Love Is The Bond: A Rowan Gant Investigation (9 page)

“Well, there did seem to be something
physical that was a bit odd,” I offered.

“What’s that?”

“Some kind of lacerations on his torso.”

“Whaddaya mean ‘some kind of
lacerations’?”

“Felicity had a better look than I did,” I
replied.

He looked over at her and raised a
questioning eyebrow. “Whatcha got?”

“I can’t be sure,” she replied with a shake
of her head. “There’s quite a bit of blood obscuring it, but there
definitely seemed to be a pattern to the lacerations.”

“What kinda pattern?”

“Sectional. Almost like a checkerboard from
what I could see. I took a couple of shots, but I don’t think
they’ll show much. Once he’s cleaned up, I suspect it will be a bit
more pronounced.”

“Okay. I’ll give the coroner a heads up. So
what do YOU two think it means?”

“Maybe that he was tortured?” she said with a
shrug. “Although, honestly, they really looked superficial. But
like I said. There was a lot of blood obscuring them.”

“Same here,” I offered. “Just not sure. But
it did seem a bit strange to me, so take that for what it’s
worth.”

“With you?” he harrumphed. “If YOU think
somethin’s strange, it’s usually not good.”

“Sorry.”

My friend reached up and smoothed back his
hair then stood there massaging his neck in silence. Finally he
said, “The number seven mean anything to you two?”

“Most consider seven to be a lucky number,”
Felicity offered.

“Reward, money, payoff,” I ticked off some of
the possibilities then added, “There are seven days in a week.”

“There are seven continents,” my wife
continued. “Seven seas, the dance of the seven veils, seven deadly
sins… Some prophecies speak of seven archangels.”

I nodded and continued her thread. “They also
mention the seven plagues, the seven seals, and…”

“Okay, okay,” he interrupted, holding up a
hand and waving me off. “It’s probably just the luck thing. That’s
what I kinda figured anyway.”

“What is?” I asked.

“Desk clerk said Wentworth specifically
requested room seven,” he replied.

“Was it him or his companion making the
request?”

“Dunno at this point.” He shook his head.
“The clerk said he’s the only one that came in, but we’re thinkin’
it coulda been whoever he was with.”

“Sounds like a setup to me,” I offered. “That
sort of thing would fit with a contract killing. Right?”

“Yeah, way ahead of ya’ on that one, Row,” he
replied. “Problem is the clerk didn’t see anyone in or outta the
place.”

“So she didn’t see whoever he was with
leaving either?”

“Nope. Matter of fact, she says she can’t
remember seein’ anybody else in the car at all when he checked in,
and he pulled up right out front. Big help, huh?”

“Well, he had to have been here with
someone.”

“No shit,” my friend huffed, an overtone of
halfway jovial sarcasm in his voice. “I think we kinda established
that already.”

“Just thinking out loud, Ben.”

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Guess we all are.
Anyway, we’re gonna shake down some of the local hoo… uh, working
girls, and see what we can find out.”

“Let me ask you something,” Felicity
interjected.

He glanced over at my wife. “What? ‘Working
girls’ is out too?”

She ignored the sardonic query and launched
into a question of her own. “I’ve been wondering this ever since
you called, and what you just said reminded me of it. How did the
body get found at such an odd hour? I mean there wouldn’t be any
maid service this time of night, and if he hadn’t checked out…”

“Clerk heard the shot and called
nine-one-one.”

“So the killer didn’t have very long to get
away,” she mused.

“Somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes,
best guess,” he explained. “She hesitated to make the call for
something like five to ten minutes, she’s not for sure. Then
response for a unit was right at six minutes.”

“Not much time,” I mused.

My friend grunted then reached up to massage
his neck as he said, “Yeah, well, apparently it was enough.”

“Do you want to grab some breakfast?” I
asked.

“What?” Felicity replied, looking over at me
as she downshifted the Jeep.

We were only a few blocks from home at this
point. Ben was still wrapping things up back at the crime scene,
but for the time being, my wife’s part in the investigation was
done—her official involvement anyway.

There was no doubt that something unnatural
was already hard at work, and it had every intention of dragging
both of us back into the middle of the entire mess. The intensity
of the feeling was actually enough to make one feel claustrophobic,
and that made me more than just a little nervous.

I had no choice but to wonder what, or who,
was pulling the strings. Especially when my friend finally sent us
on our way, and it became obvious that we weren’t the only ones who
could feel it. He had gone so far as to hedge the dismissal with a
promise to contact us later in the day if he had any questions. I
wouldn’t have thought anything of the comment if it weren’t for the
fact that I could tell simply by the way he spoke the words that
even he wasn’t sure why he’d said them. That in itself told me he
knew something was going on as well, even if only
subconsciously.

Still, the aberration thus far was that there
were none of the usual signs. No psychic flashes, no preternatural
headaches, and not even a hint of ethereal contact from the victim.
There was no apparent reason for us to be involved other than the
emergency photographic services Felicity had provided. Even so, it
felt like a foregone conclusion that we were now connected to this
crime in some vastly deeper way. For the life of me though, I had
absolutely no clue what that connection could be.

“Breakfast,” I repeated. “We could hit the
Corner Coffee House. I’ll buy.”

She gave her head a slight shake. “Maybe
later. Aren’t you still queasy?”

“Unfortunately, no,” I replied, sincere
in my words. “I’m afraid my tolerance for the horrific is back in
full. I
am
a little tired
though. What about you?”

“No.”

“No what?”

She shook her head again and spoke absently,
“No. Not queasy then.”

“Well, you’ve got to be tired. You’re running
on only about an hours sleep.”

“Hmmmm?”

“Tired. You’ve got to be tired.”

“Not really.”

“Okay,” I replied, giving a nod in her
direction. “So what’s on your mind?”

“What?”

“Yo, Earth to Felicity,” I said, reaching
over and poking her in the shoulder with my index finger. “Would
you like to fill me in on what’s going on here? You’re completely
scattered, and I find it really hard to believe you aren’t tired.
Is something wrong?”

“No… I don’t think…” she replied hesitantly.
“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Now you’re sounding like me,” I told her.
“What is it?”

I twisted in my seat and watched her through
a long pause. I could see that she was struggling with something,
and the aura surrounding her was one of intense frustration.

“That room…” she finally said after finishing
the turn onto our street and accelerating down the block.

“What about it?”

“The feeling…” she murmured. “I… I just can’t
shake it.”

“You mean the lack of fear?”

“No, not that. The sex.”

“Oh,” I replied, slightly taken aback.

I had been affected by that aura myself but
for the most part, only while inside the room. Once outside the
feeling had rapidly diminished, and after we had left the premises,
it had disappeared entirely. But, apparently the same wasn’t so for
my wife, and that worried me.

For a moment I started wondering if my
earlier SpellCraft simply wasn’t good enough to keep her from harm.
But, that tinge of panic didn’t last long. I knew full well that
I’d gone to great lengths constructing the spell, weaving it only
to keep her safe, not to cut her off from the ethereal entirely.
So, it stood to reason that she could still be overly sensitive to
myriad other energies. Besides, sensing and channeling positive
energies shouldn’t be harmful. And, sexual arousal probably
qualified as positive, or at least that’s what one would think.

I immediately abandoned my mental analysis
and grabbed for the dashboard out of self-preservation as my wife
whipped the vehicle into a hard right, squealing the tires and
tearing into our driveway at a higher rate of speed than I
considered advisable. She immediately accelerated out of the rapid
turn and barreled up the concrete expanse through the open gate and
brought us to a sudden halt directly in front of the garage. The
Jeep lurched as she jammed the gearshift into first and let the
clutch out even before she managed to switch off the engine.

I eyed her wordlessly for a second then
opened my mouth briefly before deciding not to chance a comment on
the fact that I knew she was a far better driver than she’d just
demonstrated. Of course, all I saw was the back of her head as she
was climbing out of the vehicle, almost before she’d extracted the
key from the ignition. I simply gave a mental shrug then twisted
around in my seat to reach for the camera bags. She turned back to
close her door and looked at me with an intense fire behind her
green eyes.

“Aye, leave them,” she instructed, her tone
harbored no room for negotiation. “Just go inside and get
undressed.”

When I stared back at her, almost
dumbfounded, she added, “Right now.”

I wasn’t entirely sure if what I was hearing
was a demand, a plea, or something born of both.

* * * * *

The door chime rang out for the second time,
setting the dogs into a repeat of the frenzy it had brought about
on the first go around. The deep-throated woof of our aging English
setter again formed a bass backdrop to the snarling bark of our
Australian cattle dog as they vociferously stood watch over their
territory. Whoever was out there, however, wasn’t easily frightened
away it seemed, and that told me it was probably Ben.

“We need to answer the door,” I told my
wife.

“No we don’t,” she breathed into my ear.
“Whoever it is will go away.”

“They haven’t yet,” I replied.

“They will,” she purred.

She was astride me in the bed, body pressing
down against mine as she continued to nuzzle at my neck. Her dainty
hands encircled my wrist, and she held my arms in place over my
head and down against the pillow. Of course, she wasn’t strong
enough to actually keep me pinned without quite a bit more leverage
than her current position offered. Even so, she was demonstrating
more strength than I expected, and she was definitely making it
difficult for me to move. That simple fact seemed to delight her in
ways I couldn’t begin to describe. Apparently, something about
exercising dominance and control had become a focal point for her
arousal, and she wasn’t about to let it go.

She’d been all over me the moment we got into
the house. I hadn’t even had the chance to “get undressed” as she
had told me to do, and in fact, I wasn’t certain I would be able to
find all of the buttons she’d managed to rip from my shirt when
she’d descended upon me. That had been sometime around eight-thirty
this morning, and she hadn’t let up since—not that I’d been able to
keep up with her by any stretch of the imagination. Truth be told,
what was certainly an adolescent boy’s dream come true, was for me
rapidly becoming a real problem.

I had never seen my wife act like this, even
during the times of passionate discovery in our early courtship. I
hated to resort to the overused term “nymphomaniac,” but at this
point I couldn’t think of anything else that would accurately
describe the visceral intensity of her physical desire.

Whatever it was that had gone on in that
motel room, Felicity was tapped directly into some portion of it. I
was actually beginning to wonder if it was she who was in control,
or something else. In any event, she was insatiable, and I was just
plain exhausted. How she was still even awake, I had no clue.

I tried to reason with her. “Honey, it’s
probably Ben.”

“Can’t be,” she whispered. “He’s supposed to
call.”

“Yeah, but something tells me that’s him at
the door.”

Her reply came in another breathy murmur.
“Then he can just go away.”

I forced my arms upward and began levering my
body to the side, actually finding myself needing to struggle in
order to push her off my torso without hurting her. She wasn’t
going to give up easily, and in fact, me resisting only seemed to
inflame her libidinous mood further.

“Aye, where do you think you’re going?” she
giggled as she pushed herself into a half sitting position, still
straddling me. Then she proceeded to wrestle my arms back into
place as she wriggled forward and dropped her knees across my
elbows before beginning to slowly rock her hips.

“To get the door,” I told her flatly. “Let me
up.”

“Aye, how about if we just borrow his
handcuffs and send him on his way, then?” she murmured.

I was beginning to get concerned. I managed
to pull my arms free after a healthy struggle and then tried to
shift her off my chest. She immediately took hold of my wrists
again, trying to force my arms back down, but I twisted my hands
from her grasp and quickly took hold of hers.

“Oh, but I’m not finished with you yet,” she
purred, then without warning she dug her fingernails into the backs
of my hands and drew them across my flesh.

I yelped then called her name with more than
a hint of sharpness. “Ouch! What the?! Felicity!”

“Hmmmmm?” she murmured as she continued to
rock, seeming not only pleased with, but also intensely aroused by,
what she had just done to me.