Scarlet Nights: An Edilean Novel Read online

  “Yeah, I read that,” Mike said. “And if it weren’t for some vague eyewitness reports, we wouldn’t know who he was.”

  “Right, because Stefan left nothing behind, not so much as a fingerprint. And you know the rule: no evidence, no conviction. Personally, I’d like to arrest the man right now, but the higher-ups want an undercover operation so we can get the mother. We take away her son, and she’d just start using her nieces and nephews. She’s the brains, so we have to get her out of action. Permanently.”

  Mike looked at his watch. “I just need to stop by my apartment to get some things, then I can leave—”

  “Uh, Mike,” the captain said in a tone of apology, “it looks like you haven’t seen the local news in the last couple of hours. There’s something else you need to know.”

  “What happened?”

  The captain took the last documents from the bench and handed them to him. “I’m really sorry about this.”

  When Mike opened the folder, he saw a computer printout of a news story. APARTMENT BURNED, the headline read. CIGARETTES TO BLAME, SAY THE AUTHORITIES.

  Mike’s anger flared as he looked at the photo. It was his six-story apartment building, and flames were coming out of the corner of the fourth floor—his apartment.

  He put the papers with the others before he looked up at the captain. “Who did it?”

  “The Feds say it must have been … Let me check. I don’t want to misquote anyone.” His voice was sarcastic as he flipped a paper over. “‘A fortuitous accident’ is what they called it. Lucky for them, that is.” The captain’s eyes were sympathetic. “I’m sorry about this, Mike, but they want you to go there clean. Your story is that your apartment burned down, so you decided to take a much-needed vacation from police work. It makes sense that you’d stay at your sister’s apartment since it’s empty. It’s supposed to be a coincidence that her place is on the same property as Miss Shaw’s. We—they—want you to lie as little as possible. Oh, yeah, I nearly forgot.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a new BlackBerry, and handed it to Mike. “Stefan cut his teeth on pickpocketing, so when you do meet with him he’ll take your phone. We don’t want him to find any numbers on it that would give you away. While you’re in Edilean you’re to contact us only through your sister. Will that be all right with her?”

  “Sure,” Mike said and renewed his vow to tell Tess to stay away. The case must be really serious if they’d burned his apartment. He’d never tell anyone, but Tess had been sending him baked goods from her friend Sara Shaw for years now, and it was Mike’s opinion that anyone who could bake like she could deserved to be saved.

  When Mike was silent, the captain said, “Sorry about your clothes.” They all knew Mike was a “dresser.” “What did you lose?”

  “Nothing important. Tess keeps whatever means anything to me in a storage bin in—” He hesitated. “In Edilean.”

  “My advice is that you don’t visit it.” The captain wanted to lighten the mood. “Again, too bad about the apartment. I was going to volunteer to look after your goldfish.”

  Mike snorted as he stood up. He didn’t have goldfish or a dog or even a permanent home. He’d lived in furnished, rented apartments since he left his grandparents’ home at seventeen.

  Mike glanced at the roadway that wound through the park. He’d take a run—he needed it—then go. “I’ll leave in two hours,” he said. “I should be in Edilean about ten hours after that—if I use the siren now and then, that is.”

  The captain smiled. “I knew you’d do it.”

  “Want to go for a run with me?”

  The captain grimaced. “I leave that torture to you. Mike?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Be careful, will you? Stefan has a bit of a conscience—or at least a fear of reprisals—but his mother …”

  “Yeah, I know. Could you put together more info for me on mother and son?”

  “How about if you jog over to my car right now and I give you three boxes full of material?”

  Mike gave one of his rare laughs, making the captain look at him in question.

  “You have something in mind, don’t you?”

  “I was thinking of how to introduce myself to Miss Shaw and I remembered a story my sister told me about a very old tunnel. It just happens to open right into the floor of my sister’s bedroom. All I have to do is move Miss Shaw in there.”

  The captain waited, but Mike didn’t elaborate. “You’ve only got three weeks. Think you can entice Miss Shaw away from a big city charmer like Stefan in that time?”

  Mike gave a sigh. “Usually, I’d say yes, but now …” He shrugged. “In my experience, the only way to get a woman is to find out what she wants, then give it to her. It’s just that I have no idea what a woman like Sara Shaw could possibly want.” He looked at the captain. “So where are these boxes of info? I need to get out of here.” Mike followed him to his car.

  Ramsey McDowell was sound asleep when he heard Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” blasting from his wife’s cell phone. Groaning, he put the pillow over his head and tried to shut out the noise—and shut out his feelings. It was her brother calling her, a man Rams had never met, a man more elusive than a ghost, more secretive than a spy. But even though he’d never seen the man, Rams had heard more about him than he cared to. According to his bride, her brother was the smartest, most industrious, most heroic and, of course, the best-looking man on the planet.

  “She’s succeeded in making you jealous, hasn’t she?” his cousin Luke had said, laughing. “Don’t worry, old man, a few days—or years—in a gym and you might live up to his reputation.”

  Jealous or not, Ramsey knew that his wife halted everything—meals, arguments, even sex—if her phone emitted that outrageous song.

  “He is not a hero,” Ramsey said the first time Tess had jumped off of him to run to her phone. “He’s just a policeman.”

  “Detective,” Tess said over her shoulder. She was nude, and the sight of her beautiful body running was enough to make him forgive her. But that had been weeks ago and he was tired of the daily calls.

  Tess said, “He usually only calls me once a week, but he’s off now so we can talk all we want.”

  “All we want” turned out to be every day, and with the way the man caught them in the midst of every “activity,” Rams thought a camera had been set on them. Even now, on their honeymoon, he still called her.

  “Mike!” Tess said as she picked up her phone. Her voice was breathless and a bit frightened. “Is something wrong?”

  Rams looked at the clock. On European time, it was the wee hours of the morning. Why couldn’t the man get a girlfriend like normal people did?

  “All right,” Tess said softly into the phone as she sat back down on the bed. “Of course I’ll do it.”

  Rams moved the pillow off his head and looked at her with curiosity. He’d never heard her use that tone before.

  “Mike, you’ll be careful, won’t you? No, I mean it. Really careful.”

  Rams sat up in bed and watched her more closely. There was enough light in the room that he could see tears in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  She held up her hand for him to stop talking. “I understand completely. Luke will do whatever I ask him to.”

  “Luke will do what?” Ramsey asked.

  Tess looked at her husband. “Would you please be quiet? This is important.”

  Angrily, Rams flung back the covers, pulled on his trousers that were hanging over a chair, and opened the curtain to look at the mountains outside. Behind him, Tess kept talking.

  “Yes, I think it’s in good condition, and besides me, only Luke knows about it. I’m sure he didn’t tell Joce. He was afraid she’d want to explore it, and he’s always thought it was too dangerous.” Pausing, Tess smiled. “Not yet, but Rams is working on it with enthusiasm and endurance. Yeah, the first one will be named Michael.”

  In an instant, Ramsey’s anger left him and he stretched out on