Page 80 of Devoted in Death

Darryl glanced over. “Multi-tool. Lemme see.” He took it from her, examined it. “It is a nice one,” he said and slipped it into his own pocket.

“Boots’re pretty new, and the coat, too.”

Christmas presents, Jayla imagined. From his parents. His parents would be looking for him soon.

“Too small for you,” Ella-Loo said to Darryl, and standing, tried on the coat. “It’s warm.”

“Not pretty enough for you, baby.”

“I bet we can get something for it, and the boots.” She tossed them, and his pants toward the couch, then studied Reed Aaron Mulligan with her hands on her hips.

“Pecker’s nothing to write home about, but we get some Erotica in him, get the wood going on him, he’ll do all right.”

She turned to Jayla then, smiled that hot, feral smile. “He’s going to rape the shit out of you.”

Jayla wanted to close her eyes, just close them and go away again, but she made herself meet those hard eyes. Made herself stare back into them until Ella-Loo picked up the sap, slapped her once, twice in the crotch.

The pain burst in her center, radiated everywhere.

“There’s a taste for you.” Angling her head, as if considering, she slapped each of Jayla’s breasts in turn.

As Jayla’s body arched and fell, Ella-Loo watched the bruises bloom.

“I never tried any sex stuff with any of them. It gets me hot.”

“Me too.”

She glanced over, saw the gleam in Darryl’s eyes, the way his hand was working between his legs.

“Not yet, baby. Not yet. Let’s get our new friend here situated, like you said. We’re going to want to soften him up a little.”

Jayla crawled into herself, into the tight, dark space where the pain pushed around the edges. After a while, she couldn’t say how long, she heard the awful, almost inhuman high-pitched sound, one she’d heard herself make.

And knew they’d begun to soften up Reed Aaron Mulligan.

•••

Eve read over DeWinter’s very preliminary report, again.

Too early to be conclusive—and that just burned her ass—but DeWinter believed, and Morris concurred—that a number of Melvin Little’s injuries had been inflicted prior to his fall. Some as much as twenty-four to thirty-six hours prior.

She waded through the science-speak, the ass-burning probables, possibles, and pulled out the meat.

Sharp-bladed instrument nicked bone, blunt object on oldest wound, back of skull. Femur fracture due to forceful downward strike.

Maybe by a tire iron, Eve thought as she paced and read, paced and read.

Numerous bones in the right hand crushed.

Further testing to continue at oh-seven-hundred.

She took heart from Morris’s postscript.

Garnet’s not ready to commit, and she’s correct. But he’s one of yours. The local autopsy was badly botched here. This victim suffered multiple wounds—stabbing, beating, striking—at least a day prior to TOD. It would be a considerable coincidence for him to have fought with or been attacked by someone other than your unsubs.

“Coincidence is bollocks,” she muttered.

“As you’ve said.” Smoothly, subtly, Roarke angled himself between her and what he believed was now—another—empty coffeepot. “You—all of you—have done all you can do tonight.”

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