Waking the Queen (7 page)

 The room had gone dead quiet and everyone watched to see what he’d say. “What an imagination you have,” he said coldly.

 “You have no idea.” I still hadn’t backed away. I was going to make him back down first. The same thing that had bubbled up in me when I’d tried to push The Cross to kill me welled again, hot and volcanic. It was from something outside of me, but seemingly hardwired into me as well. I just knew where to zero in, which buttons to push that would dredge up the darkest, most awful thing inside of my enemy.

 “Tell me, Anderson, the reason you hate women so much, is it because of your mother?” The look on his face confirmed my suspicions. “Is she the reason all women are whores? Because
she
was a whore?” His face mottled, and a crimson stain crept up his neck, I could tell from his stance he was entering fight or flight. I should’ve stopped, I’d already proven I had the upper hand, but this newness inside of me, it wouldn’t let me be silent until I’d delivered a crushing blow. “A dirty, filthy whore she was. Is that your trigger?
Did she make you watch
?”

 “I’ll fucking kill you,” Anderson drew his piece and aimed it right at my forehead.

 I leaned into the gun, bringing the cold muzzle flush against my skull. “Give it your best shot.”

 Jason rose up behind him like some avenging angel, his 9MM against Anderson’s temple and his forearm locked around his throat. “Drop it.”

 Anderson’s gun clattered to the floor and Jason jerked him around to slam him into the wall. “You draw your gun on a fellow officer again and I will be the one pulling the trigger. Got me, douchebag?”

 Anderson had gone pale, and the fetid stench of his fear was overwhelming. He nodded, his head shaking on his neck like a noodle.

 “Now get the fuck out of my crime scene and stay the hell away from Brynn.” Jason released him and Anderson skittered out the door, glaring daggers at us both as he went. Then Jason yanked me outside into the hallway.

 “What is wrong with you, Brynn?” He sounded more animal than human, growling like a rabid dog. His adrenaline was high, his veins rigid beneath his skin carrying oxygen to his muscles as his body prepared to fight.

 I didn’t have an answer for him. I honestly didn’t know why I’d said those things. Sure, I thought them about people all the time, but I had to keep up appearances. I’d always been so careful about what I revealed. The mask had slipped just a fraction and I imagined what it would be like to not wear a mask at all, but to demand my tribute.

 I shrugged helplessly and he grabbed my upper arms hard. “This isn’t a game, Brynn.”

 “Why? What’s changed? It didn’t matter to you that I didn’t have all the cards when we started. Why does it matter now?”

 “You’re not strong enough to take care of yourself.”

 I would have been less insulted if he’d called me a whore like I labeled Anderson’s mother. “Then maybe The Cross will kill me and you’ll have a shot at my next incarnation,” I snarled.

 What the fuck
was
wrong with me? This wasn’t me. I didn’t get angry, or this invested. I had to get a grip on myself and do my job. My job. I repeated those two words over and over like a mantra. The job was all that mattered. The job and ascension. But I’d never do either if I couldn’t control myself.

 “Brynn.” He said my name like a prayer, but he didn’t release me.

 I looked at where he gripped my arms and raised a brow, showing him only the mask. For a moment, I was tempted to rip the mask off. A litany of my deeds welled on my tongue, and I realized this was his dark thing, the deepest, darkest stain on his soul that I could dig my claws into and bring to the surface—it was me.

 “What was I to you?” The question erupted from my lips, even though in my conscious mind, I didn’t want the answer.

 “Not here.” He still hadn’t let go of me.

 “Then where? At your apartment with take out and candlelight? Wine and silk sheets for the woman you keep hoping I will be?”

  “How about we pretend this is an episode of Law and Order instead of Gossip Girl and find this asshole?” Stratovich grumbled as he walked past us back into the room where the bodies had been found.

 “I’ll talk to the maid.” I knew I’d end up canvassing with Grimes later, but I really needed to get a handle on my bullshit before I could work with him. This had never been a problem for me before.

 Grimes released me and I retraced my steps back down the office without looking back at him.

 The maid who found the body was an illegal. I could tell by the way she looked at me. Her eyes were full of fear and desperation. She blanched visibly every time a cop walked past the door.

 Her name tag said “Sarita.” I pulled on another mask, the same I’d use when questioning a child. Calm, kind, and non-threatening. “Hi, Sarita. I’m Brynn.”

 “
No hablo Inglais
.”

 And I spoke to her in Spanish.

 I didn’t know Spanish. I spoke English and Old Icelandic.

 Yet, I understood every word she spoke and she in turn understood me. She smiled when I told her that her residency status didn’t matter to me and I just wanted to help those girls and their families.

 Then I saw the MS-13 tattoo on her wrist. It glowed like a bright little star even though they were only three small dots in a pyramid shape and by the untrained eye, could have mistaken for freckles or moles. My guess was she had a bigger tattoo marking who she was and who she belonged to somewhere that wasn’t as easily seen.

 I hesitated to put these things in my notes. MS-13 was one of the most dangerous gangs in the world. There had been a case last year where a young member had slaughtered a whole family for blocking his car in an alleyway.

 Those three dots of her tattoo stood for the three places its members would go after being initiated. Hospital, prison and the grave.

 These murders would be shoved off onto the special FBI gang task force thinking there was some deeper connection to the gang. I couldn’t deny that maybe there was, but the other victim wasn’t a gang member and she wasn’t anyone’s property so far as I could tell. My gut told me this didn’t have anything to do with gang activity outside of the fact that the victims were working girls and one belonged to MS-13.

 Sarita noticed my scrutiny and placed her hands in her lap, so that her fingers covered her tattoo.

 Frankly, I was surprised I’d gotten this far with her. MS-13 didn’t talk to pigs, as they were fond of informing us. I smiled again and shook my head to indicate I didn’t care about that either.

 That’s when she told me that one of the murdered girls was her sister. That explained why she’d talk to me. Revenge was a commandment among the gang. She wanted me to find who’d done it and then when they went to prison, they’d be tortured and killed.

 She provided me with both girls’ names and I saw a rigid determination beneath her fear. Sarita would grieve only after her sister’s killer had been punished. I admired that in her.

 After asking her a few more questions, I went to the precinct to start on the paperwork for the case file. The building lights were dim and most of the staff had gone for the evening, for all intents and purposes, I was alone, but that suited me fine.

 I needed to figure out what the killer had done to the bodies. Sarita had said that the girls had been waiting in the room for him the night before, so these girls had died in the last twenty four hours. But the mummification puzzled me. I chewed on every theory I could think of, but nothing made any sense. Much like the last day.

 My hand was inadvertently drawn to my chest again, the place where my heart was supposed to be. I felt no steady beat against my hand, and there was no pulse in my carotid. I had the sudden urge to slice open the veins at my wrist just to see what was there. Would I bleed? Spurt copious amounts of blood across my desk and the floor in a sticky crimson syrup?

 There was only one way to be sure.

 I opened my desk drawer and took out the switchblade I’d pulled off a perp and I slit my left arm open from my wrist to my elbow.

~The story continues in
Part Two:
The Siren’s Song
, coming in October 2012.~