Darynda Jones - First Grave on the Right

My knees weakened beneath my weight. I grabbed a pen and paper off a uniform’s desk as I walked past, earning a hostile glare for my efforts, and wrote down the address.

“He didn’t have a number, but he said she works from home, so she should be there when you get this.”

I could have kissed that woman.

“I know. You could kiss me. Just find Reyes’s sister, and we’ll make out later.”

With a mad chuckle, I jumped into Misery and headed downtown. The anticipation growing inside me had my heart and stomach switching places. I glanced at my watch. Twenty-four hours. We had twenty-four hours to stop this.

The ride gave me time to contemplate what Reyes had said the night before. What did he mean when he said they would find him? Who would find him? Was he being hunted? I chose not to think about what Reyes had been growling at. Clearly there were things out there that even I couldn’t see. Which brought up an important conundrum: What was the point of my being a grim reaper if I couldn’t see everything out there? Shouldn’t I be kept in the know? Seriously, how could I be expected to do my job?

After pulling up to a gated apartment complex, I padded across the walk to the door of 1B and knocked. A woman about my age answered with a towel in her hands, as if she’d been drying dishes.

Stepping forward with my own hand outstretched, I said, “Hi, Ms. Millar, I’m Charlotte Davidson.”

She took it warily, her paper-thin fingers cold to the touch. With dark auburn hair and light green eyes, she looked nothing at all like Reyes. A tad Irish and then some.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“I’m a private investigator.” I fumbled for a card and handed it to her. “May I speak with you?”

After studying the card a long moment, she opened the door wider and gestured me inside. When I stepped into the sunlit room, I scanned the area for photos of Reyes. There were no pictures at all, of Reyes or otherwise.

“You’re a private investigator?” she asked, leading me to a seat. “What can I do for you?”

She sat across from me in the front room. The morning sun filtered in through gauze curtains and bathed it in warmth. Though her furnishings were sparse, they were clean and in perfect shape.

Wondering if she had a touch of OCD, I cleared my throat and contemplated how to begin. This was harder than I’d thought it would be. How did you tell someone her brother was about to die? I decided to save that part for later.

“I’m here about Reyes,” I began.

But before I could elaborate, she said, “Excuse me?”

I blinked. Had she not heard me? “I’m here about your brother,” I repeated.

Because I had mad skill at reading people, I could tell instantly she was lying when she said, “I’m sorry. I have no idea who you’re talking about. I don’t have a brother.”

Wow. Why would she lie? My mind started running scenario after scenario, trying to solve this newest mystery. But I didn’t have time to play games. Even one so intriguing. I decided to fight fire with fire and lie right back.

“Reyes told me you’d say that,” I said, a pleased smile on my face. “He gave me the password so you’d know it was okay to talk to me.”

Her brows slid together. “What password?” She leaned forward. “Did he tell you about me?”

That was too easy. I almost felt guilty. “No,” I said in regret, “he didn’t. But you just did.”

Anger flared in her Irish eyes, but it wasn’t directed at me. She was mad at herself. The concave angle to her shoulders, the disappointment thinning her lips and pinching her brows told me everything I needed to know. Reyes wasn’t the only one in the family who’d been abused.

“Please don’t be angry with yourself,” I said, still not feeling guilty so much as empathetic. “I do this stuff for a living because I’m good at it.” She eyed the rag in her hands as I continued, her grip tightening. “Why would Reyes want your identity to remain a secret? There’s nothing about you in his prison jacket. He’s never listed you as a relative or a contact of any sort. There’s not a word about you in any of the court transcripts.”

After a long pause, she spoke with a sadness that seemed almost palpable. “There wouldn’t be. He made me promise not to tell anyone who I was. We have different last names. It was easy to fade into the shadows at the trial. No one suspected a thing.”

Why on Earth would Reyes want her to remain anonymous during his trial? If anything, she should have been a key witness. “Do you know what’s happened to him?” I asked.

Her chin dropped farther, her hair shielding her eyes. “I know he was shot. Amador told me.”

“Ah. Does Amador keep you informed?”

“Yes.”

“So you know the state is going to take him off life support tomorrow.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice catching.

Finally, we were getting somewhere. This might just work after all. “You have to fight it, Kim. No one else can. You seem to be his only living relative.”

“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head vehemently. “I can’t get involved.”

Astonishment sucked the air out of my lungs, and I stared at her, shocked and bemused.

She twisted the rag between white-knuckled fists. “Please don’t look at me like that. You don’t understand.”

“Obviously not.”

A soft sob escaped from her chest. “He made me swear I would never contact him again. He said when he got out, he would find me. That’s why I’ve stayed here in Albuquerque. But I don’t go visit him, I don’t write him or call him or send him gifts on his birthday. He made me swear,” she said, her eyes pleading with me to understand. “I can’t get involved.”

Though I couldn’t imagine why Reyes made her swear to such a thing, the situation had clearly changed. I decided to go for the jugular. Desperate times and all. “Kim, he protected you all those years,” I said, my voice acidic with accusation. “How can you do nothing?”

“ Protected is not the right word,” she said, sniffing behind the dish towel.

“I don’t get it. Was there … sexual abuse?” I couldn’t believe how presumptuous I was becoming, how much nerve I’d suddenly garnered in the face of adversity. To just blurt out something so sensitive like that bordered on brutality.

Tears pushed past her lashes and flowed in rivulets down her cheeks, answering for her.

“And he protected you the best he could. How can you turn your back on him now?”

“I told you, protected is not the right word.”

The end of my patience was rocketing toward me. Why would she not want to help him? I saw how much he’d worried about her, how he’d risked his life that night just to stay with her. He could have run away, gone to the police, turned his psychotic father in to the authorities and been free. But he stayed. For her.

“What is the right word, then?” I asked, a caustic edge to my voice.

After a long moment of thought, she looked up at me, her green eyes shimmering in the afternoon sun. “Endured.”

Okay. That threw me. “I don’t understand. What—?”

“My father”—she interrupted, her voice cracking under the weight of her words—“my father never touched me. I was simply the weapon he wielded to control Reyes.”

“But you just … implied there was sexual abuse.”

Her gaze lifted to mine, her green eyes almost hostile at what I was forcing her to say. “He never touched me. Me. I didn’t say there wasn’t sexual abuse.”

I sat blindsided, stunned into silence a full minute, absorbing what Kim told me, turning it over and analyzing it in my mind. It was painful even to contemplate, like the thought itself was a physical entity, a box covered in razor sharp shards of glass, slicing through my fingertips every time I tried to open it.