Touching Silver (3 page)

Maybe his confidence in Remy wasn’t as misplaced as it had originally seemed, but that still didn’t mean she belonged on
her
case—even if it seemed Isaac, Nathan and Remy were a package deal.

She pulled into the visitor’s lot at the hospital and found a spot near the entrance. Nathan and Remy waited for them at the door. This time they weren’t trying to taste each other’s tonsils, though Remy had her hand in Nathan’s back pocket.

“Does she usually dress like that?” Olivia muttered as she and Isaac approached the hospital.

“Be thankful she’s dressed at all.” The doors whisked open, but Isaac stepped to the side, tilting his head toward the entrance. “Lead the way, Detective.”

Olivia nodded and her three new associates fell in step behind her. The elevator ride to the fourth floor passed in silence. Nathan looked through the file she’d handed him at the station, Remy seemed fascinated by her nails and Isaac studied the case over Nathan’s shoulder.

But she thought Isaac was really watching her watching him.

She kept it casual, never letting her gaze catch on him for more than a moment at a time. Professional curiosity. That’s what it was. That’s what she’d argue to her dying breath if he had the balls to call her on it. But her eyes returned again and again, each time taking away a new detail. His suit, for instance. Expensive, tailored perfectly, like he was stepping onto a runway rather than heading to question a witness. He cared about appearances, regardless of his maverick attitude.

The one time their eyes met, she steeled herself against looking away first. She won when he returned his focus to the file.

She’d argue that to her dying breath too.

Two plainclothes officers guarded Stacy’s fourth-floor room. When Olivia approached, one of them stood and nodded. “Detective.”

Olivia glanced inside. Stacy’s eyes were closed, but she didn’t seem to be asleep. “I think it’s best if only Mr. Pierce and I go inside to speak to her.”

Isaac frowned, ready to argue, but a sharp look from Nathan snapped his jaw shut again. Remy untangled herself from her boyfriend and instead curled her arm through Isaac’s. When he tried to pull away, she only pressed harder into his side. “We’ll run for some coffee,” she said.

As Remy dragged Isaac down the hall, Olivia paused before stepping into Stacy’s room. “You’ll have to show me how to do that sometime.”

“What?” Nathan asked.

“How to shut him up with a glance.”

“It takes years of practice.”

The room was sterile, cold, and probably the worst possible environment in which to try and get a damaged girl to talk. Their options were limited, however, and Stacy Montenegro needed the medical attention at St. Joe’s. She laid in the narrow bed on her side, lank black hair half-hiding the angular planes of her face. Beneath the unflattering lights, her dark skin took on a sallow cast, though the bruises that had flowered along her jaw and neck at her arrival were finally starting to fade. Someone had done a number on her. Thankfully nobody would do it again.

Olivia perched on the chair beside Stacy’s bed and said her name softly. The dark eyes fluttered open and Olivia didn’t miss the sharp panic that only faded as she began to recognize the hospital room.

“Stacy, it’s Detective Wright.” She kept her tone gentle, her body as relaxed and unthreatening as possible. The longer she was on the job, the harder it got to hide her fury with the perpetrators. She would never forget how hard it was for the victims or family. “How are you feeling?”

Stacy regarded her for nearly a minute in silence. Then her gaze slid over Olivia’s shoulder to Nathan standing in the background. A short, sharp breath came out through her nose before she closed her eyes again and rolled onto her back. At least she hadn’t turned away completely.

Olivia pulled the headshot of de los Rios from her file. “Stacy, can you please look at these photographs?”

Stacy didn’t open her eyes or acknowledge Olivia’s request. She wished she could simply look into Stacy’s mind and save them both from this conversation. But she couldn’t, so she patiently spread five photos across Stacy’s lap.

“Stacy, which of these men kidnapped you?”

Still no response. Part of Olivia wanted to take the girl by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. The only way they could catch her kidnapper—and find the other girls—was with Stacy’s help. But she couldn’t actually blame her for being scared. Stacy had survived something horrible. Her battered body was proof of that.

Time to test Isaac’s faith in his friend.

Leaving the pictures where they were, she touched the back of Stacy’s hand. “Stacy, I brought a friend. He’d like to speak to you about your experience. His name is Nathan Pierce.”

Olivia stood and stepped away from the bed, allowing Nathan to take her place in the chair. She didn’t want to serve as a distraction for either of them, though she still had no idea how Nathan intended to coax her into speaking, let alone get her to ID her captor.

“Hello, Stacy.”

He spoke in a soft, soothing voice, addressing her by name at every opportunity. He told her about the day he woke up in a hospital room, like this one, confused and frightened. He told her about the moment he realized he couldn’t talk. He recounted the days and weeks he passed in silence because it hurt, because he was scared, because he didn’t know if he even wanted to be alive anymore. Olivia knew the story was not meant for her ears, but it captivated her anyway. Where had Isaac been when this happened?

It could have been the gentle cadences of his British accent, or the obvious empathy in his words, the similarity of the situations, or any combination thereof. But after five minutes of Nathan’s unfailing voice, Stacy’s lashes fluttered again, her eyes opening to regard him in silent solemnity as he went on. He didn’t falter. His next story spoke of the solitude of being trapped in a world that didn’t make sense, how the only thing he could do was question everything he knew to be true.

“But it stopped?”

The sudden sound of Stacy’s hoarse voice startled both of them. Nathan paused, while Olivia stiffened, taking a small step to the side to better see Stacy’s face.

Her eyes were wet, and a stray tear clung to her thick lashes. “You look…” She winced, her throat working slowly as she swallowed. “You look like it stopped.”

Nathan nodded. “It did. It takes some time to heal. I won’t lie to you, Stacy, it might take a lot of time to heal. But it did get better. It helped to know the person who hurt me could never do it again.”

“
Quien
?”

“
Se llamo Susanna. Ella fui mi novia.
” He continued in fluent Spanish, describing his relationship with a woman he used to know. Somebody he used to love. Olivia’s Spanish wasn’t as easy as his, but she caught enough to understand the explanation he gave, and her stomach clenched with each new detail. How this Susanna used him. How she tricked him. And how, in an effort to save her own life, she’d slit his throat.

Neither Nathan nor Olivia moved as Stacy’s hand slipped out from beneath the blanket and stretched toward him, pushing aside the heavy collar of his coat in order to expose the long line of his neck. The angle made it impossible for Olivia to see what Stacy did, but she witnessed the reaction, witnessed the way Stacy fixed on Nathan’s eyes. Compassion and understanding shone in the dark depths of her gaze, but even more important than that was the delicate strand of trust.

Going to Isaac had been the smartest choice Olivia had made yet in this case.

“I’m tired,” Stacy murmured, her hand falling away.

“I know you are.” Nathan cupped her hand between both of his. “We’ll let you sleep soon. But we need to know who did this to you, Stacy.”

Gently, he lowered her hand to where the photos were still spread out in front of her. Olivia remained completely still, unwilling to shatter what good Nathan might have done, but her eyes tracked every twitch of the girl’s fingers, every tremor as she pointed slowly at the black and white picture of Gabriel de los Rios.

Though Olivia wanted to shout for joy, Nathan merely nodded and smiled. “Thank you. That’s exactly what we need to make sure he doesn’t hurt the other girls.”

Stacy was shaking her head before he’d finished speaking, pulling her hand back to burrow deeper within the blankets. The photos slid off, falling to the floor. “It’s too late. There aren’t any other girls. I was the last one left.”

Something cold, like a sharp icicle, buried itself in Olivia’s gut. All her cases ended this way.
Too late. So sorry. Contact the family
. But she thought this one would be different. When Stacy showed up in the emergency room, she thought it had to be different. Hope. She had allowed herself to have hope for a few minutes. Finding those girls had been possible, just within her grasp.

Nathan didn’t have a visible reaction, except to lean closer to the bed. “What happened to the other girls, Stacy?”

“He took them away. On his boat, I think.” She squeezed her eyes shut, but Olivia could have told her closing her eyes would do nothing to block out the ghosts. “He always talked about it. The Silver Maiden.”

Nathan did react now. He reeled back in his chair like somebody had punched him in the throat and his eyes widened. Olivia had no idea what she was talking about, but Nathan clearly did. Or he thought he knew what she meant. Either way, the icicle began to thaw a little.

“What did he say about the Silver Maiden?” Nathan asked urgently.

But Stacy was done. Olivia had seen it more than once since they’d got her back. She simply pulled the blanket up around her ears and turned her face into the pillow.

As promised, Isaac and Remy waited in the hall with coffee. They both stiffened when they saw the look on Nathan’s face. Remy shoved her coffee into Isaac’s tray so quickly, it sloshed over and spilled onto his fingers. His muttered curse was quiet as he regarded Nathan with a frown that only weighed Olivia’s spirits down even more.

“Well?”

Nathan nodded. “It’s Gabriel.”

“She picked him out of the array I gave her,” Olivia added, knowing she should be happier about that than she sounded.

“That’s not all.” Nathan took a deep breath and looked at Remy. “She mentioned the Silver Maiden.”

Remy blanched and Isaac turned away, running his hand through his hair as he swore under his breath. Before Olivia had the chance to ask what the hell was going on, Remy whirled on her heel and bolted down the hall. Nathan took off after her.

Isaac’s strong hand wrapped around Olivia’s elbow when she started to follow.

“Don’t.” All humor had fled his dark eyes. “Going after them won’t do you any good.”

“Standing here won’t do me any good either.” She didn’t know why Remy and Nathan freaked out when the Silver Maiden was mentioned—nobody had said anything about a boat—but she didn’t really care. “I need to check out this lead. If I can get a hold of that boat’s registration, I might…” She paused when his face screwed into a frown. “What?”

“The girl mentioned a boat too?”

Olivia frowned. “Not
too
. She said the Silver Maiden is a boat.”

“What kind of drugs do these doctors have her on?”

Olivia pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know, McGuire. So are you telling me it’s not a boat? What is it? A plane? A house? A horse?”

“It’s that coin I was telling you about.”

She stared at him. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Isaac’s shoulders sagged as he let out a long sigh. For the first time since she’d run into him that night, he looked like he’d put in a long day’s work. “And welcome to the wonderful world of Gabriel de los Rios.” Pushing the tray of coffees into her hands, he headed down the hall toward the elevator. “I’ll e-mail you the directions to the diner. We’ll talk over breakfast.”

Her first instinct was to throw the hot drinks at his disappearing back. That was it? She’d put up with his crap all night for him to just walk away? Not if she had anything to say about it.

She handed the tray to one of the officers and quickly followed Isaac, double-timing her strides until she was at his side. “We’ll talk right now. What’s this Silver Maiden?”

“I’ll tell you what I can tomorrow.”

“And I don’t have time for that. Why is this so difficult for you to understand? We need to stay on top of this.”

“You can get on top tomorrow.” The elevator opened as soon as he punched the down button, and he stepped inside, leaving her in the corridor. “As much as I hate to admit it, Remy’s the priority right now.”

Her jaw dropped, and the doors whisked shut in front of her. She jabbed at the button to open it again, but it was already moving, leaving her standing there alone and furious. Talking to Isaac McGuire was like pulling teeth. She needed to find more constructive methods of catching Stacy’s kidnapper.

Like researching the Silver Maiden and finding out what a coin—or whatever it was—had to do with her case.

Bile burned in the back of Remy’s throat as she raced down the stairs. She needed to get outside the sterile walls of the hospital, get into the crisp night air to clear her head, get away from a girl she had yet to see—and hopefully never would. Nathan’s footsteps echoed behind her, but he didn’t catch up until the second floor landing, grabbing her arm to yank her back against his chest before she could begin the next descent.

“Remy.” His other arm snaked around her stomach, holding her in place. “Don’t run.”

Though his touch killed the instinct for flight, she couldn’t completely relax, even in his arms. “She knows.” Remy thought of it often, dreamt of it more, but hearing the words uttered out loud made it more real than the scar on Nathan’s palm. “She knows about the Silver Maiden.”

The sole reason she was in Los Angeles. In 2010. Fifty years before she had been born.

“In a way. She thinks it’s a boat.” He gently turned her to face him. “Gabriel has used the Silver Maiden to do something to those girls. So what are we going to do about it?”

For the past six months, she’d considered it a miracle. A myth surrounding a mystical coin that allowed the bearer its greatest heart’s desire. It had taken her away from a life of loneliness in the streets of Washington DC and dropped her in Nathan Pierce’s lap in Los Angeles. And even if there was something schiz about going back in time or falling head over heels for a man in less than six days, she was still left holding aces. She wouldn’t change it for the world.

She wouldn’t even take back the deal she’d made with Gabriel de los Rios. Trading a coin for the chance at a life with real happiness had been worth it. Nathan was worth anything.

But that didn’t make stomaching the thought that she was partially responsible for six missing girls any more royal. If she hadn’t given him the Silver Maiden, Isaac and that Olivia might still have a chance at saving them.

“What
can
we do? I just handed that fucking coin over to him. Can we get it back? We can’t let him take any more of those girls, Nate. I’m not going to let him.” Remy’s eyes widened. “He wanted it so he could do something to those girls. Where was he keeping them before he got the coin?”

“No, don’t. This isn’t your fault. We won’t let him take any more girls. But think, Remy.
How
is he using the coin on those girls? The Silver Maiden is supposed to take people to safety, right?”

His words were only partially true. “Supposed to, yeah, but we don’t know the first thing about how it works. We don’t even know why it burned you. Gabriel probably knows all its secrets and now he’s using it to steal these girls away.” She rested her brow against his shoulder, closing her eyes to breathe in the scent of him. That, too, helped her focus her thoughts. “Jesus, Nate, what did I do?”

“You didn’t
do
anything.” He wrapped her in a tight embrace, resting his cheek on the top of her head. “You were put in a terrible situation and you made the best decision you could. If he’s using the coin to make those girls disappear, he’s probably not killing them. They’re likely alive somewhere, right? If they’re alive, then we can bring them home. We just need to know what he knows.”

“We
need
to get the coin away from him.” Slipping out of his arms, she started to descend the stairs again, though her pace was slower and more deliberate now. “We should have taken it back months ago.”

“
No
.” His unexpectedly sharp tone brought her to a halt. “Remy, we can’t get the coin away from him. For one thing, we have no idea where he is keeping it. For another, even if we knew the exact location, his security is going to be so tight, it’ll make Fort Knox look like a pillow fort.”

His eyes were grim but not unkind. He didn’t go to the mat with her very often. Nathan was a lot smarter than her about picking his battles. So when he did, she knew he had what he considered good reasons.

But he didn’t have the specter of the Silver Maiden hanging over his head. He hadn’t been the one to hand it over without batting an eyelash.

“So…what? We just let him get away with this? He needs to pony up. Before he makes somebody else disappear.”

“No, we don’t let him get away with it. You beat him before.” He took her hand. “You can’t beat Gabriel with force. Not now. He’s too strong. But we can outsmart him.”

“Maybe
you
can,” she grumbled. “I get my ass thrown behind bars when I try to get anything done.”

He chuckled. “Maybe our brilliant plan shouldn’t involve dressing you up so provocatively.”

“Maybe that’s how we get me close enough to Gabriel,” she said, half-jokingly. “It worked on that pig Ramos, after all.”

“No, he’d definitely recognize you.” Nathan turned to lead her down the stairs. “Even if you were cleverly disguised as a prostitute.”

She didn’t say another word until they’d stepped out into the cool night air. Shivering, Remy pulled his coat more tightly around her scantily clad form and nestled into Nathan’s side.

“We have to do something, though. I still feel like this is all my fault.”

“We will do something.” He brushed his lips against her temple. “We couldn’t ignore this even if we wanted to. Isaac wouldn’t let us. We collared Brad tonight. We can afford to take some time off and focus on this.”

She nodded. Her mind was already in overdrive, trying to figure out what step they could take next. If they couldn’t go for Gabriel, then that didn’t leave many options.

It just left the Silver Maiden.

Everything always came back to the Silver Maiden.

Gabriel stared at the damning photos for several long minutes, as though he could will the images away. When Ali had failed to check in the night before, everybody assumed he was chasing tail. He was young and he had a little power and a little money for the first time in his worthless life. It would be strange if he didn’t disappear occasionally, only to turn up the next day a lot poorer and no wiser.

“Dammit.” He liked Ali. “What was he doing there?”

Rabbit shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “We don’t know.”

Gabriel arched his brow. “You don’t know? Do I need to hire a babysitter?”

“No, sir.”

“Where was Ali supposed to be last night? Or do you not know that either?”

“It was his night off. He was going to meet a girl at the Rojo.”

“What girl? What happened to her?”

“We don’t know.”

“Lord, give me strength,” Gabriel muttered, carefully putting the photos in the envelope Officer Miller had delivered earlier that night. This would never have happened a year ago. This wouldn’t have even happened six months ago. But his attention had been elsewhere, and maybe he hadn’t picked the smartest people to oversee the organization’s daily operations.

“We can find out, sir.”

“It’s a little too late for that.” The report suggested the coroner would declare smoke inhalation as the official cause of death after the autopsy. Smoke inhalation at a fire Ali shouldn’t have even known about, much less been participating in. Ali had no reason to be at the site of the arson. But there he was. Dead. Gabriel’s mark still obvious, prominent, on his wrist. “Get out of here.”

Rabbit didn’t move. Was he deaf as well as stupid?

“What is it?”

“Should we contact his family, sir?”

Gabriel idly wondered who would contact Rabbit’s family when he put a bullet between the boy’s eyes.

“Just leave.”

Maybe Rabbit heard the desire for violence in Gabriel’s voice. Maybe he was tired of this particular interview. Either way, he obeyed without further aggravation. Gabriel closed his eyes, and all he could see was the tattoo. Ali Cristó Garcia-Jimenez. The police had a positive ID now. There was a clear path from Ali to Gabriel, with three fires between them.

And there was one man who would draw the line between Ali and Gabriel. It wasn’t a matter of
if
when it came to Detective McGuire. It was a matter of when. He was tenacious, and he was a pain in Gabriel’s ass. He had managed to stay out of McGuire’s reach by playing it slow and smart. He worked like a river moving a single grain of sand at a time to build a mountain. Everybody else shifted the landscape like earthquakes—suddenly, without warning. They got caught.

But Gabriel never did.

He couldn’t afford to attract attention now. Not when he was so fucking close to realizing his life-work. In less than a month, all the pieces would be in place. He didn’t have the time or the energy to throw McGuire off his path. Not now.

Gabriel opened the small safe tucked securely under his desk and removed a large oak box. Within the box was a thick velvet bag. The heavy silver coin that had eluded him for so many years, but now brought him so much comfort, resided in the bag. He dropped it from the bag to the palm of his hand, cradling it gently. Light glinted off the fine carving. It shined dully in the dim room, but he knew how magnificently it would glow in the right circumstances.

Nothing would take this away from him. He would find its partner and when the two sides came together with the power of the eight…his blood sang at the thought.

Taking a deep breath, he focused on the coin. He had difficulty thinking clearly these days. Too many diversions drew his mind in too many directions. But the organization needed him now. He couldn’t just think about himself. He had to consider the fact that Ali’s death and subsequent identification pointed a huge spotlight directly at them and painted a target on his own back in the process.

That sort of thing never happened by accident. Somebody wanted the LAPD in general, and McGuire in particular, to notice him. A new enemy? An old one? Either way, Gabriel didn’t plan to allow the asshole to get away with it. He would find Ali’s murderer and make him wish his parents had never been born.

But first, he needed to make sure McGuire wasn’t going to get in the way.

Gabriel carefully replaced the coin and reached for his phone. The number he dialed came from memory, and the voice on the other end of the phone didn’t seem surprised to hear from him.

“Bill, it’s Gabriel. How fast can you get surveillance rolling?”