Brown and de Luca Collection, Volume 1 Read online

  What the hell did I care? I’d deny it. My legions of followers would believe me. I mean, as long as it didn’t happen too often or in front of someone’s cell-cam and wind up on YouTube, I was golden. And even if it did, they’d forgive me for losing it if I let them know why.

  My brother was missing, for God’s sake. A saint would be on her last nerve.

  I tapped across the room and out the door, feeling the space around me widen as I moved through it. I turned left down the hall to the main entrance. Lots of doors there. I picked the quietest one and went through it and then down the broad stone steps to the sidewalk. I intended to cross the street to the coffee shop, grab a Mucho-Mocha with extra caffeine, and phone my assistant to come and pick my ass up. My mind wasn’t on what I was doing, though. I was flashing back to the last time I’d seen anything.

  It had been Tommy’s face.

  I was twelve and knew I was going blind. I had a corneal dystrophy, a rare one. At that point I could still see, but it was pretty bad. Blurry, dull. Worse and worse. I’d been having a nightmare, dreamed of being completely blind, and woke up screaming.

  It was Tommy who came to my bedroom, sat on the edge of my mattress, hugged me close, told me it was all gonna be okay. That he’d be with me, no matter what. And he was, before the addictions took him away. He went from coke to crack, from the oxy-twins—contin and codone—to heroin, his standards lowering with his resources, until he was broke and homeless and taking anything he could find that was stronger than aspirin. Anyway, before all that, when he was a freshly showered fourteen-year-old kid with a future, he hugged me, conceded to my demand that he leave the light on and told me stories until I fell back asleep.

  When I woke up, I thought he’d lied to me. I thought he’d turned the light off after swearing he wouldn’t. But he hadn’t. Turned out my nightmare was a premonition. I was totally blind.

  I shook off the memory about the same time I heard squealing tires and a blasting horn, and realized about a second too late that I’d stepped off the curb and into the street without checking first. Sure as shit, the car hit me. I couldn’t even believe it. One step, a loud horn, and bam. I flew fast and landed hard, hip bone, then shoulder, then head, in that order. And then I just lay perfectly still while pain blasted through every part of me.

  Damn. I’d thought this day couldn’t get any worse.

  * * *

  Detective Mason Brown had a series of rapid-fire impressions; leggy brunette. Dark sunglasses. White cane. Blind? OhfuckI’mgonnahither! He jerked the wheel and slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. The thump made his stomach heave. The car slid sideways, but only a few feet—hell, it was city traffic, he hadn’t been moving very fast to begin with—and came to a stop. He opened the door and lunged out before he’d even finished processing what had happened. And then he was bending over the felled female in the middle of the street outside the station, hoping to hell she wasn’t seriously hurt. Hands on her shoulders. That was autopilot. Then the brain kicked in. Don’t move her. Spinal cord and all that. Hell, her eyes are closed.

  And then they opened and looked slightly past his left shoulder. They were sky-blue eyes, and they were completely blank.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay.” She was trying to sit up while she talked.

  “Hang on. Hold still a second, just in case.”

  She was lying on her side, propped up by one bent elbow on the pavement. Short skirt. A brand-new run in her stockings. Long brown hair, kind of wavy. She patted the blacktop with her free hand. “Am I in the road? Get me the hell out of the road.” Her questing hand found her big sunglasses and she quickly jammed them onto her face. They were crooked, but he didn’t think she knew. “Do you see my bag?”

  Since she was apparently getting up with him or without him, he helped onto her feet, then kept hold of one upper arm. “It’s over by the curb. Can you walk?”

  “Yeah.” To prove it, she started limping back the way she’d come. It was closer, though how she knew which direction to go, he couldn’t figure. A couple of his colleagues had jumped into action by then, blocking traffic, directing it around his still sideways unmarked car. His partner, Roosevelt Jones, was standing by the hood, shaking his shaved head and smiling so hard his face actually had wrinkles. He was a hundred and six—okay, fifty-seven—and still only had wrinkles when he smiled.

  “Quit your damn grinning and move the car, Rosie.”

  “Nossir. We’re gonna need photos and whatnot.” He scooped up the handbag and cane just as Mason got her back on the sidewalk. Rosie held her things out to her. “Here’s your stuff, miss. You sure you’re all right?”

  She turned her head toward him and, with a precision that surprised Mason, reached out and took her handbag, then her cane, from Rosie’s outstretched hands. “I think so.”

  “Do you hurt anywhere?” Mason asked.

  “All over, but—”

  “Best let the medics have a look at you in the E.R.,” Rosie said. “Just to be sure. Damn, Mason, I knew you were desperate for a woman, but I didn’t think you’d run one down in the street.” Then he laughed like a seal barking.

  The woman’s head snapped toward Mason again. “You were the one who hit me?”

  “Damn straight he was,” Rosie said and turned to Mason. “What’s wrong with you, running down celebrities in the street?” Rosie smiled at her. “I’m Detective Roosevelt Jones. My partner—who talked me into letting him drive due to my alleged aging reflexes—is Mason Brown. And might I just add that it’s a privilege to meet you, ma’am? My wife quotes you to me on a daily basis.” He elbowed Mason. “Rachel de Luca. The author.”

  He said it, Mason thought, like that ought to mean something to him. He shrugged at Rosie, but said, “Great to meet you.” Like he knew who the hell she was. He’d never even heard of her. “And I’m really sorry.”

  “I’m fine.” As soon as she said it her knees bent a little, and he had to snap an arm around her waist to keep her upright.

  “Whoa. Okay, that’s it, you’re going to the E.R.”

  “I really don’t have time, I—”

  “Ambulance is already here,” Mason said.

  “Like I said, I don’t have time.”

  He gave the paramedics a wave. “Over here, boys.” Then he turned to her again. “Just go get checked out. I won’t be able to work all day if I don’t know you made sure you’re okay.”

  “Oh, well, I wouldn’t want to mess up your day. And mine’s pretty much fucked, anyway.” She clapped a hand over her mouth, and he saw those blue eyes widen behind the crooked glasses.

  The lady had a temper.

  Just as quickly, he saw her face change. It was like she put on a Halloween mask. Only backward. In this case, the wicked witch was the one behind the disguise.

  “So you’re a detective?” she asked, as if she’d only just heard that part of his partner’s spiel. Her voice was a half octave higher, softer, her attitude polite instead of pissed, as if she wasn’t really just aching to kick him in the balls for hitting her.

  “Yeah.” And I see right through you, he thought. You wouldn’t give a damn what you said to me if you didn’t know I was a cop. And that makes me wonder why it matters. “Here come the paramedics. Hey, Reno.”

  “Hey, Mason.” Reno, an EMT Mason had known for three years, took her other arm and led her to the back of the ambulance. She handed Reno her bag and her stick, gripped the rail, found the step without a single miss, and pulled herself up and in as Mason watched her, thinking she was really good at being blind. And then thinking what a dumb-ass thought that was.

  No wonder she was on the bitchy side. He would probably be a bear if he were in her shoes.

  “Look, I’ll see how you’re doing later, okay?” He wasn’t quite able to walk away just yet. “I need to take care of things here, g
et that car out of the road, free up the traffic, climb the paperwork mountain. But I’ll check in on you.”

  “No need. I’m not going to sue you.”

  That’s what they all say, he thought. Right before they call a lawyer. That was one headache he didn’t need. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

  She settled onto the gurney, still sitting up. “All right. Actually, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about, anyway.” Sweet smile, flung at him without warning. He hadn’t been expecting it, so its impact was stronger than it should have been. “Maybe…maybe this little accident was supposed to happen.”

  Huh? What the hell did that mean?

  He stood there puzzling on that after the ambulance doors closed, until Rosie came over and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “She’s way better-looking in person than on her book jackets, isn’t she?”

  “I wouldn’t know, having never seen one. Who the hell is she, anyway?” They started back toward Mason’s car. There were uniforms out in the street taking photos, another one stopping traffic to let the ambulance pull out.

  “Self-help author. Big celeb. On TV a lot. Preaches nonviolence, happy happy joy joy shit. You know, like Marlayna’s so into. Positive energy. Love your enemy and raise your vibe. What you get in life is always your own doing and all that. How can you not have heard of her?”

  “Like you would have if not for your better half, pal? We’re not exactly vibing on her level, are we now?”

  Rosie grinned. “Guess not, bein’ as we been up to our necks in bloodless crime scenes and MPDs lately.”

  Missing, presumed dead. Twelve so far. Not a single body yet, though. But back to the blind chick. “Did you hear what she said to me, just before they closed the doors, Rosie?” Rosie shook his head. “She said maybe this accident was supposed to happen. What do you think she meant by that?”

  “Shoot, I don’t know. I said I know who she is, not that I’m a true believer. I’ll ask Marlayna, though. She might have an idea.”

  “Yeah, you do that.”

  Mason’s phone chirped just then, and he pulled it out and looked at the screen.

  His big brother Eric’s face—he looked fifty but was only thirty-eight—popped up beside the text message icon. He clicked through, and the message read: Take care of Marie & the boys.

  What the hell?

  “I gotta go.” Mason turned toward the car, moving on autopilot, then stopping. “Shit, I need a car.” He couldn’t move his until he got the okay.

  “What’s up?” Rosie unsnapped his key ring from his belt and held it out.

  “Don’t know. Eric’s at my place, showed up in the wee hours and wouldn’t talk to me. He had a fight with Marie or something.” He looked at the text again as he took the keys, a cold chill going up his spine. “Thanks, pal.”

  “Holler if you need me, Mace.”

  Mason gave a nod and headed around the corner to the parking lot behind the Binghamton P.D. Rosie’s yellow Hummer stood out just like its owner, the only black detective in a mostly white police department, so he didn’t have to look for it.

  There was a sick feeling in his stomach as he drove the oversize toolbox out into traffic. He was worried about his brother.

  Nothing new there. Worrying about Eric had become the Brown family pastime. Habit, he guessed. He told himself that there was probably nothing wrong. Maybe Eric was quoting a line from one of those damn grim poems he was always reading, scaring the hell out of Mason for nothing.

  But he didn’t think so.

  * * *

  Eric Conroy Brown had gone straight to work after dumping the body, worked the entire day and then headed home late last night just like he always did after the rat had been fed and had crawled back into its hole, leaving him to clean up the mess. It made him feel normal to lie in bed beside his wife and pretend he wasn’t a monster. He knew he was, though. The rat was him. No matter how hard he tried to convince himself it was some other being, some demon possessing him, some evil other personality trying to force its way to the fore, it was him. He was the rat, which was probably why he couldn’t get it to shut up and stay inside, much less kill it.

  This time, however, home had provided no solace.

  Marie had been angry, waiting at the door with one hand at the small of her back and the other on top of her basketball-sized belly. “Why didn’t you come home last night? Honestly, Eric, I told you yesterday morning that the boys would be home from camp and I was making a welcome-home dinner.”

  He blinked. The boys. Baseball camp. They’d been gone all summer. Hell. “I’m sorry. I got busy at work and—”

  “You left your cell phone home. Again. I called the garage three times last night.”

  “You know the garage phone switches over to the service at five whether we stay late or not. This guy needed his car finished, and the boss asked if I could stay late and get it done. It got so late I just slept on the cot in the storeroom. I just forgot about the boys is all.”

  “You forgot?” She’d stared at him for a second there as if she knew. Or suspected. As if she was trying to get a visual of the rat inside him.

  Don’t let her see, don’t let her see, don’t let her see. Spackle. Plaster. Shhh. No scratching!

  “Are they already asleep?” he asked. He’d stayed late. It was hard to face the family too soon after…

  “It’s 2:00 a.m., Eric. What do you think?”

  He sighed heavily. Then, unable to bear the way she was looking at him any longer, he went to the boys’ shared bedroom and closed the door behind him. He heard Marie huff and stomp off into the kitchen. He imagined her waddling and stomping at the same time and smiled. She was beautiful when she was pregnant. All the time, really. A blue-eyed blonde just like Mother. But pregnant, she was at her best.

  He didn’t deserve her.

  Joshua was sound asleep. His curly carrot mop had grown longer, and his freckles had undergone a summertime explosion. How did kids change so much over a single season? He hoped sixth grade would be a good one for Josh. He hated sending his kids to school. School had been nothing but hell for him. He’d suggested homeschooling, but Marie had insisted she had no time, and the boys had hated the idea. And really, the more they were out of the house, away from him, the better.

  Besides, the boys weren’t like him. They fit in. They weren’t freaks.

  He’d wondered, back then, if everyone would always be able to see the rat inside him as clearly as the kids in middle school seemed to. Because they saw it. He had no doubt that they saw it. Even when he could keep it mostly silent and sleeping for months at a time, and only had to feed it a neighbor’s cat here and there, they saw it. Kids homed in on shit like that and tried to kill it. You know, like a litter of healthy animals, mom and all, will push the one sick one right out of the nest and leave it to die? He’d seen it on the Discovery Channel. Lions did it. Wolves did it. Birds did it. Kids were just like that. A weak one, a different one, a broken one, or even an especially gifted one—anything different—was to be shunned, banished, destroyed. It was probably a matter of self-preservation left over from the caveman days. You didn’t want anyone evolving faster than the norm or they’d be unfair competition. And you didn’t want anyone evolving slower than the norm, or they’d drag you down with them. And you sure as shit didn’t want predators—the kind who would prey on their own—because they’d eat you.

  Kids always knew. Adults, not so much. Adults were mostly blind. Not his mother, though. His real one. She must have taken one look at him and seen that he was broken.

  Eric smoothed Josh’s hair and turned toward Jeremy’s bed, then stopped where he was, shocked by how much more of the bed Jeremy took up. He couldn’t possibly have grown that much taller since May. Could he?

  He moved closer, surprised when Jeremy rolled over and opened his
eyes. They were brown and accusing. “You forgot, didn’t you?”

  But it wasn’t his words that made Eric’s blood chill in his veins. It was his look. He didn’t look like a kid anymore. He looked like a young man. Tall, lean, lanky, with brown hair he’d let grow all summer long, and deep brown eyes with heavy brows and thick eyelashes.

  He looks just like they all look.

  And that hot scratching began deep inside Eric’s brain.

  “No,” he whispered. “No.”

  Scratch, scratch, scratch.

  “No? Well then, where were you?”

  Eric backed away from his son.

  Jeremy rolled his eyes and gave an exaggerated sigh. “Come on, Dad, can’t you even talk to me?”

  But he couldn’t. The rat was coming out. He felt it scratching, clawing, gnawing. The plaster hadn’t even had time to dry, and already the rat was breaking through. Its twitching nose was sniffing through the first tiny hole.

  Eric backed out and closed the bedroom door. The digging intensified. That scratching rat inside his brain had caught the scent, and it was demanding to be fed. And the meal it wanted this time was Eric’s own son.

  He couldn’t stay at the house. Not once that feeling had begun. It never went away once it started. Nothing would stop it, nothing but killing.

  He heard Marie banging pans in the kitchen, warming up leftovers for him. She was always worrying about what he ate, his cholesterol, his weight, shit like that, shit that didn’t even matter. His body wasn’t diseased, his brain was.

  He walked quietly back through the house. It wasn’t a bad house. Small, only three bedrooms. The boys each had their own, but Josh had given his up to be a nursery, so they were sharing now. The living room was a mess. The boys’ sneakers scattered randomly all across the rug, jackets flung over chairs, backpacks spilling out onto the floor. He looked at the clutter, at the out-of-place sofa pillows and the TV, turned on, volume muted, running an infomercial about an electronic gadget you plugged into the wall to drive away pests. Mice and ants and spiders…