Alpha Ascending Read online

  “Lab confirms it,” he said in a gravelly voice. “As did the blood on the shirt we found. We traced the shirt back to Anderson.”

  “This can’t be!”

  The cop car roared to life and then drove away. Lucas. This wasn’t true. She didn’t believe it. Whoever was trying to frame Lucas had succeeded. She should have warned him!

  “We might also get him for Dixon,” Bushnell added. “We have a witness who can destroy both his alibis. He says he was overcome with guilt, and he told us that not only did his security team lie about Anderson staying home that night but also made sure he was alone the night of Fraser’s murder.”

  This was all wrong. Her instinct was telling her it was wrong. Who was this witness? “Sir—”

  “I need to get back to the station before Anderson gets booked.” Bushnell declared. “Sharpe?”

  “I’ll follow you, sir,” he said. “I have to take care of something.”

  “All right. I’ll see you at the station.” He turned and walked toward the car.

  Sofia watched the captain drive away, her mind still reeling. They’d arrested Lucas. “This is bullshit!”

  “Detective—”

  “He didn’t do it! Any of it!” Her hands clenched into fists. “I know it.”

  “Detective—”

  “What’s this evidence against him? And this witness? Is it—”

  “Detective!” The forcefulness of his tone made her stop.

  “What?”

  Sharpe tugged at the tie on his coat. “Detective, please. Hear me out.” He looked around, as if he was expecting someone to jump out at them. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I believe you.”

  “You do?” She wasn’t sure if she’d heard him right.

  “Let’s take a walk.” He gestured for her to follow him as he strode away.

  Intrigued, she did and stepped up to keep pace. “You believe me.”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I don’t know Bushnell very well, but his reputation precedes him. That first day I came, I knew it was a well-deserved one. But something changed the other day. It’s weird, and I can’t wrap my mind around it, but it’s like he’s a different person.”

  “A different …” A chill ran through her. Her mind replayed her conversation with Bushnell, playing it like a movie backward and forward. There was something off about the captain. “How?”

  “For one thing, he seemed unnaturally obsessed about Lucas Anderson. He said I should focus on him as a suspect.” He shook his head. “Twenty years as a detective, and I’ve never had a superior tell me who my suspects should be.”

  “That’s unethical.” And definitely didn’t sound like Bushnell. “And what did you tell him?”

  “I said I’d be doing my own investigation. But he insisted, and he shared your initial suspicions with me.”

  “About the connection between Lucas and Dixon? The kidnapping and Kevin Hall?”

  “Yes. I have to say, it was fine work on your part. Why did you stop?”

  “Because it was all a dead end.” She crossed her fingers. That was technically true, but she couldn’t tell him the real truth about Lucas and the Lycans. “And then when we found Fraser, it should have all clicked together, but it just felt wrong.” She looked at him, trying to gauge his reaction. “Bushnell didn’t tell you, did he? About my suspicions?”

  “No.” He stopped and turned to her. “But he did tell me about your personal involvement and why I had to take over both cases. What suspicions did you have?”

  “That someone was trying to frame him. We need to figure out what happened. And why someone seems to want to frame Lucas for these murders. But Bushnell—”

  “I don’t think we can trust him.”

  She hated to think it, but Sharpe was right. Maybe someone had gotten to him, was bribing him or something. “We need to look back at all the evidence. And we can’t do it at the precinct.” Bushnell would be there. And of course, Lucas. She couldn’t bear to see him in the cell. The look of hate he gave her before he was taken away ate at her. No, she would make sure he got free and he would never look at her like that again. “We can go to my place.”

  “I’ll grab the case files and meet you there.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Detective, you should get some rest.”

  “Shhh!” She held a hand up. “I need to read this.”

  “Detective … Sofia,” he said gently. “You’ve read that autopsy three times.”

  “I might have missed something.”

  “If you have, it’s because you haven’t slept or eaten in hours. Now, stop and take a breather.” Sharpe insisted.

  “No, there’s no time.”

  “Time is the only thing we have.” Sharpe took off his glasses. “We don’t have any case.”

  “Not yet!”

  “Sofia.” Sharpe looked at her from across the kitchen table strewn with various papers, files, and photographs. “We’ve been at this since last night. It’s five in the morning. Did you even sleep?”

  She looked around her. “I closed my eyes for an hour or two.”

  He stood up and walked over to her, then knelt down to look her straight in the eye. “I’m sure we’ll find something, but you won’t be able to if you’re tired and hungry.”

  “But Lucas is counting on us. He’s been in that cell all night!” She had called Winters at some point during the night to see how Lucas was doing. It was a Sunday, and no courts were open, so they had to wait until the next day for a judge to grant bail. If he gets bail. Lucas had the means to just disappear, so she doubted any smart judge would let him post bail.

  “And we’ll get him out, but you have to eat and rest.”

  She sighed, despair slowly creeping up on her. But she refused to fall into that pit. Lucas needed her. “All right.”

  “Good. Let’s go get some breakfast and try to circle back. Maybe if we have full stomachs, we can figure this out.”

  They walked to a deli not far from her apartment and ordered bagels and coffee. Her stomach growled at the smell of food, and she devoured everything in seconds. Still, she felt ravenous, and she ordered two more egg and bacon bagels.

  “This is a disaster,” she said. “We haven’t accomplished anything.”

  “You’ve convinced me that Lucas really is innocent.”

  She gave him a weak smile. “Thank you.” And she meant it. Right now, she could use as many people on her and Lucas’s side.

  “I really thought it was just me, but now I know what you mean about how everything fell into place too easily. Ready for us to take, wrapped up with a neat little bow. Even that witness who suddenly came forward—”

  “The witness!” She searched her mind. “Why didn’t I find anything about him in the files?”

  “It wasn’t in there?” His lips pursed together. “I was pretty sure I got everything from my desk.”

  Her instincts were telling her now to keep pushing. “Who is it?”

  He leaned forward. “David Masters. His assistant. Or former assistant now. Claims he quit because the guilt was too much. Interviewed him myself.”

  “David Masters.” She thought back to that first day she went to Fenrir. Jared had stopped by the desk outside Lucas’s office.

  “David,” Jared greeted.

  Damn, she didn’t even notice him. She had a vague idea of what he looked like, but never really paid attention to him.

  “What’s on your mind, Detective?” Sharpe asked.

  “Do you know where Masters is?”

  “We have an address,” he said. “Brooklyn. Red Hook.”

  “We need to go see him.” Masters was the key to proving Lucas’s innocence.

  “Now?”

  She was already getting to her feet. “Something tells me if we don’t, we might not find him until it’s too late.”

  They took a cab to Brooklyn in Red Hook, the traffic light enough that they made it fairly quickly. On the way, the
y discussed how they would approach Masters and ask him questions. In the last couple of hours, Sofia realized just how smart Sharpe was. He wasn’t just a good detective, but a strategist as well.

  Anticipation thrummed in Sofia’s veins as well as anxiety and dread. Masters wouldn’t expect them this early in the morning. Unless he wasn’t there anymore.

  No, Masters would stay where he was. If he really was out to frame Lucas, he wouldn’t disappear until the job was done. But was putting Lucas in jail really the endgame? If it was Masters, why frame him for this? Was he somehow connected to the kidnappers?

  Masters’s neighborhood was one of those places that was on the cusp of being gentrified, but his building was still old and rundown. Good thing for them, because that meant that security was virtually nil. They were able to gain entry by simply waiting for a neighbor to leave and slip in before the front door closed.

  “Apartment 2B,” Sharpe said.

  They climbed up the steps and found themselves in front of Masters’s door. Sharpe lifted a hand and knocked. When there was no answer, he did it again, this time louder.

  There was a shuffling from inside and then the door opened. “Detective? What are you doing here?”

  Sofia blinked. This was David Masters? He looked so young. He was dressed in sweats and a T-shirt, but she supposed if he was in a drab gray suit, no one would notice him. So … ordinary. Brown hair, brown eyes, straight nose, and a chin on the weak side.

  “Good morning, Mr. Masters. Sorry to barge in on you so early. But we just wanted to inform you of Mr. Anderson’s arrest.”

  He breathed a sigh, his hand going to the base of his throat. “Thank goodness. I hope you bring justice to those two dead men.”

  “We wanted to make sure you were all right and to ask you some questions,” Sofia said.

  Brown eyes looked straight at her as his fingers stroked his collarbone. “I remember you. You came to visit the office a while ago.”

  “Yes, I went to interview Mr. Anderson,” she said. “About the murder of Thomas Dixon.”

  "And you left without doing anything. Not even taking him in for questioning.”

  She didn’t miss a beat. “As you know, he can be very convincing.”

  “Well, thank you so much for stopping by.” He made a move to close the door. “I—”

  She shoved a hand against the door. “We have a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “Just to make sure our case is solid,” Sharpe assured him.

  Masters hesitated, but pulled the door wider. “All right.” He gestured for them to follow him.

  Despite being small, the apartment looked tidy and clean. Again, it was so ordinary. There was a couch, a flat-screen TV, some books and magazines laying around. “Can I offer you some water? Tea?”

  They declined, but accepted his invitation to sit on the couch, while he sat across from them on the easy chair. “What would you like to know, Detectives?”

  “You said that Mr. Anderson was alone that night of Fraser’s murder?”

  “Yes. His personal bodyguard, Mr. Reyes, had a family emergency that night, and the security team was shorthanded. So that night, he went home alone without any detail.”

  Sofia mustered all her training to try and keep cool. That alone wouldn’t have been enough to arrest Lucas, but it was the shirt that tied it all together. “Do you have access to Mr. Anderson’s townhouse?”

  He shook his head. “Of course not. I’m not a personal assistant. I work strictly at the office.”

  It was Sharpe who followed up. “And you never handed him any documents at home? Do errands? Or maybe he left his briefcase and you had to run it to him?”

  “Never.”

  They continued to grill Masters, but he was as cool as a cucumber and never wavered in his statements. Sofia was growing frustrated, because she just knew Masters was hiding something.

  “I think we’re done here,” Sharpe declared as he got to his feet. “Thank you so much, Mr. Masters.”

  Sofia took her time getting up. “Yes, thank you.” She wanted to wash her mouth after saying that to him.

  “Anytime, Detectives.” He got up and walked them to the door. “Anything you need from me, just ask. I feel awful about the way those two died. And then those pictures …”

  Sharpe turned around slowly. “Yes, it was terrible, wasn’t it?” His gaze turned down to the floor, but before that, it flickered at Sofia so quickly, she could have missed it.

  “Yes. All the blood on Fraser. And Mr. Dixon … his head smashed in like that.” His chin trembled. “I still have nightmares.”

  It took all her strength not to clap at Masters’s award-winning performance. Her heart rate picked up, and she prepared herself for what was to come.

  “Yes, it was tragic. But,” Sharpe’s gaze lifted so it met his, “I didn’t show you any pictures. In fact, I never mentioned Dixon until you told me and the captain that he had his security team lie for him about the night of Dixon’s murder.”

  He gave a nervous laugh. “I didn’t? I must have read it in the papers or something.”

  “No, because that was one detail I didn’t release,” Sofia said. “Just in case.”

  Masters turned to her. “In case of what?”

  “In case the real killer identified himself by slipping up.”

  The silence in the room was so thick, she could have cut it with a knife. Masters’s mouth curled up into a smile. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you, Detective Selinofoto?”

  “I like to think so.” She slightly tilted her head in his direction. What she was about to do what a gamble, but she was feeling lucky. “Why did you set him up?”

  His ordinary face twisted into a hateful expression. “Why? Because we’ve been trying to get to him for months. He’s so well protected by his damn clan. So, we decided that the best way to get to him was to let the human authorities jail him. Then, once he was trapped, we could finally take what we needed.”

  Clan. Humans. Sofia’s blood ran cold. Masters knew Lucas was a Lycan. Was he one too? “You want to kill him that bad that you would frame him for murder?”

  “Do you have any idea what he is? The abomination that is their kind?” Masters’s voice grew distorted from anger. “You know,” he spat. “And still, you whored your body to that filthy animal!”

  “David Masters, you’re under arrest.” She relished those words.

  “It took you long enough to figure it out.” Venom dripped from his words. “Too bad I’m going to have to kill you.”

  She would have laughed if he wasn’t so pathetic. “With what weapon?” He definitely wasn’t hiding anything under his clothes.

  His hand went to his throat, his fingers stroking his shirt—no, there was something under the fabric. Little sharp bumps, like he was wearing jewelry. He stretched his other hand out. “With this.”

  The sound of a gun cocking made her freeze. Her gaze darted to Sharpe, who had raised his arm and his weapon pointed at her. “Sharpe,” she said in a low voice. “You don’t want to do that.”

  “Probably not.”

  She jumped as both Sharpe and Masters said the words in unison. “What the—” Astrid’s words came back to her. They can do all sorts of things, like control people and make spells that can harm us. What were they called? “You’re a … mage.”

  Masters laughed. “Correct. It’s too bad Lucas Anderson hates your guts, otherwise I might have used you as bait.”

  “How did you—” And then she realized the truth. Sharpe’s hazel eyes had turned a deep brown, just like Masters’. And yesterday, the Captain’s eyes were the same shade. “You can control Bushnell. And see what he sees.”

  “Yes.” He slipped a finger under his collar and took out something gold stuck around his neck. It was a thick chain that had a large disk hanging from it. In the middle of the disk was a large red gem. “Thanks to this, I can control anyone. Well, any human. But once we have taken Lucas’s blood, I will b
e able to control Lycans and other magical beings.”

  “You bastard!” She wanted to do something—like kick his fucking teeth in—but Sharpe’s gun was still trained on her. “Sharpe,” she pleaded. “Henry … you have to fight it.”

  “He can’t!” Masters spat. As if to prove a point, he twisted his hand and made Sharpe point the gun at his own head.

  “No!” she cried. “Kill me. But let him live. Can’t you … erase his memories instead?”

  “I don’t think so. We can’t leave witnesses, can we? No, after he kills you, he will turn the gun on himself. We’re covering our bases so even your captain has to go. Unfortunately for the poor captain, he’s about to die in a terrible car crash, care of my associates.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “I wouldn’t even touch you with someone else’s dick, you whore.” His grin turned evil. “Maybe I should make your death slow. A shot to the stomach so you can bleed out.” Sharpe trained the gun back at her.

  This was it. She swallowed the lump forming in her throat. This was how she was going to die. Her gaze went back to Sharpe. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to remember anything.

  But just as she was about to resign herself to her fate, she saw something that made her grasp at the last threads of hope. Sharpe’s eyes went back to their hazel depths, just for the briefest of seconds. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his temple. He was fighting for control! She didn’t know how, but she knew.

  “Goodbye, Detective,” Masters sneered.

  A split second before the gunshot rang out, Sharpe pulled his hand back, sending the bullet ricocheting just over her left shoulder. The ringing in her ear was painful, but she didn’t have time to contemplate how close the bullet had gotten to her because she threw her body at Masters.

  He screamed in surprise, his hands going up to cover his face. This was her chance. Her fingers targeted his neck—to the necklace—and ripped it off him, making him wail in pain. Good.

  “Freeze, motherfucker!”

  Sofia rolled off Masters, and when she looked up, Sharpe stood above Masters, his gun pointed at the mage. She nearly wept in relief. “I’ll call 911.”