Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery Book 3) Read online

  Confusion creased his handsome features. “I wouldn’t have thought Mark would allow such a thing.”

  I shrugged. A gesture far more casual than my real feelings on the subject. “He says they’re mostly harmless. The ones that have been dropping by to see me, at least.”

  A sly, conspiratorial smile tugged one corner of his mouth. “I’ll make some calls.”

  My cell phone buzzed in my pants pocket. Glancing at the screen, a small knot of irritation tightened in my chest.

  “Shit,” I muttered. “Defensive driving.” Thank God I’d remember to set a calendar reminder two weeks ago. I’d have totally spaced it otherwise. “I better get going or the judge will probably re-issue my arrest warrant. Between you and me, I’m in no hurry to get hauled down to the pokey again.”

  “You?” he asked. “Marion Goebels’ granddaughter was arrested?”

  “On a totally a trumped up charge,” I said. “The detective had a man-grudge against your son, and he had to drag us in together when we got back from London. The unpaid speeding ticket was the only thing he had on me. Fucking Morrison.”

  Who I sort of slept with a few times.

  “Anyway, the charges against Mark were dropped after Detective Morrison beat the snot out of him during their interview, and a very nice judge said if I went to defensive driving class, he’d wipe the ticket off my record.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to just pay it?” he suggested.

  “And have a mark on my record? Are you mad?”

  Now I was treated to the full wattage of his pearly whites. “You are your grandmother’s granddaughter.”

  “Sounds like we both have important business to attend to then.” He leaned forward and took my hand in his, bending down to brush a brief kiss across my knuckles. “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?” A draft from the gallery’s windows caressed my blood-warmed cheeks.

  “Mercy,” he answered. “First and foremost. And for being so kind to me. Undeserving as I am.”

  “We’ve all made choices we regret,” I said. Like my ex-husband, for example. And that Quarter Pounder with Cheese I ate at midnight. “I’m not here to judge.”

  “What a rare woman you are,” he observed. “Rare, and beautiful.”

  He gave me his second bow of the day, and left the gallery to dispose of the dismembered undead.

  Chapter 5

  I have this theory.

  It goes like this: the universe hates me.

  Arriving at my defensive driving class my standard ten minutes early, I sat myself in the shameless nerd-approved front row table and I took the time to arrange my effects: cell phone, two pens, notepad, iPad, and a bag of cheese crackers.

  If I was going to spend the next four hours with my ass in a plastic chair, cheese needed to be in the equation somewhere.

  My fellow students shuffled in over the course of twenty minutes, a buzz of discontent building when the instructor hadn’t shown at ten minutes past the appointed start time.

  A full twenty-eight minutes late, he shuffled through the door. I knew his smoky, scotchy smell as well as I knew his hard hewn but handsome face.

  Morrison, my clever-tongued and dexterous detective.

  So, this is what they did with cops on suspension.

  His brown sugar fudge colored hair hadn’t been washed this morning, the granite cliff of his jaw was begging for a shave. The lids over his hazel eyes seemed heavier than I remembered, wanting sleep, and more. The white button-up shirt stretched over his chest looked like it might have been resurrected from the bottom of a laundry basket. Ditto, the pants, which radiated resurrected from the floor energy. The body beneath the fabric appeared softer than the whole and vibrant image in my mind’s eye. Dulled by time or beer.

  He saw me at once.

  I felt the small pop of recognition, but not the usual spark of hunger that generally attended it. His eyes darted not to my face, or my breasts as was their custom, but to my wrists and neck.

  Checking for bruises, no doubt.

  When I had deplaned after my meeting with Oscar Wilde in London, I’d had plenty. Only Morrison had assumed Mark had put them there. I’d argued as much as I was able without revealing that whole werewolves and vampires are real thing, but it hadn’t been enough. Detective James Morrison had exacted justice by way of a fist, leaving due process to see to his suspension. I hadn’t seen him since that night.

  Satisfied that I’d sustained no further injury, Morrison refused to look at me for the rest of the class—even when mine was the only hand raised to answer the questions he posed.

  Which was often.

  I sat through all four hours, ignored and ignoring, resenting everything and everyone, and generally just wanting to throat punch someone.

  Morrison’s voice still resonated with the unrelenting edge that had ripped confessions from murderers and rapists alike and closed a record number of cold cases within the Georgetown Police Department. He was wasted on this class, and its bored, blinking occupants.

  Well, most of its occupants.

  I caught hungry gazes from my fellow female classmates lasering at Morrison’s ass when he turned his back to the class to scrawl on the whiteboard.

  And, damn him, he’d turned and smiled at them. Every single one of them.

  Except for me.

  You think he’s flirting with you? I wanted to shout. Well I’ve ridden that man like a mechanical bull on nickel beer night, you smug eye-humper. Put that in your Juicy Couture sweatpants and smoke it.

  After class, Morrison snapped his battered briefcase closed and was out of the room quicker than a greased pig. I packed up my notes and wandered out to the parking lot where my metallic flake blue 67 Mustang hunkered like a wolf at the herd’s edge. The white racing stripes reflected the day’s waning light in a dull gray.

  Behind the wheel, I cranked the key over, and was met by a rhythmic choking.

  “Aww, come on,” I pleaded. “Don’t do this to me. Not now.”

  I waited for the caravan of minivans to disperse before giving it another go. The engine sounded weaker this time, a patient in the last stages of vehicular emphysema.

  I thunked my head against the cold steering wheel, worn smooth long before the Mustang had come to rest at my curb.

  The horn gave an abrupt little beep, reminding of the first time I’d honked the horn of Mark’s old Rolls Phantom. He had been in front of the car at the time, an unfortunate happenstance for us both. Me, for the new pair of underwear I required, and him for punching a dent in the car’s hood that cost a nifty ten grand to replace.

  Only it wasn’t Mark in front of the car now.

  It was Morrison.

  He had my hood popped before I could get the car door open.

  If that wasn’t a metaphor for our entire relationship, I didn’t know what was. Taking a blood pressure lowering breath, I levered myself out of the car.

  Morrison leaned over the exposed engine, hands planted on the chrome grill. I had often thought that Morrison looked more like a boxer than a cop and glancing at his profile in the sun’s dying light did little to change my mind. A strong nose that looked like it might or might not have been knuckle-adjusted at some point. The stony jaw capable of absorbing full force haymakers. Only his lips offered a hint of sensitive vulnerability.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Battery’s dead.” He thumbed greasy dust off the battery’s terminal.

  “Think so?”

  “You left your lights on again.”

  I began to protest and then remembered. Checking the clock radio, wanting to be in my seat at least ten minutes before class started, I had squealed into the parking lot on two wheels. “I might have forgotten to click them off,” I admitted.

  “You have jumper cables? The Vic’s parked over there.” He shot his chin the direction of a Gold Crown Victoria a few rows behind us in the mostly empty parking lot. I’d once made the mistake of needling Morrison about the wo
es of police-issued vehicles, only to discover he owned it personally. I’d learned too slowly that the man liked his cars like he liked his women: easy to slide into, fast on the gas, and requiring little more attention than the occasional oil change.

  Only managing two out of three meant I was a little too much for him to handle most days.

  “Do I have jumper cables?” I scoffed. “What kind of girl do you take me for?”

  This wrought the specter of his uneven smirk.

  I pulled open the driver’s door to retrieve the keys and swung back to unlock the trunk.

  Where I found a decapitated body hunched around the Mustang’s spare tire.

  A dark suit ending in a ragged red stump, matching like a morbid puzzle piece: the head it belonged to at an impossible angle, the neck pale against drying blood. The copper clamp of one cable poked from the gory space between head and neck, looking like a failed mechanism for attachment.

  Somewhere deep in my gut, I felt the spreading calm of a woman who had seen too much bloodshed. A woman who had seen scores of mangled bodies. A woman who had been bitten, beaten, and betrayed. A woman who met violence and death with the grace of eventuality.

  But that was my gut. To my great regret, my gut didn’t control my gross motor functions.

  Nope.

  That would be my brain. My panicky, neurotic, anxiety-addled brain.

  I shrieked like a banshee, slammed the trunk closed, flapped a frantic circle, and slapped death germs off on my jeans. It’s possible that I indulged in a full body shudder before I remembered Morrison, now staring at me in sudden squinty-eyed suspicion.

  Shit. The cop face.

  I’d fallen prey to its impossible scrutiny more times than I cared to recall.

  I could show him. After all, he was a cop. He could find the bad guys that did this. They might even let him back on regular duty if he called this in. He’d be grateful. He might even forgive me.

  Right, the ever-present cynic critic in my head said. You’ll just let this cop who is convinced Mark is a murderer check out this sweet body in my trunk. I’m sure he’ll know I was completely innocent of any wrongdoing and everything will be sunshine and rainbow-colored unicorn poop.

  There was only one option open to me, and I knew it. I needed to get this mess back to Mark.

  “Dear God! The gorgonzola!” I said, blurting out the first lame excuse that sprang to mind. Fortunately, it was also believable. “How did I forget?” Fanning my nose, I bent at the waist and retched. I could literally feel his gaze scorching the side of my face as he tried to decide if I was lying.

  Either I was a better actress than I thought or he was feeling especially benevolent that day.

  “I have cables,” he offered. “I’ll pull the Vic around.”

  His body’s casual grace hadn’t been compromised by the forces that drove him from his usual routines of measured control. He moved across the parking lot with the purposeful stride of a man who didn’t attach conscious effort to the movements of his own body. Morrison’s energy, as always, turned inward to the constant engine of his mind, processing details, calculating, determining.

  He slid behind the wheel with a practiced gesture and the Vic roared to life. Morrison shot across the parking lot, spraying gravel in his wake, and swung around nose to nose with the Mustang.

  “You didn’t buckle your seatbelt,” I teased, as he came around to clamp cables between our two vehicles. “I’m pretty sure you could be ticketed for that.”

  “You want my help or not?” he grunted, reaching over the Mustang’s guts.

  “Someone pee in your Cheerios this morning?” I asked

  Anger flashed in the blue-brown vortex of his hazel eyes and I saw how close to the surface it lived. In that moment, I knew I could push him into a fight. One more carefully placed prod, and he’d scald me with the rage he’d been bottling since our last meeting. I’d know the whole of his ire, and we could begin rebuilding.

  I let it pass.

  He pushed his sleeves to his elbows, baring the forearms I had admired as they’d pinned my wrists to the wall, on occasion.

  What can I say? I happen to be a brachial musculature enthusiast.

  I reminded myself that I shouldn’t be staring as he thrust his hips against the car’s body to rock himself backward without the aid of hands. Nor watching the way his fingers worked the cables’ length to secure the connection before he ducked back into his car to rev the engine.

  Morrison clearly wanted to be out of here as soon as possible, and I didn’t blame him.

  “Try it now,” he ordered.

  I gave him a salute and leaned into the driver’s seat. Bucky’s engine roared to life on the first turn. I was equal parts elated and disappointed.

  He hopped out of his car, disconnected the cables, and tossed them onto the carpet of discarded fast food wrappers in his back seat.

  “Thanks!” I called out the window.

  He slammed his hood and sped away, leaving the acrid aroma of burnt rubber and unspoken words in his wake.

  I indulged in a forlorn sigh dredged from the depths of my hopelessly romantic heart.

  And then remembered the headless thing in my trunk.

  “Why couldn’t I have majored in something safe and boring, like accounting?” I asked the universe. “If I hadn’t majored in art history, then I wouldn’t have lied my way into this job, and if I hadn’t lied my way into this job, I wouldn’t be a werewolf’s assistant, and if I weren’t a werewolf’s assistant, I wouldn’t have a headless body in my trunk!”

  I mentally added this to the growing list of “Reasons to Stay Human” I had been compiling. Probably soccer moms didn’t have to deal with finding bodies in their trunks.

  Not that minivans had trunks.

  I gunned the Mustang out of the parking lot and aimed it back toward the gallery. My phone chirped in it’s dashboard holster. I glanced at the name and scowled.

  Maybe I could ignore it.

  But then, I’d already been ignoring it for the last three weeks. It was only a matter of time before the cops were called, and I’d had enough trouble explaining my life as of late.

  No. I would face this resolutely. Like an adult. No more avoiding the inevitable.

  I clicked the answer button when I reached the stop light and put it on speaker.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said.

  “Hanna!” she shrilled. “Oh God, Hanna, is that you?”

  “No Mom,” I answered. “I’m a robot clone that’s been assigned Hanna’s phone number in order to keep up appearances since the alien hive mind has assumed control.”

  “What?” she asked. “Is this Hanna?”

  “Yes, Mom. This is Hanna.”

  “Oh! Thank goodness! I’ve been so worried. I left messages, but I guess you haven’t been getting them.”

  “Sorry, Mom,” I said. “I’ve just been busy.” Avoiding vampires and assassination attempts by Theo Van Gogh, among other things.

  “Oh, of course,” she said. “Working full-time now and going to school. Even if you don’t have a husband to take care of anymore.” This last, she slipped in with just enough disapproval to set my eyelid twitching.

  “No, Mom. I graduated, remember? I got my Master’s last year.”

  “Your Master’s?” she asked, familiar confusion clouding her voice. “But I thought you were working on your PhD?”

  Irritation swarmed down my spine like an army of insects. I swerved around a Honda puttering in the fast lane and gave him the finger.

  “No. No PhD. Just the Master’s,” I said, stomping on the gas. When the engine roared, I reminded myself about the body in my trunk and decelerated rapidly.

  “Well, isn’t that lucky then, that you found a job as a secretary in that art store.”

  “It’s a gallery, Mom,” I corrected through clenched teeth. “And I’m not a secretary. I’m an assistant.”

  “An assistant? You’re an assistant?”

  “Yes
, Mom.”

  “Who are you assisting?” she asked. “Is it a man?”

  Sometimes. When he’s not tooling around on all fours fending off vampires and rival werewolves.

  “Yes, mother. He’s a man and his name is Mark Abernathy,” I said, already knowing her next question.

  She didn’t disappoint.

  “Is he married?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “Divorced?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m sure he won’t mind that you are,” she said. “You’re a very pretty young lady, when you don’t wear too much makeup.”

  I made a mental note to buy slut-red lipstick and false eyelashes.

  “I’m not planning on getting married again anytime soon,” I said.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “Lots of women are having babies out of wedlock these days. Even at your age.”

  Breathe, Hanna.

  “Mother,” I said, “I am not having a baby.”

  “Not yet,” she said, her voice gone singsongy and hopeful. “But you could be. You know that checker at Save-Mart? The one whose line we always went to?”

  “The one with three divorces, a smoker’s cough and a boob job?” I asked.

  “Yes! She’s forty-one and she’s pregnant.”

  “Mother, I’m not sure how this escaped your attention, but I am not forty-one years old. In fact, I’m not even thirty.”

  “I know. But you don’t want to wait too much longer. A woman’s most fertile years are—”

  “When she’s slouching around a hippie commune sleeping with random strangers?” I shot back.

  “Hannelore Harv—” she gasped.

  “Don’t,” I said. A one-word damn between the thoughts in my head and the mutiny they would cause if they left my mouth.

  The unwelcome knowledge of my childhood burned in my chest like hot coals banked beneath unassuming ash. What about my father? What about my brother? What about my history? Your history? How can you pretend you don’t know what I am? What you are? How can you sit here and pile guilt upon me while you hide a pack of lies?

  “You got to choose your life,” I said. “Now I’m choosing mine.”