Dark Taste of Rapture (Alien Huntress #6)(56)
Author: Gena Showalter

She watched him, nervously rocking back and forth.

First things first. The part of the job he most loathed. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Margarete, but Bobby Marks was murdered last night.”

“What?” The surprise gradually mutated into horror. “No. No! I saw him only yesterday.”

Hector remained quiet, giving her time to absorb the news. First she spouted a few more denials about how he couldn’t possibly be dead, then she cried, then she settled as shock took hold and numbed her out. Reactions he knew very well. He’d done the same thing when he learned about his brother.

“When was the last time you saw him?” he asked.

“I … I … yesterday. Last night.”

“What time exactly?” “I don’t know. Maybe …” She glanced at the clock resting on the nightstand, as if that would help. “Around nine p.m. I think.”

Keeping his tone gentle, easy, he said, “What had he done before that?”

Teardrops caught in her lashes, and she had to blink rapidly to clear her line of vision. “Dinner with me and his mother. He finally introduced me to her.”

Good. They were getting somewhere. “How did that go?”

Her chin trembled. “I do not want to talk about this.”

Words he’d said to Noelle only yesterday. “I know, but you must. I need to find his killer, and you can help me.”

Several minutes passed before she collected herself enough to say, “He always made me hide when someone came over, but that hurt me, and he knew it, so he invited his mother over. When he told her, she screamed. I have never heard words as vile as the ones she used. He told me to go to our room and wait for him to come and get me. I did, but he never came.”

So. The mother had just gotten a bit of bad news. Well, bad news according to her. She’d been upset. Motive for murder? Maybe, but that didn’t explain what the witness had seen and heard.

Still. Hector definitely needed to question Ms. Brenda Marks. She was now a suspect, plain and simple. With her money, she could have easily hired out.

“And then?” he prompted.

Margarete shook her head. “I do not know. That was the last time I saw him.”

“You didn’t call him? Talk to him on the phone?”

“No.”

“You didn’t call anyone? Not even to report him missing?”

“No,” she shouted, suddenly angry. “I trust no one on this planet besides Bobby. He told me people would injure me if they discovered me.”

“How did you meet him?”

She drew her arms around her middle, as if battling an abrupt waft of cold. “Why do you want to know? How can that help you with his … with his … ?”

“You’d be surprised by what helps,” was all he said. Her gaze darted away. “He came to my planet. We fell in love. He brought me here.”

She was lying, Hector thought. The words sounded rehearsed, as if she were repeating something she’d been told. Plus, Bobby would have had to gain permission to go off planet, and he hadn’t. Hector had already checked, per standard procedure.

He could take her in, lock her up in AIR for his suspicion alone, but he didn’t want her logged into the system. Wasn’t that he lacked trust—although he did—but he hadn’t forgotten how those girls had disappeared from the hospital last year, an Arcadian suspected of taking them. And with an Arcadian involved in Marks’s murder … no chances.

Besides, taking her from her home, her familiar surroundings, would be unnecessarily cruel. Whatever had happened, she had loved Bobby Marks.

Wouldn’t hurt to garner her trust, either. She’d tell him anything he wanted to know if he could just make her trust him. “We think your husband was trying to gather evidence for a crime someone committed. Did he tell you anything about that?”

The color faded from her face, leaving her with a sickly ashen pallor. “N—no. I know nothing about that.”

Abject fear. Okay. Definitely the right path. “Nothing at all?” Men would tell a woman anything during pillow talk. At least, he supposed. Look at everything he’d revealed to Noelle. Deeply personal stuff he’d never shared with any other person in all the years of his life.

This time, Margarete’s chin was trembling too intensely for her to reply. She violently shook her head.

You’ll tell me yet. “I don’t want you to leave New Chicago,” he told her. “I might have more questions for you, and you need to be available. If you leave, I’ll hunt you down, and you won’t like the results.”

Threatening a frightened female who’d just lost her husband was far worse than cruel. He couldn’t let himself care about that, though. Results mattered right now. Nothing else. And she would learn to trust him despite his strong-arm tactics. She would have to.

“I will not leave,” she whispered brokenly.

“Good. But just in case you’re tempted …” He withdrew a syringe from the toolkit and closed the distance. She shrank back, but he grabbed her arm only long enough to inject the contents. “I’m sorry for the sting.” He released her, stepped back. “That’s an isotope tracker. A few clicks of a button, and I’ll be able to find you.”

Rather than snip at him, she nodded in understanding.

Won’t feel guilty. He’d come back tomorrow. And the next day. Until she spilled. Asking her follow-up questions, little things to get her talking. She’d learn that he could be relied on to protect her. That he was dedicated to helping vindicate her husband and put his killer away.

And maybe … maybe he’d send Noelle over. Maybe Margarete just needed another female. Although Noelle was a ball buster and likely to offend. And threaten. And shout.

A pang in his chest. A rush of sensation through his body. You’re doing it again. Thinking about her. Reacting to her.

“I need to do a little work around this room,” he said, “but I want you to remain where you are, okay?”

A soft “Yes.”

He dusted the dresser drawers for prints, took a couple pictures of the closet, even one of Margarete, and she did as promised. She never moved from the bed. The thing with AIR, you didn’t always need a warrant for stuff. Otherworlders did not have the same rights as humans.

When he finished, he placed a holocard on the nightstand. A small black button that she had only to press for a blue screen to crystallize overhead, his picture, name, and number glowing. “This has my cell number. You call me if you remember anything about that night that you haven’t told me. Anything at all.”