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“Then maybe I’ll have to interview your girlfriend.” She clicked the safety off and aimed the stun gun at the ceiling. “I’ll shoot every one of them if that’s what it takes.”
She wouldn’t, but Max didn’t know that. And he’d seen Jack in action often enough to think she meant what she said.
Max sighed and rubbed his eyes, looking suddenly defeated. “She means it.”
For several seconds nothing happened. But the birds flying above her head seemed less frantic. Something blue and green fluttered to her left, briefly catching her attention. But it was only a couple of the birds coming to rest on the edge of Max’s desk. Actual birds, not a shapechanger.
Power ran across Sam’s skin, a faint tingle that burned a warning into her soul. The shapechanger was on her right.
She turned, stun gun rising. But she wasn’t fast enough by half.
Something smashed into the side of her head and the lights went out.
ERROL STREET SAT IN THE heart of government-owned housing. Gabriel slowed the car, searching for numbers on the shabby-looking brick-and-concrete residences.
Twelve…fourteen. He stopped and climbed out. The wind swirled around him, thick with the scent of rain. He glanced skyward. The clouds were black and looked ready to burst. He reached for his coat, shrugging it on as he walked across the road.
Number fourteen was different from its neighbors in that no one had tended the garden for at least a month. Weeds twined their way through the imitation picket fence, crowding the sad-looking roses, and what there was of the lawn had died some time ago.
The house itself was little better. The porch drooped at one end, as if the foundation had given way. Several of the front windows were smashed and had been roughly boarded up. The second story looked thrown on, and sections of the tin roofing rattled noisily in the wind. Gabriel walked up to the front door and rang the bell. He waited several minutes for someone to answer. When there was no response, he knocked loudly. Still no one came to the door. He stepped back and studied the second story. No lights; no sound.
The house looked and felt deserted.
He walked around to the back. Several sweaters and skirts hung on the line, flapping forlornly in the wind. If the bird shit caking the side of one navy skirt was any indication, they’d been there for a while.
The back door was locked. He stepped back and kicked it open. The handle gouged out a large chunk of plasterboard from the wall behind the door and dust flew high, making him sneeze.
Clothes lay scattered on the laundry floor—whites separated from colors, but both piles gathering dust. He stepped past them and into the hallway.
The air smelled stale, as if the house had been locked up for a long time. He turned right and found himself in the kitchen. A loaf of bread sat on a board near the sink, so green it was almost unrecognizable. A carton of milk sat nearby—and even from where he stood, he could smell its pungent sourness. Someone had prepared breakfast and not come back to clean up.
Both the dining room and the living room were empty of life. The stairs were at the back of the house, but on the first step, he stopped. No light filtered down from above. Darkness hunched at the top of the stairs like some demon waiting to pounce. But it wasn’t the lack of light that stopped him. It was the smell. Meat, long gone rancid.
Death waited above.
He slowly climbed the stairs. Darkness wrapped around him, as heavy as a cloak. On the top step, he hesitated, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Shapes loomed out of the blackness—several bookcases lining the walls on either side of the doors.
The odor came from the room on his left. He walked through the doorway.
Emma Pierce sat up in bed, her body supported by several cushions, watching a TV that no longer worked. Her eyes were still open, her jaw hanging loose. Her skin had a waxy look to it, pale cream in color tending to green near her neck. A tray, containing a half-eaten slice of molding toast and a cup of what looked to have been coffee, sat by her side.
Her death obviously wasn’t recent. And given how cold it had been lately, she could easily have been dead for over a month. Bodies tended to deteriorate far slower in lower temperatures. While her death appeared to be natural, he couldn’t take any chances. Not when Emma Pierce was related to at least two murder victims.
He called in an SIU cleanup team, then put on some gloves and walked over to the window, opening the blind. Light flooded into the room, highlighting the decay—human and otherwise. Several envelopes sat on top of the drawers next to the bed. He picked them up. Bills, mostly. But one envelope caught his eye, because the return address was Hopeworth.
He tore it open. It was a letter from Dr. Frank Lloyd, asking Emma to contact him immediately. The request was dated August 17—the day after the first murder. He wondered if there was a connection—and if Hopeworth knew anything about it. Not that they were likely to tell him. The people at Hopeworth were something of a law unto themselves. He put the letter in his pocket and opened the first of the drawers. Neither the drawers nor the room itself gave up any further secrets.
In the second bedroom, he discovered a wardrobe full of clothes—modern stuff, not the type worn by most women in their fifties. Someone else had stayed in the house with Emma, and for some time, if the range of apparel was anything to go by.
So where was that person now? And why hadn’t she reported Emma’s death to the authorities?
He searched the remaining bedroom, but he didn’t find anything else, so he went back downstairs.
He was in the kitchen when the pain hit. Fire flashed through his brain and sent him stumbling forward. He grabbed the counter, holding on as the kitchen danced around him. Sweat rolled into his eyes, stinging, blurring his vision. For an instant, everything went black.
Then it was gone, as swiftly as it had come. Leaving him with the certainty that Sam was in trouble.
“Assistant Director, are you okay?”
