A Voice in the Dark. Jenna Ryan
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official pronouncement of death.
At length, the medical examiner stripped off his gloves and blew on his hands. “Someone sliced him up real good, Angel.” He pointed. “Opened the carotid artery, which is why you’ll find a diluted stream of blood from the dock halfway to your place. Guy’s big and well built. Probably put up a fight, but only with one hand. He was trying to stem the blood flow with the other.”
One of the uniforms leaned in. “How long d’you figure, Doc? I’m in for three and a half hours.”
“Joe’s the one who puts the stamp on the time of death,” Angel reminded him.
“I only confirm that he is in fact dead.” The medical examiner signaled the ambulance attendants. “And this one definitely is. Has been since a minute or two after the knife sliced his neck.”
Angel had trained herself long ago not to let a victim’s facial expression affect her. Easier to focus on the wounds.
As the ME left, Angel’s eyes followed the gash on the victim’s neck. “It’s a jagged slash. Either the killer had an unsteady hand or the victim was struggling. Second thing makes more sense.”
Uninterested, the uniform moved off. Another pair of boots sloshed in. The woman wearing them hunkered down. “The victim’s name is Lionel Foret. Forty-two years old. Officially, he lived in Boston, but his work appears to have taken him between here and DC.”
“Government?”
“So his soggy credentials say. State Department. Bergman might know more by the time we check in.”
“He has the look of a politician. Or a lawyer. Whatever he is, Bergman barked at me to get down here, and in the year and a half I’ve known him, he’s never barked.”
“Ditto.” Liz fingered the man’s coat. “His clothes say major money, but with the exception of his driver’s license and a few credit cards, his wallet’s empty. My guess is he was rolled by a junkie.”
The skin on Angel’s neck tingled, as if an army of invisible ants were marching across it. She glanced behind her. “Do you feel something, Liz?”
“Other than waterlogged?”
“I think we’re being watched.”
FBI agent Elizabeth Thomas blew out a steamy breath. “Any thief desperate enough to slice a guy in this weather won’t be hanging around to observe the cleanup crew. He’s long gone and probably high as Franklin’s kite by now. Which is why we’ll nail him before first light.”
“If the perp’s an addict.”
“Okay, it’s an assumption, but my money’s on the easy answer this time.”
Sensation, like a finger stroked across the back of her neck, sent a shiver of reaction down Angel’s spine. “Okay, this is way too weird.” She whipped her head around, but saw only shadows behind the fish processing plant. “Someone’s back there.”
Liz rose with her. “I promise you, Angel, there’s no one. We told the cops to secure the area, and they did. All shadows duly checked, all boxes on the list ticked empty.” She nudged her partner’s high-heeled boot with her toe. “Maybe your brain’s starting to freeze. You’re not exactly dressed for this weather.”
“I was at a play when Bergman called.”
“Lucky you. I’d just settled my toddler into bed and was thinking about streaking my hair for the holidays. Can you believe Thanksgiving’s only three weeks away?” She squinted at the threatening sky. “It seems like summer just ended.”
“Apparently you turned Rip Van Winkle and slept through last week’s blizzard.”
“That was a freak storm.”
“That was six inches of snow the last week of October. Normal for Juneau, but in Boston I expected a glorious New England fall, up to and hopefully through Thanksgiving. Didn’t get it last year, and so far this one’s a rerun.”
“Write to the Tourist Bureau. They print the brochures.” Liz ran her fingers through her short blond hair. “Was the play good?”
“The first act was.”
Although she scanned and rescanned the darkness, nothing moved except the rain, currently being driven sideways by a gale-force wind that gusted in hard from the water.
And still the sensation persisted, a featherlight breath on her face, then along the line of her cheek to her throat.
Liz nudged her again. “We need to get inside. You might have grown up in Alaska, but I’m a Corpus Christi girl and highly susceptible to wet rot. I swear on my nine years of federal service, there’s no one and nothing back there.”
One final hint of warm, and suddenly it was only the wind on her cheeks.
Angel shook her head. “Weird,” she murmured one last time. But she had to admit as the victim’s body was prepped for removal, that despite the unsettling aspect, the sensation had felt strangely like a caress.
Completely sensual, and in an instant, completely gone.
HE WATCHED HER from the narrow walkway that split the old processing plant in two. She’d sensed him. He’d seen it in the way her eyes cruised the shadows, as if she’d known more than rats and cockroaches lurked within them.
Suspicion had come first, followed by speculation. Then, when the feeling persisted, impatience.
In unguarded moments, Angel Carter wore her emotions on her face, her incredibly beautiful face. Those same emotions added an element of intrigue to her already exotic features…
And he was thinking like a man obsessed.
Still, he didn’t move, didn’t let his gaze waver. Didn’t mean he missed the body at her feet, but he’d seen that already, before she’d arrived.
“Someone’s back there, Liz…”
He heard the determination now, and his lips curved. He should go, leave her with partner and corpse, let her draw her conclusions and see where they led.
Icy rain slid along his neck beneath his upturned collar. The man in black. The man who lived in the dark. A phantom. That’s how people described him. He didn’t care. Phantoms could slip in and out undetected.
Except, apparently, by an Angel.
When her partner set a hand on her arm, he knew it was time to vanish. He’d done what he’d come to do. Now it was her turn.
The shadows shifted as the ambulance arrived. He allowed himself one last look, then disappeared into the heart of them.
Chapter Two
The hands of the clock ticked slowly toward 2:00 a.m. Angel had spoken to her boss three times since viewing the body and his sniveling assistant twice. This time she had a somewhat different number in mind.
She was positioning her thumb over the seventh digit when the head of forensic pathology pushed through the lab door. His smile was automatic, his chuckle a welcome sound in the sterile grid of hospital corridors.
“He won’t mind,” Joe Thomas assured her. “Two, four, six o’clock. Time of day or night is irrelevant to Noah Graydon. As you should know after eighteen months of back-and-forth phone conversations.”
Angel’s own smile blossomed. “Good to hear, Dr. T, but in actual fact, I was calling my mother. And after almost thirty years of close association, I can promise you time means a great deal to her. More than her new Harley, in fact.”
“Amazing woman.” Joe used a blue checked handkerchief to polish his glasses. “She crunches numbers in Alaska for the better part of four decades, then meets a long distance trucker and decides to go off and live the life.”
“Everyone