Runner's Moon Trilogy Megabook Series (26 page)

In answer, she felt the car slow, bouncing slightly as he pulled into a driveway to turn around and head back the other way.

"Lieutenant?"

There was a pause. "You called me Thomas earlier." His voice was soft. A trace of sadness hung heavy over his comment. Roni opened her eyes to see him glance over at her. Those pale blue eyes she once thought of as being icy were now as clear as the summer skies. All reluctance flowed out of her underneath his caring gaze.

"That Cowven guy. He creeped me out. No. He pissed me off, then he creeped me out."

DeGrassi's face went rigid. In a fraction of a second, he went from loving partner to stone-hard cop. "Explain."

"He..." She shrugged slightly. "He accused me of being like the other girls."

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"What other girls?"

"The other hookers who came to the agency looking for employment. He got really mad at me when I asked for a day job. He said I had no business putting conditions on what I wanted because it meant I would still work nights hooking."

"He told you that?" Anger, like pungent smoke, began to fill the interior of the car, anger brought on by what she knew was his need to protect her. "What else?"

"He kept looking at me like I had a big 'For Sale' sign hanging around my neck." She shivered at the memory. "I didn't like him, Thomas. If I go back there, I'm going to want a different case worker."

"So will I," DeGrassi agreed. He threw another concerned look in her direction. "Still want to go home?"

"Yeah. My stomach's not doing too good at the moment, either. I'm sorry, but he smelled—"

"He what? He smelled?" She got a sharp look from him.

"What do you mean 'he smelled'?"

Oops. Too much information. Biting her tongue, she tried to cover her goof. "What I said. He smelled. Like he hadn't washed in a while. Or had bad hygiene. I don't know. The whole time I was in his office, I kept wishing I could get out of there. I couldn't breathe, Thomas. He made me sick."

"That's probably why your stomach's still upset and you're getting a headache." He sighed, apparently calmer. The anger slowly filtered away.

The miles flowed under the car—miles spent in silence. It wasn't until they reached the main street leading into her subdivision that DeGrassi spoke again.

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"Roni ... about earlier."

Earlier. When they had kissed and nearly torn each other's clothes off.

"Forget about it, Thomas," she tried to say with nonchalance. He didn't need to know how much it had affected her.

They turned the corner onto Mare Marginis, then pulled into her gravel driveway. DeGrassi put the car in park but didn't turn off the engine.

"Roni. Listen. Look at me."

She had no choice but to obey. Looking at him, she found herself memorizing every line of his face so that she could recall him with perfect clarity in her dreams.

"Roni, this thing between us ... it's getting deep. At least it is for me."

He waited for her to respond. There was no way she could not tell him the truth.

"For me, too."

He expelled the breath he had been holding. The lemonade smell became more pungent. "Roni, the only thing holding me back right now is the hooker thing. I hope you understand that."

The hooker thing? He had no idea how much deeper and dirtier her secrets were. She swallowed around the thickness in her throat and nodded.

"I want you to get tested."

This last bit surprised her. "Huh?"

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"I want you to go to the clinic or somewhere and get tested. Make sure you don't have, you know, some kind of venereal disease. Or worse."

He was wanting to make love to her, but only after making sure she was clean. How could she explain to him she would never be able to join with him as a human? At least, not until after they became lovers when she was in her true skin.

Which would never happen. He would never be able to accept the real Tiron. He would never be able to face the creature hiding beneath her human façade, much less make love to it.

Still, she felt like she needed to say something.

"Thomas, I never took a job without a condom."

"Even that first time?" His eyes revealed his cynicism and doubt.

"Yeah. Even that first time." How could she forget the sight of the guy pulling on that rubbery sheath, and wondering why he was trying to shape-shift just that part of his anatomy?

She had been so naïve back then. Starving, lonely, and naïve.

She had learned a lot in the years since.

His dark eyebrows lowered. The tight set of his jaw told her he wanted to believe her. "Are you telling me you never went bareback with a john?"

"I'm telling you that just because I'm a hooker doesn't mean I don't have my own sense of self-respect," she shot back. The heated exchange only made the pain between her eyes grow worse, but she tried to put it aside for the moment. "I'll go get tested. There's a walk-in clinic off of Brady. I'll have the results faxed over to you, if that's what you're wanting. If you don't believe me."

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There. She had challenged him, which wasn't like her. She wasn't trying to antagonize him. She was needing him to trust her. To believe in her. She needed him to realize she would never do anything to endanger what they had together, and she would fight to keep their relationship as pure as possible.

He continued to stare at her, but now she could no longer read him. The baby powder smell was still there, though, as well as the lemonade scent. Unlocking the door, she let herself out and started to close it when he leaned across the seat.

"Roni."

"Tiron," she hissed back at him, lashing out as the pain in her head and in her heart spiked. "My real name is Tiron Fesell Tarakon. And if you cared anything for me, you would accept me as I really am. For what I am. Without condemnation or prejudice. Thank you for breakfast, Lieutenant. And for the ride to the agency."

Slamming the door shut, she turned and walked around the corner of the cottage to the front. She half-expected, half-wanted him to follow her. Instead, she heard the car pull out of the driveway and leave.

Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely fit the key into the lock. Once inside, she let the tears roll down her face. Huge, aching sobs tore from her throat, and she collapsed on the rug beside her bed.

She couldn't love him as she really was. An alien.

He couldn't love her for what he believed she was. A whore.

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The irony bit like a sharp knife, cutting and hacking away at her soul without care.

She cried out his name and begged him to accept her, pleaded for him to open up and love her unconditionally.

Without fear. Without hesitation.

She used to beg the Arra for leniency. Begged, pleaded, screamed, wept. None of it had worked. Just like none of what she was feeling or doing right now would help. After a year or so of fighting her captors, she had given up. Just like she would have to learn to give up on him.

Thomas DeGrassi. His name was like honey in her mouth.

Somewhere Roni found the strength to get to her feet and stumble into the bathroom. The mirror over the sink revealed red, swollen eyes and a tear-streaked face. Her nose was running. Her lips were puffy. She looked horrid, like an ugly nightmare. How could Thomas even look at her when she was like this?

The pain in her head was excruciating. Opening the medicine cabinet, she tried to find the pills she had discovered that sometimes took the pain away. On the bottom shelf, she saw the eyebrow pencil she had bought some time ago, back when she had experimented with wearing makeup. Back before Ginger convinced her she didn't need to use any because of her "natural beauty."

Some natural beauty. How would you react if I dropped this thin sheet of skin covering the true me and let you get a look at my real "natural beauty"?

The moment she let the hideousness of her actual self be known, it would only be a matter of hours, maybe minutes, 365

before her life would be over. Ruinos would become creatures to be feared. Abhorrent abominations from space. No one would see them as the simple, family-loving, gentle beings who had been sold into slavery. Or eaten when one of their kind got too old or sick to be of any financial good anymore to the Arra.

Thomas would hate her if he saw the real her. Hate her.

Grabbing the pencil, Roni shut the mirrored door and stared at her reflection. Angrily brushing away the hair stuck to her wet face, she swiped at the tears to dry off her cheek.

Then with the pencil she etched the words "hate me" into the skin. Once she was done, she examined the results. The letters were crooked, but that was okay. It could be read without any trouble. Let Thomas make a comment now next time she saw him. Let's find out how much he cares about me, and if he still wants me to go to that clinic and get checked out. Because once she did, there would be no more hiding the truth from him. No more disguising herself. No more shape-shifting.

It would be over. Everything—her secret, as well as any possibility of happiness with the man who had become as crucial to her as air and food.

Throwing the pencil into the toilet, Roni stalked back into the bedroom and threw herself onto the quilt. Before she was aware of it, she was sound asleep.

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"Yeah. Cowven. C-o-w-v-e-n, I think. First initial B. I want everything you have on him. Just email it to me as soon as you can. All right? Thanks, Karel."

Closing the lid on the cell phone, DeGrassi tossed it onto the seat next to him. After Roni had taken off, he'd wasted no time checking into the guy's background. That Cowven guy.

The one who'd made those asinine remarks that would get him canned. No one had the right to make those kind of sexist remarks to a client, even if the woman was a known prostitute.

If DeGrassi had learned anything in all his years in Vice, it was that hookers' instincts were nearly one hundred percent spot-on. If this guy made Roni's skin crawl, then he deserved a second look. Or third. Or fourth. Most hookers developed that sixth sense as a defensive mechanism, to protect themselves from johns who could hurt or kill them. Of course, not all the girls were able to develop that special knack. The victims of the Cutter were prime examples of those who hadn't. But a lot of the girls did. Roni included. And for that he was grateful. Damn grateful.

She'd looked as white as paper when she came out of that agency. Clutching her stomach like she was about to hurl. Her eyes were as dark as burnt charcoal, so dark he could barely see the glittery specks frozen in them.

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As soon as he got his ducks in a row, DeGrassi was going to confront that idiot and find out what the hell he meant by demeaning his woman that way. And if the guy didn't kiss up exactly the way he needed to, or if his excuse didn't fit DeGrassi's criteria, then the man could wave his job goodbye.

No one was going to treat Roni—

DeGrassi nearly slammed on his brakes as the import of what he had just admitted came home. His woman. Roni? His woman?

"Damn straight," he muttered. And it was about time he

'fessed up to himself. It was pretty sad, too. A couple of kisses, and he had fallen ass-over-ankles in love with the woman.

In love with a hooker? He shrugged. Well, stranger things have happened.

Stranger still, Roni didn't act like a typical hooker, much less one who had been cruising the streets for four years.

Yeah, she had the attitude. She had that down real good. But there was something about her that didn't push his buttons the way other hookers did. At least, not those kind of buttons.

Dammit, what was it about the woman that turned his insides into jelly? Why did he feel like he needed to put his arms around her every time he was around her? Why did his brain turn to mush whenever he caught a whiff of that intoxicating maple-syrup scent?

How could a woman who maybe topped five feet seven inches make a midget out of a six-foot-four-inch man who weighed twice as much as she did? If that wasn't love, what was it? Lust? Infatuation?

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Jesus. He was scared. Right now, the way things stood between them, he could handle it. Yeah, he could handle their situation as it was this minute. The kisses. Touching her.

Taking her out to eat and all. That was good. It was natural.

Hell, he felt like a million-dollar winner just showing her off, letting the other guys know she was with him. The other guys who didn't know her background, that is.

Roni was a walking beauty queen. That black leather she wore suited her. It was her sexier side. Her "make me yours"

outfit. But the pastels and flowers, that was the real Roni.

That was Tiron. Frightened, insecure, in need of protection.

The woman who blushed and giggled. The woman whose smile could light up all of Crescent City.

DeGrassi knew he wanted to keep Roni off the streets and make Tiron his. Solely his. Never to share her with anyone.

He could get used to living in a house full of plants. He was more than willing to spend his nights underneath a quilt of flowers. In fact, he was looking forward to it. As long as she was there, needing him and wanting him as badly as he needed and wanted her.

All they had to get around was the sex issue. And, boy, was it ever an issue.

All right, DeGrassi. You once said you would never dip into a polluted pool. But if she got herself tested and came back with a straight A report card, could you? Would you?

Yeah. The "would" part? Oh, yeah. He would do his damnedest for the "could" part, too. But if it didn't "work out," so to speak, he could go to Plan B. There were other ways to satisfy a woman. Hell, he was already pretty much 369

the expert with his hands and mouth. Whatever it took to keep her, he would do it. Or go down trying ... pun intended.

Taking a deep breath, DeGrassi smiled. It actually felt good to get that off his chest. The truth didn't hurt as much as he'd thought it would.

"I love Tiron Tarakon. I, Thomas Joseph DeGrassi, am crazy nuts about the woman. And she and I are going to spend many long years in each other's company if I have anything to say about it."

Even out loud, it sounded as good as it felt.

He pulled into the lot next to the labs and parked. Once inside, he went straight to see Delores MacAvie, who was working days in the DNA department. "Hey, Dee! I got your page. What's up?"

The tall redhead looked up from her microscope.

Recognizing him, she crawled off her stool and walked over to her desk to retrieve a folder. "DeGrassi, I've worked on too many cases with you to think you're a practical joker."

Tossing him the folder, she gave him a grim stare.

"What? Why do you say that?" He opened the folder to read the results on the DNA testing of the hair from the brush he'd taken from Roni's bedroom. Then he read them again.

"This doesn't make sense," he said, glancing back up at her.

"Tell me about it!" Going back over to the microscope, she flipped through the small stack of slides next to it, found the one she wanted, and placed it under the lens. After adjusting the magnification, she gestured him over. "Okay, bright boy.

Tell me what you see."

"Hey, now, I'm not a scientist."

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"I didn't ask for an analysis, Lieutenant. Just an observation. Tell me what you see."

Sighing, DeGrassi placed his eyes against the eyepiece.

"Mmm. Cells? I dunno."

"Good guess. Now, can you describe the cells?"

"They're red. No. Pink."

"That's because they're blood cells. What I want you to describe is the shape of the cells," MacAvie continued.

"Blood cells are roundish, kinda," he told her.

"Humor me, Lieutenant. What shape are the cells on that slide?"

"Mmm. They sorta look triangular." He backed off and turned to look at her. "Triangular?"

"Try conical."

"Conical? Blood cells?"

She waggled her eyebrows at him. "If you think that's strange, have you looked at those DNA results we got the second time around?"

"Do I want to?" DeGrassi wondered aloud.

"Take a gander." The lab tech handed him a second printout of the DNA analysis. The numbers not only looked wrong, they looked impossible. He gave her a confused look.

"This can't be right. No one can have that many chromosomes. The test was tainted," he said flatly.

MacAvie nodded. "That was my first thought, too. That's why I'm retesting a different set of tags. But you know what I think?"

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"You're thinking the second test is going to validate the first one," he told her. Another thought came to him. "Where did you find blood cells?"

"On the brush. A couple of the skin tags looked like the scalp had come off with the hairs. I also found some epithelials on the hand towel, but the brush was a gold mine."

She laid the second paper inside the folder. "I don't know where you got that brush, DeGrassi, but whatever put those hairs in it, wherever they came from, they're not human."

"Maybe she used the brush on a cat or something." Did Roni own a pet?

MacAvie snorted, very unladylike. "Come here and look."

She took him to a side table where a book of photos lay open. Quickly flipping through it, she found a picture of a dog hair, magnified twenty times. "This is a dog hair. Check the grain, Lieutenant. And here..." She went past a few more pages until she found a photo of a cat hair. "This is cat. And this one..." She found another picture. "This is human. Note the similarities. They're all consistent in that all the hairs are round. Cylindrical. After that, it breaks down according to species. Now let me show you the hairs from the brush." Back to the first table and microscope, she picked up the slide she had been examining when he walked in. She focused the instrument, then waved an invitation for him to see for himself. DeGrassi stared at what he saw for many long seconds.

"These hairs ... don't look like hairs."

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"Not even at base twenty magnification. You ought to see them under one hundred times. It's enough to pull the rug out from under you."

DeGrassi turned his head to stare at her. "They're hexagonical? Hexagons?"

"Just say they're six-sided, like a stop sign."

"Maybe it's a wig."

"Nope." She shook her head. "Wigs have triangular or tubular hairs. Besides, hairs from a wig wouldn't have skin tags like these did. Nope. What you brought us on that brush was real hair. It just wasn't human."

"Maybe it's from another kind of animal other than a dog or cat. Like, I don't know, a deer?"

"You're reaching, Lieutenant. Why?" She peered at him closely. "Where is your suspect from, by the way?"

DeGrassi was floored. Hexagon-shaped hair? Cone-shaped blood cells? It just wasn't human. Roni ... not human?

Before he realized what he was doing, DeGrassi turned and started for the door. "Lieutenant?"

"Not now, Dee. I need to check into this further."

"If you find out anything, let me know," she called out as the door closed behind him.

He somehow found his way to the parking lot amid the barrage of questions flooding his brain. Once he was behind the wheel, he was debating whether or not to confront Roni with the findings, when his cell phone bleebled. It was the police station.

"DeGrassi."

"Karel Majorca, Lieutenant."

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"Yeah, Karel. Did you find out anything on that Cowven guy?"

"Plenty. Name's Brian Cowven. Spelled C-o-w-v-e-n, just like you said. Age thirty-two. Two priors, both suspended sentences."

"Priors for what?"

"Assault. Both females. One was six years ago, and the second three years later. He's been clean since. Served his probation without mishap. Not even a traffic ticket."

"Where were these assaults? Here in town?"

"Nope. The first was in Davis Junction. The second was in Meanderfield."

A mental map snapped into place in DeGrassi's head.

Meanderfield was about a hundred miles north of Crescent City. Davis Junction was another two hundred or so miles northwest of Meanderfield. The guy had been migrating south-southeast for the past six years.

The Cutter was heading due southeast, which meant he was now in their territory.

"Dear God."

Cops knew police work was three-quarters sweat and one-quarter intuition. DeGrassi began to get that ugly feeling crawling up the back of his neck.

"What?" Majorca demanded.

He accused me of being like the other girls. The other hookers who came to the agency looking for employment.

"Fuck!"

"What's your problem, DeGrassi?"

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"Nothing," he hastily said, praying he was right. Or very, very wrong. "Thanks for the help. Did you email me that info?"

"Yeah, right before I called you."

"Look, can you send it to Tayson and McCormick, too?"

"No problem."

"Thanks again, Karel. I gotta run." He quickly hit the end button, then dialed Tayson's number, which went straight to voice mail. Shit. He tried McCormick, with better luck.

"Vice. Detective McCormick."

"Wade! Thom DeGrassi. What's your status at the moment?"

"We've been beating on doors all day, trying to find a witness or anyone who can tell us about the victim. Why?

Think you've got something?"

"It's probably nothing more than a bad feeling," DeGrassi began.

McCormick actually laughed. "Hey, man. You know as well as I do that the most insignificant clue can bust a case wide open. Even if it's nothing more than a bad feeling. Whatcha got?"

"You remember those three girls we processed a couple of days ago?"

"You mean the ones we pulled off Dross? The redhead and the, uhh, blonde, and the black-haired chick you processed?

What about 'em?"

"I took the black-haired girl to see Judge Braidon. He released her on probation under my recognizance."

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"That's going quite a bit above and beyond the call, Thom.

But go on. I'm listening."

"I told her she had to find gainful employment. If she got busted for soliciting before her probationary period was up, it would be my neck as well as hers. Anyway, I took her over to the employment agency today to sign up. And some guy who worked there scared the shit out of her."

"So?"

"So the guy accused her of being 'just like the other girls.'

The other hookers who had come in to look for other jobs."

Dead silence filtered through the phone as McCormick digested this bit of news. "So, what are you thinking, Thom?"

"I got pissed by his attitude, so I ran a background check on him. He has two priors for assaulting women, but he's clean now. Wade, he was busted up in Davis Junction, then in Meanderfield. That's northwest of us. He's been moving southeast."

"Like the Cutter's been moving southeast here in town?"

"Precisely."

"DeGrassi, are you thinking our victims may have had prior contact with this guy?"

"You've been striking out trying to figure out what's tying the victims together," DeGrassi said. "Other than they've all been hookers, you haven't been able to find any other commonality. It won't hurt to check the guy out. Have the agency release his list of contacts. Anything's worth a shot."

"You got that right. What's the guy's name?"