Jenna Black - The Devil Inside

I glanced at my watch. “I can meet you there in half an hour.” Just enough time to contact a lawyer — as long as I happened to be dating said lawyer. I didn’t think I had time to find someone else. At least, not someone I trusted. I don’t trust easy. Surprised?

O’Reilly leaned his hands on the chair in front of him while Finn tried to freeze my marrow with his eyes.

“We’d appreciate it if you came with us now,” O’Reilly said.

But the vibe on these guys felt wrong. I didn’t want to get into a car with them. I mean, I knew they were really police officers and all, but still, something was bugging me. I’d feel a hell of a lot safer meeting them at the station. Even if that would piss them off.

I was very calm and nonconfrontational when I responded. “I’ll be happy to answer any questions you’d like. In a half hour, and with my attorney.” I didn’t ask if they had a warrant, because if they had, they’d have told me already. So far, cooperation on my part was entirely voluntary.

Finn looked like he wanted to say something nasty, but O’Reilly silenced him with a tiny shake of his head.

“We’ll see you at eleven-thirty, then,” O’Reilly said, looking at his watch. “I’m sure you won’t keep us waiting. Right, Miss Kingsley?”

If he was trying to get a rise out of me, he had to do better than that. My fuse isn’t that short. I smiled at both of them. “I look forward to it.”

Finn snorted softly, but the corner of O’Reilly’s mouth lifted as if he found me amusing.

The second they were out the door, I was on the phone, praying Brian wasn’t in a meeting.

He wasn’t in a meeting, but he wasn’t overjoyed to hear from me, either. Apparently, he hadn’t been happy to wake up and find me gone. I decided I’d apologize later, when I wasn’t begging for a favor so it wouldn’t sound so self-serving.

Brian’s not a criminal attorney, but he’s extremely competent. I figured as long as I wasn’t officially under arrest, he’d be able to protect me from any major legal faux pas.

We met at the police station at right around eleven forty-five. We weren’t late on purpose, it just took Brian a little longer to tie up his loose ends at the office than I’d hoped. O’Reilly seemed to take it as a personal offense, though, and glared holes in my skull when I was shown into his office. At least Finn wasn’t there to give me frostbite with his eyes.

“Where were you last night between three-thirty and five?” O’Reilly asked without preamble.

I glanced over at Brian, who raised his shoulders in a hint of a shrug. I took that to mean it was okay to answer the question.

“With my boyfriend,” I said.

O’Reilly scribbled something on his notepad. “Name?”

My inner smart-ass wanted to say “Morgan Kingsley,” but somehow I didn’t think O’Reilly would find that funny. “Brian Tyndale.”

O’Reilly wrote that down, then looked at Brian with narrowed eyes. “You her lawyer or her boyfriend?”

Brian’s expression was mild, as if he didn’t mind the cop’s belligerence. I minded, but I kept my mouth shut. “Both,” Brian said. “If you’re going to press charges, I’ll find someone else to represent her. Are you going to press charges, Detective O’Reilly? And if so, what are they?”

O’Reilly ignored the questions and asked one of his own. “Can you vouch for her all night?”

Brian opened his mouth as if to say yes, then fell silent. My heart sank to my toes. Brian was too much of a goody-two-shoes even to fib for me.

“Most of it,” he said, and I couldn’t help turning to look at him. I don’t know if my face showed hurt, or anger, or both, but whatever it showed didn’t seem to move him. “I don’t know what time she left this morning.”

Bastard. Asshole. Brutus.

These were just a few of the thoughts that ran through my mind. His face looked completely impassive while he slit my fucking throat. I was clenching my hands around the arms of my chair so hard I lost feeling in my fingertips. If O’Reilly had asked me a question at that moment, I wouldn’t have been able to answer if my life depended on it.

The betrayal tasted sour on my tongue.

“So you can’t account for her whereabouts between three-thirty and five,” O’Reilly said, just to hammer in the point.

“Not unequivocally, no.” Brian sounded like he might be discussing the weather, that’s how much emotion was in his voice. And he didn’t even look at me. “Now would you care to tell me what this is all about?”

O’Reilly ignored me and focused on Brian. “Sometime early this morning, there was an illegal exorcism.” He glanced at his notepad. “A Mr. Thomas Wilson. He’s a legal, registered demon host. Someone broke into his house last night, Tasered him, tied him up, then cast out his demon against his will.”

“And why do you think it was my client?”

His “client.” That made my stomach turn over.

“The exorcist used vanilla-scented candles for the ritual. Your client is known for using vanilla-scented candles.”

“Oh for God’s sake!” I burst out, indignation now taking over for the hurt. “Lots of exorcists use scented candles! And — ”

Brian reached over and grabbed my arm in a grip so tight it hurt and startled me out of my anger. He turned those impassive eyes to me. “Let me handle this, Morgan. That’s why you brought me along.”

“Yeah, you’ve been a big help so far,” I snarled.

His grip on my arm tightened even more. If he squeezed any harder, he’d leave bruises. In my state of mind, it should have made me go ballistic. Except it was such unusual behavior for him that I had to stop and think. He was still wearing his lawyer face, and there was no special boyfriend-to-girlfriend look in his eyes. But his fingers were crushing the hell out of me. I realized suddenly that he was gripping my arm from behind — so O’Reilly couldn’t see how hard he was squeezing.

I swallowed hard and shut up, hoping this meant he was still on my side and was trying to keep O’Reilly from seeing it. Brian let go of my arm with a self-satisfied little nod.

“Detective O’Reilly,” Brian said, “I’m sure if my client had performed an illegal exorcism, she wouldn’t have left her candles behind to be found.”

Oh yeah, that was a rousing endorsement.

“Maybe she was interrupted.”

“That’s hardly enough — ”

There was a knock on the door, and Finn stuck his head in. I didn’t like the smile on the detective’s face as he motioned to O’Reilly.

O’Reilly rose. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment. Please, make yourselves comfortable.”

I whirled on Brian the moment O’Reilly was out the door.

“Be quiet, Morgan!” he snapped in a low, urgent voice. He’d lost the impassive lawyer look, his face now intensely earnest. “If I’d lied about your whereabouts and they’d found out about it, things could get very, very bad for both of us. Please keep your temper under control and let me handle this. We can fight later.”

I was eager to get to the fighting right away, but O’Reilly stepped back in at that moment. He looked way too happy.

“Very sloppy, Miss Kingsley,” he said. He uncurled his fingers to show that he had something in his hand. They were little pieces of brightly colored paper like confetti.

Only it wasn’t confetti. Whenever you fire a Taser, it leaves a literal paper trail-anti-felon ID (AFID) tags, up to forty of them, with the cartridge’s serial number on them. I had a nagging hunch I knew whose Taser cartridge these had come from. I also had a nagging hunch that when they downloaded the data from my Taser’s data port, it would claim it had been fired between three-thirty and five.