Fiance by Friday (14 page)

Neil’s arm tightened around her. “You’re out of line, officer.” The anger in Neil’s voice was thinly reined.

“Duly noted, Mr.…?”

“MacBain,” he answered. “C’mon, Gwen, let’s get you out of this room.”

Gwen was still shaking as she made her way downstairs with Neil holding her up.

When she closed her eyes, she saw her neighbors bobbing in the bubbling water. How long would she live with that image as company?

Neil perched himself at the edge of the couch and sat her down beside him.

Another officer had made his way into the house. “Are you the homeowners?”

“I am.”

“You reported the bodies?”

Gwen blinked twice. “So they are dead?”

The officer looked at Neil and nodded once.

Bloody hell.

The officer upstairs called his colleague.

“I need to talk to the police. Are you going to be OK here?” Neil asked.

Gwen wrapped her robe closer to her body. “I’ll be fine.”

“Where’s your cell phone?”

“In my purse, why?”

“I need you to call Eliza, get Carter on the phone if you can. I need him to clear a path for me to see what happened over there with my own eyes.”

Gwen cringed. “Clear a path? I don’t understand. It’s probably an unfortunate accident.”

Neil looked around the room, spotted her purse, and brought it to her. “Just call her.”

Eliza’s voice might help to calm her down, even if Gwen had no idea why Neil insisted on sticking his nose into the investigation.

While Gwen removed her phone from her purse, Neil walked up the stairs to the officers in her bedroom.

The phone rang twice before Eliza picked up. “Hey, Lady…what has you calling this—”

“Eliza?” Gwen heard the distress in her own voice.

“Oh, no, what’s wrong?”

Gwen closed her eyes; saw the bodies. “My neighbors…they’re, they’re…”

“They’re what, honey?”

She swallowed. “Dead.”

Eliza gasped.

“I was washing dishes. Neil called, pissing about the monitors in the backyard.” Recalling the events now made her remember the distress in his voice. More than normal.

“And?”

“The monitors have been acting up a lot. They don’t work when the neighbors are in their hot tub for some reason.”

“The naked neighbors?”

Naked and dead neighbors.
Gwen sucked in her bottom lip and refused to let tears surface. “Neil told me to go check if they were in
the tub. I was pissing mad at him, Eliza. Ordering me around. I told him it was the last time I was running up stairs to look down at my neighbors. And then…then I looked. Then the house alarm went off, and Neil was ordering me to lock the door and wait for him.”

“Oh God, Gwen. That’s awful.”

“Neil needs to talk to Carter. Is he there?”

“He’s not. But I’ll call him and tell him to call Neil’s phone right away.”

“OK…thanks, Eliza.”

“I’ll call you right back.”

Eliza hung up and Gwen held her phone in her lap. Lights flashed out her front and back windows.

Two people were dead. Gwen wasn’t sure she could live in this house alone after all.

“You noticed something abnormal on the surveillance system?” the sarcastic, wet-behind-the-ears cop asked.

Neil lied. “Yes.”

“What?”

“I’ll have my assistant make a digital file for you to examine.” What Neil needed right now was to get out of the bedroom and over the fence into the neighbors’ yard to check out the scene himself.

“Did you know the victims?”

“No.”

“Miss Harrison?”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

“Who are you to Miss Harrison?”

Neil narrowed his eyes. “Her security.”

“This is hardly an upscale neighborhood, Mr. MacBain. Sounds like the security system you have here and the surveillance is over-the-top.”

Neil’s jaw twitched. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to investigate the scene.”

“Private security isn’t cleared, Mr. MacBain. I’m sure you know that.”

Neil clenched his fist.

The cell phone ringing in his pocket directed his attention somewhere else and kept him from committing a felony.

“MacBain,” he answered.

“Neil? It’s Carter. What’s going on?”

Neil turned his back to the cops. “Gwen’s neighbors are dead.”

“That’s what Eliza just said.”

“Mr. MacBain, this is an active scene, we don’t—”

“I need clearance from whoever’s in charge of Tarzana PD to check out the scene. And I need it before they fuck it up over there.”

The officers looked at each other with slight smiles on their lips.

Cocky kids.

Neil heard Carter talking to someone before he got back on the phone. If anyone could arrange his clearance, it would be the governor.

“I have someone on it. Eliza just called Dean.” Good. Dean was a detective with the LAPD, and a close friend of Eliza’s. “Do you think it’s a homicide?” asked Carter.

“I won’t know until I look. Hope the hell not.”

“Mr. MacBain?”

“I’ve got to go,” Neil told his friend. “Call Blake, tell him Gwen’s safe.”

“Will do. I’ll call back if there’s a holdup.”

After Neil hung up, the officers started questioning him again. “Where do you live?”

Where he lived wasn’t relevant and answering these kids’ questions while the uniforms were running around outside was a waste of valuable time. Neil cut them off. “I’ll talk to you after I’ve seen the area.”

He returned to Gwen’s side. She hadn’t moved an inch from the couch.

“You all right?”

Her blonde head started to nod and then she shook it. “You don’t think this was an accident.”

Neil didn’t confirm or deny.

“That’s why you told me to stay in my room, get the gun.”

Those few moments when she’d screamed and didn’t respond to him on the phone were the longest in his life. He ran out of his house and broke every traffic law to get to her. Rick’s words repeated in his head.
I think they were just fucking with him…making him bleed on the inside, ya know?

Neil glanced at the officers as they walked down the stairs and out the back door.

He shoved his hand into his pocket and removed the crumpled up paper clipping of Gwen and Karen and the dead bird.

“What was this about?”

Gwen smoothed the paper on her lap. “Karen and I were eating dinner. She found the dead bird on the ground by the passenger side of the car.”

“You look upset in the picture.”

“We…we were a little worried. Karen found a dead crow outside her window in the flowers a few days earlier. She hates birds so she asked me…” Gwen kept talking but Neil didn’t hear her.

Two…two dead crows?

“The crow in the window I didn’t think much of. But this looked bigger to me, like a raven. I looked it up. Ravens aren’t indigenous to this area.”

“I have Raven in my sights, Mac.” Billy was holding a sniper weapon and Neil was about to call the order to fire, save all of them the trouble of moving closer so they could get the hell out of there.

“Damn.” Billy pulled back.

“What?”

“Kids. His kids jumped in his lap.”

“Wait. We’ll get closer. Make it clean.” Less collateral damage.

“Neil?” Gwen’s hand was on his arm, bringing him back.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” He needed to get her out of there.

“We thought this was about Karen. A sick fan of Michael’s.”

It could be Gwen floating in a pool of water…and not the neighbor.

“Karen?”

“She hates birds. We found them in
her
window and on
her
side of the car.”

“Mr. MacBain?” The officer nodded toward the back. “You’ve been cleared.”

Thank you, Carter!

“Go upstairs, Gwen. Pack a bag. You’re not staying here.”

He didn’t wait around for an argument. He moved out the back door and scaled the block wall.

The bodies had been pulled out of the water and were covered with sheets. The dozen officers in the yard were poking their flashlights around.

“Who’s in charge?” Neil asked as he walked to the back of the hot tub.

“I am.”

Neil looked over, and noticed a uniformed officer. “First on scene?”

“That’s right.”

Which meant he was waiting for someone of higher rank to show up and take over. “What do you know?”

“Each victim has burn wounds, one on the hand, the other the side of the face.”

Electrocuted. “Where did you cut the power?”

“At the box.”

Neil stood, moved to the side of the yard. Two cops were looking inside the box. One of them took pictures.

“Neil?”

Neil turned and saw Dean and his partner Jim walking his way.

“Thanks for coming.”

“Excuse me.” The lead officer pushed his way between them.

Dean and his partner flashed their badges.

“You’re out of your jurisdiction, detective.”

Dean pointed to Gwen’s house. “Do you know who lived in that house?”

The officer shook his head.

“The governor’s wife. Anything that happens within a mile of this house is my jurisdiction. Now tell your guys to back off, they’re trampling the scene.”

The officer took Dean’s advice and walked away.

“I love saying that.” Dean’s easy smile spread over his face.

“What happened?”

Neil brought them up to date. Omitting all information about the ravens. For now.

Dean looked around. “You think it’s a homicide?”

“When’s the last time you heard of a couple frying in a Jacuzzi?” Neil asked.

They walked back toward the tub. The other cops were standing aside.

Jim lifted a tarp. Neil didn’t see what was underneath, and didn’t need to.

“Electricity travels though the body and out just about anywhere. Frying everything in between.”

“The water was still charged when the uniforms arrived,” Neil told them.

He knelt down to the service door of the tub. One of the officers had already opened it. “Do you have a flashlight?”

Jim handed him one.

Neil peered in. Any possibility that this was an accident dissipated when he spotted the dead birds.

“What the hell are those?”

“Ravens.”

Chapter Twelve

“Run, hero…run.”

Playing with his prey was more addictive than crack. No wonder gangbangers couldn’t keep their asses out of jail. They were all high and doing shit like this…well, not quite like this.

This was fucking genius.

He watched as Neil scaled the back fence and ran into the house. One suit followed him, while the other directed the minions.

He popped a sour candy in his mouth and watched the entertainment.

His binoculars followed Neil pulling the girl from the house and shoving her in his car. Neil tossed a bag into the backseat, and slammed the door closed.

“I thought you didn’t care, MacBain. Thought you were leaving your princess.”

He laughed, shoved more candy in his mouth. Now that Mac had proved the woman meant something to him, it was time to take her away.

Mac didn’t deserve to be happy. None of them did.