Rapture (Fallen Angels #4)(38)
Author: J.R. Ward

He put more than just his back into the lift. Tacking on a little mental juice as well, the window slid up with a crack! as if it were breaking free of having been painted in.

Twelve-foot drop onto pavement.

“Fuck,” Matthias said. “You’re going to have to catch me.”

“Roger that.”

With a coordinated surge, Jim was up and over and into the loose hands of gravity. He landed solid on his combat boots and held out his arms. Matthias’s exit was rougher, his legs hard to bend by the look of it, but the guy wasn’t stupid. He gripped the window and dragged it back into place behind him, even though his ass barely fit on the ledge.

As he let himself go and went into a free fall, his black windbreaker flapped out behind him uselessly, like a parachute with a bullet hole in it.

Jim caught his old boss with a grunt, keeping him from hitting the pavement.

“They found our friend,” Matthias said as he shoved free.

Sure enough, far down the side of the building, the cops had opened those double doors and entered the corridor, their flashlights shining out into the alley from time to time as if they were doing sweeps around the leaking assassin.

Time to get ghost.

Moving quietly and as quickly as they could, the two of them headed in the opposite direction. Unlike in XOps, backup was the name of the game when it came to the Caldwell Police Department, and sure enough, more sirens started to echo throughout the night.

A good fifty yards later, he and Matthias stopped at the other corner of the hotel, did a look-around, and then stepped out of the alley, calm as frozen water.

“Lose the sunglasses,” Jim said as he focused on the sidewalk ahead.

“Already did.”

Jim glanced over at his old boss. The man had his chin up and his eyes straight ahead. His lips were slightly parted and he was breathing like a freight train, but you wouldn’t know it if you weren’t looking for signs of hypoxia.

As far as anyone could tell, they were just two Joes out for a stroll, unconnected to any weirdness.

Jim had an absurd urge to tell his old boss that the bastard had done a good job. But that was ridiculous. They’d both been trained by the same drill sergeant, had spent years running exercises on evasive techniques side by side, had been through variations of this precise scenario.

By the time they entered the lobby, Matthias was breathing easy.

It went without saying that the guy would continue to stay at the Marriott. Now that an attempt had been made, and not just dead-ended, but with the involvement of gold badges, it made second tries trickier and riskier, at least for the next couple of days.

Besides, they’d been on a tour of the kitchen. Very professional.

Be a shame not to try the grub.

Mels’s tenacity paid off…in a sad way.

The news crews left after midnight, and then the cops started paring down. Even Monty left before she did. Finally, it was just the crime scene investigators, two detectives, and her good self.

The yellow line of police tape had gotten smaller and smaller as the staffing had been reduced and she had gotten closer and closer to the open door of the hotel room. So when it came time to remove the victim, she had a clear visual shot at the process. Two men went in with a black body bag, and because of the cramped nature of the bathroom the woman had been killed in, they had to put the thing flat on the carpet and carry her out to lay her in it.

That poor girl.

“Yeah, it’s terrible.”

Mels wheeled around, unaware she’d spoken out loud. A tall, scary-looking guy was behind her, your typical hard-ass with piercings in his face and a leather biker jacket. Except his expression carried a heartbreak on it that immediately changed her prejudicial opinion of him. He wasn’t focused on her; he was staring at the dead girl whose lifeless limbs were being arranged by her sides before a zipper disappeared her into black folds of thick plastic.

Mels turned back to the scene. “I feel so sorry for her father.”

“You know him?”

“No. I can just imagine, though.” Then again, maybe the guy hadn’t given a crap about her and that was part of the reason she got hooked in the life? “It’s just…she was a baby once. There had to have been some innocence at some point.”

“You’d hope.”

Curiosity had her sizing him up again. “Are you a guest at the motel?”

“Just a bystander.” The man exhaled with a curious kind of defeat. “Man, I hate death.”

In that moment, Mels thought of her father for some reason. He’d been removed from the scene of that car crash in a bag, too—after he’d been cut out of the driver’s seat by the Jaws of Life.

Was he in Heaven? Looking down on them? Or was dying really just a lights-out kind of thing, like a car being turned off or a vacuum getting unplugged?

There was no afterlife for inanimate objects. So why did humans think that their fate was any different?

“Because it is different.”

She glanced over her shoulder and smiled awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to think out loud.”

“It’s okay.” The guy smiled a little. “And there’s nothing wrong with hoping that your dead are at peace or with having faith. It’s a good thing, actually.”

Mels refocused on the motel room, thinking it was weird to be having this candid conversation with a total stranger. “I just wish I knew for sure.”

“Ah, but you’re a reporter. You’d spill the secret.”

She laughed. “Like Heaven and Hell are privileged information?”

“You got it. Humans require two things to properly bond: scarcity and the unknown. If loved ones were around forever, you’d take them for granted, and if you knew for sure that you’d be reunited, you’d never miss them. It’s all part of the divine plan.”

So he was a religious nut. “Well, there you go.”

They moved back as the officers grasped the nylon handles of the bag and started walking the victim out. As the grim processional went by, Mels had a feeling why Dick had given her this assignment. Dead girl, grisly scene, mean streets of Caldwell, yada, yada, yada. He was just the kind of ass**le to pay her back for shutting him down again.

And the truth was, she was rattled, as anyone with a conscience would be. But she was still going to do her job.

Leaning into the doorway, she addressed the man in charge. “Detective de la Cruz? Would you care to make a statement?”

The detective glanced up from his old-fashioned Columbo pad. “You still here, Carmichael?”