Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)

Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)

Shannon McKenna




Acknowledgments


A lot of people helped me with the writing of this book, but first, I must mention my invaluable critique partners, Elizabeth Jennings and Lisa Marie Rice, without whom I cannot even dare to imagine the agony, the solitude and the mess. Thanks for always being there for me!

And a heartfelt thanks to Adam Firestone, for his generosity with arcane lore about weapons and strategy, and also to George Young, who was so patient and forthcoming with my questions about detective work in the Portland Police Bureau. You helped immeasurably. Any mistakes and absurdities are unquestionably mine—the result of asking the wrong questions! You have all my gratitude.





PROLOGUE



Upper West Side, Manhattan

Seventeen years ago





The summons came at three A.M. Three short hits on the intercom.

Dr. Howard Parr leaped up, knocking over his drink. His cigarette flipped, sparks scattering. He made his way slowly down the steps to the door of his town house, swaying, clutching the banister. He peeked out the spy hole. The big envelope lay on the stoop. He opened the door, not even bothering to touch the envelope with care to avoid obscuring possible fingerprints. They all knew that he wasn’t going to the police.

Two objects inside. One was in pieces; the smashed remains of the closedcircuit camera he’d put up in an ill-conceived attempt to monitor his front door. Someone had ripped it out days after it had been installed. He’d been braced for a slap-down ever since, wishing he hadn’t done it. That he could roll onto his back, showing his throat, saying, “I’m sorry.” But they didn’t care. The other object was a videotape. His guts lurched.

His eyes swept the darkened, car-lined street. No one was there, but he felt malevolence oozing from the darkness like poison gas.

Howard trudged up the stairs, slid the tape into the VCR, docile as a beaten dog. A burning smell tickled his nose. He looked down. His cigarette was smoldering in the carpet. He crushed it as footage began.

He realized, with a sickening rush, that the camera’s jolting progress showed the interior of his own house. It turned a corner, zoomed in on Howard himself, passed out on the kitchen floor. He could not have said what day it was. His nights often finished there. He found the hard, cold floor tiles vaguely comforting, pressed against his hot face.

The camera moved up the stairs, past Howard’s bedroom. A featureless hand in a rubber glove turned a knob and walked into his elevenyear-old daughter’s room. Howard’s guts began to spasm.

The camera moved toward Lily’s bed. Light from the hallway spilled in. The camera focused on her half-open mouth. The hand held up a spray bottle with a “ta-da” flourish and sprayed Lily’s face. She murmured but subsided without waking. The camera sank as the man sat on the bed, bouncing. He slapped Lily’s face. She did not stir.

The hand pulled the sheet and coverlet down with taunting slowness. The camera surveyed the girl’s body, curled into a huddled comma. She wore a T-shirt and panties. The rubber hand shoved the garment up over her ribcage, petted her budding breasts. The hand arranged her body, bent up her knee, splayed out her thigh. It zoomed in close onto the crotch of her chaste cotton panties, staring directly at that featureless field of white for many long, horrible seconds.

Howard clutched his mouth, struggling not to vomit.

A knife appeared in the hand. A short, dark blade. Howard’s breathing hitched. Lily was fine. Asleep upstairs. She’d scolded him before she went to bed, for being drunk, like always. She’d been OK, apart from angry. She hadn’t been . . . hurt. Howard gnawed his fist as the blade moved intimately over her body, pressing here and there.

It paused over her femoral artery, then the disembodied hand replaced the coverlet, tucking it tenderly under her chin. Fingers wrapped around her throat for a moment. Then the hand thrust a finger into her mouth and slowly withdrew it, petting her soft lips as he did so.

Howard lunged for the bathroom, but did not make it. Spewed the alcoholic contents of his stomach in the hall. Fell to his knees, belly heaving. He crouched there for the better part of an hour before he dared to rise to his feet. Before he found the nerve to do what he had to do next.

He shook two pills from the special bottle, hesitated for a moment, and shook out a third.

It was for love, he told himself, over and over. He did this for her. His precious girl. The only way to protect Lily was to shut up, swallow the poison. Roll a rock over what he knew. His awful secret. He needed help for that. Stronger help than booze. If it killed him, so be it.

Lily would be better off.





1


Portland, OR

Present Day





Just a dream, man. Just a dumb dream.

Right, and so? Knowing it was a dream didn’t help. When he was in it, he was in it. Stuck in a white nowhere, that booming voice in his head saying words that made him want to scream, though they were just bland numeric sequences. “. . . DeepWeave four point two, combat level eight, sequence five commencing . . . four, three, two, one . . .”

Then Rudy came at him, stinking of drink and sweat. Slashing at Bruno, switchblade in one hand, broken beer bottle in the other.

Mamma lay on the floor behind Rudy, beaten and bleeding, eyes pleading over the gag. All because her useless, * son hadn’t had the balls to steal Rudy’s Beretta and shoot the scumbag dead. Kitchen shears would do fine, too, slashed across the jugular. A bread knife right between the ribs. A machete. Take that, dickhead. Or a chainsaw, even better. Swoosh, swing. Splatter that rabid bastard every which way. That’s what you get for hitting my mamma, f*cking shit-for-brains.