Detect Me (15 page)

“Must be a hell of a girl,” Julian finally said. Mark glanced over and Julian met his gaze with steady brown eyes. “You swore you’d never go near a woman again and for awhile there I thought you weren’t lying.”

Mark ran his fingers backward through his hair, making Julian give him a skeptical glance. Probably a bad move. “I didn’t think I was either. I guess Nikki’s made a liar out of me. Or - she will. She might. Maybe.”

Julian looked less impressed by the second. He leaned back against the kitchen counter and folded his arms.

“That’s an awful lot of qualifiers,” he observed. Something acrid reached both their noses and they froze. “Aw, crap,” Julian exclaimed, and salvaged the wreckage of what would’ve been the next round of bacon out of the frying pan.

That was part of the routine too.

“How’s things…” Mark waved around at the kitchen, empty except for them. The empty house. Julian’s face clouded over and Mark tried not to regret his words. He wasn’t the best friend in the world, but he couldn’t just say nothing with the evidence of Shawna’s absence lying over the apartment like a shroud.

Julian shrugged. “It is what it is,” he said. His bulky shoulders tensed as he turned back to the sink. “Think she’s moved out of her mom’s place now.”

“That’s… good,” Mark said. The divorce had been amicable, but Mark found it hard to summon up a lot of enthusiasm for the well-being of the woman who had walked out on his friend.

“It wasn’t her fault,” Julian said, echoing a hundred previous conversations. “Most people who marry cops can’t hang. I should’ve known better.” He sounded like he was still trying to convince himself of it, and worse, Julian sounded like he was closer to believing it now.

Mark stared at Julian’s back unhappily. “That doesn’t mean you won’t find anyone. I’ve seen the statistics on police marriages too, but they’re just numbers. I mean, yeah, Shawna wasn’t right, but there’ll be someone else.”

Julian’s shoulders hunched and Mark gave it up as a lost cause. He sighed. Only thing to do was distract Julian with his own pain. Good times and pancakes all around, here.

“She’s back,” Mark said softly, and Julian immediately turned around. His face was wary but not shocked, and Mark’s eyebrows pulled together in a puzzled frown. Julian rolled his eyes.

“Come on, that’s not exactly a surprise, Champ,” he said. Mark couldn’t understand it.

Mark made a frustrated gesture. “Julian, she’s back! Stealing stuff, and threatening my… my not-girlfriend!”

Julian’s mouth twisted in something that wasn’t quite a smile.

“Of course she’s back, Mark. I don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure it out.”

Mark dropped his head and exhaled. “Yeah. I guess you can figure that if I’ve showed up here dead on my feet looking like hell, it’s not much of a leap in logic.”

“There’s that…” Julian nodded, “and also there’s the fact that I’m, you know, a police officer, Mark. A police officer that everyone knows still talks to you.”

He made a
duh
face and Mark felt deservedly dumb.

“Oh… right.” Now he felt stupid and guilty. Julian would be taking heat from the rest of the department for anything Mark might or might not have to do with Ghost’s reappearance. It wouldn’t help that Mark had been seen at the actual robbery, though Ghost hadn’t gotten the painting. But that was correlation, not causation. “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to cause you any trouble.”

Julian grinned. “You’re always trouble.” The smile faded and Julian’s expressive face grew solemn.

“Look,” he said, “G- uh, I mean, Ghost - Ghost isn’t the problem. I mean, she is a problem, but not the way you’re making her out to be. What’s really got you worked up?”

Mark stared at his friend and something clicked in his head. Ghost
was
a problem in a lot of ways, but not the ways that were freaking him out. Mark already knew that he couldn’t sleep; that he had nightmares and phantom pain. He was very familiar with waking up in a cold sweat and thinking for a moment that he was trapped. He didn’t much like those things, but he’d learned to live with them as best he could.

What he hadn’t learned to live with was loving someone again.

He was upset by Nikki’s words, and he was worried about Ghost, but neither of those things were what had brought him to Julian’s door. Now that he knew that, he couldn’t un-know it. The only thing to do was make his choices, and live with the consequences.

Mark pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. Julian watched him with raised eyebrows and a quirk to his mouth.

They grinned at each other.

“I figured it out,” Mark announced. “We don’t actually have to talk about it now, do we?”

Julian rolled his eyes and the legs of his chair squealed as he stood. “Hell no. Figured it might go this way. Sometimes questions are more complicated than their answers.”

Mark leaned around the table and clapped Julian on the shoulder. “Thanks. For everything,” he said, meaning it from the bottom of his heart but not having the words to say it. He thought probably Julian knew anyway. “I’ll call you?”

“Yes you will,” Julian said. “Actually, I might call you first. I’m not supposed to, but screw it, if I hear about Ghost, I’ll let you know. You need to be able to protect your lady. Your own hide, too.”

Mark was silent for a moment, feeling gratitude weigh heavy in his gut, grasping desperately for a way to tell Julian how much he appreciated it.

“The bacon was really great,” Mark said finally.

Nikki spun around, her heart in her throat. Some primal part of her must have been expecting this since she woke up, because immediately adrenaline shot into her veins and her heartbeat started to pound a tattoo in her ears. For a second the physical sensation of fear was so strong that she was actually worried she wouldn’t be able to hear anything Ghost said.

Then Ghost spoke, and, well, hearing it allayed one of her fears, anyway. “I’m so very pleased to find you here alone.”

“Why?” Nikki managed to ask past the lump in her throat. “Did you want some art lessons?” Good move, Nikki, tease the criminal about her crimes. See, this was why she couldn’t do anything right. Self-destructive urges like this.

Instead of looking angry, Ghost grinned; a slash of a smile that opened across her face and made Nikki’s skin crawl.

“If I was looking for art lessons, I’d go to someone successful,” she said.

Ouch. The words hurt, but they didn’t strike her to the core the way they might have just a couple weeks before - as Nikki blinked in shock, Mark’s brilliant smile came unbidden to her mind and she remembered him rushing around his office looking for files, asking her opinion.

Ghost tilted her head and her brown ponytail puddled against one side of her collarbone. She was still wearing the balaclava, and an outfit that looked like mostly leather and stretchy black fabric. There was a knife strapped to her leg and a gun belted to her hip.

“What do you want?” Nikki asked. Suddenly all of her patience was gone, though fear was still tingling through her nerves. She didn’t want to play games. She wanted Ghost gone and Mark back so she could try to apologize again.

Again with the head tilting. If it was designed to freak Nikki out, it was working. Humans shouldn’t look like carnivores about to pounce.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Ghost murmured. Instead of being merely threatening, now her eyes were narrowed in focus at Nikki, seeing instead of just looking. Nikki fought down a shiver. It was like bears - you couldn’t show any weakness. Or were you supposed to roll over and play dead? Nikki couldn’t remember.

“I have to admit, you surprised me,” Ghost said. “If it hadn’t been for you,
The Olive Trees
would have been a cinch. Mark always works alone. I’m very good at planning for contingencies, but you caught me off-guard.”

Nikki felt her shoulders straightening and her spine stretching to her full height; she couldn’t help it.
That was me
, she repeated over and over in her head.
I stopped the robbery of a priceless painting. Me. Take that, Mom!
And then a quieter voice in the back of her head whispered,
Mark always worked alone… but he begged you to stay.

“I won’t make that mistake again,” Ghost added. A chill draped over Nikki. Ghost stepped forward. They were close enough to touch without Ghost even having to straighten her arm, but Nikki didn’t pull away. What good would it do?

“Hurting me won’t make Mark stop hunting you,” she said, because she was physically incapable of keeping her fool mouth shut. “I mean - he’ll just want revenge, and, um - you already hurt him, so he was already on your trail before I showed up, so it’s not like…” Nikki trailed off before she could start explicitly begging for Ghost not to kill her. She’d sunk pretty low, but not quite that low.

Ghost blinked, expressing an actual emotion for the first time that Nikki could remember. She looked nonplussed, which wasn’t much of an emotion, but perhaps a start.

It was short-lived; Ghost recovered quickly and reached into her pocket. Nikki tensed and Ghost rolled her eyes.

“I don’t have any particular interest in hurting you, unless you do the slightest little thing to cross me, which so far, you haven’t… intentionally, anyway,” Ghost said. She raised her hand so that Nikki could see the thief had stolen her phone.

“Hey, that’s mine!” Nikki said, and wondered if she could find some way to physically kick herself in the ass.

Ghost rolled her eyes again. “I can see you have some issues comprehending the whole criminal thing,” she said. “That’s alright. Mark was never too bright; I wouldn’t expect more from you.”

Nikki froze for a second, honestly shocked. “What? Mark is brilliant,” she said. Because it was true (and because her response to panic was to babble). Mark was one of the most intelligent people she’d ever met. You could see it in his eyes, in his passion for his work, in the way that he was capable of not only processing huge amounts of information like a computer, but also able to work with people just as well.

To her surprise, instead of ignoring her or scoffing, Ghost’s lips curled up into a sneer.

“He’s an idiot,” she spat. “He’s a pathetic waste of space.”

Nikki’s eyes widened. That was a big reaction to have. She knew that Mark had been hunting Ghost, and that he’d come close to catching her. But this didn’t sound like professional ire. This sounded personal.

“How do you know?” Nikki asked softly.

Ghost’s large brown eyes focused on her. She stared at Nikki for a minute. The hand with the phone in it dropped to her side.

“He didn’t tell you, did he?” Nikki stared, uncomprehending. Ghost barked out a laugh that sounded odd coming from her small frame. “Isn’t that curious? Mark’s the honest sort. I thought he would have told you. Or maybe things between you two aren’t what I thought they were?”

A horrible feeling prickled up the back of Nikki’s neck. “Things - I don’t… Tell me what I don’t know,” she said, hoping desperately that she wouldn’t want to take the request back.

There was no reason for her to expect that Ghost would oblige, except that already a sly grin was sneaking over the thief’s face. Nothing that came out of this woman’s mouth would be good, and Nikki knew instinctively that she would take any chance she could to hurt Mark.

Nikki knew that if it would hurt Mark, she probably shouldn’t listen to it. But she couldn’t help herself. There was a terrible suspicion rising in her about the exact nature of the association they had, and Nikki couldn’t just be happy in blissful ignorance. She had to know.

Ghost was still grinning. It looked wrong on her, like she had never smiled enough for the right lines to form on her face. Her thumb rubbed against the phone in her hand but gave over to temptation easily. The allure of the criminal lifestyle.

“Mark was my lover,” she said, and the words hit Nikki like a sucker punch.

She felt her mouth drop open. Ghost’s smile broadened.

Ghost turned away from Nikki and she started to pace. Nikki watched her turn her head back and forth, noting the look of the apartment. She wondered with a sick feeling in her stomach if Ghost had been here before, or if the woman was just comparing. Measuring up what she could see of this Mark to the Mark that she used to know.

“Well, I suppose he wouldn’t put it quite that way. He would call me his fiancé. Ex-fiancé,” she clarified.

She laughed delightedly when Nikki clapped a hand over her mouth in shock.

“I guess he really didn’t tell you.”

Ghost opened her mouth again - to spill more secrets no doubt, and as sick and scared as she felt, Nikki leaned forward to hear more - when the phone in her hand started ringing.

She looked down at it and half of Nikki wanted to yell, “No!” The other half wanted to take off running for the door. But she didn’t do either.

A smile curved over Ghost’s lips. Nikki felt like all Ghost had done since she walked in was give her Cheshire grins. She hated it. She hated Ghost. She thought maybe she hated Mark a little too, and anything he’d done with this woman. And the fact that he hadn’t told her about it.

Do I really have any right to know? Nikki asked herself. Probably not. But she was angry anyway.