Blood Debt (Vicki Nelson #5)

Blood Debt (Vicki Nelson #5) Page 13

"FUCKING Oakland."

Through half-closed eyes, Celluci watched Sullivan walk toward the bed. This is it. Now or never. He'd lined up a few more cliches that seemed appropriate but had no time to voice them before the big man grabbed his shoulder and shook him, hard. He let his head whip back and forth on the pillow, hoping it looked like he didn't have strength enough to fight the motion. As far as acting went, it wasn't much of a stretch. His head felt as though it were connected to his body by a not very thick elastic band.

"I'm gonna unbuckle you, so don't give me any shit 'cause I'm not in the mood. Damn Mariners finished three fucking runs behind and I had fifty fucking bucks ridin' on the game."

Celluci grunted as a thumb ground between the muscles of his left forearm and into the bone.

"Felt that, did you? Good."

The leather strap fell away. He flung his arm up off the bed and tried to close his fingers around Sulli?van's throat.

A vicious backhand snapped his head back. His mouth filled with blood from lips caught between knuckles and teeth. Well, you wanted him angry, he reminded himself, trying to swallow without choking. All part of the pi... A sudden, agonizing pain in his left wrist cut off the rest of the thought and brought involuntary tears.

"Weren't you listening when I said I wasn't in the mood for this kind of crap?"

The pain painted red starbursts on the inside of Cel-luci's eyes. He didn't think the wrist was broken, but at the moment, that belief gave him very little actual comfort. Only the left. I won't need the left. Christ, couldn't I have come up with a plan that hurt a little less? If it had only meant the loss of a kidney, he'd have been tempted to just lie there and let it happen. Preventing loss of life however-his life-had to be worth a bit of discomfort.

As the last restraint fell away, he tried to lunge off the bed. This time, he rocked back with the blow so that Sullivan's hand impacted against his cheek with slightly less force than previously. Slightly. What was that plan again. Let him beat you senseless, then escape in the confusion? With any luck, the pounding in his temple was his pulse, not pieces breaking off the inside of his skull. Oh, good plan.

The room spun as Sullivan dragged him up onto his feet, muttering, "I should just leave you there to piss yourself."

Breathing heavily, the dizziness as much from the earlier blood loss as from the double contact with Sul?livan's fist, Celluci managed to twist his split lip into a close approximation of a sneer. "You'd have ... to clean it up, but maybe...  you'd like that."

Sullivan blinked mild eyes and smiled. The smile held all the petty cruelty the eyes did not. "Yeah? Well, I'm gonna enjoy this."

The first punch drove all the air out of Celluci's lungs. He'd have fallen had Sullivan not maintained a grip on his shirt. Seams cut into his armpits as the fabric stretched to its limit and beyond. He took a wild swing while he tried to get his feet back under him but had no success at either.

He didn't feel the second punch connect, only the result. One minute he was more-or-less standing, the next, he was flat on his face on the floor. Which was where he wanted to be. Unfortunately, he'd intended to be just a bit more functional.

"You know what I keep forgetting?"

The words seemed to come from a very long way away.

"That you're a cop."

Oh, shit.

The sudden flurry of kicks that followed pounded out a rhythm along hip and thigh. They hurt, but no?where near as much as they would've had Sullivan not been in sneakers or had he been able to reach more delicate targets. Or, for that matter, had the doctor not wanted his kidneys intact. Exaggerating the effect, Celluci tried to rise and fell, only partially faking as he'd forgotten that his left wrist was essentially unus?able. Whimpering-and ignoring how good it felt to let some of it out-he squirmed frantically forward on his belly until his shoulder slammed into one leg of the dresser hard enough to rock the heavy furniture.

"Bet that hurt." Sullivan was breathing as heavily, but not from exertion.

Lying with his right arm stretched out under the dresser, Celluci walked his fingers over the floor. Just when he thought he'd made an unsurvivable mistake, they closed around metal. He didn't have strength to spare for a smile.

"I got the other guys when the doctor was done, but since you're not gonna survive the operation, I'm glad we had this time together." Sullivan bent over and grabbed the waistband of Celluci's jeans, jerking the heavy cotton up into the air. "Now, get back on your fucking feet."

Celluci went limp, neither hindering nor helping, conserving his strength. He kept his right arm stretched out, out of sight for as long as possible. The moment his hand cleared the edge of the dresser, he spent all his hoarded strength on one blow, swinging up and around and slamming the length of stainless steel pipe from the fallen IV tower between Sulli?van's legs.

The mild eyes widened. Mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, Sullivan sank slowly to his knees, both hands clutching his crotch.

Hauling himself to his feet on the edge of the bed, Celluci half turned, intending to smash the pipe against the back of Sullivan's head. To his astonish?ment, the big man got a hand up and intercepted the blow. The pipe spun off across the room.

All things being equal, the two men were about evenly matched but, as it was-as they were-Celluci didn't stand a chance without a weapon and he knew it.

Injured arm cradled tightly against his chest, he staggered out of the bedroom and through the room beyond. As he fought with the outside door, he could hear Sullivan getting to his feet, yelling a mixture of profanity and threat.

Then he managed to lift the latch, and he staggered out into the night.

"Son of a bitch! He's not there."

Screened from the view of curious neighbors by double rows of cypress, Henry turned off his head?lights and sped down the winding drive toward the low rectangle of Swanson's house nestled within its cocoon of security lights. "He could be in bed. We won't know until we're out of the car."

"He's not there," Vicki repeated, her voice rising in frustration. She didn't know why she was so certain, but the blank stare of the dark windows said empty- not asleep, not sitting with the lights off; not home. The instant Henry stopped the car, she leaped out onto the concrete, senses extended. "I told you we should have gone to Dr. Mui," she snarled after a moment.

"We agreed that the doctor is probably with... " Half out of the car, Henry paused, head lifted to catch the breeze. "Vicki! Do you... " He didn't bother finishing because she was already racing toward the back of the house.

The way Celluci saw it, he had two choices; he could try to outrun Sullivan on unfamiliar paths, hoping to reach a road and witnesses if not safety, or he could dive into the semi-wild growth the paths cut through and hope to lose him in the underbrush. Ten feet from the cottage, swaying like a sailor with every step, he realized he had no hope in hell of outrunning anyone, not even a man with his balls in a sling. Teeth clenched against the protests of his abused body, he pushed into the darkness.

The trees blocked the little moonlight that flittered through the cloud cover-he couldn't see as far as his feet, and higher obstacles like trees and bushes were patterns of shadows on shadow. Big mistake. I'm no woodsman. But it was too late to turn back.

A crashing in the shrubbery behind him flung him forward. Since he had to believe Sullivan could see no more than he could, he had to hope that the sound of his escape was drowned out by the sound of pursuit. It was pretty much the only hope he had.

He stumbled over something that poked sharp edges through his sock and into his ankle, caught him?self before he fell, and realized that he was moving across a forty-five-degree slope. Up or down? Since he had no idea of where he was and no idea of where he was going, down seemed as good a choice as any. Fuck it. Might as well have gravity work for me.

A branch end slapped him in the face, hard enough to raise a welt. Thorns he couldn't see snagged his jeans and dragged bleeding scratches across bare arms. The slope got steeper. He began to pick up speed.

He flung out his left arm to block a sudden shadow and nearly cried out when his wrist slammed into the unforgiving trunk of a tree. The pain brought back the dizziness. Shadows whirled. He missed his footing, and the night tilted sideways.

Rocks and trees slammed into him as he passed, hard enough to hurt, never hard enough to stop him. He crashed through some kind of bush-it had no thorns, that was all he either knew or cared about- picked up speed across an open clearing, and slammed into a concrete retaining wall on the far side.

The world went away for a while...

"You better not have damaged anything, asshole!"

... and came back in a rush.

Celluci drew in a deep breath-moderately relieved to find it didn't hurt as much as he thought it should- and, as the moon broke through the cloud cover, tried to focus on the man squatting beside him. In spite of the poor visibility, Sullivan's bovine features looked scared. "Doctor won't be pleased ... if I'm not good ... as a donor. Bet you got kidneys...  she could use."

"Shut up. Just shut the fuck up."

The open-handed blow rocked Celluci's head back, but everything hurt so much he felt the motion more than the actual pain.

"All right. You're goin' back to the fucking cottage and I'm going to tie you down so tightly you're gonna need my permission to fucking breathe."

"You're going to have to ... carry me."

"I'll fucking drag you if I have to."

"Better not damage...  the merchandise." As he finished speaking, he threw himself at Sullivan's feet, trying to knock the big man off balance. With them both on the ground and a little luck...

Beefy fingers grabbed the front of his shirt and heaved his torso up off the ground. He saw the fist raised, a club-shaped shadow against the sky, then Sullivan disappeared, and he dropped flat on his back again.

"Are you all right?"

"Fitzroy?" Swallowing a mouthful of blood, Celluci propped himself up on his good arm, Henry's hand steadying him as he swayed.

Vicki had Sullivan on his knees in the middle of the small clearing, one hand dimpling the scalp under the short hair, dragging his head back so far the corded muscles of his throat cast lines of shadow. Her eyes were pale points of light in a face of terrible, inhuman beauty that Celluci almost didn't recognize.

"Vicki?" When she turned her burning gaze on him, he knew what she was about to do, and although the night was warm, he was suddenly very, very cold. "Vicki, no. Don't kill him."

"Why not?" Her voice had changed to match her face; seductive, irresistible, deadly.

There was no need, not even for emphasis, to shout his reply. She could hear his heart beating, his blood moving under his skin; he only hoped she could under?stand. "Because I'm asking you not to. Let him go."

Vicki straightened, the quiet plea reaching her in a way anger or fear would not have been able. She re?leased her captive, ignoring him as he collapsed sob?bing to the ground, and took a step toward Celluci. "Let him go," she repeated, her voice becoming more human with every word. "Are you out of your mind? He is mine!"

"Why?"

"Why? For what he did to you."

"Wouldn't that make him mine?"

Confusion replaced some of the terrifying beauty.

"Vicki, please. Don't do this."

"This is where I draw my line in the sand. ..."

The scent of terror drew her back around to face her prey. Without her hand to hold him, he whimpered when her eyes met his and flung himself back?ward toward the edge of the clearing.

The Hunger sang the song of the Hunt, of the blood.

It was all she could hear.

She tensed to spring, and it was over.

Henry let Sullivan fall to the ground, head lolling on a broken neck. Calmly, as though he hadn't just killed a man, he met Vicki's gaze across the clearing.

When he nodded, she turned to face Celluci, the Hunger fading now that the terror had stopped and the blood was cooling. She should have felt rage at the theft of her prey by another, but all she felt was grateful. She'd stood on the edge of a precipice and had just barely escaped plunging over. Her fingers curled into fists to stop their sudden trembling.

"Is he dead?"

"Yes."

Celluci looked from Henry to Vicki and realized he'd received exactly what he'd asked for. Vicki had not done it, Henry had. But he'd seen Henry kill be?fore in a barn outside London, Ontario. He'd known for a long time what Henry was. Vampire. Nightwalker. Immortal death. Henry. Not Vicki. He closed his eyes. The lids had barely fallen when a familiar arm went around his shoulders and a familiar voice brushed warm breath against his ear.

"Are you all right?"

He shrugged, as well as he was able all things con?sidered. "I've been better."

"Do you need a doctor?"

From somewhere, he found half a smile. "No."

"Then let's get you out of here. Henry's car is at the front of the house." She hesitated, ready to slide the other arm beneath his legs. "May I?"

"Just don't make a habit of it." Her lips pressed briefly against his face, then she carefully lifted him into her arms. He kept his eyes closed. Sometimes, love needed a little help being blind.

Swanson sighed as he turned onto Nisga's Drive, thankful to be almost home. The black-tie fund-raiser for the Transplant Society had been a depressing af?fair, most conversations either beginning or ending with the recent death of Lisa Evans and how much both she and her open checkbook would be missed.

He almost failed to note the one significant detail of the car pulling out onto the road, realizing only at the last moment that it pulled out of his driveway. There seemed to be three people in it although he only got a good look at the driver as it sped past. ?'Dangerous," he told himself, although he didn't know why, and he wondered if perhaps his house had been robbed while he was away. Shaking his head as he turned in between the cypress, he told himself not to be ridiculous. Thieves seldom drove BMWs.

Still, in a neighborhood where Bentlys were the car of choice, it wasn't that farfetched a theory.

The house seemed undisturbed. He parked outside the garage and sat studying it in the brilliant quartz halogen glare of the security lights. He didn't want any surprises. He didn't like surprises. After a careful inspection, he left the car where it was and walked over to the front door.

The security system hadn't been tampered with, but that meant only that they might have used another entrance. There were four-No, five, he amended re?membering the trench doors Rebecca had insisted on having in the dining room. He hadn't used them since she'd died.

Lights switched off and on automatically as he in?spected the first floor. The lights had been Rebecca's idea as well and only her memory kept him from dis?mantling them. They always made him feel as though he were being followed around by ghosts.

Upstairs, Rebecca's jewel case lay where she'd left it on that last day. Swanson knew the order of the contents the way he knew the order of his desk, and they hadn't been touched.

Not thieves, then.

Who?

He turned to face the window that looked out over the lawns, the gardens, and, ultimately, the two guest cottages tucked a discreet distance down the wooded slope. Although their locations had been chosen so that they were as private as possible, there seemed to be rather a lot of illumination filtering up through the trees surrounding the farther building.

Dr. Mui had a donor in one of the cottages.

Perhaps the three in the car were colleagues of hers.

His fingers closed around the curtain edge, crushing the fabric. He hadn't wanted the donor here. Dr. Mui had no business turning Rebecca's home into an ex?tension of the clinic; she'd had enough of hospitals and clinics during that last horrible year before she died. Whether it had been a good business decision or not, he should never have agreed to the use of the cottage. It was one thing to allow the buyer to conva?lesce in peace and quiet for a few days and quite another thing to open his home to the sort of people who provided the merchandise.

"I'm going down there to find out exactly what is going on. If the doctor thinks it a good idea I maintain my distance from the donors, then she shouldn't have left one on my doorstep."

As he turned from the window, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror and wondered if maybe he shouldn't take a moment to change his clothes before he went to the cottage. Twitching a jacket sleeve down over a heavy gold cufflink, he decided not to bother. "If anyone complains," he told his reflection, "I'll ex?plain that I'm making a formal investigation."

Had Rebecca still been alive, she'd have laughed and maybe thrown something at him. He'd loved mak?ing her laugh. But Rebecca was dead. His shoulders slumped and after caressing the cameo he'd had made for her in Florence, he left the bedroom.

At the back door, it suddenly occurred to him that the car could be connected with Patricia Chou. The reporter had accosted him as he arrived at the fund?raiser, demanding to know how a room full of rich people sitting down to an expensive meal was going to help anyone but the caterers. So far, she'd been careful to confront him only on public property, but he had no doubt she'd consider a trespassing charge a small price to pay to get a story. She was becoming a distinct irritant, and sometime soon he'd have to do something about her.

He checked the perimeters of the security lights for a camera crew and only when he was certain he was unobserved did he step out the door.

As he drew closer to the lit cottage, he began to feel more and more uneasy. When he rounded a cor?ner and saw the open door, he knew something was wrong. "Every light in the place is on," he muttered, stepping over the threshold. "Don't these people real?ize hydro costs money?"

The cottage was empty. Both the donor and the orderly that Dr. Mui had promised to leave in atten?dance were gone. Swanson frowned down at the re?straints on the bed and tried to work out what had happened. Perhaps the people in the BMW were the donor's colleagues, not Dr. Mui's. Perhaps this donor hadn't come off the street but was one of the young turks who'd crashed and burned in the recent reces?sion and now needed money from any source to main?tain his lifestyle.

It explained why Dr. Mui had felt he couldn't be kept at the clinic.

Perhaps at the last moment he'd changed his mind and his friends had come for him.

But where was the orderly?

And more importantly, what was he supposed to tell the client coming into Vancouver on the 2:17 from Dallas?

Lips pressed into a thin, angry line, Swanson started back to the house after having carefully turned off all the lights and closed and locked the door. He'd missed the mess in the rhododendrons on the way down to the cottage, but a broken branch nearly tripped him up on the way back and brought it to his attention.

Although wisps of cloud blew continually over the moon, there was light enough to see that a large ani?mal had gone crashing through his expensive under?brush. There'd been a recurring problem in the neighborhood with mountain lions eating household pets, but Swanson had always assumed the big cats were less obtrusive travelers. In his experience, only people caused that kind of destruction to private property.

Had the orderly not been missing, he'd have gone back to the house to call the police. As it was, he stepped off the path.

It wasn't a difficult trail to follow, even in the dark. Small plants had been crushed, large ones bent or bro?ken. Then the moon went down.

Picking his way carefully down the slope and into the clearing above the retaining wall, Swanson swore softly to himself as his dress shoes slid on the damp grass and he went down on one knee. He put his hand on what he thought was a fallen log and felt cloth.

The moon came out.

"Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God."

"So, now what do we do?"

Celluci sucked air through his teeth as he lowered himself down onto the bed. He'd walked up from the car to the elevator and the elevator to the condo under his own power. Mostly. "Now we figure out a way to bring in the police without involving the two of you."

"We tried that," Vicki snarled, reaching behind her for the first aid kit that Henry carried, "and it didn't work."

"So we try it again. There's a body in Ronald Swanson's backyard... " Which we are not going to discuss, his tone added. "... we might as well make use of it."

She began to wrap the elastic bandage around his wrist, the gentle rhythm of the motion a direct contrast to the brittle anger in her voice. "Swanson's rich and respected. The police find a body in his backyard, and they're not going to immediately connect it with him, especially when he wasn't home and no doubt has a rich and respected alibi. And second, it's not just Swanson that we want, and there's nothing to connect Sullivan's body to Dr. Mui except that he worked at the clinic. Which Swanson pays for. I'll bet long odds that the two of them could come up with an accept?able reason for that son of a bitch to be spending a few days in the cottage."

"Then perhaps I should go talk to Dr. Mui."

Celluci opened bloodshot eyes and stared past Vicki at Henry. "Talk to her?"

Henry nodded. "She has a condo in the next building."

"So you said in the car."

"So I should go see if she's home. We can make a decision when we have more information."

"You're only going to talk to her?" When Henry nodded again, Celluci exhaled noisily and added, "So why not tell her to go to the police and confess all?"

"You go on," Vicki announced quickly before Henry could answer. "I'll explain to Mike why that wouldn't work." It had been easy to deal with his presence when all her attention was on Celluci, but now the skin between her shoulder blades kept pro?testing another standing behind her. They needed to give frayed emotions a little more distance if they didn't want to return to the old animosity.

Henry read the subtext off her face, noted how she kept in physical contact with Celluci at all times, and left the room without comment. It made no sense for him to envy their intimacy, especially not in light of what had happened in the warehouse. It made no sense and was dangerous besides. He kept telling him?self that as he walked away.

Celluci waited until he heard the outside door close, then he caught Vicki's hand in his-trying to prevent her from pouring rubbing alcohol into the scratches on his arms. "All right. Explain"

"It's simple, really." Twisting free of his grip, she swabbed the worst abrasions clean, ignoring his com?plaints. "We can't force anyone to act contrary to their own survival."

"Pull the other one, Vicki. People expose their throats to you."

"Most of them enjoy it."

Eleven dead in a Richmond warehouse. "Some don't."

She heard the memory of death in his voice and sighed. "If Henry told Dr. Mui to turn herself in, she'd walk out of her apartment, maybe even make it to the car, but then, unless she had no strength of will at all-and considering what she's been doing in her spare time, strength of will doesn't seem to be some?thing she lacks-then she'd suddenly ask herself just what the hell she was doing. Henry'd have to stay with her all the way and that would kind of defeat the purpose; wouldn't it?"

"But as long as he's with her, she'll talk? He can control her?"

"Probably," She remembered the crime boss who'd gone for his gun even though she hadn't released him. Of course, Henry'd been doing that sort of thing a lot longer.

Henry'd forgotten the full video security until half?way across the visitor's parking lot. Speed had kept his image from registering as he'd entered the building and raced up the stairs, but he was going to have to stop out in front of Dr. Mui's door, and he could figure out no way to prevent himself from being taped. As he left the stairwell on the eleventh floor, he could only hope she'd answer quickly. This was one of those times when he wished that Stoker had been right about certain laws of physics not applying to his kind. An ability to become mist would come in handy tonight.

He spared barely a thought for the couple in the hall until he noticed they were leaving the condo next to Dr. Mui's. Dressed all in black, they were laughing and talking nervously-although they had no idea of why they were nervous-their door half open. Henry slipped through before they pulled it closed.

Once inside, he stopped to catch his breath. The speed his kind used to escape detection was not meant to cover long distances. He'd need to feed soon.

Although there were video hookups inside the ac?tual condominium units, they only activated if the electronic locks were forced. He should have no trou?ble leaving, but since he considered his presence here a solution, albeit an impulsive one, to the problem of standing in the hall, he had no intention of leaving too soon.

Electronics aside, the layout of the units seemed identical to the mirror-image layout in his building next door. He moved silently down the hall, wonder?ing where on earth the owners had found the four-foot gargoyle in the entry.

Sifting through the stack of mail balanced incongru?ously on the stone guardian's head, he discovered that Carole and Ron Pettit had a number of esoteric inter?ests. Amused, he set the correspondence back on its perch and murmuring, "They'll be sorry they missed me," went on into the master bedroom. The red silk sheets and truly astounding variety of candles perched on every available surface came as no surprise. Black, he discovered pushing through two neat rows of cloth?ing in the walk-in closet, came in more shades than he'd previously imagined.

Resting his forehead on the wall adjoining Dr. Mui's condo, he could feel a life in the next room.

Sleeping.

Not having bothered to read the contractor's speci?fications provided when he bought his own unit, he had no idea how the walls were made but even if he could get through them, he couldn't do it without wak?ing not only the doctor but the tenants above and below.

Then he smiled. While not in the habit of climbing headfirst down castle walls, he should have little trou?ble going from balcony to balcony, even with the doc?tor's solarium in the way. They couldn't possibly have video coverage on the balconies; too many people in Vancouver preferred to avoid tan lines.

As he turned away, he heard a phone ring next door.

The sleeping heartbeat quickened. Henry leaned back against the closet wall.

She hated being woken up in the middle of the night. Shift work was one of the reasons she'd left the hospital. A minor reason granted, but a reason. Still, old training died hard, and she came instantly awake. "Dr. Mui."

"I found your orderly dead on my property. The cottage is empty."

Switching on the bedside lamp, she stared at the clock. Three A.M.

"Did you hear me, Doctor?"

She pulled the phone a little away from her ear before he deafened her. "I heard you, Mr. Swanson. What about the donor?"

"There was no one else here! Just a dead body!"

"Please, calm down. Hysteria will do no one any good." How could that idiot have gotten killed? she wondered. He's going to ruin everything! "Have you called the police?"

"The police? No, I, uh... " He took a deep breath, clearly audible, and his voice steadied a little. "I found it and came back to the cottage and called you."

Then the situation wasn't an irretrievable disaster. She began to pull coherent thought out past her imme?diate reaction. Either the detective had greater re?serves than had appeared or the friends who'd left him at the clinic had managed the impossible and tracked him down. It didn't really matter which. Sulli?van was dead, the detective was gone. But the detec?tive's friends were proven unwilling to go to the police and so, apparently, was the detective, or the police would be at the scene already.

"Dr. Mui? Are you still there?"

Rolling her eyes, she wondered where he thought she might have gone. "I suggest, Mr. Swanson, that we cut our losses."

"You suggest we what?" He was beginning to sound as though he were reaching the end of his resources. That was good; a man with no resources was much easier to manipulate. "But the police... "

"If you'd intended to call the police, you'd have already called them. As you called me, I suggest you take my advice. Go back to the body and bury it."

"And what?"

"Bury it. Sullivan had neither family nor friends. If he disappears, no one will notice but the staff at the clinic and I can handle them."

"I can't just bury him!"

"Neither can you bring him back to life. Since he's dead and we don't want the police or the public discovering what we've been doing, I suggest you find a shovel."

"I can't bury him here! Not here."

She counted to three before replying. "Then put him in your car and take him out into the mountains. People disappear in the mountains all the time."

"Where in the mountains?" He was almost whim?pering on the other end of the line. "You've got to come here. You've got to help me."

"Mr. Swanson, Richard Sullivan was over six feet tall. I'm barely five foot two. I don't see how I can be much help."

"But I can't... "

"Then call the police."

There was a long pause. "I can't."

Dr. Mui leaned back against her pillows. She'd known that, or she'd never have suggested it. "Then listen carefully and I'll give you what help I can." The more dependent Ronald Swanson was on her, the better. "There's an old logging road just inside Mt. Seymour Park ..."

They'd moved out into the living room. With only one exit from the bedroom and Henry standing in it, Vicki had begun to grow agitated.

"So what you're saying is, Ronald Swanson is about to go bury Richard Sullivan out where Mike thinks the rest of the bodies are buried."

Henry nodded. "That's what I'm saying."

"Then let's go." Vicki began to stand, but Celluci pulled her back down beside him on the couch. "What?" she demanded, turning to glare at him.

"Look at the time," he said wearily.

"Mike, we've got over an hour."

"To do what?"

She stared at him for a long moment, then threw herself back against the sofa cushions. "I know, don't tell me, you want Henry to go find a patrol car and make up another story."

"No. With the amount of rain they have around here, it'd take a damned good forensics team to get all the evidence they need out of that clearing. I want this whole thing blown wide open with no chance of putting the genie back in the bottle."

"You want?" Vicki exchanged a listen-to-him glance with Henry; the haunting had begun as his problem and her case, but they'd both lost control. Any other time, Vicki would've stomped all over that, but with Mike safely back beside her, just exactly who was in charge didn't seem to matter-although honesty forced her to admit that was unlikely to be a permanent state of mind. "And how do you intend to accom?plish what you want?"

Wincing as abused muscles protested the movement, Celluci reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Out of the wallet, he pulled a business card. "I'm going to wake up Patricia Chou. After all, I promised her the story."

"And what makes you think she's going to believe you when you tell her to climb a mountain at three in the morning in search of tabloid enlightenment?"

He shrugged and regretted it. "She really wants Swanson."

"Yeah? And how much of a part in her story is she going to expect you to play?"

"None."

"None?" Vicki repeated, lip curling. "Yeah. Right."

"Apparently, she's been willing to risk jail in the past to protect a source."

Vicki snarled softly but passed him the phone. "Well, you'd better hope she's apparently willing to risk it this time, too."

His hands white-knuckled around the steering wheel, Swanson turned onto the logging road. In spite of the hour, there'd been lights behind him all along Mt. Seymour Drive and he'd very nearly panicked as they followed him into the park. If they followed him again...

But they didn't.

He was watching the mirror so closely, he almost lost control of the car in the deep ruts. Trying to ig?nore the sound of the rear shocks compacting under a bouncing weight, he fought the expensive sedan back onto the road.

There was a sport utility vehicle parked behind the cottage, but it had to be Sullivan's, and he couldn't bring himself to drive it. He was upset enough without the added stress of driving a dead man's car as well as the dead man. He wished he had more of the doctor's detachment. His thoughts revolved around and around in a chaotic whirlwind, replaying over and over the finding of Sullivan's body, the phone call, the feel of the corpse as he lifted it up into the trunk. He knew he wasn't thinking clearly, but that was as far as awareness extended.

The road ended in a clear cut just as Dr. Mui had described. He drove the car as close as he could to the rotting stump of a Douglas fir and turned off both the engine and the headlights. The surrounding dark?ness looked like one of the upper circles of hell.

Dr. Mui had said it had to be done in the dark. Headlights in the woods at night would attract unwel?come attention. And what would be welcome attention; he wondered.

After a moment, he dried his palms on his trousers, got out of the car, and opened the trunk.

Sullivan stared up at him over one broad shoulder, the bouncing having twisted his head around at an impossible angle. His eyes bulged like the eyes of an animal in a slaughterhouse.

Unable to look away, Swanson stepped back and swallowed bile. What am I doing here? Am I out of my mind? I should've called the police. He passed a trembling hand over a damp forehead. No. If I called the police, everything would come out. I'd be ruined. I'd go to jail. Dr. Mui's right. I bury the body, and no one has to know anything. Over the course of a long career, he'd never hesitated to do what had to be done, and he wasn't about to start now.

Teeth clenched, he pulled the body out of the trunk. He tried to ignore the way it hit the ground, tried not to think of it as something that had once been alive. He dragged it about twenty feet, went back for the shovel, then began to dig.

"This is nuts. This is absolutely fucking nuts."

"Watch your language, Brent. And shut up, he'll hear you."

"Who?"

Patricia Chou grabbed her cameraman's arm and steadied him as he stumbled over a rut, the weight of the camera and light together throwing him off bal?ance. "Ronald Swanson, that's who."

"You don't know he was in that car we were following."

"I do."

"Based on a phone call at three in the morning?"

"That's right."

"That's it?"

"That and finely honed instincts for a story. Now, shut up!"

They moved as quietly as possible as they ap?proached the clearing. Eyes having grown accustomed to the dark during the walk up the logging road, nei?ther had any trouble separating the parked car from the surrounding shadows.

Head cocked at the rhythmic sounds from up ahead, the reporter raised a hand and, breathing a little heav?ily, Brent obediently stopped.

Digging? she mouthed silently.

He shrugged and lifted the camera up onto his shoulder.

She guided him around the car and pointed him toward the man-shaped shadow. This is it, she told herself as she stepped forward and gave the signal.

Ronald Swanson, already knee-deep in the soft earth, stared up at her like an animal caught on the road-disaster bearing down and unable to get out of the way. The body stretched out on the ground beside him, the unmistakably dead body, was more than she could have hoped for. Her own eyes squinted nearly shut from the brilliant beam of light from the top of Brent's camera, Patricia Chou thumbed her micro?phone on and thrust it forward. "Anything to say to our viewers, Mr. Swanson?"

His mouth opened, closed, then opened again, but no sound came out. His eyes widened, pupils con?tracted to invisibility. He dropped the shovel, clutched at his chest, and collapsed forward onto his face in the dirt, just missing the corpse.

"Mr. Swanson?" The microphone still on, she knelt beside him and reached under his ear for a pulse. He was alive, but it didn't feel good. Scowling, she reached into her belt pouch for her cell phone. "That goddamned son of a bitch has had a heart attack or something before I got a quote."

"Do I keep shooting?" Brent's voice came out of the darkness on the other side of the light.

"No. Save the batteries." Grinning triumphantly, she called 911. "We'll likely get some good stuff when the police arrive."