Daimon, DANIELLE BOLGER [read my book .txt] 📗

then?”

“Don't you think about leaving.” As I began to walk away, he added, “You get back here. Get here and fix this!”

Turning to one of my co-workers as I passed by, I murmured, “No wonder he's so keen on turning this dog into a hero, the two sound so alike.”

“Get back here or I'll fire you. I mean it this time! What are you sniggering at, Gary?”

“Relax. I'm going to work on my other report. See you tomorrow.” As I waved behind me, I could practically feel the heat emitting from his red face.

****

“So, you got me alone, now what are you going to do to me?” I teased as I ran my fingers around the rim of my glass of wine.

Zach almost sprayed the cola he was guzzling across my lounge. “Well, baby,” he grinned, “how 'bout you give me a glimpse of the devil inside you, and then I'll combine it with my devil.”

“Oh, Zachy boy, your devil is no match for mine; it would annihilate you.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe I like destruction.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Careful now. Go down that path and your heart will not be merely torn to shreds, but will be pulled apart at the cellular level, exposing each little protein and fatty acid it's made up of.”

“Ah, annihilate my heart. Yes, I believe you when you say you would break it. Still, isn't the danger half the fun?”

“Not when you're losing.” I reflected, thinking of my past battles with Smoke.

“Fair enough. Sometimes it's smartest to retreat and count your losses. Still, I like the idea of winning better than the idea of losing. You're the same. That's why you won't let go of this Fox story, even when they threatened you. Jane, tell me…last Tuesday things got pretty hairy there, didn't they?”

I smiled. “Zach, you can see I'm fine. Quit worrying about me already.”

He shook his head. “You're as stubborn as ever.”

“I'm letting you work with me, aren't I?”

He sighed heavily. “Yeah, that’s something. Shit, I can see this getting messy fast.”

“Are you afraid to get your hands dirty?”

He frowned. “No, I told you that I wanted to work with you, but I don't want to see you getting hurt at the same time.”

I reached for his hand. “Thanks. You don't know how comforting that is for me.”

“Well, if we're going to do this, you better bring me up to speed. That nightmarish guy, you've seen him before, hey?”

The low ominous chuckle replayed in my mind as I nodded. “Detective Smoke is a double agent.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Valentine—he's related isn't he?”

I gaped at him.

Zach smirked back. “Sandra might not get it, but I do. You went for Valentine in your latest story because he's got something to do with the Foxes. You would not have betrayed her otherwise.”

I was stunned at his seamless thought process. “That's right.”

“So, just who is he to the Foxes? Does Valentine pay them off, or is he one of their members?”

I did not answer, but my eyes stared with deep alarm into his.

“I see, so, the latter. Well, you really should back off then, Jane. Valentine is not afraid of the limelight, but the Foxes are. Connect them to the serial killer and they'll make sure you're his next victim.”

How did he know so much? If he could work it out, then what about everybody else? What about Sandra? What about Ryan?

I was breathing heavily. “How do you know all this?”

He smirked. “Well, I am pretty frickin' brilliant for one. That's how I know you're secretly in love with me but will never admit it 'cause you're too enraptured by a crush that will never work out.” He winked. “I may not be as socially adept as you, but I can pick up on visual signs quite well. Like the way that your breathing increases when I say something correct, even when your words lie. I know you so well, but I reckon you've got to be one of the best liars I've ever met. Most the time, when your guard is in full force, I have no bloody idea what you're thinking. Right now, though, you're raw; exposed, scared. Something bad's happened to you lately and I think it's more than just this little fright at the club, but you won't tell me, will you, Jane?”

Raw? Exposed? Damn it, he's right. After a stretched pause I took a deep breath. “Last Tuesday, it wasn't as simple as me being kicked out. In fact, I'm pretty sure they tried to kill me.”

I had Zach's full attention.

“They caught me going through one of their desks in an office, then found out who I was after taking my phone. One of them...” I choked on my words. “Hit me and threw me to the wall. Then, he went around to the desk and started to pull something out. That's when I bolted. As I ran out, I swear I heard a shot being fired.” I gulped.

I felt a warm hand rub my shoulder. “It's alright, Jane, I won't let them do anything to hurt you.”

Too late.

I gave a weak smile. “Thanks, Zach.”

“Do you think that with all that's happened, that maybe it’s best you stay off their radar?”

I shook my head. “They know who I am. They're the Foxes, and they aren't known for their forgiveness. That's why I've got to expose them myself. When they're all behind bars, that's when I'll be safe.”

“Jane, even if you put them away, there will always be some grunt who will come after you and take revenge for the gang's sake. Getting involved like this means that you’ll never be truly safe. Once people like this notice you, you can never go unnoticed.”

I managed to hold back the bitter smile. “That might prove to be the case, and if it comes to it I'll move out of the city, but I'm not running away yet. Not when I'm so close to exposing these bastards. I'm not doing this just for myself, but for every citizen of the Blue Coast that has been victimized by these gangs. Someone needs to take a stand against the creeps, and I'm not going to wait around for some hero to take action. These gangsters need to be brought to justice.”

I left out my final sentiment: they all must die.

“I see. Well, in that case, I definitely won't let you do this alone.”

I gulped, wondering whether or not I should have told a lie so close to the truth.

“So, Valentine is a Fox...” Zach murmured thoughtfully. “Is it possible that he's actually their leader?”

Picking up my wine glass, I stared deep into its golden-colored contents, my eyes as wide as golf balls.

“Shit,” he murmured. “Well, that explains why he hasn't been caught in all this time. Everyone knows that the cops are in the Fox's back pocket, and if he controls the Foxes...”

Zach already knew, so I relented, “He pretty much has full control of the city, where he can perform his pervasive acts without consequences.”

“What's he look like?”

I sighed. “That I don't know, but I intend to find out very soon.”

Zach reached down into a backpack and placed a USB on the coffee table. “Maybe we'll find out with this.”

I shot him a curious glance.

“Go on, take a look.”

I grabbed my tablet eagerly, connected the small plastic rectangle and accessed its images. “You sure you copied the right ones?” I asked, shifting through page after page of flowers.

“Yes, keep looking through them.”

As I skipped through the photos, I saw nothing of significance, namely because there were no people in them. They were composed entirely of lush flower gardens amongst a skillfully crafted landscape.

“You could have just started at the interesting part,” I mumbled, “instead of wasting my time going through all the fluff.”

The next picture caused me to fall silent. There was a figure, just in the corner, with his back turned. By the way the photo turned out, all I could make out was a gray-gold silhouette.

“Who's this?” I enquired.

“Just keep going through them.”

I did. The next one had the same figure further along in the same scenery. The shots continued the figure’s path one frame at a time. I realized that, by the way the figure's frame was composed, Zach would have been crouched down low, perhaps flat on the ground, as he took his curious shots.

“Put it into a picture viewer, and put the speed to maximum,” Zach ordered.

I guessed then that he had taken one of those continuous shutter shots. I did as he ordered and watched the figure walk into the center of a flower clearing, where he turned and we could finally view his face. I gasped as I realized that the figure cast with that strange ethereal glow was Smoke.

Then the skipping photos moved on a few moments more and others joined him; three others, that all shone with a variant of that golden hue. The dimmest and smallest of these was an old man who leaned upon a cane. Then there was another familiar physique, one that resembled an insect with his thin and lanky limbs. It was a distant shot but I swore I could make out that elaborate smile as Freddie's. He was the second dimmest. One of them sat casually on a rock wall. She possessed long curly hair with a fiery red coloration. Ruby. She glowed with a similar vivacity to Smoke, perhaps only slightly more muted. The last entity to enter the frame could not be determined as male or female. The figure's entire body glowed white, without a single facial feature to be detected. What on earth is that?

The pictures flicked through to show some sort of conversation taking place. Movement here was minimal. I did notice the old man turning his head frequently, however, as if he suspected they were being watched. Deciding that the area was safe, he reached into his coat and pulled out an object no more than a foot in length. He unwrapped some fabric and exposed the object. It was small but a sharp tip could be discerned unmistakably. He grasped the pointed end, and as he passed the device to the central figure, the side caught the light and it reflected with almost as much magnificence as the white-glowing individual.

I hit the pause button. “It's a knife.”

“Strange, the way they're all standing around it, as if it holds some sort of importance.”

I remembered a knife; I remembered the one that was used to kill me. I remembered one that I discovered in the Minx office a week ago. It had strange markings on it as if it had come from another world. I could not see any detail so fine in the photograph, but I felt certain that this must have been one and the same.

I continued the slideshow and saw Ruby lay back down and throw her arms about. Freddie approached her in one image and the next showed him to be flat against the stone wall with her hovering over the top of him. Freddie clambered to his feet and stalked off hunched over. The woman and Smoke, likewise, departed, but the white figure and the older one remained. Almost imperceptibly, they turned their heads in the direction of the camera. Then the older one walked away with his stick, using it as a crutch. The white figure turned full-on to the camera, then off in the opposite direction, and soon walked out of shot.

The photos stopped.

“What's with the glows?”

Zach let out a breath. “I told you they were damaged.”

“The white person, what did he look like?”

Zach looked pensive, then shook his head. “I don’t know. I was too far away, and while I was shooting the glare was hitting the display so I couldn't get a good look at them.”

I frowned. “You never saw the pictures before they became distorted?”

“I was about to, but then the computer crashed as I tried to upload them.”

I fell silent.

“It's kind of suspicious looking at it all now, though, after learning everything. I mean that guy there's got to be Smoke. No idea who the others are, but I'm banking that they aren't fellow coppers.”

“These pictures…why were you taking them, Zach?”

He shrugged. “I got a tip that there was a newly developed private property there; so private that the roads leading to it don't even show up on a map. Naturally, I assumed there was a fat chance that a celeb was camped out there, but whoever they were certainly didn't register as any famous clowns I knew of. After I recovered the ruined pictures, I thought them useless and put them straight into the rejects folder. I recognized the big guy, but they were hardly doing anything memorable. It was when you became so interested in him that I started wondering about these shots again.”

I backed through the photos and tapped my finger on the shiniest person.

Zach commented, “Looks like a god, doesn't he?”

My tablet slipped from my hands. “What— what did you say?”

He retrieved the smart device from the carpet and inspected it with concern. “Yikes! Watch it, Jane, you know how easy it is to break these screens.”

My hand clenched the sofa. “That white person, you think he is a god?”

His eyes narrowed. “I think that, to them, he may as well be. He kind of looks like their leader, doesn't he?”

I turned back at the image, shifting my gaze about to all the