Secret Worlds (529 page)

“Collins, I want you to circle around back and see if there’s a rear entrance. If anyone in the apartment decides to make a break for it, they’re going to head for the back door. Hill, you’re with me.”

“What about me? What do I do?” I asked.

“Stay quiet and out of the way.”

Collins and Hill smirked at each other, their shark grins reflected in their sunglasses, while I huffed in irritation.

Assholes.

Although the building proclaimed to have a security system, the lock was broken and we encountered no resistance getting inside. There was a pervasive smell of boiled cabbage about the place, making me regret the milkshake I’d sucked down at Denny’s.

“Why do these places always smell like my Great Aunt Ina?” I asked aloud.

“What?” Holbrook asked, glancing at me over his shoulder as he pressed the button for the elevator.

“My Great Aunt Ina. She was a weird one. She had one lazy eye, but I could never remember which one. You couldn’t tell if she was looking at you or something across the room. Damn unnerving,” I rambled.

“Right...” Holbrook drawled, while Hill looked at me askance.

“Never mind,” I said, rolling my eyes and shooing them into the elevator ahead of me.

The cloying scent of air freshener filled the third floor hallway in a noxious cloud, smacking me in the face as soon as I stepped off the elevator, coating my tongue with an oily residue.

“Christ, did someone set off a truck load of Lysol?” Holbrook asked, wrinkling his nose at the overpowering smell.

“Something like that,” I replied distractedly, my steps slowing as we approached Shoup’s door. Beneath the overpowering stink of factory produced flowers was the all too familiar new penny scent of blood.

The sounds of life were all around us—the bang and clatter of someone making dinner in the apartment to the left, the canned laughter of a TV in the one to the right, and somewhere down the hall a baby was crying. Shoup’s apartment however, was silent as the grave.

“We’ve got a problem,” I warned when Holbrook stopped in front of the door.

“What’s up?”

“I smell blood. Lots of it.”

His hand went automatically to the weapon at his hip, unsnapping his holster, while he motioned me to move behind him with the other hand. Silent communication passed between the agents, and with a nod from Holbrook, Hill moved into place on the other side of the doorway.

Keeping one hand on his gun, Holbrook raised the other to knock on the door. His expression turned sour as he eyed the thick bandages swaddling his hand. Nodding at Hill, he waited for the other agent to knock.

“Ms. Shoup, this is Special Agent Holbrook with the FBI. Open the door!”

Silence persisted beyond the door for several heartbeats, almost long enough for me to believe that the apartment was empty. I was about to tell them to forget about it when a muffled thump sounded on the other side of the door. In front of me, Holbrook went stiff, his body all but vibrating with tension.

“Ms. Shoup? Ms. Shoup, open the door,” he said in a loud and clear voice, while Hill pounded on the door so hard that it rattled in the doorframe.

Another burst of frantic movement inside the apartment was the only answer we received. Scenting the air I mentally catalogued the odors I could detect beneath the chemical stink of air freshener. The scent of blood was strong, pervasive enough to let me know that whoever it had once belonged to was not likely to be up and walking about now. Beyond that was the smell of garbage, and the ammonia of a dirty litter box.

“It’s her cat,” I said, letting the tension slip from my shoulders.

Ignoring me, he gave Hill another silent command, and once the other agent had raised his gun to target the doorway, he took a couple steps back and delivered a powerful kick to the lock. For a second it didn’t look like the door would give, and then the doorframe buckled, raining splinters and chipped paint down on the carpet. Pushing the door open, he peered into the apartment, his gun drawn and held at the ready.

“Stay here,” he told me as he stepped through the doorway.

Yeah, right,
I thought, moving to follow him in, only to be stopped by Hill extending an arm across the doorway.

I would have demanded what the hell he was doing if not for the dead stare he leveled at me. Crossing my arms over my chest, I leaned a shoulder against the ruined doorframe and peered into the apartment. Shoup’s apartment was even smaller than the one I’d shared with my roommate in college. The door opened onto a sparsely furnished living room, the sagging couch and plywood coffee table looking to be thrift store finds. A single chair and TV stand looked like they’d at least been bought at IKEA, worldwide supplier of affordable furniture for college students and bachelors alike.

Beyond the couch was a narrow kitchen, barely big enough for one person to navigate, and a small eat-in dinette with a rickety table and two chairs covered in junk mail and empty take-out boxes. A door to the left of the living room was cracked open, revealing the end of a bed, the rumpled covers spilled half onto the floor. The scent of blood radiated from the bedroom, and lurking beneath the rich coppery fragrance was a trace of sweat and cigarette smoke that I’d come to associate with Johnson.

If the extensiveness of his stink was anything to go by, he’d spent a lot of time here. Once I had picked it out from the other scents, it was almost like a thread that I could see weaving back and forth across the room. I could all but see the path he had followed in front of the window, leaving trails of cigarette ash in his wake as his no-nonsense shoes wore a faint furrow in the dingy carpet. Given the amount of time he’d spent in Shoup’s apartment I had to wonder if he’d somehow been targeting me long before Samson escaped from prison, or if I’d just happened to be a handy victim. Had I conveniently fallen into his lap when any wolf would have done?

I raised a shaking arm towards the bedroom. “She’s in there.”

Holbrook turned to see me standing in the doorway, one foot inching over the threshold. “I thought I told you to stay outside.”

“I am outside,” I replied, pulling my foot back from the doorway to validate my response. “Not that it matters. I told you no one’s in here except her cat.” As if to emphasize my point, a small ball of ginger fur chose that moment to burst out from under the couch, streaking into the kitchen where it hunkered down next to the stove and hissed at us. Except for Loki, most cats don’t like me much. I think they can sense the wolf inside and recognize her for the dangerous predator she is.

Letting out a long, slow breath Holbrook rolled his shoulders and resettled his grip on the Glock. “Don’t. Move,” he instructed, taking several slow steps towards the bedroom door.

Rolling my eyes at his dramatics, I remained by the door and fought to hide my irritation when Hill eased into the room. The two agents made a slow sweep of the apartment, checking every inch to make sure that it was empty. My suspicions about the fate of Shoup were confirmed when Holbrook emerged from the bedroom, barking orders into the cell phone pressed to his ear. Holbrook and Hill had both slipped their guns back into their holsters, their tension gone, replaced by solemnity now that they were dealing with a corpse.

I would have enjoyed feeling smug if my vindication wasn’t dependent on the dead woman sprawled out on the bed in the other room. Even though she’d likely been crazier than a sack full of angry pixies to be tangled up with Johnson, that didn’t mean she’d deserved being butchered and left to rot in that depressing apartment. No one deserved that.

Well, maybe except for Samson. And Johnson. And Chrismer.

While Holbrook rallied the troops and Hill went outside to coordinate with his partner, I took the opportunity to venture into the apartment and do a little snooping. I knew enough from watching hours of CSI to avoid touching anything, and didn’t doubt that Santos would hang my ass out to dry if I contaminated the scene, but I had to satisfy my curiosity. I needed to know why these people wanted me dead.

Standing in the middle of the living room, making sure I wasn’t in danger of brushing up against anything, I started looking over the random clutter littered across the coffee table. A momentary spike of guilt stabbed into my gut as I perused the woman’s life with cold detachment, but I quickly dismissed it.

It’s not like she’s going to get pissed at me for being nosy.

At first glance it looked like the coffee table was just covered in more junk mail, dirty coffee cups, and several air fresheners that were responsible for the choking scent permeating the hallway outside. I was about to go investigate the kitchen and its hissing occupant when something caught my eye among the old pizza ads and past due credit card statements. Hesitating, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure that Holbrook was preoccupied before I plucked the salmon colored flyer from underneath a dog eared copy of the
National Enquirer.
The venomous words swam in front of my eyes as a cold shiver raced down my spine.

Humans for Humanity is a radical hate group who believe that all non-humans are the scourge of the earth and the root of all evil. They’re National Socialist Party wannabes, and completely whack-a-doodle. Like their Nazi counterparts, they believe in a supreme race and that anyone unlike them is a form of pollution that deserves to be eradicated. To Humans for Humanity, vampires, werewolves, and all the other varied non-mundanes are the same as the Jews and homosexuals are to the Nazis.

Without thinking, I sank down on the edge of the couch, fighting to breathe through the panic burning in my chest. Johnson had left no doubt in my mind that he wanted me dead, but I’d never have guessed that he was involved with the group of racist nut jobs. Setting aside the flyer, I flipped through some of the other papers on the table, many of them filled with venomous anti-supes propaganda. The sheer unadulterated hatred these people felt for me and my kind was sickening. As I rifled through the clutter spread across the coffee table, I uncovered an ashtray, filled to the brim with cigarette butts, and grew even more certain that Shoup had been involved with Johnson somehow.

“What the hell is Johnson into?” I muttered aloud, dropping another offensive flyer on the table. Had he been a member of Humans for Humanity all along, or had his wife’s adultery driven him to join their crazed ranks?

Behind me, Holbrook continued to issue commands to whoever was on the other end of the line, and I figured it was likely to be my only chance to get a look at the woman who had presumably been working with Johnson. I rose from the couch, and crept to the bedroom doorway on silent feet.

Cheap metal blinds hung in the room’s single window, coated in a layer of dust so thick that they looked grey rather than white. They didn’t do much to keep the light out, leaving the room bathed in cold light. I don’t know if it was the light, or the way that she was splayed so carelessly on the bed, but I had to admit that I felt a stab of sympathy for her.

She had been pretty, in a plain Jane kind of way, with straight dark hair cut into an asymmetrical bob that framed a slightly rounded face. Eyes the color of bittersweet chocolate stared unseeing up at the ceiling. Faint red marks on either side of the bridge of her nose indicated that she wore glasses, but I didn’t see them anywhere on the bed. Her throat had been slit, a ragged slash bisecting the pale skin of her neck. An arc of blood colored the ceiling and the wall behind the bed, while a large pool of blood had soaked into the rumpled sheets beneath her, looking dry and stiff. I was guessing she’d been dead for a while.

It was quick at least,
I supposed, though I doubted that Shoup would see that as a saving grace considering she was dead either way.

There were no lingering traces of cigarette smoke in the bedroom, making me think that it was unlikely Johnson had killed her himself.

Figures the bastard wouldn’t have the balls to do the deed himself.

Which meant that there were other people involved in this mess. People that would be all too happy to see me dead. The list of people who wanted to kill me was getting longer by the minute. If I was lucky, maybe they’d duke it out over who got the honors and take each other out.

Nah, I’d never be that
lucky.

IT ONLY TOOK fifteen minutes for the apartment to be overrun by EMTs, police officers, FBI agents, and one harried animal control officer decked out in fire retardant gloves. I wasn’t sure what he was anticipating, but I thought the gloves were overkill until I saw the way the little ball of fluff transformed into a whirlwind of slashing claws and needle-like teeth. At that moment even the wolf didn’t want to be within ten feet of
that
furious creature.

Officer Beefcake was a familiar face amongst the throng of uniformed officials, and he did not seem at all pleased to see me.

“Well Ms. Cray. You seem to have a
nose
for trouble, don’t you?” he said as he sidled up to me, his thumbs hooked through his belt, framing his washboard abs. It should be against some kind of cosmic law for someone so hot to be such a humungous tool.

My shoulder’s stiffened at his jibe, but I chose to take the high road and let it slide.

Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

“Just lucky I guess.”

“Uh huh.”

I sighed in relief when one of the other officers caught his attention, waving him over.

“I’m watching you, Cray,” he warned, extending a finger in my direction before turning and stalking away like a ticked off peacock. Lucky for me his angry strut highlighted the toned curve of his ass, giving me a rather nice view as he stalked across the apartment.

Things were getting just a little too tense for my liking in the confines of Shoup’s tiny apartment so I ducked out into the hallway and slouched against the wall. Away from the frenetic flurry of activity, I let my head roll back and my eyes slide shut, relishing the relative quiet of the hallway. I was finally healing faster than a human, but it was still painfully slow compared to typical were standards.