Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3) (17 page)

They were all too involved, dangerously involved.

And for what?

As he looked out the windshield at the darkening sky, the drifting fog lit by city lights, he allowed himself to consider Epps’ idea.

I could
drop it.

The force that seemed to guide Cara now also seemed to have freed her to continue her business.

So what if we did just let it be? Let her go on with what she does?

His inner turmoil was extreme. There was a whole other dimension to the possibility. He thought, had often thought, he might be the only one who could catch Cara. So if he were not to chase her, would she go free? Would that be the best outcome? Was it actually what he wanted? To be relieved of the responsibility of catching her, jailing her again?

So. Let the case go . . . and never see her again?

He felt a sudden lightness. Everything in him was leaning toward the possibility.

Salvation . . .

It was almost within grasp.

And then the light changed, and he made the turn toward the Haight.

Chapter 32

G
olden Gate Park was shrouded in mist, black shapes of cypress looming in the haze. In the drifting gray tendrils, the Stanyan Park Hotel looked like something out of a Victorian novel.

Roarke took the inside stairs two at a time and then had to force himself to slow down, just to be capable of knocking at Erin’s door in a way that wouldn’t alarm her. Even before he got to the door, he noticed the “Do Not Disturb” placard hung on the doorknob. A bad sign.

Again he listened first. This time he heard nothing . . . no sign of movement. He knocked, called softly, “Erin? It’s Agent Roarke.”

Again, listening. Nothing.

“Are you there?”

Silence.

Roarke had a memory flash of the blood, the word she had cut into her flesh:

D I E.

He felt a dread that he couldn’t ignore. He turned sharply and headed back downstairs.

At the desk he held his credentials out to the gangly and pleasant young clerk to save time. “Erin McNally, room 204. Is she in?”

The young man looked Roarke over, then took an appropriately serious and concerned tone. “I haven’t seen her today.”

“I need to get in there. She may be in danger.”

Upstairs the desk clerk opened the door into the dim cave of Erin’s room. Roarke had to keep himself from pushing past him to get inside. The feeling of dread was extreme.

He took in the room at a glance. There was no one in it. The bedspread had been drawn up, but not to any hotel housekeeping standard. He could see no suitcase; the bureau drawers were closed.

The clerk hovered anxiously in the doorway.

Roarke stepped quickly to the bathroom door and pushed it open, half-expecting the worst. But there was no body in the bathtub, no crimson water against white porcelain. The bath and the room were empty, and devoid of personal toiletries.

He turned and crossed to the antique wardrobe that served as a closet. He pulled open the door . . . to find his own image looking back at him in a mirror. Empty hangers dangled from the clothes rod.

The bureau drawers were likewise empty. She was gone.

Downstairs, he paced in the office while the manager, an older, more expensively groomed version of the young clerk, typed into the office computer, then looked up. “She hasn’t checked out, no. She booked two more nights last night.”

She added nights and then cleared out without checking out—and leaving a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door?

It was a kind of misdirection that was ominous.

“She booked the extra nights with you?” Roarke asked.

“That’s right.”

“On the phone or at the desk?”

“On the phone,” the manager answered.

“You didn’t see her?”

“No.”

So she may have been gone already, just calling in,
Roarke thought. It was exactly the kind of thing that Cara did.
And why would Erin suddenly start acting like Cara?
he wondered uneasily.

“What time was that?” he asked aloud.

“Around five o’clock,” the manager said. Then he glanced down at the computer screen. “5:04.”

“Anyone visit her? Any calls in or out?”

The manager used the mouse to click through the record.

“No calls on record.”

Of course, that meant nothing in this age of cell phones. No one called out from a hotel phone anymore.

He handed the manager his card. “I need to know immediately if she comes back in, or checks out, or contacts the hotel in any way. Please let the rest of your staff know.”

“Of course, Agent Roarke,” the manager said with a dutiful smile.

Roarke stepped out of the hotel and stood on the stairs, looking out over the park. It was dusk, the fog turning to purple in the gloomy twilight. Just beyond the trees was the tunnel where Cara had slit Danny Ramirez’s throat.

His feet were moving down the sidewalk toward his car, but the thought of going home, of being confined within walls with no plan, was intolerable. He passed his vehicle where it was parked on the street, turned the corner onto Haight, and kept walking, past the mega record store and its sidewalk constituency of skate punks and dreadlocked junkies, who ducked their heads down as they saw him coming.

Erin’s disappearance made him uneasy in a way he hadn’t quite wrapped his mind around.

Cara, Jade, Erin . . . they were all out there on the street now. And the timing of it. All of them disappearing at roughly the same time. Not to mention Molina and the mysterious Bitch
.
And now another mystery woman, whose name wasn’t Andrea Janovy.

And Singh. What is she up to?

What is going on with these women?

Across the street, the sidewalk in front of the free clinic was already lined with homeless encampments: sleeping bags and cardboard shelters, like a three-dimensional extension of the sprawling mural painted on the clinic’s front wall. Roarke stopped in his tracks, staring up at the mural.

In the background, a skeleton wearing a wreath of roses grinned out of the painted faces of the crowd.

A chill started from the base of his spine.

Santa Muerte. She’s everywhere.

And then he realized the image was the iconic band logo of the Grateful Dead. He shook his head, berating himself.

Seeing phantoms now. What are you even doing here?

But he knew the answer to that. He could tell himself he was working the case, looking for Erin, looking for Jade, looking for Bitch. But the truth was, he was looking for her. For Cara. After everything.

The image of the guard, cooked into his bed, floated in his mind. And out of nowhere, a cold, hard voice spoke in his head.

Let’s face facts, brother. How do you really think this is going to end? What kind of death wish do you have?

A feeling of doom washed over him, so powerful that his legs were shaking. He wasn’t sure he could stand.

At that moment, a female voice spoke behind him, so familiar:

“Roarke.”

His heart leaped, and he turned . . .

Rachel Elliott stood on the sidewalk in the shadows and spill of Christmas lights.

As she looked at him, the quizzical expression on her face turned to alarm. She stepped forward and took his arm, and he realized she was half-holding him up. She spoke urgently.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine,” he said thickly.

“Have you eaten anything?”

He could suddenly smell roasted flesh. He turned away from her, seconds from retching. She hovered as he swallowed back bile.

“Come on,” she said. She took his arm again and steered him across the sidewalk and through a red leather door.

Music and darkness surrounded them. Through the buzzing in his head, Roarke recognized the dim cavern of the Zam Zam, a semilegendary dive that had been around since the seventies. It was approximately the size of a postage stamp, with a Persian theme: Byzantine arches, dark red lighting, brass smoking pipes on a shelf above the door, and a mural of some kind of Ottoman pastoral scene on the wall. The space was taken up mostly by a large semicircle of bar.

“I’m all right,” he said to Rachel.

“No you’re not.” He was about to contradict her when she said, “Just sit. For a minute. Please.” She looked past the bar at an archway leading to a dark back area. After a moment, he nodded, followed her. She stopped at a table in the corner, put her coat on a chair. “I’ll be right back.”

Roarke sat, and once he was down, he recognized the signs. It was not just his stomach roiling. His pulse was jumping, his vision blurred.
No food all day. No sleep.
He realized Rachel had called it: he was nowhere near all right.

He took a slow breath and looked around the space, illuminated by Arabian lanterns that cast chips of light on the red walls. Ella Fitzgerald sang from a red jukebox set into a glass case in the wall. Seated around Roarke were some aged hippies reeking of pot and two tables full of hipsters: boys with porkpie hats and girls with Betty Page haircuts, a veritable gallery of tattoos among them.

Rachel stepped back to the table and set down two glasses. Roarke recognized straight whisky. He looked up at her and she smiled wryly.

“Food would be better, but I thought I’d have more chance of getting you to drink that. Medicinally.”

He picked up the glass and downed it. The whisky burned his throat, stung his eyes, and for the first time that day he did not taste the guard in his mouth.

He set the glass on the table and felt his stomach settle.

Rachel was watching him. “What happened?” she asked softly.

He looked into her worried gray eyes and almost told her. The burned house. The sickening sight of the guard’s blistered body. His deep, panicked dread, as if he had caught a glimpse of his own fate . . .

Almost.

Instead he shook his head. After a moment, she tried again. “I know she’s out . . .”

“Free on bail,” Roarke said, looking away.

“Which means . . .” She hesitated. “It means she’s gone, doesn’t it?”

“We won’t know for sure until she’s called back into court.”

Rachel’s jaw tightened. She sipped from her drink. “So . . . what’s next?” She glanced at him.

He had no answers, only a million questions. Was it the start of another bloody rampage? Would it ever end? Could he let it go? Let
her
go? For Rachel? For himself? For anyone?

“Are you safe?” she asked bluntly.

He looked at her, startled. She’d put her finger right on what he was feeling.

“I don’t know.”

Her eyes widened slightly and she bit her lip, but said nothing. He tried to focus, to make the conversation about the job.

“Did Jade ever talk about her?” he asked.

“Cara?” She said the name now, deliberately, watching his face. “Not really. Only what she said to you and Mills the other day.”

“Do you think she might have visited her? In jail?” Now Rachel gave him a startled look. “I know she’s a minor, but surely she has a fake ID—”

Rachel cut him off. “I’m sure she wouldn’t have.”

Roarke frowned. Rachel herself had told him that the first thing pimps did was get the girls fake IDs. Not just as a precaution to avoid stiffer criminal charges for any offense involving a minor. Changing the girls’ identities was also a crucial step in the indoctrination process, and it made them harder to find if someone who loved them was looking for them.

“I thought fake IDs were standard operating procedure,” he said, and waited.

Rachel hesitated for just a moment. “Yes, of course. I meant she wouldn’t have used it for that. The girls are so terrified of prison. Not that it’s worse than the street. But walking straight inside a jail?” She shook her head. “I can’t see it.”

“Jade was at the courthouse yesterday. I saw her.”

Rachel did another double take. “That can’t be . . .”

He looked at her, even more perplexed. She shook her head. “I mean, if she killed DeShawn, wouldn’t she be gone? I just don’t understand why she would . . .” She stopped. “I don’t understand much about it.” She looked down, then back at him. “Any of it.”

Roarke knew the subtext had moved from Jade back to Cara. “I don’t understand much, either,” he said, and reached for his glass. But of course it was empty.

Rachel stood. “Hold on.” She threaded her way through the tables.

Roarke looked up through the red haze of the club to the mural, a tapestry-like rendering of a forest with a young Persian woman washing at a stream. A turbaned prince watched her from horseback, concealed in the trees.

Rachel returned with two more whiskies. She avoided Roarke’s eyes as she set them down.

Why not? This is what normal is. This is what normal people do.

He reached for the glass of amber liquid. Rachel took a swallow from hers, looking at him. He glanced away. “Has Erin McNally contacted you?” he asked.

Rachel gave him a cynical look, her pause emphasizing the subtext that he was avoiding. “I haven’t seen her since—that night.”

Just two nights ago, now, but it felt like an eternity.

“And she hasn’t called.”

“No.” She looked at him. “Why?”

He drank, tasted the amber burn. When he set the glass down he said flatly, “She’s gone. She just left the hotel, without checking out.”

Rachel frowned. “Do you think something happened?” Her eyes narrowed. “Or do you think it’s something to do with the case? With Cara?”

He flinched inside as she spoke Cara’s name again. Too real, and too strange.

“I don’t know. I hope she’s all right. I hope . . .” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence, and he didn’t even know who he was talking about. He suddenly felt drunk.

She’s gone. She’s gone, and I may never see her again.
The thought was a wave of anxiety, or maybe it was fear.
I should pray I never see her again.

He reached for his glass, and drank.

Another drink later, or maybe two, they were standing under the red lights on the sidewalk outside the bar. They turned to each other and spoke at once.