Chapter 16

 

“Buzz?” I called, frozen in the doorway.

The office looked like a tornado had whipped through: computers smashed, pictures and papers on the floor, the file cabinet overturned...and more blood than I had ever seen in my life. Solomon came in behind me.

“Shit,” she said. She pushed past me. I saw a shoe sticking out from behind the desk—Buzz’s dress shoe, scuffed, worn... Probably the same shoes he’d been wearing for the past twenty years. Solomon knelt out of sight. I walked over to her in a dream.

Buzz lay on the floor in a pool of blood, his face cloud-white. There were even, neat slices up and down his arms; one along the left side of his face... And another, gaping wide, just below his Adam’s apple. Solomon pressed a towel to the wound. I wondered in some distant haze where she had gotten it.

“Diggs,” Solomon said, loudly enough that I snapped to attention. “Call 911.”

“He’s—”

“He’s got a pulse,” she said. “Take your phone and call an ambulance. Tell them he’s lost a lot of blood. He’s in shock, but I’ve got a pulse.”

I dialed 911. On the wall above Buzz’s desk, whoever had done this had left a message:

You were warned.

The dispatcher on the line got the details and assured me someone would be there soon. I hung up and went back to the other side of the desk. I knelt in the blood beside Solomon. Buzz’s eyes were open now—he looked terrified. His hand clutched Solomon’s arm while she pressed the now-blood-soaked towel to his throat.

“Just stay quiet,” Solomon said. There was no fear in her voice—nothing but perfect calm. “An ambulance is on the way. You just need to stay awake. Stay with me.”

He tried to speak, choking on the words. I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t help with anything, and when a trickle of blood dripped from his lips my head spun.

“We’ll get them, Buzz,” I finally said. “Just hang on. Please, just hang on.”

The paramedics were there within ten minutes, but by then Buzz was unconscious again. Solomon rode in the ambulance with him; I drove behind. Halfway there, I looked at the passenger’s seat and my brother looked back at me. He wore his swim trunks, his hair still dripping from the water. When he turned his head, I saw that half his skull had been crushed in, both eyes cloudy.

“What do you want from me?” I said. “Why are you here?”

“I’m always here,” he said. It was a voice I remembered from a lifetime ago; from the childhood we’d both lost. For a strange, irrational second, I didn’t want him to leave. Even if he was a manifestation of my own madness, I would take it. “You drag me with you,” Josh continued in the child’s voice I’d known, his words anything but childlike. “I’m here, even if you refuse to acknowledge me.”

“I’m acknowledging you now,” I half-whispered. “I see you now. What do you want?”

“It’s not what I want. I’m here for you... Because of you. What do you want?”

“I want Buzz to live,” I finally managed. It was all I could think of. Something that was more light than physical weight touched my hand. My brother remained beside me, eyes fixed on the horizon and his small hand on mine, for the rest of the drive. When I turned into Maine Medical Center and looked to the passenger’s side of the truck again, he was gone.

 

◊◊◊◊◊

They were already wheeling Buzz into surgery when I got into the hospital. Solomon stood off to the side with her arms around her middle, her face stark white. Before I could say anything, she launched herself into my arms and held on tight while I stroked her hair and murmured sweet little lies about how everything would be all right.

When she pulled back, she wiped her eyes with the back of her arm and looked embarrassed. I nodded toward the chairs in the waiting room.

“You want to sit?”

“Yeah. Sitting’s good. I want to hit the bathroom first, though.” She sniffled. “I think I may have peed a little when I first saw Buzz.”

I laughed. I think the sound surprised both of us. “Okay, go clean up. I’ll be right here.”

While she was in the restroom, Thibodeau showed up. He looked more haggard than the dead who kept popping up everywhere.

“We really need to stop meeting this way,” I said.

“Tell me about it. How’s Buzz?” He looked genuinely concerned.

“I’m not sure. Hopefully we got there in time—we’ll see.”

He shook his head and sank into the chair beside me. “Do you have any idea—”

“Eugene Elias,” I said before he could get the question out. “You know the pictures that had been taken of Solomon and me? The guy who’d been hanging around? He threatened Buzz, too. He’s a PI out of Weymouth.”

“What’s his beef with you?” Thibodeau asked.

“Not sure—he won’t tell us who hired him.”

“You think he was the one who did Charlene Dsengani?”

“I don’t know. It feels like two different M.O.s to me, but maybe this Elias is just trying to protect his boss, and that’s the killer.”

Thibodeau didn’t comment on that. Solomon came out then, and the detective took us to an empty exam room for a surreal interrogation that lasted over an hour. Solomon and I sat on an exam table while Thibodeau sat on the doctor’s stool; Solomon kept fiddling with the instruments, and I spent most of the time stealing glances out the door in the hope that someone would come to let us know how Buzz was doing. No one did. Meanwhile, Solomon and I presented everything we had on the investigation, from start to finish—including the photos Mary had given us.

Thibodeau looked genuinely shocked when he saw Davies and Foster in the shot.

“You haven’t told anyone else about this?” he asked us. We shook our heads.

“There hasn’t been time,” Solomon said. “We went straight to Buzz with the pictures, and then...well...” She trailed off.

“Right,” Thibodeau said. “You think you can do me a favor and keep this quiet a while longer?”

“Whatever you need,” I said without a second’s thought. “But people will want a statement about Buzz, and the doctors have already called his wife.”

“My office will handle the statement,” Thibodeau said. “I’ll see that someone stays with Buzz’s wife, and I’ll follow up on this Elias guy personally. And as for you two...”

“We have somewhere to stay,” I said. Solomon looked at me, surprised. “You have our cell numbers if you need to reach us. We won’t be far.”

“Be careful,” he said grimly. “I don’t like the direction this thing is heading.”

“We’re not crazy about it ourselves,” Solomon said.

After he’d gone, Solomon turned to me with a question in her eyes. I was already calling Wolf Cole, though.

 

 

 

◊◊◊◊◊

“You’re sure this isn’t a problem?” I said to Wolf when we pulled up at Johnny’s Portland brownstone three hours later. “Johnny—”

“He’s out of town,” Wolf said. “There’s no reason he needs to know anything about this. But if whoever killed Charlene is the same guy who tried to take out your boss, and maybe they have Lizzie and Maisie...” He shifted. “You’re gonna need more than a deadbolt, if that’s what you’ve stumbled into.”

This time, I agreed. Solomon and I had spent the past few hours in the waiting room at the hospital, barely speaking to one another for most of that time. It was only when the surgeon came out to tell us that Buzz was out of surgery and stable that we decided it might be time to go. I had to admit, I was genuinely touched at how readily Wolf offered up both his time and his brother’s place.

Inside, Johnny’s brownstone was tastefully decorated in surprisingly quiet earth tones, nothing like what I’d seen at the beach house.

“Lizzie picked out everything here,” Wolf said—sadly, I thought. I wondered if he believed she was dead. “Johnny hates it, but the place was featured in a couple of design magazines, so that’s good enough for him.”

It was two in the morning, the house eerily still. Solomon looked dead on her feet, her eyes glazed.

“You need anything to eat?” Wolf asked. “The kitchen’s through there.” He pointed toward an arched doorway in the back.

“I think just sleep, for now,” I said. Solomon nodded, mute.

Wolf didn’t give us the option of separate rooms and I didn’t ask. The guest room he led us to was on the second floor, with an en suite and a king-sized bed and walls painted an oddly comforting mossy green.

Solomon shucked her jeans and her bra without apology and got under the sheets in her t-shirt and underwear. I followed her lead, stripping to my boxers before I crawled in next to her. She didn’t wait for an invitation this time before she slipped into my arms.

“You okay?” I asked. She wrapped her arms around me more tightly and didn’t speak. I kissed the top of her head, my hand in her hair. “The surgeon said he’ll be all right.”

“I know,” she said, her voice muffled in my chest. She loosened her grip on me, but didn’t move. I didn’t mind. “What about you. Are you okay?” she asked.

It took me at least a minute, possibly two, before I answered. “My brother keeps appearing to me,” I finally said, instead of telling the lie I’d expected. I felt her shift, but kept my arms locked tight around her so she couldn’t go far.

“Are you serious?” she asked.

“And Doug Philbrick. Mostly Josh, though.”

She struggled in my arms until I let her go, then reached for the bedside lamp and turned it on low. Her hair was down, mussed and tumbling around her shoulders, and her eyes were bright with fatigue when she looked at me.

“Does he talk to you?” she asked. “Your brother, I mean.”

“Sometimes,” I said. I sat up in bed and leaned back against the wooden headboard. “Do you think I’m going crazy?”

She didn’t answer right away, as though considering the question. “I talk to people from the Payson fire sometimes.” She lowered her eyes and twisted her hands in the blanket. “And I had this friend who was in the church with me... I see her, sometimes.”

I looked at her in surprise. Four years working together, running together, and she’d never mentioned it. “For how long?”

She shrugged. “Since the fire, I think. Or not long after. It doesn’t happen very often anymore... When I was younger, though, I saw her a lot. What did he say to you?”

“He asked me what I want.”

“Oh.” She tilted her head and studied me. “What did you tell him?”

I looked at her, rumpled and deceptively delicate. You’d never expect the kind of strength she has in such a small package. I thought of the world I’d left in Baja; the exhaustion that inevitably comes from a life of not-so-quiet desperation.

I reached out with a hand that seemed to have a will of its own, and brushed the hair away from her face.

“What do you want?” I asked her.

There was a beat of silence. Then another. Instead of answering, she moved closer. The vulnerability in her gaze was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, the sheer honesty there almost overwhelming. Her lips were sweet when she kissed me, the lightest brush stroke; when I didn’t pull away, she continued. I tangled my hand in her hair and held her there, moved my lips against hers, felt myself respond when she pressed her body to mine. When I felt her tongue at the seam of my lips, I opened willingly, without a fight, and pulled her closer.

The kiss deepened. I lay down and pulled her on top of me, her heart beating hard against mine. When I shifted my focus to her ear and took the lobe into my mouth, she whimpered in a way I’d never heard from Solomon before. Her breath caught; her hips arched into mine. I slid my hand up and palmed her small, firm breast through the fabric of her t-shirt.

She was the one who pulled back. Her pupils were blown wide and her lips were swollen. “We...” She sat up, still straddling me. I tried to pretend I wasn’t harder than I could remember being since I was a teenager. “Um—we should probably stop. I mean...” She hesitated. “Right? I’m tired, and you’re tired, and people are missing and Buzz is in the hospital. So, I’m not having sex with you. Definitely.”

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t move. Just watched her while she struggled with a decision I wasn’t sure I was ready to make anyway. Finally, when I’d managed to restore at least part of my normal brain function, I reached up and ran my hand through her hair, guiding her face so she would look at me.

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s your decision—but you’re right, I don’t want our first time to be like this. You deserve a little better than a drug dealer’s guest bedroom on one of the worst nights of our lives.”

“Just a little better?”

“Fair enough. A lot better.” I shifted. “But if you don’t want me to try something more, you have to get off me. Soon.”

She grinned, eyebrows up. “Yeah? Why’s that?” She moved above me, twitching her hips just enough to make me completely nuts. I growled when she kissed me again, wrapped my arms around her, and flipped us so that I was back on top.

The kiss was slower then, more sensual than just plain sex, and I nipped her bottom lip and felt the length of her body against mine. And pulled back. I let out a long, slow, even exhale, then moved off her and flopped onto my back. “Just give me a minute?” I said.

“Sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry—she sounded downright triumphant.

“Sure you are.”

Things were quiet for a few seconds, nothing but the sound of the occasional car on the street outside to break the stillness. Solomon shifted beside me. I reached down, found her hand, and twined my fingers with hers.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. She hesitated. “Are we? I mean, are you and I okay? Because if we’re not... That was a lot of fun, what we just did. A lot of fun.” She let out a sexy little exhale. “Seriously. More fun than the county fair, just without the fried dough. But I don’t want to screw things up, you know? You’re a pain in the ass, but I kind of like having you around.”

I rolled to my side so I could face her. The vulnerability had returned to her gaze—the kind of openness I knew she wouldn’t show anyone else.

“We’re okay. I like having you around, too... I’m not gonna do anything to mess that up, if I can help it.”

“Okay. Me too.”

I stretched my arm out and she snuggled in with her head on my shoulder, her hand on my stomach. “Do you think you can sleep?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Strangely enough, I think so. You?”

“Yeah. I think so.” Her eyes were already closed. I shut out the light, wrapped my arms around her, and waited for morning.