Second Skin Part 10

He shut up and let me be, and I fell asleep, only waking up when we pulled into a gas station on Highway 21.

"Far as I go before my turnoff," said the trucker. He fished in the ashtray amid the roach b.u.t.ts and pressed two dollars in quarters into my palm. "You got someone you can call for a ride?"

"Yes, yes," I said impatiently. "Thanks for the lift. You can call the SWAT Division of the Nocturne City PD if you need to be reimbursed for your mileage."

"s.h.i.t, don't mention it," he said as I dismounted the cab. "Always happy to help a lady in distress."

"All men should be like you," I muttered, and picked my way across the blacktop to the bank of pay phones. My foot had stopped bleeding at least.

I hesitated after I fed the phone my quarters. I could call the cottage, where Dmitri would surely have worked himself into high dudgeon over my being gone with no explanation. Did I have enough change to convince him that I'd been abducted by crazies rather than out having a torrid affair?

That would only end in screaming with the mood I was in. I dialed Sunny's number instead.

"Luna!" she shrieked when I identified myself. I held the phone away from my head, shaking it to dispel the feedback. she shrieked when I identified myself. I held the phone away from my head, shaking it to dispel the feedback.

"Sunny, what's wrong?"

"You're what's wrong!" she shouted. "Are you okay? Your team said you didn't show up and Dmitri came home and didn't know where you were . . . everyone's in an uproar. But you're all right!"

"Well I was, right up until you ruptured my ear-drum," I said. "Sunny, I need you to do me a favor and tell Bryson to come pick me up."

"Not me?" She sounded confused. "Not Dmitri?"

"Definitely not Dmitri," I said.

"Luna, he's been going crazy."

Great, now I felt like a world-cla.s.s b.i.t.c.h in addition to c.r.a.p. "Sunny, I was kidnapped."

That started another litany of shrieking and rapid chatter. "Calm down!" I finally yelled. "I'm okay!" How close I had come to not being okay, my cousin would never know.

"I'm . . . I just . . ." She breathed in and out a few times. "There have been so many times when I thought it'd be the last time I saw you, Luna."

"Not this time," I said, trying to be conciliatory. Normally I'm not very good at it, and right then I flat-out sucked. "But the fact remains that I'm a kidnap victim and Bryson needs to take my statement as soon as possible and collect any evidence that might be on me."

"Okay," said Sunny. "I'll call the Twenty-fourth. What's the number there?"

I gave it to her and hung up, watching the traffic swoop past on the highway and trying not to think about the previous hours.

Bryson showed up in an hour or so and said, "Jesus juggling flaming swords, Wilder. You look like a hermit."

"Thanks, David. That suit you've got on makes you look dead."

He touched the lapels of his powder-blue number protectively. "Don't gotta get all p.i.s.sy."

"I just spent a night naked in the woods," I said. "Trust me, now is not the time for rebuking."

He opened the car door for me, at least, and made sure I was buckled in before heading back to the city.

"So what happened?" said Bryson.

"I . . ." I saw the men's faces, blurred under the street lamps, and felt the needle p.r.i.c.k my neck. After that, until I'd woken up under the bush, there was so little I remembered that wasn't blurred with fear . . . "I don't wanna talk about it until I have to."

"One thing," said Bryson. "D'you think it's the same people that offed the other four?"

The men had let me see their faces, unconcerned. Methodical. They hadn't expected me to still be alive.

"Yeah," I said. "I think so."

"s.h.i.t," Bryson muttered, gripping the steering wheel hard. "Why does my life get so G.o.ds-d.a.m.n complicated every time you show up, Wilder?"

"Sorry," I yawned. "Next time I'll try harder not to get drugged and thrown in the back of a van."

We made it to the hospital and Bryson made me wait in the car while he went and got a pair of flip-flops for me to wear in. "David, you're being nice and it's really freaking me out," I told him.

"Don't take it personal," he said. "You're a witness now. I need you in good shape to make a statement."

In the ER, people stared. Patients, doctors, and everyone gave me at least a startled glance. I felt my face heat. "Can I get a curtain, please?" I hissed at Bryson.

"Yeah," he said. "I called ahead. The CSU tech should be here any second."

The doors to Emergency hissed back and Pete Anderson appeared, carrying a steel case and looking harried.

"Hey, Detective," he called when he spotted us. Bryson and I both started to reply, then Pete really took a look at me and his eyes widened.

"Officer Wilder, are you . . . ? I mean, what happened?"

"I need you to do a collection on her clothes and anything else you might find," said Bryson. Pete nodded, still looking at me. We'd met on the Duncan case, when he was an AV geek and I was suspended from the force. He'd gotten field-certified and shaved his head, and contact lenses made him almost look like an action hero.

"Okay, Officer. I'm following you."

"She ain't PD today, son," said Bryson. "She's a vic. Do your job."

"I'm showing respect," said Pete. "If the situation were reversed, I doubt you'd take kindly to me ordering you to strip down." Pete and Bryson had never gotten along, but I jabbed Bryson in the arm before he could say something that made Pete punch him. A nurse in pink scrubs decorated with flying hearts came and led me to an examination area, where she handed me a paper gown. I stripped behind the curtain and put my clothes into the paper bags that Pete had provided. He taped them up and initialed them, then combed the dirt and sticks in my hair into a bindle.

He looked me over. "You had it rough, Luna."

"Pete, you have no idea."

"You catch the creeps that did this, I will be happy to personally put a foot up their a.s.s," he said.

"You're gonna have to stand in line behind me and my cousin and my very large boyfriend," I said.

The nurse returned with a plastic box about the size of a Tupperware sandwich carrier. "Mr. Anderson, could I get you to step outside? I need to perform a rape kit on Miss Wilder."

"No," I said, before Pete could react. "I wasn't raped."

"Standard procedure," she said, putting on gloves and beginning to arrange the swabs. "It won't take long and it doesn't hurt. Please lie back on the table."

Pete touched my shoulder and then made a hasty exit. "I wasn't raped," I said again, louder.

"Miss Wilder, with all due respect," said the nurse. "You were drugged for nearly a day. You don't know what might have happened. We'll give you the morning-after pill to be safe."

Inside me, down where the b.u.t.terflies in your stomach usually live, everything went cold. My vision spun away from the sterile beige-and-blue examination room just for a second and I was fifteen again, scratchy carpet under my naked back, a heavy arm across my chest, and thick, drunken fingers tugging at the waistband of my cutoff shorts. Pain in my neck as he sank his teeth in . . .

"Miss Wilder?" said the nurse. "Should I page Dr. Bradshaw?"

"Just make this fast," I said. I was here. Not in Joshua's van. Not getting the bite. Here, thirty years old, in the hospital, in control. Joshua hadn't gotten his chance to rape me. I wasn't a victim.

"If you'd feel more comfortable with a sedative . . ."

"Look, lady, what part of 'fast' isn't sinking in?" I snapped. "Can we do this without plat.i.tudes? I don't need the post-trauma speech. I know it by heart already."

She did the rape kit and I kept my eyes on the fluorescent light above my head, staring until I saw stars in front of my vision.

The nurse gave me extra scrubs to put on along with the flip-flops, and I swallowed the pill before I went back to Bryson, clenching and unclenching my fists to contain the claws that threatened to sprout inside.

"You ready to go make your statement?" he asked, following me out the door. I stood and breathed the outside air for a few minutes to calm myself down, and dispel the stink of Joshua Mackelroy, my progenitor and would-be rapist, from my memory.

He'd made me a were, but he didn't own me, not then and not ever.

"Yeah," I said to Bryson finally. "I'm ready."

n.o.body at the Twenty-fourth looked at me when Bryson led me through the back entrance. Detectives and uniforms studiously averted their eyes as we walked through the squad room to the interview closet. It really had been a closet, and now it was a slightly more friendly version of the interrogation rooms.

Matilda Morgan, the Twenty-fourth's captain, came out of her office as we pa.s.sed and stopped me. "Officer Wilder. I was so sorry to hear about your attack."

Morgan and I had a rocky relationship when I worked under her, and I wasn't exactly sure that we'd parted on good terms. She'd signed my transfer without so much as a flicker of emotion in her icy eyes or a hint of disapproval around her prim mouth. "Thanks, Captain," I said. I was too tired to even attempt to spar.

"Lieutenant McAllister is waiting for you in the interview room. He was quite perturbed as well," she said. She patted me awkwardly on the shoulder, reaching up from her short, round height to do it. I hissed as she hit one of the spots that I'd pulled running and phasing, and she whipped her hand back to her side. "Detective Bryson, please see me after your interview is over."

"Yes, ma'am," he said meekly. I couldn't resist a half smile after Morgan walked away.

"She trained you good, David," I said.

"If you weren't an invalid right now I'd smack you," he muttered.

"Kinky," I commented. Troy McAllister leapt to his feet as soon as we opened the door to the interview closet, long limbs going everywhere.

"Luna!" He offered me a chair and whispered, "What the Hex happened to you?"

"I wish I knew, Mac," I said. Unlike Morgan, I had had regretted leaving Mac behind. He was a good cop, a good friend, and a genuinely decent guy who had accepted me being were without so much as a raised eyebrow above his slate-blue, unflappable gaze. If it didn't impact my case work, it didn't bother Mac. If I was into that touchy-feely c.r.a.p, I'd say he was almost brotherly. regretted leaving Mac behind. He was a good cop, a good friend, and a genuinely decent guy who had accepted me being were without so much as a raised eyebrow above his slate-blue, unflappable gaze. If it didn't impact my case work, it didn't bother Mac. If I was into that touchy-feely c.r.a.p, I'd say he was almost brotherly.

Bryson turned on his digital recorder and said, "You wanna stay and observe, LT?"

"If it's all right with you," said Mac. "Get going, David. Let's not keep Luna here any longer than she has to be."

"Thanks, Mac," I murmured. Honestly, I didn't mind being at the Twenty-fourth nearly as much after what had happened. It was familiar and secure, and even if Bryson's cologne was stinking up the tiny room, it was seven long h.e.l.ls better than being stranded in the wilderness.

"Okay," said Bryson. "This is Detective David Bryson interviewing Luna Wilder in connection with her kidnapping and also a series of four homicides, case numbers 33457, 33420, 33458, and 33409. Luna, can you state your full name for the record?"

I swallowed, my throat feeling very dry and closed. "Luna Joanne Wilder."

"And what is your occupation?" Bryson used a clipped tone that was almost professional, and totally foreign to me. I looked into his pinched face and saw that he was as uncomfortable as I was.

"I'm a SWAT officer with the Nocturne City Police Department."

"Uh-huh, and can you describe what happened in the course of your kidnapping?"

"I was paged to a scene with Tac-3," I said. "I arrived at the Justice Plaza and was accosted by three men who were apparently drunk . . ."

Thinking about how fast they'd come up on me, how easily I'd been subdued, made me squirm. I was supposed to be better, stronger than that.

"And?" said Bryson. McAllister glared at him.

"They distracted me, and two more men got out of a van from the cleaning service the city uses. They subdued me and gave me an injection of something and then drove me out of the city." I licked my lips. "After that the next thing I remember is waking up in the woods."

"Can you describe the men?" said Bryson.

"Darker skin. Black hair. One of them had a ponytail and silver b.u.t.tons on his shirt."

"Anything distinctive you got a look at?" said Bryson.

"No," I said. The interview closet was starting to get very warm, or that may have been my abject humiliation.

"Did you get a license number off the van?"

"No."

"Did you see anything anything that could be useful in getting these guys?" Bryson demanded. that could be useful in getting these guys?" Bryson demanded.

"I was drugged, drugged, David," I snarled at him. "You try playing Sherlock Holmes when you're stoned out of your gourd." David," I snarled at him. "You try playing Sherlock Holmes when you're stoned out of your gourd."

"Sherlock Holmes was was stoned out of his-" he started. stoned out of his-" he started.

"Ease up, Bryson," said McAllister shortly. "Move on."

I gave him a grateful half smile, but I was doubly sorry he had to be around to hear about how badly I'd let things go FUBAR this time.

"Fine, fine," Bryson muttered. "After you woke up in the woods, what then?"