Beneath the Skin (16 page)

After it was lit, Emmett drew in a deep breath of spiced smoke. But beneath the smoky taste of cloves, tobacco, and caramel, he still smelled the greasy stink of death.

Even though he was glad to be getting out of the wet and the weird, his internal alarm system was still on a hair trigger, just a mispunched number away from an earsplitting siren wail.

Gut feeling: They weren't escaping. Not in time, anyway.

The weird's coming with us, and a nightmare beyond imagining is riding hard on its twisted heels.

GILLESPIE WATCHED THIBODAUX AND Goodnight walk down the driveway until they disappeared from view. He pulled his nearly empty jar of Vicks from his jacket pocket and smeared a dab beneath his nose. The pungent scents of camphor and menthol iced his nostrils. But his mind wasn't fooled.

Whenever he caught a whiff of Vicks, his thoughts automatically flipped to images of bloated bodies, mummified bodies, bodies in every stage of decay. He'd never allowed Lynda to use Vicks at home; if the kids were sick, she could use anything else as long as it didn't contain menthol.

Dropping the jar back into his pocket, Gillespie turned around and strode into the cottage. Clumps of dried and flaking mud led across the living room carpet and down the hall like a trail of bread crumbs in some dark fairy-tale forest.

Gillespie's gaze settled on the coffee table in front of the green vine-patterned sofa. A tray holding a bottle of alcohol, cotton balls, and sealed syringes cluttered its surface along with a spiral-bound notebook, two Bic pens, an empty glass, and a CD or DVD glinting beneath the overhead light like a sunstruck rock in a river.

Stepping to the table, Gillespie bent and picked up the disk. A red stripe banded its outer and inner edges; black letters edged the red stripes. His heart kicked hard against his chest as he read the disk.

MED UNIT I SECURITY CAM BUSH CTR

Gillespie's thoughts flickered back to a conversation a few weeks ago with Prues, an East Coast section chief:

Word on the grapevine is that Bureau ADIC Johanna Moore vanished from the center along with security-cam footage. Word is the powers that be are pissed as hell. They want
both back and I wouldn't want to be Moore when they find her.

Gillespie unzipped his jacket to mid-chest, then slid the disk into an inner pocket close to his hammering heart.

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind being the one to stumble across her, know what I mean?

Gillespie rezipped his jacket. He'd known exactly what Prues had meant--finding Moore or the disk would be career gold, a way to heave Underwood off his back, a way to ease fingers between his throat and the stranglehold of the past so he could finally breathe without guilt.

Still blaming yourself? After all these years?

And maybe it wouldn't make a difference; nothing would change and Lynda wouldn't come back. But he'd be a fool--well, okay, a
bigger
fool--if he didn't try.

Someone walked into the cottage, jumpsuit crinkling with each step. "Chief, what's the scenario?"

Gillespie swiveled around, pulse racing.

FA Kaplan, wheat-blonde hair pulled away from her face into a ponytail, waited. Rain beaded her jumpsuit. Nothing in her expression or her gray eyes suggested she'd stood at the open door watching as he'd pilfered the disk; nothing suggested she'd just scooped up a lovely pile of dirt against her SC to store for a rainy day.

Relief cascaded through Gillespie.

"We're staging this as a natural disaster," he said. "Sinkhole, noxious and lethal underground fumes, tragic loss of life, including an FBI agent and his family."

Kaplan nodded. "How long will the fumes scenario be played?"

"Let's plan on a few days. Detained any looky-loos?"

Kaplan nodded again. "A curious civilian from up the highway, a local reporter checking up on calls about lights in the sky just before dawn."

"Lights in the sky?" Gillespie asked. "Like UFOs?"

"More like the aurora borealis," Kaplan said.

"Okay, that works--we can use it. We'll say that the lights were a result of noxious fumes as the sinkhole opened up--the initial release. Maybe an interaction with the rain or something. Have the science brains whip something up."

"Will do, Chief." Kaplan's gaze skipped past him and around the room. "Clean up everything in here?"

Gillespie pulled another stick of Juicy Fruit from his pocket, the foil crinkling as he unwrapped it. "Everything that contradicts the scenario."

As if to underscore his words, two techs rustled down the hall, carrying the headless body between them in a black body bag marked with a bright red biohazard symbol.

Kaplan's face tightened and her gaze shifted to the techs and the body bag they carried through the room and outside, a fetid odor trailing in their wake.

"Like that," Gillespie said dryly, then stuffed the stick of gum in his mouth to join the old wad. He shoved the balled-up piece of foil into his pocket. "Everyone you detain here will have to go through a medical exam--tell them it's necessary to make sure they haven't been exposed, work hard on the fear factor."

"Got it. Make them feel like they're lucky we detained them. Do we also hold them for observation?"

"Yeah, twenty-four hours sounds good. Keep them on edge by checking their vitals every hour. Oh, and put them in scrubs. Contaminated clothing, our apologies, it's for your own good, yada yada, the usual."

"When do we break the news to the media?" Kaplan asked.

"As soon as the truck is loaded and out of here," Gillespie said. "Keep the perimeter guard strong. If anyone actually sneaks onto the scene, they'll have to become another casualty of this tragic, but natural, disaster."

Kaplan blinked, sucked in a breath. "A ... casualty, Chief?"

"Absolutely. To keep others from sneaking onto the site," Gillespie said. "It's one thing for a person to risk possibility of arrest for sneaking into a quarantined site, another thing altogether to risk the possibility of death."

Chewing her lower lip, Kaplan looked away.

Gillespie waited for her to reconcile her duty with her conscience. He wished the process was as easy as syncing an iPod with iTunes. Wished it wasn't necessary. "Keep the perimeter strong and it won't even be an issue," he said quietly.

Kaplan's attention returned to him and her gray-eyed gaze was steady. Grim, but steady. "Understood, sir." Turning around, she walked out of the cottage.

Gillespie smoothed a hand over his head, his buzz-cut hair soft beneath his palm. What if the techs and science brains couldn't figure out what had happened at the compound in between one satellite scan and the next?

House. No house.

And the reported lights in the sky? Was that even connected?

What if they never found Prejean, Wallace, or Lyons? What if they just faded away into law-enforcement myth like D. B. Cooper and all his money, and the mystery of the cave and the statues was never solved?

He could live with Wallace and Lyons wriggling away from justice. He wouldn't like it, but he could live with it. But Prejean? That was another matter.

The memory of Rodriguez dead on the floor of his blood-spattered office while the coffee cooled in his GROUCH mug prickled, a burr stuck in what remained of Gillespie's conscience.

This mystery
would
be solved, his perps--mortal and vampire--found, and the dead avenged. But to do that, he needed more information about his perps than he'd been given. What was Underwood hiding?

He patted his jacket, imagining the disk tucked inside. Just might be the pry bar he needed to leverage enough truth from the Special Ops director to do his job.

Wishing for a frosty-cold Pacifico, a lime slice wedged into the neck of the bottle, Gillespie strolled out of the cottage and into the chilly March rain.

12
FOREVER AND EVER

UNKNOWN
Eleven years ago

"Dante? Dante-angel? Wake up. Please wake up." Chloe's voice pats against Dante's consciousness like the fingers against his face. Her words sound small and scared and hoarse, like she's been saying them over and over and over.

Papa Prejean's voice slithers through his memory:
Aw ... ain't this sweet? Y'all wanting to protect each other from what y'all got coming.

Dante's eyes fly open. Chloe's tearstained face meets his gaze. "Dante-angel," she hiccups, wiping away her tears with the heels of her hands.

"What's wrong, princess? You okay?" Dante's words feel fuzzy, his voice too thick. He doesn't feel like he's waking up at twilight, alert and hungry; he feels more like he does at
dawn, when the need to sleep rushes over him like black water and he can't keep his eyes open no matter what.

Beyond Chloe, he sees a white ceiling instead of the shadows lurking in Papa Prejean's basement. And he doesn't feel the bite of metal around his wrists, doesn't smell dank stone or moldering cardboard boxes or the musky sweat of the pervs who visit him in the basement.

"Where are we?" Dante's eyes shutter closed again; he can't seem to keep them open. He knows something's wrong and he knows he and Chloe are in a strange place, but he's drifting like smoke. On the verge of dreams. "Did Papa take us someplace? Did that fucking asshole hurt you?"

"No," Chloe whispers. "Not Papa. The lady with the little dog. And she hurt you, Dante-angel, not me."

Chloe's words kick-start Dante's memory and a ton of images burn rubber through his mind. Running from Papa's house and darting across the rain-slick grass of the park; Jasper's leash-trailing dance, his little paws on the shoulder of Chloe's Winnie-the-Pooh shirt; the huffing rain bonnet lady in her rubber boots reaching into her pocket; the little wheel stinging his neck, cold icing him from the inside out, frosting his vision white.

Rain Bonnet's words snake through Dante's memory, loop diamond-sharp chains around his heart.

No escape for you, sweetie.

Dante sits up, eyes open, pulse racing. No handcuffs. No basement. No bed. Black specks pepper his vision and the room's white padded walls whirl around him. He tastes something familiar at the back of his throat
--
cool and dandelion-bitter.

A weird deja vu feeling twists through him and his vision darkens. "Fuck," he whispers, closing his eyes again and drawing up his knees. Pain spikes his temples. He feels shaky, hungry in that new way he's been experiencing off and on the last
few months. Sweat springs up along his hairline. His gut knots.

"You okay?" Chloe strokes his hair back from his burning face, her cool fingers tucking a strand behind his ear. "You want me to sing to you until you feel better?"

Dante nods. Swallows hard. He's never thrown up before, and isn't sure what nausea might feel like, but he figures this gut-churning, throat-burning, gonna-turn-inside-out feeling might be close enough.

Chloe sings one of his favorite songs by The Real Thing, "BTW," and Dante smiles as she jumbles the lyrics, changing "in my hair" to "anime bear." And as he focuses on her sweet and off-key voice, the weird, queasy feeling fades. He breathes in the mingled smells of strawberries and soap, grass and rain and wet sneakers, the sweetness disappearing beneath the sour tang of fear.

Dante opens his eyes and lifts his head. Offers Chloe a smile as he reaches out and pushes a long strand of red hair back from her face.
"Merci beaucoup."

"You feel better?"

"Yeah,
ca va bien.
What happened? After I went down, I mean? Do you--?"

Dante stops speaking, his words dying in his throat. He stares past Chloe, his attention riveted on the steel hook bolted into the ceiling above the center of the room. The hook gleams in the light.

Ready for business.

Dante's heart kicks against his ribs. Ready for business? What the fuck? Where the hell did
that
come from?

He jumps to his feet and prowls the room in his battered and duct-taped Converse sneakers. He searches for a way out. Blind white walls surround them, no windows except for a small viewing window set high in the big, thick door.

A red light glows beside the door. LOCKEDLOCKEDLOCKEDLOCKED scrolls past on the LED screen.

Dante walks into the heart of the room, stopping beneath the hook. It stinks of old blood and musky adrenaline. A cold finger trails the length of his spine.

"What happened after I went down, princess?" Dante repeats, his gaze on the hook. "Do you know where we are?"

"After you fell into the grass, a man came up and joined the lady. He handcuffed you, then picked you up and carried you."

"What'd the man look like? Ever seen him before?"

"Nuh-uh. Never seen him before. He was tall and had short hair ... and, um ... he was wearing a trenchcoat. He kinda looked like one of the social services people Papa talks to. He wasn't mean-looking, but he didn't look nice either, especially when he picked you up."