“Seriously?” I asked.
Essex nodded. “That’s what McCollum said.”
“Sarge!” Rivera called from the news van.
Essex groaned. “Excuse me. Nice to see you, Ransom.”
“Hope to see more of you, Sergeant.”
I wanted to crawl under my patrol car. When my boss was out of earshot, I backhanded my brother’s chest. “You’re an asshole.”
My brother smiled. “I know.” He lowered his voice and looked toward the chalet. “What happened in there?”
“Not sure.”
“Did I hear someone say one of the bodies was torn in half?”
I nodded. “But you’re not supposed to know that.”
“Damn.” Ransom stared up the hill. “Mutilated bodies and a fire cover-up . . . You know what this looks like.”
I shook my head. “Don’t even say it.”
He looked at me with his lips pressed in a hard line. We were both thinking the same thing. I hated we were both thinking the same thing.
“Ransom!” a man yelled. Another car had pulled up behind Harlan Drexler, and a red faced bald man waved to my brother.
“That’s my boss. You gonna be here for a bit?” Ransom asked me.
I glanced toward my car. Teek was still smiling in the back seat. “Yeah. Gonna stay as long as I can.”
Half an hour later, the fire was almost out and hotel security had pushed all the media back to the hotel’s entrance. The guys and I were waiting around our patrol cars when a fireman walked toward us. He removed his helmet.
“What’s up, hose dragger?” Jones asked.
“Your momma’s risk factor for STDs,” the fire captain replied as he stopped in front of Essex. “You definitely want to get your investigators in here.”
“They’re on the way. Why?” Essex asked.
“We found a third body missing its throat. The bit of wall left standing in the living room is covered in blood.” He put his hands on his hips. “Whatever happened in there, it was brutal, man.”
Nausea churned in my stomach. This had absolutely happened before.
Harlan Drexler rushed toward us. “Is there an update?” He grabbed the fire captain’s arm.
“The coroner is on his way, Mr. Drexler. We’ve recovered three bodies.”
Harlan’s knees went out, and he would have fallen had I not been there to catch him. “Come with me, Mr. Drexler,” I said gently. “Let’s find you a seat.”
Harlan leaned heavily on me as we walked toward a bench on the golf course. “What am I going to do? What am I going to tell their poor families?”
I patted his back. “I don’t know. It’s a terrible thing that’s happened.”
“Do they know how the fire started?”
“There will be an investigation.”
“Do they have any suspects?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Who was in the back of the patrol car?”
I smiled. “No one relevant to what happened here tonight. He’s harmless, mostly, but he did try to hold up the Mini Market down the street with a zucchini.”
Harlan’s bubble of laughter seemed to surprise him, and he walked the rest of the way to the bench on his own. When we reached it, I held his hand until he sat down. Sweat drizzled from his hairline, and his face was freckled with soot.
He glanced at my name tag. Cpl. S. Nyx. “Nyx. Are you related to Ransom?”
“My brother, sir.”
“What does the S stand for?”
“Saphera, but my friends just call me Nyx.”
He grabbed my hand and squeezed my hand. “Thank you, Nyx.”
I really hadn’t done anything, but I smiled and said, “You’re welcome.”
Ransom’s boss joined us. I stepped out of his way and turned back toward the chalet. It was an eerie sight poised against the moonlit clouds over the lake, and another cold chill took my breath.
“It’s happening again,” someone whispered behind me.
I spun on my boot. “What was that?”
Ransom’s boss looked up from his smartphone. “Pardon?”
Harlan’s eyes were glazed over, looking past me at the chalet.
I blinked. “Sorry. Thought you said something.”
Maybe I was hearing things. Or maybe my imagination was making this into more than it really was. After all, my father was still safely behind bars. That much had been reconfirmed by the state penitentiary only days before.
But when I turned back toward the chalet, the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach returned like the recoil on a shotgun.
This wasn’t a coincidence.
And I knew it.
“Nyx!” Essex called from near my car. I walked to him, and he jerked his head toward Teek. “He says his wrists are starting to hurt. Better go book him in.”
“The guy’s harmless. Can’t we just call somebody to come get him?” Everly asked.
“Under some circumstances, sure, but he held up a store clerk. Made her fear for her life,” Essex said.
I opened my driver’s side door. “Don’t worry, Everly. I’ll make sure they call his brother or Gramma T.”
“Gramma T?” With worried eyes, Teek’s head whipped around like his grandmother might be in the parking lot.
Essex held onto my doorframe. “I’ll see you back at the station. We should wrap up here soon.”
“10-4.”
He stepped back and shut the door.
I wound through the labyrinth of emergency vehicles along the path to the exit. Seven different news vans had gathered at the closed front gate. One of them, I recognized. Sapphire Lake’s premier newswoman, Marianne Clarke, and her cameraman from News 4 ran toward my patrol car as I drove past. “Looks like you might make the news, Teek.”
Silence.
“Teek?”
The interior lights flickered, all the doors locked around me, and my surveillance cameras shut off.
From the back seat came a chilling voice that didn’t belong to Teek Fleming.
“Hello, Saphera.”
Chapter Two
With a loud gasp, I grabbed my heart to make sure it was still in my chest. Then I looked around to see if anyone had seen me freak out.
I drove away from the Drexler and stopped on the shoulder up the road. I turned all the way around in my seat and slid open the dividing window to the prisoner in the back. “You swore you wouldn’t do this to me anymore.”
In the back seat, Teek’s doe-eyed bewilderment had faded. His expression was soft and pleading. Teek’s mouth moved, but it was my father’s voice that came out of it. “You haven’t replied to any of my letters.”
“Because I haven’t opened them. What the hell are you doing here?”
It was no secret (at least to me) that Elias Nyx had the power to detach—to leave his body during REM sleep and travel. Like a ghost, his spirit could lurk undetected, taking eavesdropping and espionage to a whole new level. It was a small part of why he was in prison, even admitting that PIN numbers, safe combinations, and computer passwords were never safe with him around.
He could also commandeer the bodies of others to interact with the waking world, but at my insistence, we hadn’t seen each other like this in years. His control now over Teek Fleming was unnerving.