The Lost (15 page)

Chapter Fourteen

B
y the time late morning rolled around, the summer heat had been switched to full-blast, scorching the air and setting Vegas's blacktop streets to broil. Grif had his sleeves rolled, but wanted to strip down to his undershirt as soon as the sun's rays hit his body. It took a while for Kit's classic convertible Duetto to cool, and he couldn't help but think of the sun's violent plasmic state—all that fire and cosmic fuel burning the atmosphere.

So deep, Grif thought, that there was nothing it couldn't split, sunder, or touch.

And speaking of deep, Grif thought, stealing a glance at Kit. There'd been something deeper niggling at her when he'd arrived home that morning. More than just worry or irritation over his absence. He'd sensed it as soon as he entered the living room, the same way he sensed a soul recently loosened from its body. It might have been the dregs of their conversation about Evie the day before, and Kit's harebrained idea that Grif somehow compared the two women in his mind. It was a talk he'd been determined to revisit, though he wasn't so sure now.

Do you ever dream about me?

No, he didn't really want to bring that up again. And there was no comparing Kit and Evie anyway. They could have been alive at the same time, same era, and still wouldn't exist in the same universe. Evie was moody and melancholic and prone to fits of passion, good and bad. Grif had often held his breath when she entered a room, waiting to see which it would be, sighing in relief when she turned the beautiful moon face his way, a calming force over the wild sea.

Kit, on the other hand, was like a newly opened soda pop. All effervescence and sparkle and fizz. It was a strange feeling when a woman's smile made you want to hold her inside of you just to feel more of her cooling effect. So her mood yesterday had cold-cocked him. He didn't know what to do with her when she was flat.

Thankfully, whatever was bothering her had melted away during the course of their lovemaking. What started out as sweet and tentative on the living-room sofa transitioned into a wild vertical roll down the hall. They'd ended up back in their bedroom, where they eventually slept, as if trying to make up for the missed night.

God, but this woman made him forget himself. It was such a complete lapse in purpose and reason that it almost worried him. Should he react to another person like she was an addiction? Or allow himself to burn with a need so fiery all he wanted to do was add more fuel?

Half the time, Grif thought, he didn't even know he was craving her—her touch, voice, nearness. Then the need climbed into him like a bandit, and it was only after he was already bruising her lips with his and devouring her flesh like an animal that he realized how hungry he'd been for her at all. By the time they were done, both sated and sweaty, loose-limbed and exhausted—he could barely remember his own name.

He even forgot why he was here.

Grif shoved that thought—all of them—away. The important thing was that Kit was back to her normal self, volleying theories on the Cuban-Russian connection like she was playing tennis with herself. By the time she'd come to a halt in the hospital lot, she was armed with plans to confront the Kolyadenkos, Mary Margaret, and Al Zicaro in one fell swoop.

Five minutes later, though, after following the ER nurse's directions to the hospital's cafeteria, they were faced with a sight that made them both fall still and silent. Jeannie Holmes's mother was already waiting.

The woman's hollow gaze skimmed Kit first, wistfulness blooming, before dying on the next blink. Seeing the look, Kit shoved her bag into Grif's hands, and rushed to take the woman's hands in her own. “Thank you for agreeing to see us, Ms. Holmes. I know this is a terrible time for you.”

Ms. Holmes's face damned near turned to dust. Her head fell, and she dropped back into her seat, and slumped. Yet her fingers remained locked with Kit's, who moved to sit next to her. Grif remained standing across the Formica tabletop.

“Call me Jann,” she said, finally looking up. “Detective Carlisle told me you'd be coming. And that you saved my daughter. Thank you. No one else ever tried.”

“I wish we could have done more,” Kit said softly.

Grif sat, too. “We'd like to do more still.”

Jann jolted at his voice, and her expression hollowed out again as she drew her hands away. Grif'd seen this look in women before, cowed and withdrawn and mistrustful. He both understood it and didn't, but knew Kit would have to take the lead on this one.

“I want to show you something,” Jann said, pulling a battered brown handbag from the adjacent plastic chair. She rummaged until she pulled out an old photograph, and handed it to Kit. “Jeannie wasn't always like this. Three years ago she was beautiful, bright. So smart I would have sworn on my life she could never get involved with any drug. Certainly not this.”

“I don't think smarts have anything to do with it,” Kit said, gently thumbing the worn photo. “These kinds of drugs can take over your mind in one fell swoop. They shut down the pathways that lead to healthy decision-making and burn new cravings into your mind.”

“They eat you alive.” Jann winced like she'd bitten into something bitter, and she dropped her face into her hands. “She used to sing, you know. She had a voice like an angel. The kind that could have taken her somewhere.”

Kit rubbed her palm along the woman's arm, Jann Holmes's pain etched across her own brow. It made Grif want to pull her close and protect her from herself.

“We're working hard to get
krokodil
off the streets and to take down the people who put it there.”

Sniffing, Jann's eyes narrowed as she glanced up at Grif. “You're the couple who busted up that prostitution ring a while back, aren't you? They said at the time that the man who was running that ring, that Chambers character, was untouchable in this town. But you touched him.”

Grif just nodded.

Jann glanced back at her lap, and the photo that she cradled there. “More rich men doing what they want, making money off the poor . . . or the cravings of the poor.” Mouth pursed tight, she looked at Kit. “I can't tell you much. Jeannie and I haven't been close in years, not since she started using. I'm ashamed to say that I kicked my own daughter out of my house. I knew she'd already shot every dollar and dime she had into her veins, and when the money I worked so hard for began to disappear from my wallet, well, I'd had enough. I've just . . . I've had enough of people taking things from me.”

“So had you ever met her friends? Tim Kovacs? Or Jeap Yang?”

“Tim was the one she was found with, right?” Jann asked, but immediately shook her head. “No, she obviously picked him up somewhere on the way to rock bottom. But, of course, I'd met Jeap. They dated for years. I think he's the one who got her into that life. Started with the light stuff, but that was like putting a match to a fuse for my Jeannie. She's like me. I get hooked on something, and it don't ever stop. That's why I don't ever start.”

Jann lowered her head again.

“Ms. Holmes . . . Jann. This isn't your fault.” Kit leaned close. “Nothing could have fated this addiction. It was her choice. But she
was
given a hand in getting there.”

“Only someone without a child could say I'm blameless.” The permanent frown deepened between Jann Holmes's eyes. “It's a mother's job to protect her child. I brought her into a dangerous world. And then I failed her.”

Jann rose, and hefted her bag over her shoulder. It looked like it weighed a thousand pounds. “I— I think I'm going to go home for a bit. I've been here since they brought her in. I've already told her nurses that you can go in, but I don't know what you expect to accomplish by seeing her. They say she might never wake up.” She huffed humorlessly. “Just don't get your hopes up. That girl will break your heart every time.”

And she walked away without another word, steps as monotone as her voice, until she disappeared from sight.

“Ouch,” Kit said softly, finally breaking the silence.

“What
do
you expect to accomplish here, Kit?” Grif asked, because it was the one thing that hadn't made sense to him on the short, hot drive over. She'd been chatting too rapidly for him to get a word in edgewise, but in the wake of Jann's dejection, he couldn't help but wonder the same thing. “Chances are Jeannie's not going to miraculously wake from a coma just to help forward our investigation.”

Kit's chatty demeanor made a sudden detour. She looked away, all at once overly interested in the vending machines. Grif narrowed his eyes.

“I could use a granola bar about now,” she said. “You want a granola bar?”

“Ki-i-it.” The word elongated into a growl. She turned back to him with wide, gamine eyes—à la Hepburn, à la Evie, à la every woman who'd ever tried to pull the wool when getting what they wanted. Grif crossed his arms. “What. Are. You. Doing?”

She licked her lips slowly, as if testing the words for flavor before answering. “I'm baiting . . . it.”

Grif shoved back from the table. The pop and effervescence and fizz of her personality suddenly made his head want to explode. “Hell no.”

“There is no hell,” she quipped. “Remember?”

Grif shook his head. “For the life of me, I cannot figure why you're always bound and determined to throw yourself in the line of fire.”

She clearly had no argument, as she waved the concern away. “Scratch reached out to us through Trey Brunk, and I bet we could have squeezed vital information from it if we'd been prepared for it.”

“How do you propose we prepare to face off against one of the Third?”

“Not we, silly,” Kit said, rolling her eyes like he was the nut job. “Scratch would never talk to you.”

Now Grif stood.

Kit stood, too, and suddenly they were toe to toe. In that moment, with determination in her eye and her jaw clenched tight, he decided she looked
exactly
like Evie.

“No.” Grif meant to walk away, clear out of the hospital without looking back—heat be damned, along with Kit's harebrained ideas—but he whirled back before he'd taken three steps. Pointing, he said, “Scratch wants to possess you. It wants your soul!”

“So let me use that,” she implored, palms up.

“Over my dead body.”

“I don't think anyone with a dead body has ever said that before,” Kit said, crossing her arms.

Now he did turn to leave.

But Kit appeared unexpectedly in front of him, leaning forward, all of that energetic willfulness curled into her fists, like he was the one in the wrong. “Grif, when I told you Jeannie was still alive, you got a look on your face that contradicted that fact.”

Grif said nothing.

“Is she destined to die?” she asked, and then clarified, “Is she your next Take?”

He unclenched his jaw only long enough to answer. “Yes.”

“Soon?”

“Yes.”

Shaking her head, Kit glared. “So we don't have much time, and we have even fewer leads. It's worth a shot.”

Laying a palm on each side of her face, Grif whispered fiercely, “It's not worth all the fortune in the world.”

Placing her palms over his, Kit squeezed. “Let me do this, Grif. I don't have wings. I can't fight using fists or brute strength. All I have is my mind, and the knowledge that this Scratch creature is . . . interested in me. And . . . ouch. You're hurting me.”

Realizing his palms had fallen to her shoulders, he released her immediately, but he didn't back away. “Scratch is stalking you.”

“I'm counting on it.”

Grif slammed his fist on the table next to him, causing the rest of the room to go silent and still. He didn't care. “Don't say that like it's a good thing! It's obsessed! Didn't you see the way it looked at you?”

Kit only lifted her chin higher. “Yes. I know exactly what that sort of obsession looks like.”

He stuttered into silence and cocked his head. Was there some sort of double meaning in her words?

“I can do this, Grif,” she said before he could give it more thought.

Grif jerked his head. “It's too dangerous. It will try to use your emotional weaknesses against you.”

“So I won't show it any.” She shrugged.

“It has a bead on you, Kit, and I don't know what to do about it! Not yet, anyway.”

Kit jabbed a finger in the center of his chest. “Then let me use that obsession! Let me get what we need from Jeannie through it by doing what I do best.”

Grif cursed and paced away, blowing out a hard breath as he yanked the hat from his head. Running a hand over the top of it, he stood for a moment, feeling her eyes hard on his back. When he was sure he was calm, he turned. “If we muck it up, Jeannie could be Lost.”

Kit stood there, her pretty face and cupcake dress completely at odds with the steel in her spine. “Then we don't muck it up.”

And what about you, he wondered, but couldn't say. He didn't want her to know how worried he was for her, partly because he didn't want to admit it to himself. But Scratch was the scariest creature he'd ever encountered . . . and he had absolutely no idea what to do about it.

Grif didn't answer for a long while. Visitors and orderlies and nurses mulled around them, but nobody paid much attention to the man and woman in an obvious standoff. They were probably used to the drama. And Grif was used to Kit. He knew that look on her face. If he demanded she leave here now, she'd just return once his back was turned. Better to stay close so he could keep watch.

So he sighed and asked the inevitable. “What's your plan?”

And he was unsurprised to find that it included him.

T
he curtain did little to separate Jeannie Holmes's bed from the rest of the ER, and the human drama playing out behind and around Kit seeped into the dreary enclave in the form of intermittent moans, rhythmic beeps, and constant drips. A machine also beeped in the corner of Jeannie's cubicle, Kit saw, but that was the only life behind that curtain. She wanted to ask Grif if plasma ringed the girl's pale, limp body, but for now, as planned, Kit stood utterly alone.