The Blood Dahlia (The Dark Angel Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  A piece of paper couldn’t fit through the gap between the tips of the two men’s noses when Lynch stated in his normal deep and gruff tone, “You messed with the wrong person, bud.”

  The man, even with his injuries, let out a laugh that annoyed Lynch, elevating his rage to a level he didn’t know was possible. His right hand squeezed the last of the laugh from the man’s throat. His eyes bulged and a new emotion appeared on his face as he gasped for life, fear.

  Lynch closed his eyes and slipped under and used an ability he discovered by accident, over a decade ago, in an alley much like this, with an asshole in his grip much like the one he has now. Their thoughts merged together, like pages in books on one another, just for the other to read. Lynch would know exactly what the attacker, John Stanford, a 38-year-old from Timmons Road, was thinking. Even better, John Stanford would know exactly what Lynch was thinking. At that moment, Lynch knew that was a terrifying thought.

  “Why did he send you?” Lynch asked. He knew it was a worthless question. If John Stanford knew, Lynch would already know.

  With bulging eyes, sweat rolling down his red face, and both hands clawing and pulling on Lynch’s duster-sleeved arm with all his might, John Stanford didn’t answer the question. He hung there and flailed.

  “No matter.” Lynch leaned in even closer, placing his lips next to the man’s left ear. “I will give him your regards.”

  John Stanford whimpered, which Lynch assumed was because of the image that had just entered their shared thoughts.

  “Oh, yes,” Lynch growled, and then he let it happen. There was no great shine of power transferring from one man to another, or a shriek from its victim. Just a quiet exchange between the two that left one man standing, holding the life force of the other in his hand. The other was nothing more than a fleshy bag of bones that fell to the ground in a pile after Lynch released his grip.

  He walked away with a smirk, “There can only be one.” A saying he felt was a little more than corny, but he liked the movie it was from and always found it the best approximation of what happened and how he felt. It wasn’t the adrenaline of the moment. There was no way this was that. Lynch had chased, and caught, enough people in his life where his pulse rarely got up for it, unless his rage pushed it. Even then, that didn’t last long. He was cooler and more calculated in his pursuits. What he felt was renewed, recharged, refreshed, and he had John Stanford to thank for it.

  It helped him hurry back to Gina’s apartment, which by now was a hive of activity, with patrolmen and paramedics rushing in the front door that he had ripped off the hinges moments earlier. To avoid creating a scene, he snuck up to the back door and flashed his investigator's badge so quick most of the newbies pulling third shift didn’t know if he was the real deal or some guy carrying something from a crackerjacks box. A few of the older guys made eye contact enough he could tell they recognized him enough to be familiar, but they weren’t sure who he was.

  In her bedroom he found two paramedics hooking up wires and tubes to every exposed area of her skin. Sitting on the bed at her head was Lucas, who just looked up and nodded.

  “How is she?”

  Without looking up, a paramedic that looked like he belonged more in high school than someone who had just finished the fire academy said, “Sir, she’s pretty roughed up. We need to transport her quickly. I am concerned about internal bleeding.” He and his partner transferred Gina to the gurney and attempted to roll her out to the stairs. Lynch stopped them for just a moment and gave her hand a squeeze and then kissed her forehead before letting them wheel her out.

  Lynch stood at her bedroom door and watched. The two lightweights surprised him as they hoisted the gurney off its wheels and carried her down the stairs with little trouble.

  “You fix her up?” Lucas asked as he joined Lynch at the top of the stairs.

  “You know it.”

  “Neighbors reported seeing the attacker jump out the second floor wearing a black hat and cap, like a large bat. You wouldn’t know anything about that?” Lucas looked Lynch up and down, with a lift of his brow at seeing his hat.

  “No, detective, I sure wouldn’t, but a John Stanford is waiting for you three blocks over and eight blocks down, next to a pile of trash. Might be hard for you to figure out which is which. He might have known something about that, but I don’t think he is real talkative now.” Lynch watched as they rolled Gina through the opening that was her front door.

  “I see. Learn anything?”

  The door on the ambulance slammed shut outside and its diesel V-8 tapped as it pulled away. Lynch started down the stairs. “Yep,” was the answer he gave his old partner.

  “You going to at least tell me where the mess is going to be?” Lucas called down to him.

  “Will call you after. Do you need me to make a statement about what I saw here, officer?”

  Lynch didn’t wait for an answer before departing through the gaping hole of a front door. Not that he was listening for one. The only thought running through his mind was on where he was going next. Just under the scrape of his car door opening, he heard Lucas yell at the black-and-whites, “What are all of you just standing around for? Let’s get some statements and collect the evidence. I don’t want to be at this all night.”

  30

  Lynch’s arrival at his destination was less than subtle, and completely intentional. The large, pitted chrome bumper on his mint green tank on wheels did its job and then gave, allowing the front grill to crumple inward just a bit. The good old Detroit steel fared better than the glossy Italian carbon fiber of the gaudy red sports car Lynch plowed into in the driveway. Considering that his knock, he walked out and kicked in the door of the large white Victorian palace. The sound of the wooden door frame cracking and then crashing inward put a smile on his face. The cloud of dust that rose from its landing amused him as he stepped through the opening, making sure all his weight pressed down through his right foot into the door's decorative glass pane. Its crunch was a satisfying sound.

  “I’m home!” Lynch yelled in through the entryway as he proceeded to the tile medallion positioned in the floor. It was the traditional mariner's compass. Above it, a crystal chandelier hung in the darkness.

  “In here,” a voice answered from the only room on the first floor with a light on. There was no fear or hesitation in the voice. Which normally should have concerned Lynch, but it didn’t. It enticed him, as he walked at a casual pace down the hall, taking in the beautiful home. As he got closer, he could see the dark wood paneling and a line of matching bookshelves through the door. This had to be some kind of office, which was fine with him. Lynch was here to take care of business.

  Instincts tried to tell him to hesitate at the door. To stand to one side and move in, clearing the room from corner to corner. They were part of the multiple messages flowing through his mind. Each shouting down the other. All being ignored as he told them to shut the hell up and then slipped to that place where only he could. He was still in there, and not, at the same time. Somewhere in between, where he could exist in the world everyone knew, but see, sense, and move in the one he knew. It put his senses on hi-def of hi-def, if that was a thing. Everything was available, and raw to him as he stepped in the door.

  There was no ‘hello’ or ‘how are you?’ to welcome him in. Just a volley of four slugs ripping through his torso before he heard the signature bangs. Like all the wounds he had suffered since Paul gave him his gift, he felt the burn as they happened, but that was it. No lasting pain or ill effects. By the feeling of the burn, it was small caliber. Maybe a .9, possibly a .38. Definitely not a .45. When those hit, they burned like a son-of-a-bitch, and their impact knocks him back a little. On his last tour, he took a rocket-propelled grenade to the chest. He felt that bruise for a week.

  “Just goes to show, you can’t trust anyone these days. Johnny had been with me for years, would’ve never picked him for a squealer.”

  Lynch just turned and looked at the man seat
ed behind the desk and said deadpan, “He squealed, grunted, and groaned. I expected something of a bit larger caliber. I am guessing your wife has the big guns.”

  The walk was that of a man on a mission. To Lynch it seemed casual steps, one after another, but Lynch was on him in seconds. His big paw gripped and twisted the gun out of the man’s hand. It went off again as he released it and then landed harmlessly on the floor. The surprised wide brown eyes of the mid-forty-year-old man, with a salt and pepper goatee and no hair on top to match, searched the wounds on Lynch. Each hole was clearly visible in his duster, but nothing oozed from them on either side. Each just a void in his flesh.

  “How? What are you?” he asked through a gasp.

  “Well, Mr. Bell. I would have hoped the person who told you to come after me and my friend would have told you that, but since she didn’t, I am your worst nightmare.” Lynch tossed him out of his chair and across the room like a rag-doll. The smack of his dark grey form against the dark hazelnut paneled walls, with the small of his back bouncing off the decorative chair rail, was a satisfying sound. Like a sack of potatoes thrown violently against concrete and then landing in a large heap on the floor below. Watching the dark grey turn into just a pile on the ground was the cherry on top of Lynch’s ice cream.

  “So, you want to tell me why you sent that stooge after my friend?” Lynch demanded, and then strode over to the garbage pile of humanity.

  “You’re a dead man,” Mr. Bell croaked.

  Lynch let out a deep belly laugh and stood over the man with his hands on his hips. Then he bent over and glared into his eyes. “She should have told you.” Lynch leaned in closer. Close enough that they could both taste the pork that Lynch threw on two pieces of sourdough bread, with the spicy mustard he knew he would regret later, and smell the anger dripping from his pores. “I am already dead, let me show you.” He grabbed him by both arms and yanked Mr. Bell in with him.

  There was no stopping at just under the surface. That was too simple, too safe. Lynch kept going. Deeper and deeper, to a place he’d made the mistake and went to once, before he learned how to stop. If there were a bottom basement of whatever this world was, this would be it. It was below everything real and alive, and just a few steps above hell itself. Lynch himself didn’t know what this place was, but he knew just the thought of it drove a stake of fear straight in his heart. It was a world soaked in despair and pain, moaning souls, trapped for all eternity, surrounding you, grabbing at you, all trying to pull you in with them. The one and only time he went this deep before, he was afraid he would not be able to break their grip on him. Now he held William Bell, the all-powerful states attorney, who made a career of holding the fates of others in his hands, over an abyss of misery. Spectral faces looked up and screamed at him. Ghostly hands and arms reached for them. Their grasp just short of being able to reach the man’s legs. He shook and wept as he pleaded, “What is this place? Get me out of here. Now.”

  “You want to tell me about her, and about your daughter?”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  The last syllable had escaped his lips as Lynch let go. It was only a mere moment, and if he fell downward, it was only a matter of millimeters, but the feeling of freefall was enough to incite a hurried answer, “Okay. Okay. I will tell you everything. Everything you want to know. Just get me out of here.”

  Lynch waited a moment more and watched a ghastly creature with hollow eyes climb up on the others and reach up. Its hand brushed the right leg of William Bell. This powerful man let out a scream similar to one a young girl might when the scary clown jumped out at her in the haunted house. It touched him again, and he screamed again, before descending into a blubbering cry. Lynch pulled him up and returned them both to the office, where he deposited Mr. Bell harshly in his office chair. “Now talk.”

  “Her name is Mistress Alana. I don’t know much about her; except she promises to help you succeed in ways you never could on your own.”

  “Yeah, right. No one makes you an offer like that without a hefty price, and we both know what the price is, don’t we?”

  There was no verbal response. Instead, it was a sickened look on William Bell’s face. It was that look people get when whatever he had for dinner had decided to come up in his throat, and it tasted worse going down the second time. After a hard swallow, he nodded.

  “I know you didn’t find her on your own.” Lynch hit the high back of the leather office chair to send it into a spin as he walked to the opposite side of the desk. He leaned over it to greet William face to face. “So, which of your sick bastard friends introduced you? Hines? Tolson? Tyson?” Then it hit Lynch like a punch from a heavyweight fighter. “Tyson. He just won that defense contract after Roland crashed that new prototype jet. I bet that was no accident, and his daughter Sarah is already dead. That is who, wasn’t it?”

  “No, it was Devon. I don’t know who introduced him to her, but he is the one who arranged for us to meet.”

  Lynch leaned in closer and leered. “So, anything happen to any of your rivals yet, or is your little Courtney still alive?” The tears that flowed when he was suspended above hell itself started yet again, following the same paths down his cheeks. “Let me tell you what she does to them. She kills them and drains all of their blood, so she can bathe in it. The more she does, the more normal that creature becomes. When you saw her, she wasn’t completely a woman yet. With every grisly bath she takes, the closer she gets to what she wants. She rubs your back with financial reward or, in your case, political power, and she bathes in your dead daughter's blood to get what she wants.” Lynch reached his hand over and gripped the mug on the corner of the desk. “World’s Best Dad,” was written on it in big yellow letters with red balloons on it. In a single violent move, he smashed it against the left temple of William Bell. “You really deserve that, you sick son of a bitch.”

  With everything making sense, Lynch was left with several choices for his next move. He could go confront Devon Hines, but what would that accomplish? Another option was to attempt to find Mistress Alana, but where should he start? The third was one he couldn’t ignore. Was there a chance some of the girls were still alive? In both his head and his gut, he thought there was better than just a good chance they were, but like the second option, he didn’t know where to start.

  With no clear option, he leaned back on an old standby, and one of his favorites. If you want to find someone you go shake the tree they are hiding in. That meant a trip to go visit his friend, Devon Hines. This time he would go alone, with no eye-candy for his benefit, and Lynch had every intention of making this less pleasant and more uncomfortable than before.

  He gave a last look at the unconscious William Bell, whose head was now laying in a puddle of his own drool. His shoulders rose up and down, telling Lynch he was still breathing, which neither satisfied nor bothered him. With a quick adjustment to his hat, he brought himself back into the real world and headed for the door, and to back the front bumper of his mint-green sedan out of what remained of the red fiberglass midlife crisis out front.

  One foot landed back in the hallway, but the second foot never made it. Lynch felt a great force grab his soul and yank him like a hook. The world around him disappeared until it was nothing more than a shadow of itself. Both there and not, like a monochrome oil painting with a plastic sheet over it. What was there, though, was clear. He didn’t need to see her, he felt her.

  31

  “I am surprised. I thought you sent others to do your dirty work.” Lynch turned to look around for her. She was nowhere in the surreal version of William Bell’s office he found himself standing in. From where he was in the doorway, the opposite corner had an odd and ominous dark spot. There were no lights here, but this is what one might expect to see if the only light source was at his end of the room. He knew it wasn’t that though. Lynch knew it was one of her tunnels in and out of the room. Which made sense, since he never felt the effects of crossing one of them, but he did
n’t remember seeing it before now.

  “Never mind, you ARE a coward!” he yelled at the tunnel. That would be why he hadn’t seen her before. She had just popped in long enough to yank him back, and left. He had her attention, but had no intention of following her. She had to be dealt with, and he would do that at a time and, most importantly, a place of his choosing.

  Everyone has plans and everyone has intentions. The best made plans are paved with good intentions, was how the saying went. Life, or fate, tends to have a way of sticking its finger in the proverbial ocean of life and swirling the water around just to see what comes out.

  At that moment, the finger was in the water and starting to swirl. As quick as Lynch pulled himself out, he found himself pulled back in. This time he spun around toward the tunnel as fast as he could. There she was. A river of flowing red hair trailing behind her as she headed back to her tunnel.

  “Two can play this game,” he muttered and reached with both hands, grabbing two firm handfuls of that flowing river of red. A violent yank back sent both of his hands past him and snapped her head backward at her neck. Her figure recoiled up and over and did a back flip toward him. The expression on her face answered an unasked question for Lynch, she could feel pain.

  His right hand released the hair and met her throat as she flipped in front of him. For all intents and purposes, her flesh felt like flesh. It was smooth, warm, and moist. Inside muscles strained to bring air in and out. A throbbing in the tissue was regular but increasing in speed and intensity. His eyes saw luscious red lips that were pursed, and terrified green eyes. Below his hand, her bosom heaved up and down with each breath. Both of her hands gripped his arm at the wrist. They didn’t scratch or try to pull his hand away. They just held his arm. They caressed his arm through the rough leather of his duster. Her thumbs rubbing like a lover might do.