Burn (Indigo)

  Burn

  Crystal Hubbard

  Genesis Press, Inc.

  INDIGO LOVE SPECTRUM

  An imprint of Genesis Press, Inc.

  Publishing Company

  Genesis Press, Inc.

  P.O. Box 101

  Columbus, MS 39703

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, not known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without written permission of the publisher, Genesis Press, Inc. For information write Genesis Press, Inc., P.O. Box 101, Columbus, MS 39703.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author and all incidents are pure invention.

  Copyright © 2010 Crystal Hubbard

  ISBN-13: 978-1-58571-506-0

  ISBN-10: 1-58571-506-9

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Visit us at www.genesis-press.com

  or call at 1-888-Indigo-1-4-0

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to C.A.K. and G.P. Thank you for your courage, guidance and friendship, and for trusting me with your stories. This book is also dedicated to C.W., who dances with the angels.

  Prologue

  Zebulon Rice thought himself a lucky man.

  He took his time climbing the carpeted stairs of the three-bedroom Gambrel farmhouse he and his grandchildren had been hired to empty. At seventy-years-old, he did everything at his own pace to save the wear and tear on his joints, especially his knees and knuckles, which seemed to have aged slightly faster than the rest of his body. His grandchildren, twenty-year-old Zebulon III, eighteen-year-old Jedediah, and sixteen-year-old Rhoda, were the runners and lifters, the backbone and muscle of Rice & Family Movers. Zebulon, the great-greatgrandson of the escaped slave who had founded the family business with the money he’d earned slopping docks in Quincy, was the brains of the operation. His wife, Teresina, was its heart. She booked their appointments, managed the finances, and gave birth to five strapping sons, all college graduates, who had provided the next generation to keep Zebulon & Family running well into the twenty-first century. Yessir, I’m a lucky man, Zebulon thought with a swell of pride. I might not have a big Gambrel farmhouse in Manchester-by-the-Sea, but I know I’m richer than the folks giving up this place.

  Zebulon’s craggy brown hand eased along the hand-carved pine banister. His experienced eye had fallen in love with the farmhouse at first sight. The house had to be over a hundred years old and had been constructed of pine, likely from the very trees that had been felled to clear ground for the house and acres of what had once been farmland. A few working farms still existed in the town, but this wasn’t one of them. Fortunately, the owners had possessed the good sense to maintain the fields, keeping them so well they looked like an endless expanse of emerald carpet.

  The interior of the house had been cared for just as well. The rafters in the high ceilings were original to the structure, as were the banisters and living and dining room floors. He was an amateur at best, but Zebulon had learned a lot about home renovation and restoration in the course of his nearly fifty years in the moving business, and he had to squint and really snoop to notice places where new wood, tile, stone or slate had repaired the old.

  At the top of the stairs, he noticed a dark droplet about the size of a quarter on the ivory carpet, and he smiled. No wonder the old bones of the stairs don’t creak, he chuckled to himself. The joints had been recently oiled.

  Zebulon tugged a bandanna from the back pocket of his work overalls. As he bent over and wiped away the droplet of oil, he hoped that someone would care for him in his old age as well as the departing residents of the farmhouse had cared for it.

  He brought the bandanna closer to his face and sniffed it, hoping to identify the type of lubricant used to condition the stairs. Funny, he thought, new wrinkles joining the old on his brow. This don’t smell like oil.

  He touched the smear on his handkerchief, rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. His eyes wide, a sudden burst of adrenalin jolted his heart. He looked back down the stairs. “Zeb, is somebody hurt?”

  His grandson, a handsome kid with a bright smile and sparkling black eyes in a face as dark as freshly brewed coffee, appeared just inside the front door. “What’s the matter, Granddad?”

  “I said, is somebody hurt,” Zebulon repeated. “Got some blood up here.”

  “Naw, we’re all good,” Zeb told him. “Jed’s tying down the last of the furniture in the truck and Rhoda is checking our moving list against the homeowner’s inventory. We’re good to go, Granddad, just as soon as we get Mrs. Wyatt’s check.”

  “Boy, lower your voice,” Zebulon insisted with an impatient slash of his hand. He walked a few steps down the stairs to speak more quietly with Zeb. “You don’t ever talk about money until the job is done to the client’s satisfaction. What if Mrs. Wyatt had heard you?”

  Zeb rolled his eyes. “I think Mrs. Wyatt might be preoccupied.”

  “Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”

  “She’s been up there in the master bedroom for the past half hour.” Zeb snickered. “Jed and I caught a peek of her in the window when we were putting the mattresses in the truck. Saw her splashing red paint on the walls. Guess she’s leaving a surprise for her ex-husband.” He shook his head. “He sure must have done something awful to piss her off like that. She seemed like such a nice lady.”

  “Splashing red paint in the—” Zebulon’s tongue froze. “Is that officer still outside?”

  “He was when I came in,” Zeb said and shrugged. “What’s he here for? To make sure we don’t steal anything?”

  But by then Zebulon had swept past him and out the wide front door. One of Manchester-by-the-Sea’s finest was sitting in a squad car reading the sports headlines on the back page of the Boston Herald.

  “This heat getting to you?” the officer asked when Zeb slammed against the driver’s door. “You don’t look so good.”

  “I think someone’s in the house,” Zebulon panted. He snatched off his grimy St. Louis Stars cap and swiped the back of his hand across his sweaty brow. “And I haven’t seen Mrs. Wyatt in a while now.”

  The officer, his balding pate gleaming pink in the summer sun, calmly opened his newspaper. “No one’s gone in or out except for you, your workers, and the soon-to-be Ms. Wyatt,” he replied, stressing the buzz at the end of Ms.

  “Thank—” Zebulon began, turning toward the house.

  “Oh, her husband might still be there,” the officer interrupted indifferently. “He wanted to pick up a few things before the little missus ran off with them. I’m sure you . . .” The officer looked up from his paper to see Zebulon awkwardly rushing back into the house.

  “Granddad, what’s the matter?” Zeb asked on the old man’s heels.

  “Shh!” Zebulon hissed, ushering his grandson behind him as they climbed the stairs.

  The loose cartilage in Zebulon’s knees sounded like popping corn, and he worried that the noise would herald his approach. His lungs burned and seemed to harden in his chest as he fought to quiet his breathing. The thick runner covering the upstairs corridor muffling his footsteps, he passed one empty bedroom, a bathroom, and a second bedroom. The door to the master bedroom at the end of the corridor was closed, but the seam of light beneath it revealed unhurried movement.

  “Go get the officer,” Zebulon whispered to Zeb. “Now,” he mouthed angrily when Zeb took too long to get
going.

  Zebulon heard nothing until his toes touched the base of the door. Whispers, too soft and garbled for him to understand, but loud enough to make his bladder seize, prompted him to grip the doorknob and slowly, quietly, turn it. Hanging back, Zebulon allowed the weight and momentum of the door to open it further.

  Later, when he testified in court, Zebulon would recall the easy, silent movement of the brass door hinges, and he’d again wonder what kind of oil had been used to care for the joints. But in that moment when he’d entered the master bedroom, all coherent thought fled Zebulon’s mind.

  He first thought Mrs. Wyatt wasn’t in the room, that the naked man kneeling behind the bags and boxes Mrs. Wyatt had planned to transport in her SUV was some bold vagrant who had begun squatting in the house before the owners had completely vacated. The streaks and splatters of blood on the windows and ceiling spoke of a far different circumstance, one that drew Zebulon into the room.

  It never occurred to Zebulon to be afraid, not after the coppery wet pungent smell of fresh blood assaulted his nose, not even after he spotted a slim, feminine hand filled with blood on the floor. The autonomic response of fear greased his aching joints, clearing the pain from them. It flowed through his ancient muscles, steeling him as he moved closer to peer behind the boxes concealing all but the bloody palm.

  The kneeling man’s back and shoulder muscles bunched as his blood-streaked right arm flew up, flinging fresh blood onto the ceiling and Zebulon’s overalls. His arm slashed down, its movement ending in a nauseating splat.

  Zebulon rounded the boxes and could go no farther. He recognized the yellow and black fabric scraps that had been Mrs. Wyatt’s pretty shorts and tank top. It took him a longer instant to identify the strands of black silk lying all over the clothes and the floor.

  The kneeling man, Mrs. Wyatt naked, unconscious, and pinned between his knees, slowly straightened, and Zebulon felt no ache of arthritis as his hands tightened into fists. “Mr. Wyatt,” he started cautiously, “why don’t you just put the knife down?”

  Sumchai Wyatt slowly turned, twisting at the waist enough for Zebulon to see the blood, some crusted, some still damp, coating him from neck to knees and mixing with the sweat running down his face. His knife hand dripped red, the other remained tangled in his wife’s hair. What remained of his wife’s hair.

  “No one will want her now.” He smiled and his teeth were filmy with blood. “No one but me.”

  “Officer,” Zebulon shrieked. “We need help in here!”

  Zebulon had met Sumchai Wyatt once, when he had moved the Wyatts into the farmhouse four years ago. He saw nothing of the friendly, openly loving new husband who had carried his wife over the threshold before disappearing into the bedroom to christen it as only happy newlyweds could. The man with the sinister grin of satisfaction before him now was a lethal stranger in the midst of killing his wife.

  “Put the blade down, son,” Zebulon said. He slowly moved his hands in a gesture of supplication. “You don’t want to do this.”

  Sumchai turned and slashed at his wife, startling a tiny shout out of Zebulon, who was relieved to see that Sumchai had chopped off more of her hair and not her flesh.

  Though in the back of his mind Zebulon knew that not even two minutes had passed since he’d sent Zeb for the policeman, he wondered what was taking so long. Mrs. Wyatt’s face was unrecognizable; so much blood covered her torso, it was hard to see her wounds. She didn’t have much time left, if she hadn’t already bled to death.

  Zebulon wished that a lamp or a chair remained in the room, anything he could have used as a weapon.

  Physically, he was no match for the taller, younger, stronger, insane man, but that didn’t stop him from rushing Sumchai when he clutched the knife in both hands and raised it high above his head.

  Zebulon’s momentum sent the knife flying and carried Sumchai off Mrs. Wyatt. The two men landed at the base of the windows. Slippery as a greased eel with his wife’s blood, Sumchai wriggled free of Zebulon’s hold and nimbly leapt to his feet. On his hands and knees, Zebulon scrambled for the knife, but Sumchai beat him to it.

  Two seconds of indecision made the difference between life and death, Zebulon was sure of it. Knife in hand, Sumchai had spent two seconds, his empty eyes as black as his spiky hair, staring between his wife and Zebulon as if deciding who to gut first. Sumchai had taken one step forward when a shot echoed off the walls of the empty bedroom, dropping him to his knees.

  Panting, the red-faced officer stood in the doorway, his gun still trained on Sumchai. Zebulon scarcely heard him speak into the radio clipped to his shoulder, calling for backup and ambulances. He was only marginally aware of Zeb, who took off his T-shirt to cover Mrs. Wyatt. Sumchai fell forward, writhing in pain from the wound in the back of his left thigh.

  His hips, knees, hands, and back all at once reminding him of his age, Zebulon sat with a protective hand lightly embracing the top of Mrs. Wyatt’s head, his eyes fixed on the frustrated rage frozen on Sumchai’s face as he stared, unblinking, at the woman he’d once vowed to cherish.

  Chapter 1

  Swift, fluid, elegant, and powerful, the two men engaged in a battle as captivating as an Alvin Ailey dance. A brisk sweep of a long leg took the taller man down, but in an acrobatic display of agility, he rolled out of his opponent’s reach and jumped to his feet. He answered the takedown with a series of quick, blunt blows to his opponent’s torso, but he pulled his punches, stopping just short of making actual contact since this was only a sparring match.

  The encounter was convincing enough to stop the progress of a woman walking past the plate-glass window fronting the studio.

  Catching a glimpse of her dark head shrouded in big sunglasses and a filmy black scarf, the taller combatant froze. Before he could blink, before he could block or dodge an oncoming blow, he found himself moving directly into a hard fist as he tried to get a better look at the woman on the other side of the window.

  A stinging lump warmed the point of his right cheekbone as he recovered, felling his opponent quickly with a throw that put him in position to deliver any combination of kill shots to his adversary’s head and chest.

  The students kneeling in prayer positioned along the edges of the thick vinyl floor mat applauded. He offered a hand to his sparring partner, the wide, loose sleeves of their crisp white gis flapping like the wings of seagulls.

  “Thanks for the match, Gian,” said the man who had just gotten back on his feet. “Almost had you that time.”

  “Good thing ‘almost’ doesn’t count,” Gian said absently, his eyes scouring the street for the mystery woman who had stolen his concentration.

  * * *

  She barely stood taller than the students buffeting her as they exited the dojo, but with her head cloaked in a sheer black scarf and wide black sunglasses, she stood out among the seventh- and eighth-graders in their bare feet and gleaming white gis. The little bit of her face that was showing appeared much younger than her wardrobe indicated, though the resolute line of her full mouth reminded Gian of the nuns who had taught him his ABCs.

  His students performed hasty bows before exiting the dojo, knowing that failure to show proper respect would earn dozens of knuckle pushups at their next class. The woman in the black scarf, clearly a stranger to the rules and etiquette of a dojo, stepped onto the floor mats with her shoes without first bowing, which stiffened Gian’s jaw.

  His first thought was that she was a parent to one of his students, but she looked nothing like the mothers who sent their children to him twice a week to learn the discipline and athleticism of martial arts. The desperate housewives of Webster Groves, Missouri, wore their bleached, tinted, and processed hair in bobs or stylized mullets. They didn’t cover their heads with funeral cloth, particularly not in June, when the radiant heat of the sun off concrete could cause third-degree sunburns. Exposing their heavy, veiny thighs and flapping upper arms in pastel ensembles of walking shorts and tank tops was typical, w
hich made the woman in black stand out even more in her sensible khaki slacks and long-sleeved white button-down.

  “Is there somewhere we can speak in private?”

  Her voice was deeper than he expected, and a bit raspy. She was shorter than he, but not by much. If she straightened her spine and relaxed her shoulders, she would gain an additional inch or two, bringing the top of her head even with his chin. Her clothes hung off her slender frame but they suited her body type, and he wondered if she’d had a sudden weight loss. His Italian instincts kicked in—he didn’t even know her name, yet he wanted to feed her.

  “Mr. Piasanti,” the woman prompted, shifting her head, presumably to meet his gaze through her dark glasses.

  “Sorry,” he said, refocusing his thoughts. “My office. We can talk there.”

  She followed him, each of her steps annoying the hell out of Gian. Her soft-soled flats caused no physical damage to the mat, but the lack of respect irked him to the core. He led her out of the studio and down a short corridor, past locker rooms for women and men—identified only by Chinese symbols—past two more doors and into the spacious office at its end. He held the door open for her. She turned her left shoulder inward to avoid touching him as she moved past him and entered the windowless office.

  “Hey, boss,” greeted a dark-haired man whose muscular frame seemed too big for the swivel chair he sat in behind a desk cluttered with stacks of papers, Asian World of Martial Arts catalogs, a pair of sparring mitts and red ballpoint pens stamped with SHENG LI. “Sionne can cover my five o’clock, so . . .”

  The man seemed to lose his train of thought once his eyes found the woman in black. He stood and rounded the desk, his bare feet silent on the worn red and black Oriental rug. “Karl Lange,” he said, offering a big hand criss-crossed with thick veins. “Can I help you with something?”

  She cupped her elbows in her hands, her shoulders drawing tighter as Karl’s close-set black eyes raked over her. Karl moved closer to her, stroking his thumb over the bare skin of his sternum, which was exposed by his unbelted gi.