The Angel of Death (The Soul Summoner Book 3) (29 page)

“I went into work that morning.” I thought for a moment. “I remember sending out something to our newsletter subscribers about trick-or-treating safety.”

He made some notes. “What else did you do that day?”

“I left work early—”

“At what time?”

I thought back. “It’s hard to remember exactly, but it was probably around four or so. I remember skipping lunch so I could leave early.”

“And where did you go?” he asked.

“Back to my father’s house. My boyfriend and I stayed with him all week because my mother had just died,” I said.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Your boyfriend…Detective Nathan McNamara?”

I rolled my eyes. “No. My boyfriend’s name is Warren Parish. I have had a close relationship with Detective McNamara, but I was with Warren on Halloween. We had dinner at the Sunny Point Cafe, then went back to my father’s house in time for trick-or-treaters to show up. Oh yeah, and we stopped to buy candy for them on the way home.”

“Anything else happen that day?” he asked.

I swallowed. “I spoke to Abigail on the phone. She asked me to come back to Texas for a meeting.”

“Did she call you or did you call her?”

This was a test to see if I’d tell the truth. I was sure he’d already seen my phone records.

“I called her.”

He blinked with fake surprise. “You called her? Why?”

I shook my head. “I’ll only answer that question with my attorney.”

For a moment, we stared at each other in a battle of wills. I won, and he looked at his pad of paper again. “Did you visit anywhere else on the day of October 31
st
?”

“No.”

He nodded and made some notes.

“Sloan, where do you bank?”

That was an odd question. “Western Carolina Credit Union, why?”

He glanced up at me. “Do you utilize any other financial service institutions?”

I thought for a second. “I have a deferred compensation retirement plan through my work, plus a Roth IRA through Smithson Investors Services.”

“No others?”

I smirked. “Are you planning on freezing my assets or something?”

He just stared at me.

I sank in my chair. “No other institutions. I want to contact an attorney. I won’t answer any more questions.”

“We haven’t even discussed the—”

I cut him off. “I don’t care. I’m exercising my rights. I want an attorney.”

He closed his notebook. “Very well.”

Never in my life had I needed an attorney for anything other than closing on my new house. I knew a few from my dealings with work, but those were generally prosecutors or sleaze bags covered in the media. But my dad knew lots of people, so I called him. When he answered the collect call, he sounded panicked. “Are you OK?” he asked before even saying hello.

“I’m OK. I’m in an interrogation room downtown,” I said. “I need you to call Nathan, and I need you to find a federal criminal attorney.”

“We’ve already made some calls. I came to your house as soon as Warren called me. Azrael and Nathan are both here with us as well,” he said.

Relief washed over me. “Thank you.”

There was some commotion on his end of the line. “Nathan says they’ll take you to appear before the federal magistrate and they’ll set bail. We’ll get you out then.”

“OK. Please find someone quickly.”

“We will, sweetheart. Be brave.”
 

I heard Nathan in the background. “Keep your mouth shut, Sloan.”

“Tell him I will,” I said. “I love you, Dad.”

“I love you, Sloan. We’ll figure this out.”

“I know.” I almost believed it too.
 

When I hung up the phone, Agent Silvers returned to the room. “Were you able to contact an attorney?” she asked.

“My father’s handling it,” I answered. “When will I see the magistrate?”

A thin smile spread across her painted lips as she looked down at her watch. “In a few days once you’re back in Texas.”

My heartbeat quickened. “Texas?”

“Correct. Your transport has already been arranged.”

My lower lip quivered. “What will happen to me until then?”

She walked toward the door, then paused and looked back over her shoulder. “I think you’re familiar with the Buncombe County Jail.”

* * *

By the time we reached the Buncombe County Jail well after midnight, I was in the fetal position in the back of the car. Rather than parking in the front lot and going through the main doors, we were admitted through a high gate covered in barbed wire to a back covered entrance I’d never seen before. The car door opened, and one of the male federal officers pulled me out by my handcuffs. My legs faltered and before I could get my feet underneath me, my knees buckled and slammed into the concrete.
 

“I’ll take it from here!” an angry voice shouted.

A man hooked his arms under mine and hoisted me to my feet. I recognized his face but didn’t know his name. His eyes were full of confusion and pity. “Are you OK?” he asked quietly in my ear.

All I could do was shake my head.

“I’ve got you,” he said, wrapping an arm around my waist to help me walk. “Baynard, get me a wheelchair!”

They helped me sit down and wheeled me inside.

Movement in the far corner of the room caught my attention. “Sloan!”

My blurry eyes focused on Nathan just as two deputies caught him by the chest to prevent him from reaching me.
 

“Get him out of here!” a gruff voice I didn’t recognize barked from a nearby hallway.

“We’re working on getting you out of here!” Nathan shouted before he was forced through a door and out of my view.

The deputy who had brought me in wheeled my chair up to a tall counter and handcuffed my arm to it.

Behind us, there were murmurings from the federal agents warning the deputies about procedures and preferential treatment. The woman behind the counter looked terrified to talk to me. I didn’t know her, but it was obvious she knew me. And judging from the whispers and wide eyes around the room, she wasn’t the only one.

She slid a sheet of paper and a pen toward me. The top of the page read
Female Inmate Intake Form.
I shuddered. “Please fill this out,” she said.

There was an entire section about pregnancy. I snorted at the line,
Is your pregnancy high risk?
 

When I was finished, she placed a clear plastic box in front of me. “Ms. Jordan, I need you to place all your personal belongings inside this container for inventory.”

They hadn’t even allowed me to change out of my dress before taking me into custody, so I took off all my jewelry and put it in the box.
 

“I’ll need your shoes as well,” she added.

I slipped off my heels and dropped them into the box. The deputy who had gotten the wheelchair brought a pair of rubber, slide-on flip-flops. He knelt down and slipped them onto my bare feet. He stood and un-cuffed me from the counter, then helped me to my feet.

“We need to get your photos,” he explained. “Can you walk?”

I nodded but leaned heavily on his arm for support.

He backed me up against a wall marked with measurements for height and took a step back. Another woman tapped a webcam positioned on top of a computer. “Please look here, Ms. Jordan,” she said.

When my mugshots were finished, they took me to a computer that electronically scanned my fingerprints. “Your dad treated my grandmother last year,” the deputy at the computer said.
 

I tried to smile.

After he clicked a few more buttons, he motioned toward a woman standing behind me. “Deputy Knox will take you back to shower and change,” he said.

I shook my head. “I don’t need a shower.”

He grimaced. “It’s policy. You don’t have a choice.”

Deputy Knox took my arm. “This way, Sloan.”

Her tone caught my attention, and I looked at her. Her name when I’d known her had been Kellie Bryant. “Kellie?” I asked.

She cast her gaze at the floor.

Ten years before, Kellie had been on the high school cheerleading squad with me and Adrianne. We had shared a lab table in Advanced Placement Chemistry and had ridden the same school bus before her family moved to Arden. Now she was escorting me across the booking room toward a curtained hallway wearing rubber gloves. That could only mean one thing.

“Do you want me to get someone else?” she asked, still refusing to meet my eyes.
 

My chin was quivering. “No. Thank you, though.”

Once we were behind the curtain, she stood behind me and held my arms out to the side. She proceeded to thoroughly canvas my body, from my ears to my ankles. “Turn around, please,” she said.

I turned to face her, and she lifted my arms up again. Then she completely patted down my front, swiping under my boobs and between my legs. I refused to cry, but I’d never been so mortified and shamed in all my life. That is, until she instructed me to disrobe, squat…and cough.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

I stood back up, covering myself as much as I could with my arms.
 

She motioned to a concrete shower with no curtain and a chipped floor behind her. “Step into the shower and use the lice shampoo. Everyone has to do it. It will sit on your hair for three minutes, and then you can wash it out. There’s regular shampoo in there you can use after.”

I nodded my understanding.

“Your dress and undergarments will be inventoried with the rest of your things,” she said. “You’ll get them back when you leave.”

I thought about telling her she could just trash the dress, but in that moment, I wanted nothing more than that expensive ugly garbage bag.

My teeth chattered as I soaked my head under the ice-cold water. Then, naked and shivering, I leaned against the concrete wall while the lice shampoo burned into my scalp. I slid down the concrete blocks and wrapped my arms around my legs, my tears mixing with the suds as I cried into my knees.

When I was finished, Kellie waited for me with a white cotton sports bra and panties, a white thermal undershirt, a pair of drawstring orange pants and matching top, thick white socks, and black slide flip-flops. As I pulled up the orange pants, I noticed the elastic strain as it went up over my belly.
 

How lovely.

My first memory of my baby bump would be forever tainted with the scent of lice killer and the cold steel of handcuffs.

22.

When I was a child, maybe four or five, I had a horrific nightmare after attending an Easter egg hunt at my Aunt Joan’s church. Twenty years later, graphic details of that dream were crystal clear in my memory.
 

I was dragged to the basement of the building by a scaly creature with a forked tongue and razor-sharp claws. It had glowing amber eyes and smelled of sulfur, rotten eggs. The thing slithered through a door, slamming me against the doorframe as we moved.
 

I knew there were hundreds of people on the floor above the basement, but something invisible, with the weight of a thousand bricks, was crushing my windpipe. I couldn’t scream.

With a violent fling, I was slammed against the cold, wet tiles of a bathroom. They were tiny tiles, maybe an inch in size, and they were green, a fluorescent lime that gave the room a sinister glow. Something sticky was splattered on the tiles; I assumed it was blood, but it had the consistency of tar and the tackiness of superglue. In my discarded heap, I was paralyzed, unable to move. Or run. Or fight.

The creature opened a long box—a vertical, wide coffin, maybe—that was nailed to the wall in front of me. Inside it, were my parents, seemingly made of stone with their eyes fixed but full of terror. Hot tears stung my cheeks, but I couldn’t cry because I couldn’t breathe.

Helpless and screaming on the inside, I watched the creature use its claw to dissect the body of my mother first. Her dripping bowels splashed into a puddle of blood on the floor. I could feel her pain. Every bit of it, but there was nothing I could do to save her—or save myself.

That panic. That nightmare. That feeling—magnified tenfold—was what the inside of my cell at the Buncombe County Jail felt like. All night long. It was an all-consuming nightmare from which I could not escape.

Because of the baby and my hysteria, I wasn’t put into the general population. I was put in a cell on the medical floor, as far away from the other inmates as possible, but that was little consolation. Under my metal bed, I curled into a ball with the itchy down pillow clamped down tight over my head. My face was slick against the polished concrete floor, resting in a pool of tears, snot, and saliva.
 

For hours and hours, I couldn’t stop the shaking.

At some point, I heard my name. “Sloan? Sloan, can you hear me?”

Prying open one of my eyes, I saw the face of Virginia Claybrooks peeking under my bed. Her hand closed around my wrist, yanking me along the smooth floor out into the halogen light of my cell. She plopped down on her backside and pulled my head into her lap. Stroking my hair, she quietly sang a song I’d never heard.

“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll; whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul…”

I tried to focus on her words, but the melody was like a baby’s mobile lullaby chiming in a horror house.

“The sheriff is coming,” someone said.

Virginia flinched.

Heavy footfalls echoed down the hall, then a gruff male voice was in the room. “Virginia, you aren’t authorized to be in here.”

“I know that, Sheriff, but you can’t blame me,” Virginia said. “So fire me if you want. I ain’t sorry.”

He grunted his disapproval. “Go on now,” he said. “Get out of here before I have to put you in handcuffs.”

Squeezing her shin as much as I could, I moved off her lap back to the cold tiles.
 

The sheriff dropped to a knee beside me. “Sloan, are you all right?”

I wanted to scream at him,
Do I look all right?
But I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t.

“Do you have meds you need to be taking?” he asked.