Dark Places

  ALSO BY LINDA LADD

  Head to Head

  DARK PLACES

  LINDA LADD

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  PROLOGUE - The Angel Gabriel

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  The Angel Gabriel

  FOUR

  FIVE

  The Angel Gabriel

  SIX

  SEVEN

  The Angel Gabriel

  EIGHT

  NINE

  The Angel Gabriel

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  The Angel Gabriel

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  Avenging Angels

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  Dark Angels

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  Dark Angels

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  Dark Angels

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  Dark Angels

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Dark Angels

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  Dark Angels

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  Copyright Page

  PROLOGUE

  The Angel Gabriel

  The triple funeral took place in a spooky old church in Missouri, one that had been built many years ago. Its clapboards were peeling white paint, and someone had carved a big cross on the wooden door and then painted it blood red. A black bell hung from a pole in the yard, and the little orphan boy peeked around the worn front pew and watched through the open portal as a scarecrow-gaunt man in a black suit pulled down hard on the long rope. The slow, steady knell sounded scary and foreboding and made him shiver.

  This place was far away from where the child had lived for the first ten years of his life. He had never even visited the remote, heavily wooded hills where his momma and daddy and baby sister were to be put into the ground. He’d never met the old woman sitting beside him and patting him on the hand and telling him she was his grandma. She smelled funny, musty and dusty like the dark attic in his Pittsburgh house where white sticky cobwebs clung to the rafters, and she used an old wheelchair that squeaked when the wheels went round. He would never get to go home to that redbrick house again. And he would never, ever see his momma, daddy, or baby Katie again.

  His head still hurt something awful from the terrible accident that had taken his family’s lives and left him alone. The deep cut wouldn’t stop hurting, and he touched the white gauze bandage where it was wrapped around his forehead. Sharp jagged pains shot through his temple and made his ear ache. His head hurt so bad that he began to cry from all the suffering and anguish and grief and confusion and the strange, frightening dreams that plagued him since he had woken up in the hospital. Tears ran down his cheeks and tasted salty.

  Grandma noticed his weeping and draped her arm around his shoulder, but he didn’t like the strange old lady hugging him so close. He didn’t like her, or the ugly church, or all the people dressed in black hovering around and staring at him. He loved bright colors and happy people, like his momma with her long, orangey-red ponytail that swung from side to side when she walked.

  He was scared. He was alone. He wished he’d died, too, in the horrible car crash that killed his family, but he’d had on his seat belt and they hadn’t. He had been in the back with Katie but her car seat had not protected her the way it was supposed to. A drunk man in a black pickup truck had crossed Interstate 579 on the bridge over the Allegheny River and hit his family head-on. He never saw any of them again.

  Now, weeks later, the lids on the two long white coffins were shut tight, never to be reopened. They said his baby sister was in with his momma, and his grandma said Momma would hold Katie tight in her arms until the host of angels flew down and transported them off to heaven. Furtively, the little boy shifted his gaze upward to the ceiling rafters.

  An old-fashioned fan rotated slowly, making the white lilies atop the caskets sway and dip in its breeze. A sweet, flowery scent wafted to him. The dark-blue hymnals in the shelf on the pew in front of him smelled old and moldy and the fan’s blades wobbled a little and squeaked rhythmically, as if they might come down on the old preacher’s head. He wondered if the blades would tear the angels’ wings when they fetched his family, but throughout the somber service not one angel appeared.

  Maybe his family had already gone off to heaven, flown away for good without him. He should’ve died, too. If he could drive, he’d crash a car straight into a tree and catch up with those angels flying high in the clouds.

  The preacher had short gray hair and pale skin with lots of crisscrossed lines and wrinkles, especially around his eyes. After a while, he finally quit droning, and six men in dark suits picked up the two boxes and carried them outside. The day was sunny, late summer, the twenty-fifth day of August, but the air was heavy with humidity. Sweat trickled down the boy’s tight collar, and he tugged at it, hating the clothes his grandma took from a battered green footlocker in his daddy’s childhood bedroom.

  His coat and pants were black and smelled like her and the round white mothballs covering the bottom of the trunk. He had never seen a mothball before, and his grandma’s house looked like the one in Katie’s book called Little Red Riding Hood. It was even deeper in the woods than the church and had kerosene lamps and a hand pump in the kitchen sink. His grandma told him that she didn’t believe in newfangled things, that God in heaven didn’t cotton to people who were lazy. She lit candles at night and the oil lamp on his bedside table. It reminded him of the one his daddy used on camping trips. Everything in his grandma’s house was sort of scary, even her, but she had been nice to him and rocked him by the fire that first night when the social worker had brought him there to live. She had wept for a long time, loud sobs that frightened him into silence.

  Outside, everybody followed the coffins along a gravel path to where two rectangular holes gaped like hungry mouths. Furry green moss clung to cracked gravestones with burial dates that said 1809 and 1896 and 1937. He wondered how old his grandma was. She had deep furrows in her cheeks and blue eyes that weren’t really as blue as his daddy’s, but paler, as if the color had washed away.

  He stood beside Grandma’s wheelchair and didn’t watch as they lowered the coffins, not liking to think of his family down there covered up with all that red dirt. Instead, he watched something crawling under his Grandma’s thin white hair, a tiny little spider, or something. He wanted to pluck it out but was afraid to. He suddenly felt so sad that he wanted to bawl and bawl but was afraid he’d start crying and never stop. Nobody else was making a sound, just standing hushed and somber in their black clothes, like a bunch of watching crows.

  “Come, child, it be over now,” his grandma whispered, when the preacher finally closed his big black Bible. “The church ladies done fixed us up a feast celebratin’ your folks goin’ to heaven with the angels. Don’t you worry none, they’re in the most wondrous place, where there ain’t no hurts or fears or tribulations.”

  He wondered what tribulations were as everyone filed out the gate under the big oak tree. Their shoes crunched on fallen acorns. People started to talk and laugh as if a spell had been broken. Other children ran and played tag and hide-and-seek while ladies set out food, but he wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to play. He wanted to be far away from them and the way they all stared at him.

  Suddenly he missed his family terribly, especially Momma, and he want
ed to say good-bye. He checked to see if his grandma was watching him. She was busy with the other women, so he sneaked back through the creaky metal gate. He wanted to be alone and cry where nobody could see.

  The graves still lay open. Shovels were stuck in the mounds of dirt piled beside them. He stared down into the dark holes and wondered how his momma looked inside her coffin. She was real pretty, with lots of freckles and a big, beautiful smile. She must look awful now because nobody got to look at her after the wreck, but he was glad Katie was in his momma’s arms. Katie was so little and sweet and would’ve been afraid to be alone in her own box until the angels came. He bet his daddy was lonely in his box and wished he was in there with him.

  “Well, lookee here, boys! What ya doin’ back out here, freak?”

  Three boys were standing behind him. They were grinning but not with friendly, want-to-play-with-us? grins. They looked about his age but were all bigger than him. Afraid, he stepped away from them and stood between his parents’ graves.

  “I know, Freddy, let’s push him in! Wanna get in there with your mommy?”

  Frightened, the orphan looked down into the dark holes. “No, please don’t, I don’t want to.”

  “You a momma’s boy, you a sissy, you scared?”

  One of the boys lunged around and shoved him hard in the back. The orphan almost fell before he caught himself at the edge of the grave. The other boys pushed at him, laughing, and Freddy picked up a shovel and jabbed it at him until he lost his footing. Frantically, he flailed his arms but couldn’t regain his balance. He fell into the gaping hole and landed hard on his back atop his momma’s coffin. The breath knocked out of him, he stared up at the blue sky. The boys’ faces appeared. They looked scared. Then Freddy laughed. “C’mon, let’s bury him! Get a shovel!”

  Clods of red clay rained down on his head, and he screamed and jumped as high as he could, trying to grab hold of something. The dirt walls crumbled under his scratching fingernails, and he knew the sides were too high to ever get out. Terrified, he dropped to his knees on the coffin and covered his head as his tormentors shoveled dirt in on him, faster and faster, more and more, until he was half covered in it. Then the avalanche of dirt stopped abruptly, and Freddy’s voice rang out, muffled, frightened, yelling something about Angel Gabriel and running. Then all was quiet.

  ONE

  Well, let me tell you, there’s nothing as exhilarating as being a two-dollar whore at Christmastime. You know, tra la la la la, and lookin’ for a date, baby? Not that I’m really a hooker, mind you. I’m a Canton County detective at Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, working an undercover prostitution sting, which means since dusk shadowed the world I’ve been meandering the perimeter of a giant truck stop just outside the town of Lebanon, wearing a teeny-weeny lime green halter top and denim short shorts. The current rash of battery assaults up and down Interstate 44 on truck-stop prostitutes, a.k.a. lot lizards, had initiated a six-county joint task force to catch the guys before they graduated up to murder, so here I am, freezing my buns off.

  I do have on a floor-length faux-fur coat over my skimpy attire, one as white as freshly driven snow, which definitely rings of irony, if you ask me. It keeps me from hypothermia, however, and allows me to flaunt my feminine attributes to any interested onlookers. At the moment, I am doing the streetwalker strut up and down the side of the lot that edges a particularly seedy motel and honky-tonk bar full of bored truckers and true-blue lot lizards dressed like myself or even more so. I am also trying to keep my legs from turning blue under my elegant black fishnet stockings. No doubt about it, hookers above the Mason-Dixon Line must come from hardier stock than moi.

  Until tonight I’d been stuck on sick leave, lots of sick leave, months, in fact, because my last case got me in big trouble, and when I say big trouble, I really mean, big, hairy, Bad-ass trouble. I have a six-inch meat-cleaver gash in my right shoulder to remind me of those good-ole, bygone days, but it’s practically healed up now. And I got the cast off my broken shinbone two months ago, which was not soon enough, believe you me. All this happened last summer when I ran into a nightmare from my past who had sort of an unhealthy fixation on me.

  But that’s another story I don’t like to think about, so instead I think about the man I met during that investigation and how much he likes me. I like him, too, not love, mind you, just like, but it’s the kind of LIKE written in all capital letters. Actually I find it a bit incredible that my new beau, Nicholas Black, a.k.a. filthy-rich psychobabbler to the stars, finds a way to spend time with a regular, homegrown gal like me. After all, I’m not exactly his type. I have way too many scars and not enough highlighted blond hair to be a celebrity’s trophy girlfriend. In fact, my hair’s short and sun-streaked honey blond, and I’m fairly tall and lean with lots of muscles because I do yoga, kickbox, or run every day when I’m not recuperating from gunshot wounds, and whatnot.

  Not that I’m complaining about Black’s attentions. Actually he saved my life, too, from the aforementioned psychopath, but I saved his first, so I call that even. Truthfully, he’s okay, I guess, except when he tries to run my life and psychoanalyze me about my childhood from hell, but he’s getting better about that. Anyway.

  A tinny male voice crackled inside my earpiece, “You sure look hot in those Daisy Dukes, Morgan, ’cept for all those giant goose bumps pokin’ through those fishnets.”

  Budweiser D. Davis is my beloved partner, Bud for short, the silver-tongued, immaculately dressed, auburn-haired, named after his father’s favorite beer, Georgia-accented wise-ass. But he helped save my life, too. What can I say? I’m obligated to put up with these guys.

  Into the microphone hidden in my plunging cleavage, I said, well, actually hissed, “You stomp around out here at night in spitting snow half-naked awhile and we’ll see what pretty shade of blue you turn, Galahad.”

  I could hear the other deputies laughing in the background. They were my protective shadows lurking in the unmarked sheriff ’s surveillance van parked across the lot. I was being filmed, too, wow, a real movie star tonight. I guess that’s what I get for being the only female deputy in our department. Well, there is one other woman, Connie O’Hara, but she’s five-months pregnant and doesn’t do bare midriffs particularly well at the moment. Therefore, I prance and freeze with ice on my eyelashes and a nose redder than Rudolph’s, but all in my own special seductive way.

  On the bright side, since early this evening, my trusty little band of men and I have busted twenty-eight truckers, six bored husbands, and one lesbian, all horny as billy goats. I guess that’s worth turning blue over, but I’d sorta rather be back in Bermuda at Black’s beach villa where he whisked me off to recover from my injuries. About an hour ago, though, I began to think another murder case would look good about now. Maybe somebody that got whacked in a steam room. Yeah, with a heated swimming pool and a bunch of hot tubs. Maybe I’ll trot over to Black’s digs later tonight and thaw out in his giant spa. Luckily he owns a luxury hotel on the lake, named Cedar Bend Lodge, where he keeps his gigantic penthouse apartment and lets me use its amenities whenever I like.

  Bud was talking in my ear again. “Hey, guess what, Morgan? Somebody just called in a missin’ person up north of the lake somewhere. Bet you’re just dyin’ to take it, right?”

  My adrenaline went rat-a-tat-tat. Around here in rural mid-Missouri, missing-person cases were top of the line in the excitement arena. I controlled my glee as a pickup truck drove by, then slowed down when they saw me offering my wares. I put my hand over my mouth and whispered, “You know I am, but a couple of johns are nibbling on my line, as we speak. Hold off a minute and let me bust them.”

  Bud said, “Okey-dokey, but make it quick.”

  I hastily painted my come-hither-you-dumb-suckers look on my face, opened my thrift-store ermine faux fur and contorted into my ultra-sexy, provocative pose, remembering to display my grape-Popsicle legs to the very best advantage. Man, if I did attract another john, he’d probably turn
to ice when he touched me, like Mr. Freeze in Batman. Then again he might have a heater in his car that I could press up against. Ah, ask and ye shall receive.

  The two guys in the battered blue Dodge pickup decided just a little too late that I was a worthy conquest and had to swerve to the curb at the last second. I guess that’s why they hit the lamppost with the Christmas star on top. Sometimes I’m just too alluring for my own good.

  I looked up into the lightly spiraling white snowflakes and made sure the rocking glittery adornment wasn’t going to fall on my head. That would be a catchy headline: POLICEWOMAN /HOOKER SMASHED FLAT BY FALLING STAR. All business now that I had a couple of easy marks, I worked up some serious slither and sidled sexily toward my dynamic duo waiting under the streetlight.

  “Hey, there, hotties, you looking for a date?” Sexy, breathy, freezing. Hey, I’d seen how the hookers do it on HBO.

  The guy in the passenger seat said, “Hey, there, you sweet little piece of thang.”

  Huh?

  My fellow deputies laughed heartily into my earpiece. Unprofessional, they are, yes. But I, being the only serious police officer in the group, ignored their glee, kept a straight face as I batted snow-crusted eyelashes at my twin Prince Charmings. I hoped all my old scars and bullet wounds were hidden under my skimpy attire. Sometimes my battle mementos make the guys courting me get all nervous and jumpy. Except for Black. He just prescribes painkillers and tells me to duck and weave next time. He’s got a couple of impressive scars himself from his Army Ranger days, I might add. Not that we’re in competition, or anything.