Chapter Two – Luke

 

“What can I help you with, Tabitha?” I asked as I looked up from my tablet and caught my nominal boss standing in the doorway, watching me with a concerned look on her face. Immediately, I went to stand.

“Have a moment, Oldham?” she asked, a pair of folders hugged to her chest as she leaned against the frame of my open door. She looked tiny in the doorway, a wisp of a woman with mousy hair.

“Sure thing, ma’am,” I said, waving her in. My office wasn’t exactly small, but it wasn’t exactly the C-Suite, either. Big enough for my desk and a full bookshelf, a couple of comfortable visitor chairs.

She rolled her eyes behind her cat-eye glasses. “Sit. You know, you can stop doing that when I walk in the room.”

I smiled a little. “Doing what, ma’am?”

“Standing like I’m your CO, Luke.”

Tabitha, out of all the non-shifters I had to deal with at Full Moon Security, was probably my favorite. Especially for a witch. It didn't hurt that Kris Cole had left her in charge while she'd taken her extended leave from the agency, alongside our resident safecracker, Hunter.

“Sorry, old habits and all,” I said, settling back into my desk chair. “Used to dealing with superior officers, ma’am.”

“Well,” she said as she came over and pulled up one of my guest chairs, “I'm not exactly military. I'm about as civilian as they come, so you can let the old habits die in their sleep, for all I care. And you can stop calling me ma’am, too. I’m your boss, not your grandmother.”

My eyes traveled down to the folders in her hands. “Burning the midnight oil, I see.”

“Something like that. You’re not exactly a stranger to it, yourself.”

“What else am I going to do?” I asked with a crooked smile. “All the guys are hooked up with their women, and Kris is out of town. I’m last man standing, here.”

“That’s kind of what I want to talk to you about.”

I raised an eyebrow. “There’s not some kind of Mate-Finding clause we’re introducing to the employment contract, is there?”

She chuckled. “No. Not exactly. But, you’re the only one I can send out on short notice and still keep a clear conscience. I might end up with a knife in my back if I try and pull this on one of the other guys. Their women are feisty.”

“Not sure if I like the sound of that,” I said.

“That they’re feisty? Or that I’ve got a job for you?”

“The second one.”

“Sorry, Luke.” She tossed one of the files down on the desk in front of me.

I eyed the folder, its carefully bland cream color eyeing me right back like it was nothing more than a repository for something as mundane as business receipts or invoices. It was anything but that, though. “Not a normal job, then, huh?”

“How’d you guess?”

“You and Kris always keep normal cases in green folders. The manila ones all look like the ones we used to keep at the Research Board.”

She frowned. “Suppose you’re right. Old habits die hard, don’t they?”

I opened the folder, began to go through it. Old clippings and small clips of photos, some clearly taken from different social media accounts. “Stalking attractive young women again, I see?” I asked as I flipped through the sheets.

This time, she didn't smile. “Four women in Arizona. All good-looking, all dead.”

“Anything connecting them?”

She shook her head. “Prostitutes, all of them.”

“I think they prefer the term ‘sex workers’ or ‘escorts’ now, don’t they?”

“Depends on the woman, I think. Some are okay with ‘whore,’ even, but I wouldn’t test that.”

I nodded as I flipped to the next, a brunette with a bright and shining smile, just like the woman on the previous page. She looked young, early twenties, maybe. Big, innocent eyes with a look in them that said the world was her oyster. They reminded me of someone I'd known a long time ago. She’d had the same kind of life to her eyes, the same kind of verve.

“You okay?” Tabitha asked when I didn't say anything for a moment.

I nodded. “They all disappearing in the same place?”

“Tucson, Arizona.”

“Where were the bodies found?”

“Varying. One was in a dry creek bed near a sewer, another in the far north out in the desert. Two more in alleys in the city. All with the same characteristics of death. No hearts.”

I grimaced, a picture flashing in my mind of a woman butchered. “Like carved out?”

She shook her head. “Not a single mark on the bodies. There’s some toxicology showing drugs and alcohol, but nothing to the point that would kill them.”

“Well, misplacing your heart likely would cover that on its own, no drugs necessary.”

She shot me a look, one that I ignored.

“Anything else? Signs of rape, trauma?”

She shook her head. “No. Victims had had sex recently, according to the ME’s report, but no traces of semen or other DNA were found. They were all carefully bathed, removing any trace evidence that could have linked the bodies back to the attacker before being dropped. And, because of the nature of the attack, there was no blood.”

“Must have confused the shit out of whatever poor soul drew the short stick on that one.” I paused, frowned. “Frequency?”

“One a month, for the last four months.”

I winced. “That fast?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Leads?”

“One. There’s a house up in the hills, outside the town of Prophet. There’s not any official release connecting it to the events, but I’ve got some info from another witch out there and some chatter back and forth on the local emails about whether or not it might be connected.” Tabitha was not only a witch, but also a fairly accomplished hacker. Not that it really took much to break into cyber security systems, these days. Even though we were practically living in the future, with tiny computers riding around in our pockets, and speakers we could talk to and order products from our living rooms with, most people hadn’t figured out just how insecure they really were with their electronic communication. “They call it the Illuminati House.”

My eye twitched a little. “Like the secret group that’s supposed to rule the world?”

She nodded.

I just shook my head. “Cops, am I right?” I licked the tip of my finger, flipped through to the next page in the file. “Why do they call it that?”

“Fancy cars coming and going at all hours of the night, mostly on weekends. Bigwigs, too. It’s not exactly a wealthy town, so a hundred-thousand-dollar car cruising down Main Street tends to stick out like a sore thumb. One of the girls was seen headed in that direction the night before her death.”

“Who’s this Illuminati House belong to?”

“Now that’s where it gets interesting. Technically, it belongs to a corporation out of Delaware, name of RFT Holdings. But RFT’s held by a combination of different companies, who are held by a combination of different holding companies, and so on.”

“Holding companies all the way down?”

“Right. Holding companies all the way down. I’m still working on navigating that labyrinth, but it’s like a tangle of string. You just find a piece and pull till you get something.”

“Anything else?”

She leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs. “Rumors, mostly. Looked into them a little after my friend got in touch, and I wouldn’t have put any credence in them if I hadn’t first heard it from her. One local person on an internet forum said it’s like a mini Bohemian Grove there, with all these rich and powerful elite coming and going all the time.”

I shook my head. “Bohemian Grove? New to me.”

“Old place in California, been around for longer than you’d think. Titans of industry, politicians. All sorts of people, mostly men, go there. No evidence of anything sinister, but conspiracy theorists love it.”

I grinned. “No offense, but it does sound a little sinister. Just a little.”

“What if I told you a bunch of military veterans went to exclusive clubs all over the country, where only they or their personal guests were allowed to drink or eat food, and that they used this space to relax, talk about things special to them, and plan events that affected the community as a whole?”

Knowing exactly where she was going with this, but not wanting to steal her thunder, I fought the urge to roll my eyes.

“Well, I just described the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

She paused. “Besides, local law enforcement thinks the Illuminati House is just an exclusive sex club.”

I laughed. “If the VFW started offering that, they might be able to pick up those falling enrollment rates.”

Tabitha did actually roll her eyes.

“Why don’t they go and investigate, then?” I asked. “You got girls flying in, you got girls dying. See if it’s connected?”

“Well, because there’s nothing illegal about sex. Drugs, sure, but you going to bust into Warren Buffett’s living room because you think he’s smoking a joint?”

“Point. But the murders?”

She shrugged. “None of the families are talking about why the girls were in town, no one they work for is discussing it. Just that they were temp workers and marketers. Besides, the Illuminati House doesn’t exactly make its list of attendees public information. All this is happening so fast, too, that the state police are just now catching on. Still going to be another week, probably, before they get the will to investigate all these. Besides, all they have is one witness saying they saw her drive that direction, and no one is saying if she ever arrived.”

“Lawyered up, didn’t they?”

Tabitha nodded. “Welcome to America.”

“Constitution ain’t half bad,” I said. “Might protect the bad guys, but it protects us just as well, too.”

I flipped through to the next page, to another gorgeous woman. Long dark hair, pouty lips. This one’s eyes were a little sad, like she hadn’t exactly wanted the hand life had dealt her, but she was making the best of the cards she’d been given.

“Any clue what's doing it?” I asked, careful with my wording. “Killing these girls, I mean?”

Because it wasn’t who. Definitely not who.

Full Moon Security, we didn't deal with who in our spare time. It was always a what. Was it a rogue shifter? Was it a ghost, or a vampire, or even a creature from some other myth and legend? A cult trying to bring about the end times? What’s killing people, what’s terrorizing the innocent? We’d all done this work before for the U.S. Government, as part of the Paranormal Research Board. A few years back, our React Team had left, though, to start our own posse and focus on domestic issues. It was Col. Harrington’s idea, first and foremost, but he’d more than proven himself. We’d been ready to walk through fire for that man, even into Hell itself if he asked, after his leadership with the PRB.

Of course, that was before he disappeared on us, and left us high and dry.

“Not one hundred percent sure, but we’ve seen this pattern before, too,” she said, dropping the other file on my desk. This one was the same color, but looked older and more worn, like it had passed through a platoon of hands.

“What’s this?” I asked as I opened it up.

“Case file from the PRB. Five years ago, same pattern of murders in L.A. Five girls, all sex workers, disappeared for two days each before their bodies were found with their hearts missing. Press called them the Missing Hearts Club Band, but the LAPD swept it under the rug and never did anything about it.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I think I remember this one. Wasn’t this one of the ones that really got under the colonel’s skin?”

She nodded. “Yeah. He tried to investigate it, but we were too busy focusing on recovering artifacts out of Iraq and Syria for that at the main organization, and our React Team was focused in Afghanistan. This case was actually one of the reasons he formed Full Moon.”

Briefly, I considered Afghanistan. And my time there. A country of rock and sand, with half the people wanting to kill you, and the other half not understanding why you were even there. Hell, my first time around as a Green Beret, I’d barely understood. Was it to build schools, or kill insurgents? Or just stop guys from blowing us up with IEDs? Either way, I’d fought the hardest I could there, no matter what the mission. Always keeping my true nature secret as I used my lion shifter senses to navigate around the traps and ambushes they laid for us.

“This one’s special, then.”

She nodded, shifting in her chair. “At least, it would be were he here.”

“So nothing, then?” I asked, my eyes focusing back on the file in front of me. “Cult, demon, vampire? Nothing?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. My contact in Arizona keeps her ear to the ground, but nothing she’s tracked or heard of could do something like this. Wrong MOs. That's why I need boots on the ground.”

I raised an eyebrow at her turn of phrase. She might not have been a soldier, but she was getting comfortable with the lingo.

I pointed to the older file, with all its wrinkled and worn edges, its smudges and faded pages. “So, five girls in L.A.” I pointed to the other. “Four girls here in Tucson. When was the last one?”

“Almost a month ago exactly.”

“Shit.” Time was running out, then, if the killer, or killers, were keeping to their timetable.

“Reading my thoughts now, Luke?”

I cleared my throat. “Any reason why we're only hearing about it now?”

“It's not from Judi,” Tabitha said, referring to the mystery British woman who had been calling us with jobs at semi-regular intervals over the last year. After the colonel had gone AWOL, we’d started receiving calls from her on a phone taped to the back of a bookshelf. We weren’t sure where she was from, or whom she was working for, or what her agenda was. But, well, work was work. Especially if it involved saving people.

“This one,” Tabitha continued, “I found while going through some news accounts. Recognized the pattern from L.A., so I dug up the old file and started to piece it together as fast as I could.”

I nodded. “Pet project, then?”

Tabitha gave me a weak smile. “Sort of, yeah. I have a feeling about this one. A bad one. And, besides, we've got some down time, and until Kris gets back from her trip, I'm technically in charge.”

“No ‘technically’ about it,” I replied. “If she left you in charge, she left you in charge.” Far be it from me to disrespect the chain of command.

She straightened up a little bit at my words, her shoulders going slightly back, like I’d buoyed her a little. Which wasn’t my intention—I was just stating the facts. Like I’d said, far be it from me to second-guess the chain of command.

I closed the Arizona folder back up and pushed it across the desk to her. Not all the way, just out of my immediate area. I’d check into it again once she left. “Tucson, huh?”

“Technically, Prophet. First point of investigation should definitely be the Illuminati House.”

I nodded. “How soon do you want me to go?”

“Already have a flight booked for you later tonight. I’ll email you your boarding pass information so you can get prepped. Rental car will be set up and ready to go, as well.”

I groaned. “Fuck, Tabitha. Tonight? I’m not even packed yet. And if I fly out there, I’m basically going naked.”

She sighed. “Sorry, Luke, but I’ve only now been able to put this together and make sure it wasn’t a wild goose chase. And, besides, you’ll have your gun with you. You can still check that, can’t you?”

“Still, though,” I nearly growled. “If you’d brought this to me sooner, I could have prepared better. Driven out that way.”

“It’s a twenty-hour drive, Luke. What would’ve happened if something else came up?” She pursed her lips a little, turning away for a moment before looking back at me. “I need you on this, okay?”

“So you booked the flight without even asking me? That confident you’d found something?”

“No, just confident enough that you'd be willing to look into it.” She rose from her chair and gave me a little nod. “I’ll leave that with you so you can get acquainted with the file.”

I roughly tapped the folder’s front. I tried, and failed, to keep the acid from my words when next I spoke. “Yes, ma’am, sure thing.”

She glanced back at me, a little frown creasing her lips. “Remember, you’ve got a deadline. I’ll send your boarding pass info to your email. If you don’t hurry, there’s going to be another dead woman. Just remember that.”

Tabitha slipped out the office door, and the silence swept in after her.

I was alone. Alone with that folder. And my thoughts.