Deadly Fate (Krewe of Hunters #19)(51)

“Astrid,” Thor began.

“When this is all behind us,” Colin said, putting his hands gently on his wife’s shoulders.

Astrid impulsively hugged Clara. Clara hugged her back.

The huskies barked.

Thor groaned. “Hey...we’ve got to go.”

“Of course, sorry, we’re just so delighted to meet you, Clara,” Astrid said. “Thor never brings people here, so—”

“Goodbye, I love you,” Thor said, giving his sister a kiss on the cheek. One of the huskies woofed; he bent down and both dogs came to him, tails wagging, smothering him with affection. He spoke to them both softly.

They both sat then, tails wagging.

To Clara, it almost looked as if they nodded, agreeing that he needed to go on to work.

Clara was hugged in turn by Astrid and Colin; the huskies were allowed to tell her goodbye, too, and she and Thor were finally out the door and heading back to the car.

She couldn’t help but smile as she slid into the passenger’s seat. He glanced over at her, frowning slightly.

“What?”

“I don’t know. They just made you human.”

“You didn’t think I was human?”

She was still smiling. Looking straight ahead, aware of him watching her, she shrugged.

“They made you more human.”

He grunted and drove and she turned in the seat to study him. “Thor...it’s what you do for a career. I imagine it’s not just work. So you deal with bad things all of the time. How do you not let it rule everything in your life?”

He glanced at her, head at an angle, and he smiled slightly himself, as well. “Most of the time, you don’t bring it home. There is no way not to care, but you have good days, too. Like today, really. By the happenstance of your group talking about Connie Shaw, we might have saved her life. Maybe we’re wrong and a horrible trickster had stalked her—I don’t know. But putting the pieces together, this might have been, as Jackson said, a really good day.”

“So...you’re in the city most of the time?” she asked him.

“Depending on what’s going on,” he told her. She thought that he flushed slightly. “I love my sister. My brother-in-law is great. And I love riding—and watching them with the dogs when they’re training. I come here often. I see my folks in Nome. We still...live. But, in this case...”

“It’s what happened with Tate Morley?” she asked.

He nodded grimly as he drove. “Most men and women in law enforcement have that one case...the one that seemed to rip you up, even if it did come to a legal conclusion. Morley was that case. We’d been hunting for a magician, or so it seemed. Someone who could disappear at will. Mandy Brandt came to see us—she came to Jackson and me. She gave us the first viable clues. Nice kid, really nice kid, just concerned for someone else. We followed up on what she told us and started a search on this guy her friend was dating. He was going by Thomas Jones at the time—he knew it would be a good choice of name because there are probably thousands of men with that name. The man is something of a magician, or an actor. He also wore costumes sometimes when he abducted women—never the same. He was a clown at a birthday party once, a ‘cowboy, new to town’ when he picked up another of his victims.” He paused, shrugging. “He wore a suit and tie and picked up one victim as an FBI agent. He’d go from glasses to none, a bald look to long hair, different clothing all the time. We followed dozens of leads. Anyway, we’d finally gotten a tip on where he was supposed to meet Mandy’s friend. But while we were heading off there, he was busy killing Mandy. We found him. She’d told me things about him in conversation that suggested he was heading to a museum with her. We found her—and he was still with her. But, Mandy was dead.”

Clara sat in silence for a minute. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thing is...I just always wonder now about ‘the book’ and what’s right and wrong, morally. I shot him, but I didn’t kill him. I was actually shooting to kill—that would have been by the book under the circumstances. But I had to take a wild shot. Still, it was just Jackson and me there then. We could have killed the bastard—no one would have known that we didn’t have to take a second shot. But we didn’t take it. He was down. We called for backup. He went to the hospital—Mandy went to the morgue. I watched the case every day. He wound up in federal court because he’d crossed state lines. They debated the death penalty. They decided on maximum security. Now, he should have stayed—the sentence was harsh enough. There was no chance of parole. But...”

“But, he’s out. And you believe that he is killing again, and killing here.”

“And I could be crazy. They could catch him in Kansas or Nebraska tomorrow.”

They had arrived back at the McGinty house. Jackson was waiting at the end of the walk with a tall man of about forty-five with short-cut hair, in a plain wool suit.

The place was busy now; Clara could see a number of vehicles there. Writing on the vans identified them as belonging to forensic crews.

Jackson walked down to the car with the tall man. By the time they reached the vehicle, both Thor and Clara were out of it, waiting. She saw that Thor knew the tall man; they greeted one another briefly.

“Erikson,” the other man acknowledged.