Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1)(64)

Noah’s AVP surged as he got out of the car, though his heart was steady. He wasn’t walking a tightrope of killing rage, either. Just a jangling rattle of overstimulated nerves. Scents registered. Earth and water, trees and moss, animals and fish—all translated into an array of crystalline colors, knife sharp in their clarity.

Caro gazed over the choppy lake under the heavy gray sky as he scanned the place, using every diagnostic ability that he possessed. Caro’s was the only heat sig within a hundred and fifty yards of the place, aside from a few small animals. The house was silent and dark. No heat, no electrical activity. The houses nearby seemed equally quiet. Not a ping on his array of supercharged sensors.

Caro herself was cloaked in a halo of blues, indigos and violets. She gazed up at the sky, out at the stormy lake, her hair flying like a banner. Her exposed throat looked so vulnerable. It made something twist in his chest. She was too exposed. Unprotected.

And that was about to change.He slid his arm around her, pulling her against him so fiercely, she stumbled.

“Noah? I—”

He cut her off with a hungry kiss. She felt so good. Her lips were so sweet, tender and yielding. The impulse that roared up was huge. Go for it. Right now.

But the wind was raw and damp, the pebbles on the shore slick from the recent rainstorm. Caro’s eyes were wary as his outsized sexual energy beat against her secret inner senses like waves of heat.

Too much. Pull back. “Come on. I want to see what’s inside,” he said.

The place had no alarm. Luke didn’t want this place on any security grid. But the front lock was gouged and scarred. Someone had forced it.

The door opened without resistance.

“Shit,” Noah muttered. “Totally trashed.”

Couches and chairs had been slashed and overturned. Through the door into the bedroom, he saw that the mattress had been pulled off, sliced open. Every drawer in the bedroom and kitchen was yanked out and overturned, every cupboard and cabinet emptied onto the floor. The electronics were on the floor, in a haphazard tangle of black cables and wires.

“Someone got here before us,” Caro said bleakly.

At the same moment, they saw the pile of envelopes below the mail slot.

“It could have been delivered after this breakin happened,” Caro said. “Bea told me she retrieved the video from a remote server after the murder” She crouched down and started sifting through dusty envelopes.

Noah joined her, rapidly tossing aside junk mail, brochures, credit card offers, past due notices, debt collection threats. On the floor beneath all of it was a small white padded mailer. The address was scrawled on it in bold black pen. No return address.

Caro hefted it. “Chicago postmark,” she said. “Dated about two weeks after Luke Ryan disappeared.”

Noah hid his impatience, waiting as she ripped the padded envelope open and shook a flash drive into her hand.

She looked up at him, her eyes bright with tears. “Do you think . . .”

“Let’s go,” he said harshly. “Right now. We’ll look at it when we’re home.”

Caro gave him a puzzled look, reminding him that he wasn’t supposed to be personally invested in this. He had no stake in this but hers, as far as she knew. But he was intensely affected, and she saw it.

She saw everything far too clearly for an unmod.

But now was not the time to tell Caro about Mark, or Luke, or Midlands, any of the rest of it. She’d just witnessed Bea’s violent death. She’d barely started to trust him.

He had to go slow. He turned away. “I have to make a couple calls.”

“To who?” she called after him.

“People who need to see this footage,” he said, quickly adding, “People who can help you.” But it felt like an afterthought, even to himself. Fuck.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Her voice had an edge. “Wait, Noah!”

He punched in a number he knew by heart, and Zade picked up fast.

“Yo, Romeo,” he drawled. “Chilling with your fugitive lady fair? Having fun?”

“I’m at Luke’s cabin on the lake,” he said. “Bea got killed this morning. And we found a flash drive. Something Bea sent to the lake. Could show Luke’s meeting with Mark. We haven’t looked at it yet.”

Zade was dead silent for a few beats. “Holy f*cking shit,” he breathed.

“Meet me at my place in three hours. Tell Sisko.” He killed the call, and turned to find Caro’s shocked eyes blazing at him.



*



“Wake up, you piece of shit. Malcolm! I’m talking to you.”

The building superintendant woke with a gasp, knocking over the warm beer that sat next to his bare foot. Beer foamed over his toes as he tried to bat away the huge fist which seized his shirt front and heaved him upward.

“Huh?” he asked, looking around wildly. “Who?”

Two men looked down at him. A big one held him suspended over his sprung out couch, watched by a smaller, beady-eyed bald one. A porn film played on the TV behind them, a cluster of bodies, lips and holes and hands, pumping and sucking.

“You’re the super of this dump, right?” the smaller man asked.

Malcolm struggled to breathe against the pressure of the huge fist at his throat. “I—yes—but—”