The Dark Tide - The Adrien English Mysteries 5

It began, as a lot of things do, in bed.

Or to be precise, on the living-room sofa where I was uncomfortably dozing.

Somewhere in the distance of a very weird dream about me and a certain ex-LAPD police lieutenant came a faint, persistent scratching. The scratching worked itself into my dream, and I deduced with the vague logic of the unconscious that the cat was sharpening his claws on the antique half-moon table in the hall. Again.

Except…that boneless ball of heat on my abdomen was the cat. And he was sound asleep…

I opened my eyes. It was dark, and it took me a second or two to place myself. Moonlight outlined the pirate bookends on the bookshelf. From where I lay, I could barely make out the motion of the draperies in the warm July breeze in the front room of the flat above Cloak and Dagger Books.

I was home.

There had been a time when I’d thought I would never see home again. But here I was. I had a furry heating pad on my belly, a crick in my neck, and — apparently — a midnight visitor.

My first thought was that Lisa had called Guy, my ex, to look in on me. That furtive scraping wasn’t the sound of a key; it was more like someone trying to…well, pick the lock.

I rolled off the sofa, dislodging the sleeping cat, and staggered to my feet, fighting the dizziness that had dogged me since my heart surgery three weeks earlier. I’d been staying at my mother’s home in the Chatsworth Hills, but I’d checked myself out of the lunatic asylum that afternoon.

If Guy had dropped by, he’d have turned on the light in the shop below. There was no band of light beneath the door. No, what there was, was the occasional flash of illumination as though someone was trying to balance a flashlight.

I wasn’t dreaming. Someone was trying to break in.

I felt my way across the darkened room to the entrance hall. My heart was already beating way too hard and too fast, and I felt a spark of anxiety — the anxiety that was getting to be familiar since my surgery. Was my healing heart up to this kind of strain? Even as I was calculating whether I could get to the Webley in the bedroom closet and load it before the intruder got the door open or whether my best bet was to lock myself in the bedroom and phone the cops, the decision was made for me.

The lock mechanism turned over, the door handle rotated, and the door silently inched out of the frame.

I reacted instinctively, grabbing the rush-bottomed chair in the hall and throwing it with all my strength. “Get the fuck out of here,” I yelled over the racket of the chair clattering into the door and hitting the floor.

And — surprisingly — the intruder did get the fuck out.

Not a dream. Not a misreading of the situation. Someone had tried to break into my living quarters.

I heard the heavy thud of footsteps pounding down the staircase back to the shop, heard something crash below, heard another crash, and, as I tottered to the wall light switch, the slam of a distant door.

What door? Not the side entrance of the shop below, because I knew that particular bang very well, and certainly not the front door behind the security gate. No, it had to have been from the adjacent structure. The bookstore took up one half of a subdivided building that had originally, back in the thirties, housed a small hotel. The other half of the building had gone through a variety of commercial incarnations, none of which had survived more than a year or so, until I’d finally been in a position to buy it myself the previous spring. It was currently in the expensive and noisy process of being renovated, the two halves divided by a wall of thick plastic.

Not thick enough, clearly.

The contractor had assured me the perimeter doors were guarded by “construction locks,” and that it was as safe as it had ever been. Obviously he wasn’t familiar with my history, let alone the history of the building.

I leaned back against the wall, trying to catch my breath and listening. Somewhere down the street I heard an engine roaring into life. Not necessarily my intruder’s getaway car fleeing the scene. This was a nonresidential part of Pasadena, and at night it was very quiet and surprisingly isolated.

There was a time when I’d have intrepidly, Mr. Boy Detective, gone downstairs to see what the damage was. That was four murder investigations, one shooting, and one heart surgery ago. Instead I got the gun from the bedroom closet, loaded it, returned to the front room, where the windows offered a better vantage point, and picked up the phone. The streetlamps cast leopard spots on the empty sidewalk, accentuated the deep shadows between the old buildings. Nothing moved. I recalled a line by Raymond Chandler: “The streets were dark with something more than night.”

Reaction hit me, and I slid down the wall and dialed 911.

I was having trouble catching my breath as I waited — and waited — for the 911 operator, and I hoped to hell I wasn’t having a heart attack. My heart had been damaged by rheumatic fever when I was sixteen. A recent bout of pneumonia had worsened my condition, and I’d been in line for surgery even before getting shot three weeks earlier. Everything was under control now, and according to my cardiologist, I was making terrific progress. The ironic thing about the surgery and the news that I was evidently going to make old bones after all was that I felt mortal in a way that I hadn’t for the last nineteen years.

Tomkins pussyfooted up to delicately head-butt me.

“Hi,” I said.

He blinked his wide, almond-shaped, green-gold eyes at me and meowed. He had a surprisingly quiet meow. Not as annoying as most cats. Not that I was an expert — nor did I plan on becoming one. I was only loaning a fellow bachelor my pad. The cat — kitten, really — was also convalescing. He’d been mauled by a dog three weeks ago. His bounce back was better than mine.

I stroked him absently as he wriggled around and tried to bite my fingers. I guessed there was truth to the wisdom about petting a cat to lower your blood pressure, because I could feel my heart rate slowing, calming — which was pretty good, considering how pissed off I was getting at being kept on hold in the middle of an emergency.

Granted, it wasn’t much of an emergency at this point. My intruder was surely long gone.

I chewed my lip, listened once more to the message advising me to stay on the line and help would soon be with me. Assuming I’d still be alive to take that call.

I hung up and dialed another number. A number I had memorized long ago. A number that seemingly would require acid wash to remove from the memory cells of my brain.

As the phone rang on the other end, I glanced across at the clock on the bookshelf. Three oh three in the morning. Well, here was a test of true friendship.

“Riordan,” Jake managed in a voice like raked gravel.

“Uh…hey.”

“Hey.” I could feel him making the effort to push through the fog of sleep. He rasped, “How are you?”

Pretty civil given the fact that I hadn’t spoken to him for nearly two weeks and was choosing three in the morning to reopen the lines of communication.

I found myself instinctively straining to hear the silence behind him; was someone there with him? I couldn’t hear over the rustle of bed linens.

just now. I think

And he was completely alert. I could

did try to break in. He took off,

back at the

I got home late this

“You’re there alone?”

I was far too ill and helpless to be left

“Yeah.”

the security alarm go

“No.”

call it

They put me

o’clock in the morning?” He was definitely on his feet and moving, dressing, it sounded like, and I felt a wave of guilty relief. Regardless of how complicated our relationship was — and it was pretty complicated — there was no

guessed said more

and call 911 again. Stay on the line with them.

said gruffly,

that. I had called, and he was coming to the rescue. Unexpectedly, a wave of emotion — reaction — hit me. One of the weird aftereffects of my surgery. I struggled with it as

* *

taking my time. From above, I had a bird’s-eye view of the book floor. The register looked undisturbed. I could see where the bargain-book table had been toppled. Otherwise everything looked pretty much as normal: same comfortable leather club chairs, same wooden fake fireplace, same tall matching walnut bookshelves — strictly mystery and crime novels

to examine. “You didn’t have to come down. I’d have gone around to the s —” Jake

a second, and then I did. Echoes of the first time we’d met; although met was kind of a polite word for turning up as a suspect in someone’s murder

I didn’t want to treat him to the vision of the seam down the middle of my chest from open heart surgery. Not that Jake hadn’t seen it when he visited me in the hospital, but it looked different out of context. The bullet hole in my shoulder was ugly enough; the incision from the base of my collarbone down through my

awkwardly, “Thanks again

He nodded.

asked him to give me a little time, a little space before we tried to figure out where we stood. He’d resigned from LAPD, come out to his family, and asked his wife for a divorce. But he looked unchanged. Reassuringly unchanged. I think I’d feared… Well, I’m not sure. That he’d be harrowed by regret. For his entire adult life he’d fought to defend that closet he inhabited. Been willing to sacrifice almost everything to protect it. I couldn’t help thinking he’d take to

sing a chorus. Big, blond, ruggedly handsome in a trial-by-fire way. He was very lean, all hard muscle and powerful bone. Maybe there was more

that light, steady gaze I felt unnervingly self-conscious. It was weird to think that for the first time in all the time I’d known him there was nothing to keep us from being together except the question of

asked matter-of-factly, “Why didn’t the alarm go

“It wasn’t set.”

to

“Tell me you’re kidding.”

The construction crew usually arrives before we open the shop, and they kept triggering it. So I

thing, because I was pretty sure if Jake got

from the side.” I turned to lead

pointed out where an endcap had been knocked over. “Only the emergency lights were on,

from one side to the other was like peering through murky water. I could barely make out the ladders and scaffolds like the ribs of a mythological beast. I directed Jake’s attention

He

“The contractor told me that that side of the building would be

already shaking his head. “Look at this.” He stooped, pushing through the slit in the plastic, and I followed him into the darkened other side of the building. It smelled chilly and weird on that side. A mixture of fresh plaster, new wood, and dust. We picked our way through the hurdles of drop cloths and wooden horses and cement mixers to the door on the far

“Great,” I said bitterly.

core in the center of the exterior handle. I discerned that it was painted, though I couldn’t make

I nodded.

lock used by contractors on construction sites. They’re all combinated the same, or mostly the same, which means that if

“Better and better.”

and relocked it. “As security goes, this is one step above leaving the door standing

I swallowed. Nodded.

have been watching the place and knew no

said, “It doesn’t look like

might have been kids prowling around.” Jake didn’t sound convinced, and I

break into my flat

I think that probably gets back to the mistaken belief that no one was home. No one has been staying here at night for three

been the first time he was prowling

“True.”

wall. Hell, if Warren were hanging around, I

unfair to Natalie; Jake

emotionally drained dry. I didn’t seem to have much in the way of physical resources these days, and this break-in felt like way more than I could

the dirty glass of the bay window, we watched a squad car pull up, lights flashing, though there was

than never, I

two, Jake looked at me. “You okay?

“Adrenaline.”

the black-and-white. Drew a deep

weird new emotionalism. The smallest things seemed to choke me up. Like this. Jake offering

small thing. Jake, who had hid his sexuality from his brother officers for nearly twenty years, who had been unwilling for people to even know we were friends, who had very nearly succumbed to blackmail and more to keep that

that he was making the offer or that I was ready to start

“I can handle it.”

you can. I’d like to do this