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10:30 p.m.
Taylor Residence
Eighteenth Avenue South
Birmingham
Sadie watched the headlights go out in front of her. The other car had rolled to a stop a few yards from hers. She opened her door and got out. The interior light remained dark. A car’s interior light was the fastest way to get yourself noticed on a stakeout. She’d learned that as a surveillance virgin with her first BPD partner.
A lifetime ago.
She forced the memories away as she walked through the darkness to the passenger side of the other car—a beat-up yellow VW Beetle. She opened the door and got in. Like hers, the interior light remained dark.
“You’ve gotta find yourself a less conspicuous ride,” she told her colleague. “This thing stands out like a lone duck in a pond full of hungry alligators.”
“I can’t part with my baby.”
Sadie shrugged. “A couple cans of spray paint would take care of the problem.”
He grunted and changed the subject. “Anything exciting happen?”
“Not unless you count the two kids playing porch pirates after the mail was delivered this afternoon. Little bastards.”
Heck Keaton surveyed the house Sadie had tasked him with babysitting every night until this was over. “She come out today?”
“Nope.” Sadie and another of her resources were taking care of the day shift. She wanted eyes kept on the Taylor house at all times. Until she had this figured out, it was the least she could do.
Sadie opted not to mention the lady had had visitors. Nothing Sadie hadn’t expected. Falco and Devlin were thorough. “Hopefully this will be another boring night detail.”
“Let the boredom come.” Heck chuckled. “I’m prepared. Back seat’s full of Red Bull and candy bars. I may never sleep again.”
Heck—this was his actual name—Keaton was a former marine. He’d lost a leg on his last tour in the Middle East, but one would never know. The prosthetic worked for him as if it were his own flesh and bone. He worked out religiously. Had the muscled body to prove it. It was the PTSD that gave him the real trouble. The meds kept him leveled out most of the time. When it didn’t, he disappeared. He said going off into his hiding place was better than the alternative. He didn’t trust himself around people when he got like that. Unbalanced. Unable to hold it together.
Sadie never doubted him. He’d worked for Pauley for six years before Sadie took over the business. If Pauley said he was a good guy, he was a good guy.
“Call if anything comes up.” Sadie reached for the door.
“Sorry about your friend.”
Hand on the door handle, she hesitated. “Life sucks that way sometimes.”
“Yeah.”
Sadie climbed out of his car and got back into her own. She glanced at the house once more before pulling away. She was halfway down the block before she turned on her headlights. Traffic was light as shedrove to her place. Didn’t take ten minutes. She rolled into the alley and parked. She locked the doors and headed for the fire escape. No one had been near her door or the fire escape since the last time Falco had banged on her door at seven. He’d called her a half-dozen times. She would get back to him in good time. It wasn’t like she didn’t know what he wanted. His and Devlin’s visit to Asher’s aunt had obviously turned their attention back to Sadie.
She unlocked the multiple dead bolts and walked into her loft to the sound of her security system’s hyperbeeping. Entering the code shut the thing up. She locked up and tossed her backpack on the sofa. She needed a drink. If there was any chance at all of her sleeping, she’d have to get ahead of the demons.
After grabbing the bottle she’d started on last night, she walked to her checkerboard pattern of sticky notes and photos on the wall, which represented her missing ten months. She tilted up the fifth of bourbon and chugged a long swallow. As the burn flowed down her throat and into her empty stomach, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Come on,” she murmured. “Do your magic.”
Knowing the buzz would soon begin, she studied the images of the faces she had reason to believe were involved in whatever had happened to her. Her gaze stalled onhis. Eddie’s. Eduardo Osorio. The only son of the most dangerous and powerful cartel leader in Mexico. He’d lost his wife only a year before the undercover operation had been launched. Sadie was no fool. Her commander hadn’t picked her for the assignment because she was the best detective on the team. Her likeness to the target’s deceased wife was undeniable. The powers that be had wanted to get Eduardo Osorio’s attention, and it had worked. He’d taken the bait like a starving rat.
A shift in her chest had her tilting up the bottle once more. She closed her eyes and let the burn overtake the memory. Her mind took her to the one constant in the fragmented pieces of her memory.
The mask.White. Horns sprouting from the sides and curling over the top. Soft, childlike voice instructing her to eat ... to drink ... to listen.
The masked child, or whatever the hell it had been, had come to her so many times. Sadie had recognized the person was female, small. Maybe a kid. But everything around the visitor was a blur. The memories were scattered and cloaked in darkness. The occasional sound or image. Sensations. Fear. Pain. Need. Panic. And occasionally hope.
