CHAPTER ONE
As Gabriel's Jag tore up the country road, I stared at the house ahead. Flames blazed from every window. An ambulance sat in the driveway, lights flashing. As I saw that, I exhaled. The only witness who could set my father free was in that house, and we'd been terrified we'd finally found her only to lose her again. But the ambulance said otherwise.
That's when they brought out the stretchers. With body bags.
"Maybe it's not Imogen," I said.
Gabriel parked, and as we walked toward the burning house, I surveyed the personnel on duty. I chose my target and picked up speed as Gabriel fell back. We were almost an hour outside Chicago, and these police might be state troopers, but that didn't mean they wouldn't know Gabriel by reputation...as one of the city's most notorious defense lawyers.
I approached the young officer left guarding the perimeter and extended my hand. "Liv Jones. We've been looking for one of the women renting this house. Imogen Seale. She's a material witness in a multiple homicide."
The trooper peered at me with a Don't I know you from somewhere look. But it was dark and smoky and tonight I was just Liv Jones. Not Olivia Taylor-Jones, former debutante daughter of the Mills & Jones department store owner. Certainly no relation to Eden Larsen, daughter of notorious serial killers Todd and Pamela Larsen.
"Hope she wasn't a valuable witness," the trooper said.
"Kind of," I said with a wry smile. "I'm guessing she didn't survive."
"Dead before we arrived, I'm afraid," she said. "Her mother fell asleep smoking on the sofa. You'd really think people would know better."
"No smoke detector?"
She shook her head. "In old rentals like this, nobody checks until something happens. A fifty-dollar investment could have saved two lives."
"Any chance I can see the bodies?" I asked. "If she's definitely my witness, I need to move fast in another direction."
"I hear you," she said, and waved for me to follow. "And I hate to see a killer walk free. Especially a multiple murderer."
Mmm, yeah, sorry, but actually, if we win this one, we do set a multiple murderer free. It's a package deal--getting my father out of jail means freeing my mother, too.
As we walked, Gabriel fell in beside me. When the trooper glanced at him, I said simply, "My colleague."
"Organized crime?" she said.
I choked on a laugh, and she quickly added, "I mean the case. I can imagine you'd need security for something like that."
It wasn't the first time Gabriel had been mistaken for my bodyguard. When we met, I'd pegged him as hired muscle myself. Even the expensive cut of his suit had only made me amend that to "hired muscle for someone with a lot of money." He was at least six-four and built like a linebacker. It was more than his size, though. He just had a look that made people get out of the way.
The trooper said something to one of the paramedics, who nodded and opened the smaller body bag. It was Imogen's mother. Death seemed to have been from smoke inhalation, with signs of suffocation and minimal burning, mostly to her clothing. Which meant there was no chance we were looking at the badly burned remains of a stranger. And the corpse in the other body bag? Imogen herself, mistress of Marty Tyson, one of my mother's victims. Imogen was the only person who could have testified that Tyson had actually killed the first couple my parents were supposed to have murdered. That was the reasonable doubt we'd needed to overturn the conviction.
And now we'd lost it.
--
Twenty-two years ago, my mother killed four people so that I could walk again. She'd made a deal with the Wild Hunt--th
e Cwn Annwn--to take the lives of four killers. In return, her two-year-old daughter's severe spina bifida would disappear. And it had. I don't even remember having it.
For twenty-two years I didn't remember my parents, either. They'd been in prison, the Cwn Annwn unable to do more than make incarceration easier for them. Of course, what the Cwn Annwn never knew was that my father played no role in those murders. He'd gone to jail because he believed my mother did the right thing--the brave and strong thing. He stayed there because freedom would come at the cost of testifying against her, erasing any chance she had of winning an appeal.
Now, with Imogen dead, I wasn't sure either of them had any chance at all.
--
The next morning, Gabriel drove me to work. He'd spent the night at my house in Cainsville. In the guest room, I hasten to add. We'd been up for hours discussing the case. Now, as he pulled into the laneway of his office greystone, his topic of conversation had nothing to do with work and everything to do with distracting me from fretting over my parents' appeal. Gabriel had put himself through law school with illegal gaming, and he was finally sharing details.
"Blackjack," he said as we got out of the car. "That was my specialty. It's simple and efficient."
"It's also one of the easiest games to cheat in, isn't it? Counting cards?"
"No one counted cards at my table. Not after the first time."
As we walked around the building, the front door swung open, no one behind it. I stopped short. When I blinked, the door was shut.
A door opening on its own. The sign of an unwanted visitor.
"Olivia?"
I shook off the omen. Given what Gabriel did for a living, we got plenty of unwanted visitors.
"Sorry. Missed my cue," I said as we walked through the front door. "So, tell me, Gabriel, what'd you do the first time you caught someone counting cards?"
He studied me.
"Well, are you going to tell me?" I said. "Or is this one of those stories you tease me with and then say Whoops, looks like we're at the office already. I'll finish later?"
His lips twitched. "You like it when I do that. It builds suspense."
"I hate it when you do that. It's sadistic. You have five seconds--"
"Gabriel?" Lydia stepped out of the office, closing the door behind her.
He bristled at the interruption.
"Client?" I guessed.