Lyn Benedict - Gods & Monsters

“A little of both,” the woman said. “It was a nice car, wasn’t it? And if I had approached you in the lot, you would have walked away.”

“Still might,” Sylvie said. “I don’t like strangers following me.”

“I’m Caridad Valdes-Pedraza,” she said. “And you’re Sylvie Lightner. You’re a PI who’s always on the scene, and I’m a freelance reporter looking for a scoop. I’ve been waiting to see Adelio Suarez; you just came from seeing him. Feels like fate.”

“Fate’s an excuse for people who don’t want to make an effort,” Sylvie said.

“Interesting,” the woman said. “I’d have marked you as believing in destiny.” She hefted her purse to the tabletop, dropped it with a clatter , and pulled out a notebook and a pen.

She scribbled in it, and Sylvie had to ask, “Are you writing that down?”

“Hey,” Caridad said. “I like to take notes on my subjects.”

“I’m not a subject,” Sylvie said. “Ms. Valdes-Pedraza—”

“You could call me Caridad if you want. I know the other’s a mouthful.”

Sylvie let her breath out in a steady gust. She wasn’t in the mood. If she hadn’t seen the sullen waitress approaching with her meal, she would have just given up. Walked away. Caridad’s expression was friendly, pert, that of a would-be newscaster. But there was something harder beneath it. Intelligence, ambition, and something deeper still, betrayed in the tension in her jaw: need.

“My friends call me Cachita,” she said. She shot Sylvie a demure glance, one step away from flirtation. It was a good front, a good act, no doubt got her into a lot of conversations with her targets; but it was only an act.

Sylvie made her voice flat, no weakness. “Ms. Valdes-Pedraza, we’re not friends, and we’re not going to be friends. I’m going to eat a long-overdue dinner, and you’re not welcome at my table. If you have something to say, say it and go away.”

“Fine,” she said. Caridad sat up straight, pressed her curling hair out of her face, drummed her nails on the table, a quick rumba, and said, “Tell me about the bodies you found in the Everglades.”

“Police made a statement,” Sylvie said. “There were no bodies, only mannequins. It was a trap, and three officers died.”

“You know what police statements are? Sop for reporters too lazy to do their own digging. Too lazy to do anything but print a preapproved story. They trade integrity and a real interview for easy bylines.”

“So you’re what? A crusader for truth?” Sylvie spiced her words with as much mockery as she could manage when she was tired . . . and dammit, the woman was drawing her in.

“Is that a bad thing to aspire to?” Caridad asked. “There’s an awful lot of truth that gets ignored or denied out there. I want to open people’s eyes.”

“Good luck with that,” Sylvie said. “I get paid to find things out, and people still don’t listen.”

“Doesn’t it just drive you crazy?” Caridad said. “Make you want to shove it down their throats? Me, I get so frustrated, I could scream. I turn in reports, and it’s all, ‘But, Cachita, where’s the point of—’ ”

Sylvie growled, took a breath, and said, “You know something else that drives people crazy? Intrusive reporters. Go away. I have nothing to tell you.”

Caridad leaned back in her seat, took her hands from the table, made herself smaller. Dammit, this reporter was good at reading people, at manipulating her own body language, her meekness only another path to taking control of the conversation, to keep the dialogue open, to derail Sylvie’s anger.

Sylvie felt a wolfish grin stretch her mouth. Maybe that kind of thing worked on regular people, but Sylvie had anger to spare.

Caridad’s eyes narrowed, pale eye shadow crinkling beneath dark brows. “Women have been disappearing from the city. The police aren’t talking about it, and even if they did, they’d be talking about a serial killer. Not a monster. But that’s what it is. You can help me. You found its playground, didn’t you?

“I’ve got sources, Sylvie. They tell me that someone called in five bodies that they found in the Everglades. Another source tells me you left the scene. You’re not police, and you wouldn’t be welcome at a crime scene—so you must have found them. What made you look for them in the first place?”

“Do you really expect me to talk to you?” Sylvie took another bite of her “special”; it was some sort of creamy pasta and seafood, barely lukewarm and sour with her irritation. “You said it. I’m not real popular with the police. You think they’d be happy if I shot my mouth off to a reporter?”

“I think you’re dying to. I do my research, Sylvie. I know my subjects. I know about you. You’ve got to be sick of the injustices, the fact that people are getting away with murder. You could help me.”

Sylvie said, “I usually get paid for helping.”

“I expected better of you,” Caridad said.

“What are you, my mother?” Sylvie said. “The only approval I need is my own.”

She pushed her plate away, appetite gone. Her personal approval rating wasn’t at its all-time best: Her dreams, in what fitful sleep she’d managed since the confrontation with Odalys, had been angry and focused on the one person who’d gotten away clean with murder: Patrice Caudwell, one of Odalys’s revenant ghosts, who’d managed to keep the teenage body Odalys had provided. At least Odalys had had to lawyer up, had her world disrupted. Patrice? She was sipping cafecitos poolside and working on her tan. Impatience and irritation flared; Sylvie stood. Caridad grabbed her wrist, faster than Sylvie had thought she’d be, and a lot more willing to get physical.

“You aren’t listening.”

“You’re not saying much,” Sylvie said. “You want me to piss off the cops by sharing stories out of school. You want me to confirm your theory about a monster who’s stealing women. Even if I played along, then what?” Sylvie shook her head. “Crazy talk’s not going to get you far as a freelancer. You’d be better off peddling predigested stories.”

“I’m disappointed,” Caridad said. “I thought you’d respect the truth. But you’re just another cover-up artist.”

Where the previous attempt at scolding hadn’t stung, this one did.

“Tell me something,” Sylvie said. “You know Maria Ruben?”

Caridad’s eyes went wide, sensing some sort of chance in the air. She chewed her lip, flipped through her mental files, raised her chin. “Should I?”

Sylvie sighed. Maria Ruben was the missing person most likely to be newsworthy—her husband saw to that with his ranting about alien abduction. If Caridad Valdes-Pedraza hadn’t put her name on her list of missing people, she was no kind of reporter at all and a waste of Sylvie’s time.

When Caridad stood, preparing to follow Sylvie from the restaurant, Sylvie snapped, “Sit. I’m leaving. You’re not.”

“We could be allies, Sylvie,” Caridad said. “Help each other.”

“You sure you want to volunteer? My most recent ally’s in a bed at Jackson Memorial, torn all to hell.”

SYLVIE WOKE THE NEXT MORNING, MOUTH DRY, PANTING WITH ANGER, with a headache born of another night of fitful and furious dreams, trying to solve real-world problems in her sleep.

She hated when daytime frustrations bled into her dreams. It could wreck the whole next day.

Sylvie slapped at the light-blocking blinds, got a quick view of bright, morning sunlight—past time to get up. Time to go get Wales, go look for trouble in the swamps.

She thunked back against her pillow, crooked her arm over her face.