the dead man’s leather jacket aside. “Here. He’s been shot. Looks like through the back with a small-caliber rifle.”

“So what does that mean?” I asked. “A dead man, shot, stuffed in the closet of a demon bar?”

“It means that this isn’t the work of a demon,” Nina said, hugging her elbows.

Parker sat back on his haunches. “It means this is probably not our guy.”

“Because we’re dealing with a demon,” I said slowly. “Right?”

Parker’s eyes flashed, locked on mine.

“Maybe,” Nina said.

“So far we know that our killer drinks blood,” Parker said.

“Takes blood,” Nina corrected. “We don’t know what he did with it.”

“Okay,” Parker continued, “a killer who takes blood, tears one of his victims to shreds, removes the heart of a third. A shooting victim for number four just doesn’t add up.”

“And the eyeballs,” I said solemnly. “Don’t forget the eyeballs.”

“So, blood, eyeballs, heart, gunshot wound? No. Definitely doesn’t make sense.”

I sat back. “It certainly seems like we’re dealing with more than one killer. And our dead guy …” I glanced down at him, sprawled on the floor, mouth gaping open and I blinked.

I knew those vacant eyes. The pale skin, the meager attempt at a mustache.

“That’s Officer Franks!” I said, pointing. “From the front desk at the PD! Don’t you recognize him, Parker?”

Parker crouched down, studying. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”

Nina stooped over, feeling for Officer Franks’s wallet and badge. “Yeah,” she said, once she retrieved them, showing them off. “Officer Kevin Franks. Kind of cute.”

Parker felt around the body, and I winced. “But he’s not carrying,” he said finally.

“So we’re pretty sure it’s not our killer. The MO is totally different, right? Maybe it was just a case of the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Nina wagged her head. “No, the clientele at Dirt is too smart for that. No one kills in a public place like this, and even if they did, with a gun?” She looked disgusted. “Wouldn’t happen.”

“All the other murders have been demon-human, right? Or at least seeming that way.” Nina and Parker both nodded. “So I guess the real question is, what’s a norm doing hanging out at Dirt?”

“No,” Parker said, handing me Opie’s wallet. “The real question is, what’s a police officer doing hanging out at Dirt?”

Chapter Fifteen

“I need a shower. Stat,” I moaned the second I sunk my key into the lock. By this time the blood had dried on my chest and flaked off in a brown shower every time I moved. Also, though I was doing my best not to think about the dead guy who was rolling on me less than an hour ago; my skin still crawled and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had dead-guy cooties seeping into my pores.

“Need help?” Parker asked.

“Charming,” I said, slamming the bathroom door in his face.

I melted into the hot water, starting to lather up, but every time I closed my eyes Opie’s milky, vacant eyes floated into my mind. When I tried to blink the image away, it was replaced by the heartless dead woman from the day before. I shuddered, my skin prickling with goose bumps in spite of the hot water.

And then I remembered that I had kissed Parker Hayes.

The goose bumps prickled again, but this time the feeling could only be described as effervescent—or maybe delicious—and my mouth started to water. I blew out a long, exasperated sigh and decided that Parker’s kiss—his tasty, pressing, passionate kiss—was the lesser of the two evils to think about, and I savored the memory of his lips crushing against mine, of the way his chest felt pressed up against mine, of the way his hands found the perfect spot at the base of my neck, the spot that made the erotic touch of his fingers send shivers from my neck to my head, right down to my toes and back again.

We’ve got to crack this case, I told myself. I can’t take any more bodies, I can’t take any more attacks, and if I have to spend any more time with Parker Hayes—well, it might be his body being attacked.

When I padded into the living room Parker was sprawled on the couch eating a slice of leftover pizza and Nina was perched on the floor in front of her open laptop.

“Did you get all the dead guy off of you?” Parker asked with a grin.

I raised an eyebrow and took a slice of pizza from the box. “Mmm,” I said, taking a big bite. “This is the best pizza ever. I can’t remember the last time I ate.”

“Nina and I are trying to figure this thing out,” Parker said, crumpling his napkin.

I sat on the arm of the couch. “Since when did you get interested in police work?” I asked Nina.

She glared over her shoulder at me. “Number one, I’m not that interested. Number two, Coptastic over there is bonding with our couch and I’d like to have it back someday soon. The sooner this guy is caught, the sooner I can stretch out and watch
The View.”

Parker glowered at her. “Don’t you have a coffin you should go sleep in?”

Nina narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you have a donut to eat?”

I jumped in between Nina and Parker, breaking their daggerlike stares. “Guys! Come on. You can deeply offend each other later. We’ve got a case to solve. Let’s get to work.”

Both Nina and Parker let out long, resigned sighs. Nina went back to scanning her laptop, and Parker snaked another slice of pizza.

“Okay.” I flopped onto the couch, tucking my legs underneath me and snagging a pepperoni from Parker’s slice of pizza. “We’re looking for a murderer who’s kidnapped Sampson.”

Parker’s eyes flashed. “Lawson …”

I narrowed my eyes at him, my words tight. “We’re looking for a murderer who’s kidnapped Sampson. What do we know?”

“We know that none of the murders have been exactly the same. Different MOs, different crime scenes, vics don’t seem to have anything in common.”

“So, random killings?” I asked.

Parker wagged his head. “I don’t think so. There’s got to be some pattern, something about the victims that we’re missing. I mean, most killers—your garden-variety sociopaths—are opportunists.”

“And there’s not much opportunity to murder a man on the twenty-third floor of his highly populated office building. And the woman from Pacific Heights—I believe the term you used was Fort Knox?” I said.

“Right. The victims must have had something the killer wanted very badly.”

I grimaced. “Like their eyeballs.”

“Let’s take the first victim—the lawyer.”

“What’s his name?” Nina piped up, her fingers flying over the keyboard.

Parker extracted his leather notebook from his jacket pocket “Um, Alfred Sherman, esquire,” he said.

I frowned. “Alfred Sherman? Doesn’t that name sound familiar?”

Parker bit the end of his pen. “Well … Alfred Pennyworth was Batman’s butler.”

“No, that’s not it….”

Parker went back to scanning his notebook. “Alfred Sherman, attorney. Worked down in the Financial District, right across from the—”

I blinked. “Transamerica building. He worked right across from the Transamerica building, right?”

Parker referred to his book and nodded. “Uh-huh, that’s right. How did you know that?”

I went to the bookshelf and slid out my grandmother’s photo album and began to thumb through it. I stopped, snapping out a yellowing photograph of Grandmother and myself standing out front of the Transamerica building when I was nine years old. I was grinning with a crooked ponytail. The sun was glaring off the plate-glass windows of the building, and there was a man standing with us, wearing a seventies-style seersucker suit. I jabbed my index finger at the man. “Is that the attorney who was murdered?”

Parker reached into a manila envelope, rifling through crime-scene photos. He slid one out, and my stomach lurched as I caught sight of the man, in Parker’s photograph, his skin purpled and pasty, laid out on a coroner’s gurney. He was older and more weathered, but he was certainly the same man.

Parker’s eyes went wide. “Alfred Sherman,” he said slowly. “How did you know him?”

“He was my grandmother’s attorney. He took care of her will, her assets. He was the only”—I sucked in a breath—“he was the only norm who knew about what she could do.”

Parker took the photograph from me and whistled, holding the two together.

“Well, I’ll be,” he said.

“I haven’t seen him since my grandmother passed away—and that was almost ten years ago. Now I guess I never will.”

Parker stroked his chin. “He knew about your grandmother’s powers?”

I nodded.

“Did he know anything about you?”

“About my complete lack of power? I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I can’t see how it would ever come up.”

“Interesting,” Nina said from her spot on the floor. “Alfred Sherman was kind of the premier attorney for the Underworld.”

“What?” I said, standing.

“Specifically, he was a go-between for UDA and the San Francisco DA’s office.”

Parker’s eyebrows shot up. “I can’t believe the boys missed this.”

“They wouldn’t have known,” I said, chewing on my lower lip. “But I should have.”

“If he was a go-between, he would have known Sampson, right?” Parker asked.

Nina and I nodded.

Parker shrugged. “So Sampson knew the first victim.”

“A lot of people would have known Mr. Sherman. Anyone high up at UDA. Any of his clients. Any of them could have had a grudge against him.”

Parker rested his hand on my forearm, and I sat down. “Calm down, Lawson, I’m just trying to lay out the facts. We’re not accusing anyone.”

“Tell me again about each of the murders,” Nina called over her shoulder.

I must have paled because Parker put his hand on my thigh and massaged it gently. “Why don’t you go lie down? You’ve had a hell of a night. You could really use some rest.”

I wanted to protest, to help with the case, but the idea of hearing Parker detail the grisly murders again made my stomach quiver dangerously.

“Maybe lying down is a good idea,” I said, standing up. “For just a minute or two.”

I shut the door softly behind me and then opened it a crack, so I would be able to hear if Parker and Nina come up with something exciting. Or, frankly, to hear if Nina and Parker’s work conversation jumped the boundary to friendly, sexy banter. The kind that
I
was getting used to with Parker.

I slipped out of my robe and crawled into my bed, relishing the way the cool sheets felt against my naked skin. I was fairly sure I wouldn’t be able to sleep, what with the vortex of swirling dead-guy thoughts and the adrenaline of the evening, but before I knew it, the clock on the bedside table read 3:43 and I was cuddling up to Parker’s naked chest. I knew I wasn’t dreaming because my left foot was asleep and I was sprawled out, naked, except for a pair of faded yellow panties with cupcakes on them that I had the brilliant sense to slip on after my shower.

“Parker,” I hissed in the darkness. “Parker, what are you doing in my bed?”