First Grave on the Right Read online

  “What?” I squeaked into the radio, having been surprised in the middle of my sound check. Uncle Bob scowled. “I am so not taking Swopes. He’s in a bad mood.”

  Garrett eyed me, his expression expressionless.

  “Either Swopes goes with you, or you don’t go at all.”

  I snatched back my diet soda and slumped down in my seat. “Then I guess I’m not going.”

  * * *

  “Be careful.”

  I scowled at Garrett through the chain-link fence as I dropped to the other side. Well, not the other side. The other side of the fence. “Yeah, I got that much from Uncle Bob,” I said, my voice acidic. I’d lost the argument. Despite the fact that I’d had lots of practice, losing wasn’t my forte.

  Garrett followed suit, climbing the eight-foot chain-link fence with way more upper-body strength than I had and dropping beside me. But could he tie a knot in a cherry stem with his tongue?

  We started out across the open field toward the warehouse. It took most of my concentration to keep from falling, and even more of my concentration to keep from clutching on to Garrett’s jacket for balance.

  “I read that grim reapers collect souls,” he said, jogging beside me.

  I tripped on a cactus and just barely managed to catch myself. Night was so dark. Probably because of the time. The moonlight helped, but traversing the uneven ground still proved challenging.

  “Swopes,” I said, breathing slowly so he wouldn’t realize I was getting winded, “there are oodles of souls running around, wreaking havoc upon my life. Why would I collect the darned things? And even if I did, where would I keep all the jars?”

  He didn’t answer. We sprinted across the parking lot to the back of the windowless building. Luckily, it had no security cameras. But I could tell from the soft glow illuminating the roofline that it did have skylights. If I could get to the roof, I might be able to see what they were up to. No good, surely, but I did need some kind of evidence to back that up.

  When Garrett pulled me behind a grouping of garbage bins, I bumped into a metal pipe that led all the way up and over the roofline with brackets every few feet for stability. Perfect footholds.

  “Hey, give me a boost,” I whispered.

  “What? No,” Garrett argued, eyeing the post faithlessly. He shoved me aside nonetheless. “I’ll go up.”

  “I’m lighter,” I argued back. “This pipe won’t hold you.” Even though I was pretty much arguing for argument’s sake, the pipe did look a tad flimsy. And it had more rust than a New Mexico sunset. “I’ll go up and check out the skylights. Odds are I won’t be able to see in, but maybe I can find a hole. Maybe I can make a hole,” I said, thinking aloud.

  “Then the guys inside will make a hole as well. In your obstinate head. Probably two if history is any indication.”

  I studied the pipe while Garrett ranted something incoherent about holes and history. I’d chosen that particular moment not to understand a word he said. When he was finished, I turned to him. “Do you even know English? Give me a boost,” I added when his brows furrowed in confusion.

  Shouldering past him, I gripped the pipe with both hands. He let an annoyed breath slip through his lips before stepping forward and grabbing my ass.

  Thrilling? Yes. Appropriate? Not on your life.

  I slapped his hands away. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “You said to give you a boost.”

  “Yes. A boost. Not a cheap thrill.”

  He paused, looked down at me a long, uncomfortable moment.

  What’d I say? “Cup your hands,” I ordered before he got all mushy. “If you can get me to the first bracket, I can take it from there.”

  Reluctantly, he put one hand in the other and bent forward. I’d brought my gloves to go with my black-on-black ensemble, so I slipped them on, placed one foot in Garrett’s cupped hands, then hoisted myself up to the first brace. Easy enough with his upper body strength and all, but the second was a tad trickier. The sharp metal of the brackets tried to cut its way through my gloves, making my fingers ache instantly. I struggled to hold on to the pipe, struggled to keep my footing, and struggled to lift my own weight to the next bracket. Surprisingly, the worst pain centered in my knees and elbows as I used them for leverage against the metal building, slipping and squirming far more often than was likely appropriate.

  A decade later, I pulled myself up and over the roofline. The metal cap scraped agonizingly into my rib cage as if mocking me, as if saying, You’re kind of dumb, huh? I collapsed on the roof and lay completely still a full minute, marveling at how much harder that had been than I thought it would be. I’d have hell to pay in the morning. If Garrett had been half a gentleman, he would have offered to climb the pipe in my stead.

  “You okay?” he whispered into the radio.

  I tried to respond, but my fingers were locked in a clawlike position from clinging on to the brackets for dear life, and they couldn’t push the little button on the side of the radio.

  “Davidson,” he hissed.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake. I pried my fingers apart and pulled the radio out of my jacket pocket. “I’m fine, Swopes. I’m trying to wallow in self-pity. Would you give me a minute?”

  “We don’t have a minute,” he said. “The doors are opening again.”

  I didn’t waste time with a response. After rolling to my feet, I hunkered down and crept to the skylights. They were actually greenhouse panels, but they were old and cracked and had more than one peephole I could see through. To do so, however, to be able to see down into the warehouse, I’d have to almost lie across a panel. A thin beam of light shot up through one of the cracks and I leaned into a push-up, my wobbly arms braced on either side. As long as the metal frame held, I figured I wouldn’t fall through the roof. Which would be a plus.

  The van was driving out of the warehouse when I peeked down. Two men were boxing up papers and files from an old desk. Other than the desk, the warehouse itself, at least fifty thousand square feet of space, was completely and startlingly empty. Not a candy wrapper or cigarette butt in sight. My concerns had been well founded. Whoever owned this warehouse cleaned it out the moment Carlos Rivera met with Barber.

  My arms still shook from the climb, and I was deeply regretting the tacos and forty-four-ounce soda I’d inhaled. Forty-four ounces was forty-four ounces. Calorie-free or not, it weighed the same. Time to make like a sheep.

  As I inched back on the metal frame, I rehearsed my told-you-so speech to Uncle Bob. The warehouse was empty. Yes, just like I said it would be. I know I was right, but— Really, Uncle Bob, stop, you’re embarrassing me. No really, stop it. I’m not kidding.

  It was about the time I was imagining my reluctant appearance and off-the-cuff speech at the Really, Really Right Awards Ceremony that my mind processed movement. Something flashed in my periphery, a fist possibly, and was quickly followed by a burst of pain in my jaw. Then all I could think as I fell through the skylight was, Holy crap!

  Chapter Nine

  You know you have ADD when—

  Look! A chicken!

  —T-SHIRT

  I first saw him the day I was born. His hooded cloak undulated in majestic waves like the shadows cast by leaves in a soft breeze. He’d looked down at me while the doctor cut the cord. I knew he was looking down at me, even though I couldn’t see his face. He’d touched me as the nurses cleaned my skin, though I couldn’t feel his fingertips. And he’d whispered my name, husky and deep and soft, though I couldn’t hear his voice. Probably because I was screaming at the top of my lungs, having recently been evicted.

  Since that day, I’d seen him only on the rarest of occasions, all dire. So it made sense that I would see him now. The occasion being dire and all.

  As I fell through the skylight, the cement floor rushing toward me at the speed of light, he was there, looking up at me from below—though I couldn’t see his face. I tried to stop in midair, tried to pause my descent, to hover for a better look. B
ut gravity insisted that I continue my downward journey. Then somewhere in the dark and scary—and some would say psychotic—recesses of my mind, I remembered. I remembered what he’d whispered to me the day I was born. My mind instantly rejected the idea, because the name he’d whispered wasn’t mine. He’d called me Dutch. On the very day I was born. How did he know?

  While I was busy reminiscing about my first day on earth, I’d forgotten that I was falling to my death. Damned ADD. I was reminded quite effectively, however, when I stopped. I hit hard, and the air rushed out of my lungs. Yet he was still looking up at me. That meant I hadn’t made it to the ground. I hit something else, something metal, before flipping back and crashing onto steel grating.

  An excruciating pain exploded in my midsection and ripped through me like a nuclear blast, so severe, so startlingly intense, it stole my breath and darkened my vision until I felt myself liquefy and slip through the grates. And as darkness crept around the edges of my consciousness, I saw him again, leaning over me, studying me.

  I tried so hard to focus, to block out the pain watering my eyes and blurring my vision. But I ran out of time before I could manage it, and everything went black. An inhuman growl—angry and full of pain—echoed off the walls of the empty warehouse, shook the metal of the building until it hummed like a tuning fork in my ears.

  Though I couldn’t hear his voice.

  * * *

  It seemed like the moment I lost consciousness, I found it again. It certainly wasn’t where I’d left it. Still, I was breathing and coherent. Amazingly, the old saying was right: It isn’t the fall that will kill you, but the sudden stop.

  I tried to pry open my lids. I failed. Either I wasn’t really conscious or Garrett had found a tube of Super Glue and was getting even for the salsa incident. While I waited for my eyelids to realize they were supposed to be in the upright position, I listened to him babble into the radio, something about my having a pulse. Always a welcome observation. His fingertips rested on my neck.

  “I’m here,” Uncle Bob blurted breathlessly through the radio. Then I heard footsteps on metal steps and sirens in the background.

  Garrett must have sensed I was awake. “Hey, Detective,” he said to Uncle Bob, who was now trudging across the grating toward us. “I think we’re losing her. I have no choice but to perform mouth-to-mouth.”

  “Don’t you dare,” I said, my lids still in lockdown.

  He laughed under his breath.

  “Bloody hell, Charley,” Uncle Bob said in a wheezy voice that sounded more concerned than angry. Maybe the rubber band at his wrist was working after all. “What happened?”

  “I fell.”

  “No shit.”

  “Someone hit me.”

  “Again? I didn’t realize it was National Kill Charley Davidson Week.”

  “Do we get a vacation day with that?” Garrett asked. Uncle Bob must have flashed him his famous glower because Garrett jumped up and said, “Right. I’m on it.” He took off, supposedly in search of the assailant.

  The sirens were getting closer, and I heard men shuffling about below me.

  “Is anything broken?” Uncle Bob’s voice had softened.

  “My eyelids, I think. I can’t open them.”

  I heard a soft chuckle. “If it were anyone else, I’d say eyelids can’t be broken. But considering the source…”

  A weak grin spread across my face. “So I’m, like, special?”

  He snorted as he pressed gingerly here and there, testing for broken bones and the like. “Special wouldn’t even begin to cover it, my dear.”

  * * *

  Miracles happen. I figured I was living proof. To walk away—well, to limp away with lots of help—from a fall like that without a single broken bone was nothing short of miraculous. With a capital M.

  “We really should get some X-rays,” the EMT said to Uncle Bob as I lounged on the stretcher.

  Ambulances were cool. “You just want to fondle my extraneous body parts,” I said to the EMT as I picked up a silver gadget that looked disturbingly like an alien orifice probe, broke it, then promptly put it back, hoping it wouldn’t leave someone’s life hanging in the balance because the EMT couldn’t alien-probe his orifices.

  EMT Guy chuckled and checked my blood pressure for the gazillionth time.

  “Really, Uncle Bob, I’m fine. Who owns this warehouse?”

  Uncle Bob closed his phone and looked at me through the open doors of the ambulance. “Well, if you’re hoping for a neon sign above his head that flashes Bad Guy, you’re going to be very disappointed.”

  “Don’t tell me. The guy’s a canonized saint?”

  “Close. His name is Father Federico Díaz.”

  Wow. Why would a Catholic priest own a warehouse in the middle of nowhere? Why would a Catholic priest own a warehouse, period? This case was getting more bizarre by the minute.

  “No one,” Garrett said, jogging up to us. “I don’t understand it. If there were two guys inside and one on the roof, where’d they go?”

  “The van was the only vehicle on the premises. They had to leave on foot,” Uncle Bob said, scanning the area with a quizzical look on his face.

  “Or not leave at all,” I added. “Where are the boxes?”

  They both turned around and surveyed the empty warehouse.

  “What boxes?” Uncle Bob asked.

  “Exactly.” I eased off the stretcher, picked up and handed the broken probe to the EMT, who reattached the alien part and put it back with a grin, then stepped to the ground with far more wincing than was socially acceptable.

  “I have three words for you,” EMT Guy said. “Possible internal bleeding.”

  I turned back to him. “Don’t you think if I was bleeding internally, I’d know somewhere deep inside? Like, internally?”

  “One X-ray,” he bargained. When I winced again, he added, “Maybe two.”

  Uncle Bob wrapped a beefy arm around me. I was a nanosecond away from arguing with EMT Guy when he said, “Charley, we have men all over the place. I promise we’ll look for your missing boxes.”

  “But—”

  “You’re going to the hospital if I have to handcuff you to that stretcher,” Garrett said, stepping in front of me as if to block my only escape route.

  With an annoyed sigh, I folded my arms and glared at him. “Stop trying to get me into your handcuffs. I want to be there when you talk to Father Federico,” I said to Uncle Bob, ignoring Garrett’s surprised expression. Would he never learn?

  “Deal,” Uncle Bob agreed before I could change my mind. “I’ll call you tomorrow with a time.”

  “You’ll need a ride home from the hospital,” Garrett reminded me.

  “You just want to try out those handcuffs. I’ll call Cookie. Go figure out where those boxes went.”

  “Do you want to look at mug shots tomorrow, as well?” Uncle Bob asked. “Can you ID the guy who hit you?”

  “Well…” My nose scrunched as I considered the possibility of positively identifying my assailant based on the knuckle sandwich he gave me. “I got an almost clear peripheral look at the guy’s left fist. I might could recognize his pinkie.”

  * * *

  For some bizarre reason that baffled the heck out of me, Cookie seemed none too happy about being called out at one in the morning to extract me from the hospital.

  “What did you do now?” she asked, walking into the examining room. Still in her pajama bottoms with a massive robelike sweater thrown over a tee, she looked a tad postapocalyptic. And she had a wicked case of bedhead. It was funny.

  I eased off the examining table, moving as if there were a bomb in the room set to go off with a motion-detecting sensor. She rushed to my side to help. Had there actually been a bomb set to go off with a motion-detecting sensor, we’d have been blown to bits.

  “Why are you assuming it was my fault?” I asked when my feet were firmly planted.

  Her lips thinned into a grim reprimand. “Do you have any idea
what it’s like to get a call from the hospital in the middle of the night? I jump into panic mode. I can barely put two words together.”

  “I’m sorry.” After limping to my jacket, I shrugged into it, amazed at how much effort it took not to pass out. “You probably thought something happened to Amber.”

  “Are you kidding? Amber’s an angel compared to you. Having you around makes me appreciate her pubescent, hormone-induced ways. Honestly, I don’t know how your stepmother did it.”

  A lightbulb went off in my head when she said that. Not a particularly bright one—maybe a 12-watter—but it did make me reassess my stepmother’s lack of interest in my well-being. Perhaps our rocky relationship was partially my fault.

  Not.

  Cookie lectured me all the way home. Thankfully, I’d had the ambulance take me to Pres, so it was a short drive. Her concern was sweet and, at the same time, oddly annoying. My concern, however, was leaning toward homicidal. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t help but get a little hot under my seven-dollar thrift-store Gucci collar. Someone hit me. Someone tried to kill me. Had he succeeded, I could have died.

  Then, as if my perpetual state of sunshine couldn’t allow such a negative thought to infect my mind—I’m pretty sure I was a flower child in a past life—I just had to see the cup half full. Hopefully of Jack Daniel’s. I’d learned something tonight, besides the legitimacy of the sudden-stop thing. I’d learned that somehow, in some bizarre coincidence of fate, Reyes and the Big Bad were connected. But how? Reyes couldn’t have been more than three when I was born. How did Bad know he would call me Dutch fifteen years later?

  I couldn’t have been imagining it. I remembered it so clearly. Dutch. Whispery and soft, deep and mesmerizing. Rather like Reyes himself. And the similarities didn’t stop there. My mind started registering all kinds of likenesses between the two. The heat and energy that radiated off them both. The way they moved—a blur—very unlike the departed. The paralyzing power of their touches, their stares. The way my knees almost gave beneath my weight with the appearance of either one.

  Maybe I was losing it. Either that or Reyes and Bad were the same kind of being. But how was that even possible? I needed a second opinion. As Cookie pulled her Taurus into the parking lot, I said, “I saw him again.”