The Shadow Guard Page 3

  “Sure thing.” Jake pushed back his chair. He too could use a good drink.

  Triumph flickered through the chief’s eyes for an instant. He swore gourmet coffee won more interrogations and political negotiations than any other bribe.

  “Once we nail that down, we can chat about how to conduct a joint investigation into Miss Williams’s death. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to make sure we cover all the basics.”

  Jake nodded politely and headed for the best stash of coffee fixings in the building. He’d need all the help he could get to wash down the FBI’s ideas of partnership.

  Then get out in time to meet Andromache.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The old pub was warm and cozy after the dank drizzle outside. Astrid pulled the door shut and allowed its golden light to enfold her like a blanket.

  Duffy’s Tavern boasted of never having closed its doors, even for the British and Yankee invasions. Baseball and football posters brightened the main room’s white plaster walls. In a bow to politicians’ delicate sensibilities, an ornate iron grille allowed the bar area to be closed when not in use. Paneled booths with well-padded leather seats and glossy walnut tables welcomed long conversations there and scarred tables sang of long use throughout the entire tavern.

  It served doctors and tourists with an efficiency that showed no favoritism. But rumor said the iron grille was sometimes unlocked late at night for cops, after hell came out to play in Belhaven’s streets.

  It was almost empty now, on this early spring afternoon. A trio of bedraggled tourists stumbled past Astrid, a baby sleeping high atop one shoulder and stroller stuffed with shopping trophies.

  Astrid automatically moved out of the way so she could scan for Jake. She’d glimpsed him on TV during press conferences, but not enough for a reliable description. Especially when every instinct told her she was a fool to say she could help.

  If the Council found out she was here, they’d kill her—and him—for letting him know there were sahirs. She’d nearly turned around and refused to see him.

  But she still heard that woman’s screams echoing through her sleep. She had to help that woman’s ghost.

  She’d just have to bespell Jake so he wouldn’t get any suspicions about sahirs, no matter what he thought of her story. After surviving two world wars and a dozen overseas conflagrations, now she was reduced to a rookie’s campaign plan. She was late, too, having missed her connection on the Metro, D.C.’s subway, without leaving time for alternative transport.

  Pitiful, purely pitiful.

  She shook her head at her own idiocy and headed for the bar, her boot heels drumming softly on the old planks.

  The bartender watched her, his hands full of clean towels.

  The man standing at the end of the counter also turned his head to look, his leather jacket camouflaging shoulders broad enough to block the wall behind. Only a tumble of jet black hair across his brow softened features too harsh to be named handsome. He belonged in this ancient room, the same as the sweating rugby players on the wall or Washington’s gaunt, defiant trooper above the fireplace.

  He pushed away the glass in his right hand and slowly straightened up to a very imposing height.

  A jolt of lust kicked Astrid’s belly into her backbone. She sucked in a fast breath and ordered her libido not to be stupid. She’d had one obsession in her life already. That much joy and grief should be enough living for any woman.

  She had a bevy of sex partners to choose from back in Georgetown, none of whom tested her self-control. She’d always had more than enough, ever since she’d left Nebraska. She didn’t need somebody like him who’d probably never let her escape with half-truths.

  “Theseus?” She barely remembered to use her friend’s Argos name.

  “Andromache. Good to finally meet you.” They shook hands like idiots who’d never spoken before.

  “Same here.” Teenagers had more intelligent dialogue than that. “I’d hoped to see you at the last ArgosCon, when you wore full Colchis mage costume.”

  Her careless mention of the notorious female-magnet costume made his deep-set eyes heat. His gaze stayed above her shoulders yet Astrid felt her insides melt, like a chocolate candy dissolving under the sun’s rays.

  She glanced away from his eyes and discovered his sensual mouth held under firm discipline.

  Lord, what couldn’t he do with those lips—and why was she reacting like this? She was more than a century old; she’d long since earned the discipline to control herself around any farasha.

  She bolted into the mundane world.

  “My real name is Astrid Carlsen. I’m an interpreter for the FBI.”

  “Sergeant Jake Hammond of the Belhaven Police Department.”

  “Thought so. I glimpsed you on yesterday’s press conference.”

  He shrugged and ran his fingers over his glass. His level eyes now studied her with a professional hunter’s dispassionate curiosity.

  For a moment, she could have mourned the lost flash of intimacy. Then she met his gaze just as openly, daring to show a little of her nervousness. Wasn’t that what any old friend would do who’d come to talk about a murder?

  Inside her coat, her fingernails dug into her thigh.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Jake asked, his big body far too alert. “Or we can go back to my office at the station.”

  Despite all her best intentions, she couldn’t control her eyelids’ flinch—and she knew those cop’s eyes saw every millimeter of it. No social niceties after six years’ friendship, just straight down to business, damn him.

  His bluntness felt like a desert sandstorm, all-encompassing and all devouring, even though she’d have done the same in his shoes.

  Stay composed, Astrid, just as if you were facing the Council.

  “I’ll take a cup of tea, thank you.” She’d learned a good deal about civilization’s trappings from the British during two world wars. Polite conversation would be easier if she held some of their reliable brew between her palms. If nothing else, it might be a distraction from him. “We can talk in here where it’s quiet.”

  The bartender, one eyebrow askew, waved Jake toward a booth and started to fix their drinks.

  Jake slid onto the bench opposite her.

  Astrid gritted her teeth and told her idiotic pulse to slow down. Her skin would not turn clammy now, as if she were a delicate maiden about to faint. She’d never done that, not even when she’d arrived at Radcliffe from Nebraska and seen just how tight city girls had to lace their corsets. She needed all her wits about her for this conversation.

  Two cups slid onto the table in front of them and sent their tempting aromas spiraling into the air.

  “Thank you.” She gave the bartender a grateful glance and pulled her tea closer. He disappeared into the back room.

  Late afternoon quiet fell over the tavern, deadly as a courtroom’s hush.

  What could she say to grab control of this meeting? Pretty phrases fled.

  Calluses roughened Jake’s big hands, and a thin red scar circled his right wrist like war paint. Dozens of ancient nicks marked his skin, in an armorer’s telltale pattern.

  He gave her silence, dangerous as the deep pits that villagers use to trap tigers.

  “It was the afternoon of the last big snowstorm, when the Beltway shut down. I was driving back to DC after helping with some exams at Quantico,” she said abruptly. Best to stay as close to the truth as possible and tests described exactly what she’d been working on with the FBI.

  Jake’s dark eyes rested on her, impenetrable.

  “I headed upriver along the Potomac and wound up . . .”

  Dammit, her heart was beating faster than a jazz drummer’s showcase. She stopped, wet her lips, and tried again. “I went to . . .”

  “I don’t need to say anything about where you were unless it’s germane to the case,” Jake said very gently. His voice could have lulled a screaming baby back to sleep in five seconds, to
ps.

  Courtesy was almost harder to face than his earlier brusqueness had been.

  “You haven’t heard where I was yet.” Astrid shot him a disbelieving glance.

  He put his big hand over hers and warmth flooded into her, sweet as the first surge of magick into a newborn spell.

  She gaped at him, her skin heating faster than beeswax beside a flame. Lust, her reaction had to be nothing more than lust.

  He released her and withdrew to his side of the table. His expression was thoughtful and wary, his jaw clenched tight as that of a prison guard standing watch over dangerous inmates. He had to think she could be the murderer, finally come to confess.

  She could have laughed, or maybe screamed in frustration. If he only knew how dangerous the real killer was.

  “I was at—the nudist club.” How else could she describe where she and Nathan had parked?

  Shock whipped across Jake’s face, followed by rapid calculation. “Good God, is that why you didn’t come forward before?”

  She shrugged, knowing her expression was very embarrassed, and let Jake draw his own conclusions. Actually, she and Nathan had needed a quiet place to park, so they could investigate the scream. The nudist club’s members were old friends who would never talk about sahir business.

  “Did anybody see you there?” Jake’s voice turned deeper and more calculating.

  “No, I just wanted to spend time with the river.” Again, exactly true, whether or not he believed it.

  “Go on.” Jake leaned forward. His eyes were actually a dark brown, full of the same solid strength that steadied an oak grove.

  She sucked in a breath. The murder scene dwelt in her mind’s eye, vivid and unforgettable as the entrance to hell.

  “After I parked, I went for a walk along the Potomac to get some fresh air.” Astrid closed her eyes for a moment and plucked memory’s strands for details. She had to re-create the murder for the one authority who could bring justice. “I saw a man standing on a large rock in the river, holding a young woman with his knife to her throat. They were arguing and she was fighting him.”

  “Are you sure?” Jake’s voice was sharper than a judge’s gavel demanding justice in a crowded courtroom.

  “As sure as you are that Robert E. Lee is buried in Lexington,” she retorted, then said more gently. “She couldn’t break free, no matter how she tried.”

  “Oh crap.” He rubbed the stubble on his jaw. His thick lashes veiled his eyes. “Could he see you?”

  “He had his back to me and she was so much smaller that his shoulders blocked her view of me.” That is, if I’d been in the same time frame, instead of scrying.

  “I wanted to scream but couldn’t,” she added with unplanned honesty. “Women aren’t supposed to die, not like that.”

  Jake squeezed her fingers briefly in a man’s hard, restrained gesture of understanding. An instant later, he was all cop once again.

  “How did he have her tied?”

  “He didn’t.” Remembered pain and helplessness surged through her once again to choke her throat. “He simply held her wrists over her head in one hand.”

  Jake’s eyes pinned her like a prize fishing specimen, on the rack to be judged for quality.

  She glared straight back at him and let him see all of her rage and disgust. The poor lady had never had a chance; she hadn’t even truly known how to fight.

  Jake sighed and threw his head back, looking a century older. “What then?”

  “He cut her throat and threw her body into the main current,” Astrid said simply. “But before that—oh, dear God, how she screamed.”

  “Scream?”

  “The way my husband did when he was killed. A banshee wail demanding justice from everyone within earshot, that went on for seconds—minutes?—until death silenced her. In this world, at least.”

  She stopped, her throat locked tighter than a five-sahir warding spell. Maybe retelling the murder would become easier the more often she said the words. Or perhaps she’d gain peace when the killer was caught—which was Jake’s responsibility.

  Jake smacked the table and cursed. “Can you identify him?” he asked sharply, his words a brutal growl.

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” Jake pulled his voice back from a roar that would have tumbled the rafters. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I never saw all of him. He was wearing winter clothes, about what you’d wear to a ski resort.”

  “Face? Expression? Coloring?” Every question shot out faster than the last until they barreled together like bullets from an assault rifle.

  “He wore a black and silver ski mask the entire time.”

  “Like a football or Viking helmet? Those are rare but we could probably track it down.” He frowned, his eyebrows stitching together.

  “Maybe,” she said dubiously. She’d tried to picture the killer before, but he always blurred like river mist. She couldn’t bring up an image of him at all inside the aerie she shared with other sahirs—and that was possibly more unsettling than the murder itself.

  “You’ll show me the spot,” Jake stated. “Now.”

  It was more a prediction than an order.

  “And the nudists?” Astrid queried, well aware she was fighting a delaying campaign.

  “They’ll survive—unless one of them’s the killer. Which was damn unlikely in that blizzard.” His grin flashed in an intoxicating invitation to share the laughter.

  Astrid joined in and her heart sank. Charm was not what she needed or wanted from Jake Hammond during a murder investigation.

  Jake stood in the clearing and studied the thundering Potomac River less than five yards away. Barren trees and dry leaves marked the land around them like ancient sentries. Boulders crept through the underbrush and into the water, forcing anyone or anything who passed to follow their rules. Thirty-foot-high cliffs, covered with still more trees and brush, blocked most of the remaining daylight.

  Astrid would have had more than enough cover to watch a murder unnoticed from here, at least during the winter when nothing grew. But could she move silently enough?

  Could she have pulled off the murder?

  “Where did you grow up?” Jake asked abruptly.

  “Nebraska.” Her tone screamed that she found the question idiotic—but was too disciplined to challenge him on it.

  Crap, everything about her had challenged his discipline from the moment he saw her. Maybe because he hadn’t gotten laid in so long. Yeah, right.

  He shifted to a better view of the river shoal where the murder had occurred.

  Dammit, where Astrid said it had happened.

  On the other hand, she knew too damn much about the killing. There weren’t many places along the Potomac River’s steep sides where somebody could slip a body into the water. Even fewer possibilities when one considered how fast the river had been running and how long the corpse had spent in the water.

  Yet, Astrid had led him straight to one of those very few choices.

  Was she legitimate or the killer? An FBI employee should be on the up-and-up, but you could never be sure.

  She followed him, her booted feet barely whispering through the thick leaves.

  Mind and instinct fell into alignment with the answer. He snapped off half a dozen photos in quick succession. “You go hunting much growing up?”

  She snorted softly.

  “Yeah, I was a tomboy and horse crazy to boot.” He could barely hear her above the river’s tumult. “My father said having me bring home dinner that way was fair, since I never did much housework.”

  Shadows carved her expression deep and dark in the twilight.

  Jake frowned. Where did kids hunt for supper these days? If she were twenty, he’d give up his next pay raise.

  Yet his brother Logan, the Special Forces sniper, wore the same harsh expression when he didn’t want to talk about shooting. Maybe she too was strong enough to kill.

  “Got everything you need from the shoal?
” she asked.

  “Yeah. I’ll have to come back tomorrow with a forensics team, of course.”

  “Of course. There was so much blood.” She shook herself and turned away from the water, looking paler than before.

  His gut bitched at him that she wasn’t responsible for the killing. No murderer willingly went gray around the eyes.

  “I’ll need to take a statement from you.” Dammit, where was some real evidence?

  “I know.” Her tone made a day in the dentist’s chair sound appealing.

  “It won’t be that bad.” Dammit, he could do charm better than this. Witnesses remembered more when they were comfortable and Astrid was an old friend. A very, very good friend.

  He’d get the truth out of her, no matter what it did to their relationship.

  “I think he parked his car in the old turnout at the top.” She took off along a narrow trail up the cliff.

  “The hiking dropoff?” He admired her rear view far too much, especially when he thought how well it might promise for the bedroom.

  Get your mind out of the gutter, Hammond. You’re on a case, and she’s your only witness—if she is a witness.

  “There’s a loop trail leading to the parking lot, which offers several routes down to the river,” Astrid commented. “The killer could have forced the victim down one and onto that rock. Then he could have returned along a different, faster route.”

  She stopped at the top, her voice a little ragged, and scrubbed away a single tear.

  His heart did a most unprofessional flip-flop.

  “There aren’t many parking spaces.” She looked around, as if the getaway car could appear at any moment.

  Jake had long since stopped believing in fairy tales. He’d settle for more achievable aims, like a hug or a date with Astrid, his flesh-and-blood gaming partner.

  “There was a foot of snow the night after the murder occurred.” Good, he hadn’t openly cast doubts on her account. “Plus, we’ve had three inches of rain since then. We’re not finding anything here except mud—and lots of it.”