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“No record of parents?”
“Her parents were killed in an automobile crash sixty-two years ago. Emma Pierce was listed as their only child.”
“Do a complete background check on Emma Pierce. Post a copy of all the results to wristcom 5019.”
He finished the rest of his coffee and rose. Time to go to Melton and pay a visit to Emma Pierce.
—
Sam climbed out of the car and glanced skyward. Gray clouds stormed across the sky, so low it felt as if she could reach out and touch them. Electricity burned through the air, tingling across her skin and through her soul.
She took a deep breath and, for a moment, imagined the power of the storm filling her body, strengthening her. Changing her.
She frowned, wishing Finley would hurry up and return from sick leave. She really needed to talk to him. She needed to understand the changes that she sensed were happening.
Thunder rumbled. It was a sound she felt rather than heard. A sound that seemed to vibrate through every cell in her body. Fear rose in her heart, but she thrust it away. For now, there was nothing else she could do, because there was simply no one she could talk to.
She reached back and grabbed her jacket off the backseat, then climbed out. The car locked automatically when she slammed the door shut. She turned and studied the concrete, slab-sided building. It didn’t look like much—not in daylight, anyway. But at night, the blue-painted concrete became the perfect canvas for all sorts of computer animation. And it attracted creatures as weird and as wild as its graphics.
Slinging her jacket over her shoulder, she walked up
the half-dozen steps and opened the front door. In her ten years as a cop, she’d never known this place to be closed—even though it only had a license to operate at night.
Smoke drifted past her body, thick and somehow cloying. With it came the smell of hopelessness. Jack, her now-dead ex-partner, had often asked her to define what she meant, but it was something she found hard to explain. Even at night, when the place was full of people and noise and life, the smell was there. It was a scent of desperation, perhaps. Or maybe it was the smell of death hovering close. So many of the people who came to Maximum were on a downward spiral to oblivion.
She closed the door but didn’t move farther inside, allowing her eyes time to adjust to the darkness. The place was quieter than usual. There were only a half-dozen people in the front bar, either wearily nursing drinks or hiding in the darkness of the booths to her right. Josie, the gum-chewing, red-haired bartender, stood at one end, looking as disinterested as the rest of the patrons.
She walked across the room. “Hey, Josie, is Max around?”
Josie’s golden-brown eyes jumped into focus. “Officer Ryan. It’s been a while.”
Her pupils were large, her speech somewhat slurred. She wondered what Josie was taking these days. “That it has. I need to see Max.”
“You here to haul his ass downtown?”
Sam smiled thinly. “If I were, would I be talking to you, giving Max time to run?”
Josie sniffed. “That’s okay, then. He’s upstairs.”
“Thanks. I remember the way.”
Josie nodded vaguely and went back to polishing, a somewhat erotic smile touching her lips. Mind’s Eye, Sam thought, catching the candy-sweet scent as Josie moved. It was, in many ways, an aphrodisiac for the brain. Wondering which patron Josie was having mind-sex with, Sam headed through the door into the main area of the club.
The huge dance floor lay in darkness. Her footsteps echoed against the wood, the beat a tattoo that set her nerves on edge. Wishing she’d brought something more than a stun gun, she made for the rear stairs and ran up to the next floor.
Max’s office lay at the end of the long corridor. She stopped and eyed the shadows warily. With the approaching storm running liquid fire through her veins and seeming to expand her senses to new heights, she knew that no one lay in wait. And yet something felt wrong.
She half-raised her wristcom to call for help, but stopped. Calling Gabriel for help wasn’t the answer. He’d only berate her for coming here in the first place.
Besides, there was probably nothing more at stake than a case of nerves. This was the first time she’d come to Maximum without Jack by her side.
She took a deep breath and released it slowly. Jack might be dead, but her life was no less complicated. And in truth, she missed him. Missed having someone to talk to, to laugh with. In the darkest hours of the night, she couldn’t help thinking that even a friendship based on a lie was better than no friendship at all.
But that feeling of wrongness wasn’t going away—and she knew from long experience it was better to be safe than sorry. Frowning, she pressed the wristcom’s locator button, giving the SIU her immediate position. Then, stun gun in hand, she walked toward the door.
It opened before she got there. Max’s obese figure loomed large in the doorway, his smile flashing in the gloom.
“Officer Ryan. Pleased to see you again.”
