Tempted by Fate (3 page)

It took all her willpower not to race to California and wait for the Bad Man to show up. Instead, she’d stayed in Paris and waited for the investigators she’d hired to report on any suspicious activity. She needed to be methodical about this—careful. She couldn’t risk rushing it and messing up her chance to finally catch the Bad Man.

“The Bad Man,” she said derisively. It galled her that she still hadn’t learned who he was, or even his real name. He’d played such an intimate role in her life. He’d shaped her almost as much as her mother had.

Willow slowed her pace and her breathing, to control her heart rate. This was it, she could feel it. He was close—she just had to find him. After twenty years, she’d finally have justice.

It took six months before one of the investigators she’d hired caught a break: he claimed he’d found an informant
who had knowledge of the Bad Man. But the informant would only speak with her face-to-face.

A trap set by the Bad Man? Likely. But what else could she do? She had to check it out. So she’d taken the first flight out to the West Coast.

And now here she was, hiking up a pitch-black hill at two in the morning.

“At least it’s not the Golden Gate Bridge,” she whispered to herself. That was where her informant had wanted to meet. She shuddered. Crossing all that steel would have been a bitch. Anytime she was around too much metal, it became difficult to perform. Metal chops wood, just like a child’s Rochambeau.

Willow crested the hill. Ahead of her, two figures sat on a bench.

Her broadsword-shaped birthmark, the mark of a Guardian, stung. An internal warning system. One that had been clanging in alarm ever since she stepped foot in the city.

“At least here there are plenty of weapons.” She touched the low branch of a tree and headed to the two shadows. They didn’t move or acknowledge her presence.

She stopped. “Something is so wrong,” she muttered. She let
mù ch’i
branch out to the two figures. The scroll’s energy coursed through her, jagged and uneven.

Her mother had taught her that everything had energy—even plastic and other man-made materials had energy to some degree. Drawing on the energy of trees came naturally to the Guardian of the Book of Wood, but it took skill to read and manipulate energy from other sources. Skill she didn’t have, because her mother hadn’t been around to help her perfect her technique. Hence, the occasional fitful starts when she used
mù ch’i
.

She was better, though. But she wasn’t delusional enough to think she could ever be as good as her mom.

Through the force of her will,
mù ch’i
mellowed into a smooth flow, extending to the figures on the bench.

But she felt nothing, which meant the two bodies ahead were dead. “Damn it.”

The faint wail of sirens overrode the soft whisper of the wind in the trees. She paused, listening.

They were headed toward the park.

“Damn it.” She hurried to the bodies, yanking her leather gloves on. The one on the right was the man she’d hired. Half his head was bashed in, but there was enough of him intact for her to ID him from the pictures she’d seen.

Always make sure you know who’s working for you. She’d found that out the hard way.

She patted him down, while taking in the scene carefully. Staged. Because someone wanted to set her up? If the approaching sirens were any indication, the answer would be yes.

She took his wallet and slipped it into her pocket before turning her attention to the other guy. Presumably, the informant. He was less messy, with a thin line of blood trickling from a small hole in his head. Bullet, 9mm. Professional.

The sirens stopped abruptly.

They were here.

Through the trees, she caught flashes of red and blue lights. They’d probably parked at the top of the hill, at the park’s east entrance.

“Which means they’ll be on my ass in minutes,” she said, transferring everything from the informant’s pockets to hers.

A card fluttered to the ground. The wind grabbed hold, but just before it got lost in the night, Willow caught it and stuck it in her already stuffed pockets. Taking in the scene one more time, she turned and strode toward the copse of trees and bushes just beyond the scene. She stepped behind a five-foot-tall bush. Not tall enough to hide her five-ten frame, she let
mù ch’i
reach inside the plant and urge it higher until its branches provided enough coverage without obscuring her view.

She tugged off her gloves and touched her long hair. The white-blond was like a beacon in the night, but she never covered it. It’d become something of a calling card. Plus, it tied her to her mother in one more way. Just to be safe, she encouraged extra foliage to sprout in front of her.

Two cops huffed up the hill a moment later. It seemed they knew exactly where to find the bodies.

“Of course they did,” she whispered, shaking her head.

More officers flooded the scene shortly after, including several plainclothes policemen. She watched as they cordoned off the scene with yellow police tape and began methodically recording their findings. It was a process she’d seen before, in different countries all over the world. Slight variations, some forces more inept than others, but pretty much the same procedures. Being in her line of work, it behooved her to be familiar with the way the police operated.

Her mark burned, sharp and insistent. Instinct made her turn her head to the left, just as another man crested the hill.

Her breath caught in her chest, and she had to force it out with a harsh exhale.

He walked to the scene with an air of authority. The officer in charge. Which meant he was Homicide, detective level. He wore a suit, no overcoat despite the bitter San Francisco wind that whipped through the city all year round. Even though it was past midnight, his clothing was immaculate. So was his dark hair, cut short and neat.

Willow couldn’t see details, which frustrated her, but something about him was familiar, and for a moment, she was tempted to come out from hiding and walk to him.

“Ridiculous,” she said under her breath. Standing at the edge of the scene, he took a small notepad and pen out of his inner suit pocket. He motioned to the first officers to arrive on the scene and asked them questions.

Too low to hear, damn it. She frowned, holding a branch to help calm herself. She knew what he’d be asking. When did they get the call? Had they disturbed the scene? Any witnesses found?

He finished talking to the two patrolmen and ducked under the police tape to inspect the bodies. Suddenly he knelt, laying a palm on the ground.

Willow swallowed a curse. Her boot print on the dirt.

He stood up and scanned the area. Sharp gaze—he probably didn’t miss much.

And then he focused on the bush where she hid.

He couldn’t see her. She knew he couldn’t see her. But somehow she felt his gaze penetrating deeply—all the way to the space inside her that had been closed off for the past twenty years.

She didn’t like it. Not one bit.

When he turned around and waved one of his minions over, Willow exhaled.

“Forget the cop,” she muttered. “Time to move.”

She had to examine what she’d taken and hope it’d lead her to something of value. Not that she was going to hold her breath.

Pulling her mother’s wooden flute from her pants pocket, she backed out of the bush, silently so as not to attract any attention. As an extra measure of caution, she had the trees across the way rustle, drawing attention away from her.

She waited until she was a little distance away before she put the flute to her lips and blew a delicate, mournful tune in honor of the dead.

It was the night from hell, and only getting worse.

Homicide Inspector Rick Ramirez glared at the crime scene. Not much to go on so far. East side of Buena Vista Park, two victims, male. No witnesses. No signs of struggle. No ID on the victims.

Why should it be easy?

At least there was a footprint. A woman’s shoe, based on the heel.

He crouched down to get a closer look. Women didn’t murder just for the hell of it. Homicides with female offenders were typically in the context of domestic abuse, or as an act of desperation. Two men, one shot execution style and the other with a bashed-in skull? A woman wouldn’t have been his guess.

Of course, all sorts of unusual things had been happening in the city the past year. Things he’d been hard pressed to explain. This barely rated on that scale.

A bush fifteen feet away rustled, seemingly without cause. Ramirez looked up, frowning. Something wasn’t right. Still, to cover the bases, he signaled a couple of his men to investigate.

Odd. He scanned the area, feeling like he was being led astray somehow.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a figure. Tall, but obviously a woman. Enveloped in black, like the shadows that clung to her. Except for her hair, which shined a brilliant white even in the dark.

The same woman who made the shoe print? Instinct said yes. He took off at a run, trying to remain as silent as possible so he didn’t alert her to the chase.

But as he rounded the bend, she was gone.

How could she be gone? He scowled into the night, looking behind the trees and bushes.

Nothing.

“Damn.” He raked a hand through his hair. Cursing again, he headed back to his team. The sooner he wrapped up, the sooner he could go home and get some rest.

As he made it back to the scene, he heard the faint whisper of a tune. Like a flute—soft and sad—carrying on the wind.

R
icky.”

Ramirez continued tapping the keys on his laptop. Only his partner called him that. But then his partner got shit about his own name—James Taylor—all the time. Ramirez figured Taylor was allowed to have fun at someone else’s expense now and then.

Of course that didn’t mean he had to respond. No one else dared call him anything other than
Ramirez.
Or the occasional
Rick,
shortened from Ricardo. And he preferred it that way.

Taylor’s chair creaked as he spun around to face him. “Ricky, you hear me?”

Rick continued to ignore his partner and pecked at a couple more keys. He’d come back directly to the office, despite the fact that he felt like his eyes were abraded with sandpaper from lack of sleep. Murders that weren’t solved in the first forty-eight hours tended to remain unsolved. He didn’t have the luxury of downtime. Besides, he’d wanted to note his impression of a tall woman with white-blond hair.

“Ricky, your grandma’s on line two.”

Groaning, Ramirez leaned back and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Can’t you take a message?”

“You know she’s relentless when she wants to talk to you. I don’t want to risk a curse.” Taylor crossed himself. “With a witchy grandma who practices voodoo, no wonder you’re so straitlaced.”

“She’s a healer, not a witch. And I’m not straitlaced.”

Taylor laughed. “My friend, if Houdini had been bound as tight as you, he wouldn’t have escaped.”

That wasn’t true. Yeah, while working, he followed the rules. The rules were rules for a reason. You went by the book or there was chaos, and no one could exist in chaos.

And lately he was all about work. For a Homicide inspector in San Francisco, there was no such thing as downtime. But in the past year, his caseload had been especially heavy—and not with typical cases. They’d been increasingly bizarre and unsolvable, starting with Jesse Byrnes’s murder last year, and continuing with the two bodies this morning. He’d include Dr. Leonora Hsu’s death in that list, but he’d only consulted on the case because his friend Carrie had found the body, and the cause of death had been ruled natural, anyway. Although, death because one’s blood completely solidified didn’t fall under “natural” in his estimation.

The Byrnes homicide had a clear resolution, as well—there was irrefutable evidence against the perpetrator, Paul Chin, including weapon and motive. Chin, having fled the country, was still at large. Only Ramirez couldn’t shake off the feeling that the crime scene had been
off—like something more had happened there than was apparent.