“I can imagine how hard it is to accept that your brother was capable of such a thing,” Tasso said, his tone so condescending Megan fully expected him to reach across his desk and pat her on the head. “But the evidence left little room for doubt. If you knew the details of the other victims’ murders, you’d understand why there’s nothing to support your amateur detective work.”
She’d left his office with a bitter taste in her mouth and no idea where to go next. Without Cole or another inside source, she had no hope of getting her hands on the sealed reports. And without a side-by-side comparison, there was no way she could prove that her hunch had any truth to it.
Maybe not even then.
But she couldn’t bear to sit around and do nothing. After calling to check in on Devany, she’d decided to come here. Back to the source.
It had all started here, where her brother had met Evangeline Gordon.
It had always struck Megan as a strange location for one of the city’s most exclusive nightclubs. Club One took up half a city block in Seattle’s seediest neighborhood. It was only four-thirty in the afternoon, but from where she was parked across the street, Megan had already seen two drug deals, and she was pretty sure the woman in the orange micromini and thigh-high white boots leaning into
the window of a car in front of her was not giving the male driver directions.
Yet every night, a line of Seattle’s most hip and beautiful snaked out of Club One’s door and around the block, the patrons even more attracted to the club because of the dangerous location.
Now, though, the sidewalk that fronted the nondescript warehouse that housed the club was empty. The crowd wouldn’t start showing up for several more hours. Plenty of time for Megan to get some answers, even though as she crossed the street to the club she still wasn’t sure what questions she should ask.
All she could think of was to go back to the beginning. To the place Sean had been seen with Evangeline Gordon before her murder. To talk to the woman who swore under oath that according to Evangeline, Sean had been practically stalking her in the week before her murder.
She ignored a panhandler and an offer to buy crystal meth and pushed open the door of the club.
“Can I help you?” a deep, male voice boomed as she stepped over the threhold. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim interior, but she spotted a huge, dark-haired man standing at the club’s lower-level bar. His black T-shirt stretched across about an acre of chest, and his black pants hinted at thick, muscular legs. He stood with his legs slightly apart, arms loose at his sides. Not aggressive, at the moment. Just watchful.
He reminded her oddly of Sean. Full of coiled energy and ready to pounce if she made any sudden moves.
Megan walked slowly toward him. As she got closer, she saw that he was good-looking, in a square-jawed kind of way. His blue eyes would have contrasted nicely with
his dark hair if he could have eased up on that disconcerting stare that made her fight not to squirm. “I was hoping to talk to Talia Vega, the beverage manager? Her sister told me I could find her here.”
Talia had moved up in the world since Megan had last seen her. When Talia had taken the stand at Sean’s trial, she’d been living in a small apartment in a rough part of downtown, working as a cocktail waitress to get by. Now she shared a house with her teenage sister in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood. No longer a cocktail waitress, Talia was now the beverage manager at Club One. A job that obviously paid enough to support Talia and her sister in comfort.
“Can I tell her your name?” the man asked.
“Megan Flynn.”
He nodded curtly and disappeared through a door at the back of the club. Megan surveyed the club, with its black marble bar lined with plush red velvet bar stools. Booths lined the lower floor, and heavy velvet curtains were drawn back to reveal velvet-upholstered banquettes and black-lacquered tables. Besides the main bar, there were two fully stocked bars on opposite corners of the lower level. Upstairs was another floor, accessible from a wide staircase that curved dramatically into the middle of the lower-level dance floor. Up there was a VIP room with private tables and red velvet love seats.
The whole place reeked of hedonism. She tried to imagine her rugged, outdoorsy, beer-drinking brother in a place like this but couldn’t. But being at Club One was the last thing Sean remembered from that night.
Megan turned at the swift tap of heels against the lacquered floor. Talia was as stunningly beautiful as ever,
though more polished in the years since Megan had seen her last. Her glossy, straight black hair was pulled back tightly from her face, emphasizing her high cheekbones and huge eyes. Her dramatically arched eyebrows, red mouth, and hourglass figure reminded Megan of a comic book bombshell.
Talia’s expression was guarded as she cocked her sleek head to the side. “Is there something I can help you with, Megan?”
Megan wasn’t surprised by the wary undercurrent in Talia’s voice, or by the way she shot a “stay close” look at the man who had greeted Megan. Talia had testified against Sean at his murder trial. For all she knew, Megan could have been driven completely over the edge by recent events, out to get revenge on everyone who’d helped convict Sean.
Megan tried to conjure a convincingly sane, friendly smile, though there was no denying the resentment she harbored toward the woman starinck at her. “I’m assuming you know about the murder at Redwood Acres last night,” Megan said.
Talia’s perfectly arched brow quirked higher. “Of course. It’s terrifying.” Talia sounded more annoyed than terrified as she folded her arms across her chest.
“I know this is going to sound crazy—”
“Do you mind?” Talia snapped before Megan could finish. But Talia’s irritation was aimed at the man who had greeted Megan and fetched Talia for her. He had gone behind the bar and taken down a highball glass from the bar and was filling it with water. She marched over to the bar and snatched the glass out of his hand. “I have that all set up for tonight. You can get your drink in the back.”
He snatched the glass back, put it to his lips, and drained it in three deep swallows. Whatever had those two bristling at each other went way beyond a conflict over what glassware to use.
Talia glared at the man for nearly a full minute before turning back to Megan. “Our new head of security seems to think he can do whatever he wants around here.”
The man ignored Talia and refilled his glass.
“Sorry. You were saying?”
“This is going to sound crazy,” Megan started again, “but I have a… hunch—for lack of a better word—that last night’s murder and Evangeline Gordon’s death could be related.”
Megan wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Talia’s expression closed even further. “I don’t see how that’s possible, since Evangeline’s murderer was convicted. There was no disputing the evidence,” she said pointedly, though not unkindly.
Megan forced herself to unclench, to not fly off the handle at Talia. No love lost between them, but if there was any information to be gained from Talia’s memories of that night, she’d get a lot further if she minded her manners. “I know that’s what everyone thinks. But there are similarities, and I don’t know where to start except at the beginning. The night you claimed you saw Sean follow Evangeline out of the club.”
“I didn’t claim anything,” Talia replied, her voice dripping icicles. “I
saw
your brother. I
heard
Evangeline tell me that he’d been hounding her for a week before she died.”
“Maybe there’s something you missed, something you don’t even realize you saw or heard. Something that was
ignored because it didn’t help the prosecution’s case,” Megan said, hating how her voice pitched higher with every syllable.
Something in Talia’s cool expression flickered, a crack in her porcelain facade, but it was gone so quickly Megan wondered if she’d imagined it. “I told the police and the prosecution everything I knew before and during the trial. Many times over. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of work to do. Brooks,” she snapped.
“Yes?” The big man was leaning on the bar, watching their exchange like an anthropologist studying a foreign tribe.
“Do your job. Escort Ms. Flynn out.” Without another word, she spun on her stiletto and
tap tap tapped
her way back to the club’s shadowy depths.
Feeling like her lifeboat had been punctured by a harpoon, Megan didn’t even protest as the man gestured her toward the door. She started to hurry out, but he stayed her, curving one massive hand around her biceps. “You shouldn’t walk around here alone, even at this time of day.”
She let him accompany her silently across the street, all the while her mind racing, grasping, trying to figure out the next step. All she could see in front of her were brick walls.
As the man reached out for her keys to unlock her car, the sleeve of his T-shirt slid up, revealing the bottom edge of a tattoo on his left biceps. Without thinking, she grabbed his arm and leaned in for a closer look. It was a black-scaled snake coiled around a beret-wearing skull with a sword stabbing up through its mouth. Sean had a similar one in the same location, but his skull was minus the beret.
“You’re Special Forces,” she said.
“Green Beret,” he confirmed.
“My brother was too. Captain Sean Flynn, seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment.”
“Major Jack Brooks,” he said. “I heard about your brother. Hate to see a fellow soldier end up like that.”
Megan jerked her hand from his arm and waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t, just stared down at her, a steady, inscrutable look in his dark blue eyes. As she met his gaze, Megan got an uneasy feeling in her gut, as though he’d known everything about her even before she’d walked through the door of the club.
Flustered, she yanked at the handle of her car door. “I guess I should get going,” she said, and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Yeah, you should.”
Something in his tone made her look up as she clipped her seat belt.
The measured look he gave her was like an icy finger down her spine. “Don’t come back here,” he said. “This isn’t a safe place for you.”
They both knew he wasn’t talking about the neighborhood.
M
egan tucked her headphones into her ears, cranked up the volume on her iPod, and forced herself to concentrate on the screen. She usually had no problem drowning out the din of the crowd at her favorite café, but after the events of the past few days, she hadn’t been able to focus enough to make herself a peanut butter sandwich, much less write the article she was supposed to have turned in to
Seattle
magazine two days ago.
Located just two blocks from her flat, Café Norte was a favorite of students at the university and freelancers like herself. As usual, the place was crowded with patrons, echoing with low-pitched conversations and the
tap tapping
of fingers on keyboards. Usually she found the vibe conducive to writing, the energy of others working and studying adding fuel to her own creative fire.
“Come on,” she muttered to herself. “Just fucking write it already.” Small wonder she couldn’t focus on an article about how Seattle’s diverse immigrant population shaped the city. But if she didn’t turn in this article ASAP and get a check cut, she was going to have a hell of a time making rent this month.
She blew out a frustrated breath, jaw clenching as she
willed the crowd of Café Norte to shut the hell up or disappear entirely. She’d come early for her coffee date, hoping the change of scenery would encourage productivity, having given up on working at home. Her high-speed Internet connection there proved too tempting and distracting—instead of making phone calls to a district high school to discuss how schools were being impacted by larger immigrant populations, she’d spent the past two days obsessively Googling every article she could find about the Seattle Slasher and his victims, looking for a sliver of information that might support her theory that they might be connected to the murder of Evangeline Gordon. She’d found nothing she hadn’t read before, except for an article about the latest victim found in the Redwood Acres trailer park.
Other than a brief statement by Special Agent Tasso of the Seattle FBI office, the article was short on information. Mostly it was a recap of the history of the Slasher and his past victims, the details of which were frustratingly sparse as investigators did their best to keep the details out of the press.
In the end, all she’d had was a short list of investigators on the local precincts where the other victims had been killed whom she planned on contacting as soon as she got this damn thing written.
So far she had two whole paragraphs. Awesome.
Her eyes did another pass at the door. She checked the time. Her coffee date was two minutes late by her watch. Maybe he wouldn’t show up. She almost wished he wouldn’t. She really needed to get the article done. And Sean… It seemed wrong somehow to be catching up over coffee with one of his old army buddies when Sean…
God, the clock was ticking. Two more days gone since her dead-end meeting with Cole and her useless visit to Club One.
Maybe I should just bail before he gets here. I’m not fit company for anyone.
Don’t be like that,
she scolded herself. In all this chaos, she needed a friend. Especially a friend like Nate, someone who knew her, who knew her brother and everything that had happened over the past three years. For that reason she’d agreed to meet Nate for coffee when he called her out of the blue yesterday. Amazing who came crawling out of the woodwork now that Sean’s name was back in the press.