the screen and hit Moira from behind while Moira was focused on defending herself from invisible energy waves. The women removed Moira’s gun and half carried, half dragged her from the alley.
“What’s going on?” Johnston asked, his voice low.
“You said Grant was coming here. Where is he?”
Johnston pulled out his phone and dialed. “Nelson, it’s me-” Johnston frowned, turning his back to Rafe. “Detective Jeffrey Johnston, Pacific Division, Badge number 455599.” A moment later, he said, “Nelson, what the hell is going on? … Tell me you didn’t hit a cop.… I’ll be there in twenty minutes. I-” he glanced at Rafe. “It appears Moira O’Donnell has been taken against her will by Nicole Donovan and Pamela Erickson. She seems to have been running her own investigation. Cooper is with me.… I don’t … Right … but … I don’t think you’re in the position to make demands right now. I’ll be there ASAP.”
He hung up, then whirled around to face Rafe. “What’s going on, Cooper? Grant is being detained for assaulting a police officer. He had a traffic accident and refused a field sobriety test. I need to get over there.”
“He’s sick,” Rafe said. “Not drunk. I need to get him to Grace Harvest Church.”
Johnston barked out a gruff laugh. “I doubt Nelson has ever stepped foot in a church.”
“I’ll tell you once, and you have to believe me. You saw that tape. Magic is real. Witches are real. There is a demon on the loose and it wants Grant’s soul. The marks on your dead bodies? Demon marks-Grant has one on his back right now.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’ve been called worse. But I’m not a liar. Julie Schroeder, Grant’s girlfriend, is a witch. Remember the image you saw of her on the YouTube video?”
“It was a reflection; it couldn’t have been her.”
“It was her astral projection.”
“Whatever. I have to get to Grant.” He turned around.
Rafe stepped forward and grabbed his arm. Johnston slapped his hand away and pulled his gun out. “Back off, Cooper.”
“Grant will die if you don’t believe me.”
“Keep your hands where I can see them.”
Rafe complied. “Julie, right now, is separate from her body, just like she was on the video. She’s right with me; ask me something only she would know about Grant. Like where they met or why they broke up- something!”
Johnston was skeptical, but Rafe had to convince him. He had to find Moira, dammit! He didn’t want to waste time arguing with a cop.
“Please!” Rafe pleaded.
“When is Grant’s birthday-and where did Grant and Julie go for his last birthday?”
Rafe listened to Julie, then said, “His birthday is July twenty-seventh. But they’d broken up a week before. She’d bought them tickets to Hawaii, and she went by herself. Grant showed up halfway into the week and said it was the best four days of his life. A month later, they broke up again.”
Johnston was swayed by the details.
“You can ask me anything, Detective-but let’s get going. We have no more time to waste. We have until sunset before the demon will attack your partner.”
“Sunset? Thought that was vampires who can’t go out in daylight.”
Rafe despised being ridiculed. “It’s an ancient ritual, and I don’t care if you believe me, but sunset is only ninety minutes from now and if we don’t get Grant to safety, he’s a dead man.”
Johnston stared.
Rafe added, “Julie just told me where Grant is right now. He’s on Washington Boulevard approaching the Santa Monica Freeway.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because Julie was with him when he crashed. She forced him off the road to stop him from walking into a trap.”
“I’m driving.”
“I need my supplies. And Detective-”
“Call me Jeff. I think we can be on a first-name basis about now.”
“Do you have a Taser?”
“Why?”
“You might have to subdue your partner. He’s not himself.”
Jeff’s jaw tightened. “I was aware of something different about him this morning, but I didn’t do anything.”
“This isn’t your fault. But you can help stop it.”
Nina Hardwick was pleased with herself. It helped being a staff attorney for the Board of Supervisors-one call and most county employees were willing to work on a Saturday getting her information. By five Saturday evening, she had a complete dossier on Wendy Donovan, Nicole Donovan, and even their mother, Susan. If they weren’t responsible for killing George, she might have felt a sliver of sympathy for the children of Susan-that woman was a nutcase. To be raised in such a horrid manner … but Nina didn’t allow herself sympathy for the mother or her children. Someone’s upbringing, no matter how horrific, didn’t justify murder.
It reminded her, however, that she needed to push the Board of Supervisors to conduct a complete audit of the troubled foster care system. It wouldn’t solve the problems, but if Nina could help a few children who’d slipped through the cracks, she’d feel that she’d done something.
She drove toward the hotel where Moira had told her they were staying, and tried Moira on her cell phone. No answer. She flipped over the card where she’d scrawled an emergency number.
No one picked up that phone, either, but Nina knew that church. It was near the Warner Bros. Studio. She was closer to the church than to the Palomar.
She made a quick decision as the ramp to the Ventura Freeway came up. She merged onto it, then took the second exit into Toluca Lake and Burbank.
Rafe Cooper had asked her to send along anything she could find that would help them take down Wendy Donovan. Knowing they were dealing with a woman who’d been institutionalized on and off most of her childhood- and then killed her mother when she was sixteen-was important. Nina was set on getting Rafe that information.
THIRTY
Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,
like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.
Grant sat in the backseat of a patrol car on Washington Boulevard, waiting to be bailed out of this mess. He wasn’t drunk, he wasn’t high, the baby-faced uniformed cop had
If he didn’t have the sick sensation that his brain was melting and about to leak out of his ears, he’d have been able to talk himself out of the situation. A ball hit his windshield. He swerved, hit a parked car. End of story. He’d been furious and in pain and the patrolman had rubbed him the wrong way. But he hadn’t decked him until the
