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“I can certainly be out of here by then, but it’ll be kind of dark for a walk on the beach. Maybe a coffee shop or something?”
Macy watched Fia check her wristwatch. Macy never wore a watch. She wasn’t all that caught up in what time it was. She always felt as if she had plenty of time to kill. A lifetime. “There’s a big waning moon,” she said into the phone. “The beach is pretty in the moonlight.”
“Okay. Sure.” Fia slipped her hand into her pants pocket under her jacket. She turned away, seeming to give up on trying to spot Macy. “I can meet you at eleven.”
Macy gave her the directions.
“Got it.” Fia Kahill hesitated. “How will I know you?”
Macy almost chuckled. “You’re quite the crack agent, Fia. I thought you guys could spot your man a mile away.” Somehow she managed to find a wry smile. “I’ll be the only one, other than you, crazy enough to be sitting on the beach in an empty state park that late at night.”
Chapter 6
Fia held her cell phone and glanced over her shoulder, looking toward the farmhouse. She scanned the crowd, which was beginning to look like a mob. Where was Maggie? Was she really here?
Fia sensed she was. Sensed Maggie was watching her. She was an intriguing woman, this informant of hers. There was something about her that tugged at Fia’s heartstrings.
And here she thought she didn’t have any….
More uniforms had arrived to serve as crowd control and the multitude seemed to be getting bigger by the moment. How could so many people have found out about the murders so quickly, in such a remote area? she wondered. How could they have all gotten here so quickly? Didn’t they have jobs? Families? Dinner to put on the table? It was morbid, humans’ fascination with the dead. Somehow she didn’t think they would be quite so enthralled if they were one of the living dead.
Fia’s gaze shifted from one face to the next, but she didn’t see Maggie. Or at least she didn’t think she saw her. Fia had an idea in her head, from the voice, what the woman looked like, but she had no real idea. It had been her experience that bodies sometimes matched voices, but not always.
The crowd was beginning to work itself into a frenzy the way a crowd could. The TV news reporters’ voices were getting shriller, even the men’s. The helicopter, waved away once, was apparently attempting to make another fly-by over the property in the hopes of getting a couple of gruesome head shots.
Fia groaned to herself at the bad pun. She’d been doing this too long. Next life, she was going to be a gardener, or maybe a basket weaver. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a green thumb, nor was she artistic. This was what she did well—the dead. Some days she considered it a gift from God used to serve mankind and help right the wrongs committed by her sept. Other days, it was another one of His sick jokes. A curse.
Tucking her phone into her pocket, she started down the path leading through the orchard. Agents Richter and Evans, from the Baltimore field office, said the bodies were just past the lean-to toolshed, over the little crest. They were buried under a tree. From here, Fia could see the branches and leaves. It was a big maple. Hundreds of years old. She liked old trees. They made her feel…less old.
Fia met Arlan on the path beside the toolshed. He was just walking along, hands in his pockets as if he belonged there. “You been to the scene?” she stopped and asked.
He nodded.
She noted he was a little pale. And still as devastatingly handsome as ever. He was always getting offers in big cities to try his hand at modeling. With a face and a body like his, he could sell a ton of tight black BVDs from a billboard in Times Square or Tokyo.
“You just walked over and had a look at a dead family of five, buried to their chins, and no one stopped you?”
“No one stopped two pitiful cats checking out their owners’ remains.”
She knew Arlan had the ability to morph into any animal. She’d once seen him morph into a nine-foot-tall polar bear in her mother’s backyard. But he usually kept it to applicable animals. Animals native to the area. The whole idea was to be able to blend in. And while he could be feline, bovine, or canine, he couldn’t split himself into two animals. Not even two measly five-pound cats. That was beyond his gift. “Two of you?”
“Found a friend. He’s over there.” He pointed behind him. “Other side of the shed. Family cat. He didn’t see anything. He was out chasing rabbits in a field somewhere when it happened. He came upon them after they were dead.”
“He call it in?” she quipped.
It was a poor attempt at humor. Neither of them smiled.
“Hey, my girl called,” she said, giving Arlan a tap on the arm. He was still wearing his sunglasses. The color seemed to be coming back to his suntanned cheeks. Who would have thought a vampire would tan so well? “She says she’s here, though I didn’t see her. Don’t think I saw her, anyway. There’s so many people. It’s crazy.” She gestured in the direction of the driveway commotion.
“What’d she want?”
“Believe it or not, she’s agreed to meet me.”
He made a face, demonstrating he was impressed with Fia’s skill as an agent.
“She won’t meet me here, though. Later tonight. On a deserted beach, of all places.”
“You think it’s safe?”
It was Fia’s turn to make a face. “For me? She’s the one who ought to be scared of me in the dark.”
“Yeah, I know.” He smiled. Their gazes met. His smile slipped. His focus drifted with his thoughts. “I saw them, Fee. It’s pretty awful.”
“I’m sure it is. I saw the last family.” She put her sunglasses back on. It was really too dark for sunglasses now. Neither needed to wear them. But they were both hiding behind them. Hiding the emotions they both knew had no place here. No place in doing their job.
“So what did you think?” she asked, pushing past the tightness in her chest that ached as much for Arlan as it did for the family and for those who had to see them this way. Arlan had always been what their resident wisewoman called a gentle soul. “Tell me your gut reaction.”
“One crazy son of a bitch.” He shook his head. “I mean kids? Grandma?”
She grimaced. “I know.”
“How is he getting them in the holes? How long is it taking him to dig the holes?” He became more manic. Talking faster. “How’s he physically managing it, Fee? How’s he subdue a whole family? How does he get in and out without anyone, including the family cat, seeing him?”
“All the autopsies, so far, showed the use of an injectable drug in each of the victims’ bloodstreams. The actual drug varies, but it’s enough to knock them out for a short time. Sometimes he digs the holes hours before he imprisons the family. That was the case on the last one, the only one I actually saw. But once, before I was following his cases, I read in the files that he made a father dig the holes for his family before rendering him unconscious. We could tell from the blisters on his hands and the blood on the shovel. In all the incidents, we think the killer buries them while they’re drugged, then allows them to come to.”
“So they have to watch each other be strangled?” Arlan asked incredulously. “Unfucking believable.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as if to attempt to wipe the foul taste of the killer’s sin from his mouth. “I want this guy.”
“I want him, too,” she said.
“No, I mean when we get him, I’m going to be on the kill team. My dagger goes into his black heart first.” He made an