The Zig Zag Scam (Afterlife Book 12) Read online

  "So why not just breakup with me already?" Peter demanded.

  "I don't want to breakup with you!" Sarah shouted at him. She realized that all the blood had gone to her face, and her hands were clenched in fists. Her nails were biting into the pads of her palms. She released her grip slowly and stepped toward Peter.

  "Listen to me, Peter. I'll tell you the exact same thing I told Samuel. Yes, I still have feelings for him. Yes, I still think about whether or not we would have worked out. But we didn't work out. He became a vampire, and he had to leave me. And you know what? I told him that might have been a good thing. Because now I'm with you, and you make me a better person."

  Peter hesitated. "Really?"

  "Yes, you idiot," Sarah said. "I'm serious. You have the courage to tell me when I'm overreacting to something, and you have the nerve to call me out when I'm trying too hard to be perfect."

  "Alright," Peter said.

  "That's it?" Sarah asked. "Just 'alright'?"

  "What more do you want?" Peter asked.

  "How about an apology?"

  "I'm not apologizing," Peter said. "I was right that you were out there admitting your feelings for him, whether it led back to me being right for you or not. I may have overreacted but I wasn't in the wrong."

  Sarah shook her head. "Yes, you were. I have every right to go talk to a friend about what I'm feeling."

  "Not if that friend is an ex-boyfriend."

  "If you had an ex-girlfriend you wanted to be friends with, I wouldn't have a problem with you staying friends with her," Sarah said.

  Peter shook his head. "People don't stay friends with their exes. That's just a thing, Sarah. Especially when you're in a new -- and better -- relationship."

  "So you're saying I can't be friends with him?" Sarah demanded. "Well, that's too bad. I told him that my door is always open for him."

  "Well, it can't be," Peter said. "I want you to stay away from him."

  "No," Sarah said. "You don't get to control me like that."

  "I'm not trying to control you," Peter said. "I just don't want you hanging around with someone that you've just admitted that you still think about being with."

  Sarah shook her head. "You know what? I don't think I want to be in the same room with you right now. I'm going to go find a gym, and when I get back here, I expect you to be gone."

  "Gone?" Peter asked. "Where am I supposed to go?"

  "Why don't you go home?" Sarah asked. She fished her keys out of her purse and threw them at him. "You can take my car. Just go back to Las Vegas and leave me alone."

  "Sarah..."

  "No," Sarah said. "I don't want to hear anymore tonight, Peter. I mean it. If you're still here when I get back, we're going to have even bigger problems than we already do."

  EIGHTEEN

  Brittney drove to the abandoned house on Locust Lane. They had agreed to meet there, should they find the shimmer. She waited impatiently for the others to arrive. After receiving the call from Conner, she had immediately called the other members of Afterlife to inform that the Shimmer had been caught.

  Harper was the first to arrive. She got out of her car and approached Brittney. They looked at each other for a long moment. Brittney hated when Harper was mad at her; they'd been friends for too long.

  "Harper, look, I'm sorry," Brittney said. "I should have let you know the fey were throwing me and Chloe a feast. You should have been there."

  "No, don't," Harper said. "You were in the right, Brittney. I overreacted. I should have realized that it was something special just for the two of you. I was just jealous."

  "You have nothing to be jealous about," Brittney said. "You're still my best friend."

  "No, I'm not," Harper said softly. "I don't say that out of anger or because I'm hurt, but because it's true. Chloe is your best friend now, and that's appropriate. She's the one that's marrying you, not me. It just took some time for me to realize that you're all grown up now and don't need me."

  "I'm always going to need you," Brittney said. "And I don't want there to be any distance between us. Just because I have someone new in my life doesn't mean that you matter any less to me. I've been ignoring you lately, and that isn't right. I'm sorry, Harper. I'll try and make more time for you, okay?"

  "Okay," Harper said.

  The two of them hugged. Brittney then pushed Harper away, and checked on her gun. It was holstered on her hip.

  "Are you ready to meet a shimmer?"

  "Sure," Harper said. "Why the hell not?"

  They shared a laugh. Then Chloe's car pulled up. Brittney glanced at Harper.

  "Go ahead," Harper said.

  Brittney hurried up to the car as Chloe stepped out. They shared a quick kiss and then broke apart. "Conner should be here any minute," Brittney told her. "He's got the shimmer in the police car with him."

  "Great," Chloe said. "Then we can get this whole tourist mess cleaned up. We need to be focusing on Stanley. Plus there's still Akain to deal with. We haven't even given him any thought lately."

  "And we're not going to tonight," Harper said. "He's a problem for another day. Let's focus on the important things at the moment."

  Chloe nodded her agreement, then brightened up. "Hey, Alec isn't here yet. That means you can share juicy details. What's it like to live with him?"

  "It's nice," Harper said.

  "That's it?" Chloe said, looking distraught. "It's nice? We don't get more than that?"

  "There's nothing really to tell," Harper said. "I've lived with him before, you know. Things aren't really different than that time. Other than the fact that we're sharing a bed together."

  "Yes!" Brittney said. "And how is he?"

  "I'm not talking about Alec like that," Harper said primly. When both girls gave her a dark look, she laughed. "Okay. Let's just say that he's experienced. He's been alive a long time, and he's learned plenty of tricks in those years."

  "I can imagine," Chloe said.

  "Details," Brittney said.

  Harper opened her mouth and then saw Alec's car pulling up. She quickly shut it. The other two women smothered giggles as Alec got out and approached them.

  "What's so funny?" he asked.

  "Nothing," Harper said immediately, her face flooding with color.

  Brittney smirked at Alec. "We just heard that you've learned a lot in your years as a vampire."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Alec asked.

  "Nothing," Brittney said sweetly.

  Alec glared at her.

  "Oh, look," Brittney said. "There's a police car. That must be Conner with the shimmer."

  Immediately their smiles were gone, replaced by looks of grim determination. Brittney once again checked the gun on her hip. She waited for Conner to pull up, and then approached the car. The others were right on her heels. Conner got out and walked over to the side door. He pulled it open. "Come on, Fred. Meet the team."

  Fred stepped out of the car warily. Brittney quickly drew her gun and leveled it at him.

  "There's no need for that," Conner said. "Fred here can't attack without his little gadgets."

  "I'm not taking any chances," Brittney said. "Harper, check and make sure he is what he says he is."

  Harper focused on Fred. After a moment, she nodded. "He's definitely a shimmer. I see him as nothing more than a vague outline. That's because his real form doesn't have a face, right?"

  Fred nodded sourly. "That's right. I can only take on the appearance of people that I've met."

  "Did you pat him down?" Brittney asked Conner. "Make sure that's not hiding anything?"

  Conner shook his head. "I took away his phone, though. I think that's what he uses for his little schemes."

  "Check him anyway," Brittney demanded.

  Harper moved forward and began patting Fred down. She found nothing on him. "He's clean. You're right, his phone must be the technology he uses for everything."

  Alec moved forward, already in his vampiric form. He stared down at Fred.
"You're lucky that I don't snap your neck here and now," he growled. "Cheating people out of their money is a high crime. We don't usually let demons live who are screwing people over."

  Fred swallowed. "Please don't kill me."

  Chloe moved forward with a liquid grace that Brittney couldn't help but admire. She put a restraining hand on Alec's arm, and then looked at Fred. "Plenty of demons have tried to run scams in Las Vegas. We're not going to put up with it, though. Do you know who we are?"

  "No," Fred said.

  "We're Afterlife," Alec growled. "Don't tell me you haven't heard of Afterlife."

  "I'm new in town," Fred said.

  "Well then, let's set a few things straight," Alec said. "This is our town. We keep scum like you off the streets."

  Fred swallowed again. "Please, I'll leave town. I won't come back. Just don't kill me. I'm not ready to die."

  "And let you go somewhere else that you can run more scams?" Brittney said. "No, I don't think so."

  "Please," Fred said. "I'll stop."

  "Yeah, right," Harper scoffed.

  Chloe cleared her throat. "We'll consider not killing you if you give us the information that we need."

  "Information?" Fred asked.

  "We want to know who you're working for," Alec said.

  Fred shook his head. "I'm not working for anyone."

  "That's a lie," Chloe said.

  Fred shook his head stubbornly.

  "Listen," Brittney said. "We know you're working for someone. All the signs point to it. If you just needed money, you could have used that device that Conner took to break into the ATMs. You could have gotten as much money as you needed that way. You didn't have to scam tourists out of their money and yet you did just that. We want to know why, and we want to know who put you up to it."

  "He'll kill me if I tell you," Fred said.

  "We're going to kill you if you don't tell us," Conner pointed out. "You're screwed either way, buddy."

  "No, he's not," Harper said. "If you tell us who you're working for, we can come up with a way to protect you from your boss. That's what we do. We protect people. Usually the innocent, but I suppose that we can make an exception for you."

  "I'm not a bad man," Fred said. "I just caught up in the wrong sort of crowd."

  "And what crowd is that?" Chloe asked.

  Fred sighed. "You're really going to kill me if I don't squeal?"

  "Squeal," Conner repeated. "I like that. Yes, we're going to kill if you don't squeal."

  Alec shot him a look and Conner just shrugged at him.

  Brittney stepped past Alec and took Fred by the arm. "Look, we've all done things we're not proud of. It's understandable that you don't want to out your boss, but he's been having you run scams when he likely knew that we were going to come after you. Is that someone you really want to protect?"

  "Fine," Fred said. "Fine, alright. Look, I'm working for the Eastern Area police captain, Ivan Berkes."

  Brittney let out a low gasp and turned to Harper. "Berkes?"

  Harper gave her a confused look.

  Brittney shook her head. "That's Ryan's captain."

  "Oh, damn," Harper said.

  Brittney turned back to Fred. "You're certain of this? It's the Eastern Area captain?"

  "I'm sure," Fred said.

  "Well, damn it all," Brittney said. "Ryan's not going to be happy hearing this."

  "It doesn't matter if he's happy or not," Alec said grumpily. "He should have noticed something was off about his captain."

  Brittney glared at Alec for a moment before turning back to Fred. "Okay, I still don't understand. Why'd Berkes hire you? If he needed money, he could have just had you rob an ATM."

  "It's too obvious," Fred said. "If an ATM was robbed, they'd eventually figure out who did it. When Berkes has a sudden lump sum of cash, it'd be traced back to him. Using multiple different faces to rob tourists though -- that's something that's a lot harder to track down. They think a bunch of people are involved."

  "He's still taking the money though," Harper said. "It can still be traced back to him."

  "In smaller chunks, though," Fred said. "It's going to be a lot harder to trace a couple thousand dollars here and there than it would be to trace a large sum."

  "This is just great," Brittney said. She let out a low curse.

  "Conner, stay with him," Alec said. "The rest of you, gather around over there." He pointed to a distance a few dozen feet away. They all followed him over to it. "We need a plan."

  "Well, we can't kill Berkes," Brittney said immediately. "He's a human. And an influential one, at that. We can threaten him, but somehow I think that would backfire on us. And it wouldn't get any of the money back for the people who were robbed."

  "Brittney is right," Harper said.

  "I don't think we should kill him either," Chloe said. "I think we should set him up."

  "How?" Alec asked.

  "It'll be easy," Chloe said. "Our demon friend just needs an identity. I'm assuming he can use his technology to create some kind of identification that will verify him as a regular every day Joe. Of course, he's going to have to spend some time in prison. He won't like that, but maybe he can cut a deal."

  "What are you thinking?" Brittney asked, though she thought she already had an idea of what it was.

  Chloe said, "I'm thinking that he goes to someone in power -- Agent Eklund in the FBI office downtown -- and says that he was hired by Berkes to pull off the scam. He can say that he convinced others to join in, others that haven't come forward yet. People might not believe it at first, but he can make a recording of him talking to Berkes with his little phone thing. And when they start digging, they'll see all the cash deposits made to Berkes."

  "Good," Alec said. "Berkes won't be able to say that it was one man, not without admitting that he was coercing a demon to do his bidding."

  "So you and Harper can take him to Eklund," Chloe said.

  "No," Brittney said. "I don't think we want to be associated with this one. There's going to be a thorough investigation because he's a high ranking captain, and we don't want them to look into our credentials. Eklund is backing them up, but with enough digging, someone is going to realize that they're false. We'll send him on his own."

  "What's to stop him from just running?" Harper asked.

  "The threat of our vengeance," Alec said. "He's scared of us, that much is clear. And when he hears that we have groups like ours setup in most major cities -- groups that can look for him with us -- I think he's going to do exactly what we tell him."

  "I agree," Brittney said.

  "Well, let's go tell him," Chloe said.

  The four of them walked back over to where Conner was waiting with Fred. They quickly explained what he was going to do.

  "I'll go to prison," Fred said.

  "It's better than death," Alec pointed out. "At least you'll get protection from Berkes. He's not going to be able to get to you while you're in the system. They'll give you protective custody."

  Fred nodded but still looked unconvinced.

  "And if you're thinking about running, I would reconsider it," Brittney said. "We have people in a lot of other places. You might have heard of some of them. Like the ones in Phoenix."

  "Everyone's heard of Phoenix," Fred said. "That's where the vampires are."

  "That's right," Alec said. "And we're friends with all of them. One call, and they'll send an entire army looking for you. And trust me, if you think they'll make your death easy -- well, many of them are really thirsty for blood with a lot of pent up anger."

  Fred paled. "I won't run," he promised. "I'll go turn myself in tomorrow morning."

  "Good," Brittney said. She turned to the others. "We have an early morning, guys. Why don't we head back for the night?"

  Everyone nodded their agreement. Conner didn't have his car, so he tossed the keys back to Fred. "You can take me back to the Beast. That's where I'm parked. Don't forget to hand in your fake badge tomorrow a
nd this car."

  "I won't," Fred said. "I'm going to play by your rules, alright?"

  "Good," Conner said. He got in the passenger's side seat and kicked his feet up.

  Brittney glanced at the others. "Bright and early tomorrow," she reminded them. "See you then."

  NINETEEN

  Chloe drove back to her house, and saw that Brittney had arrived before her. That was pretty normal; she often thought that Brittney drove like hell on wheels. What surprised her, though, was the unfamiliar car parked in their driveway. She got out cautiously, wishing that she carried a gun too.

  She carefully made her way to the front door, and then cautiously opened it. Her eyes widened in shock. Sitting on her sofa was Brittney's mother and father.

  Brittney caught Chloe's eye from where she was standing and offered a helpless shrug. "They were here when I got home."

  "Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Conley," Chloe said. "I'm surprised you're here this late. Is everything alright?"

  "Please, call me Craig," Craig said. "And my wife is Alice. Right, honey?"

  "That's right," Alice said. "I'm sorry for intruding so late, but we just finished having a long conversation and we wanted to come and speak with you both in person. We got here a few hours ago, but you were both out. So we waited."

  "You waited outside for several hours?" Chloe asked, blinking.

  "Well, we tried to call," Craig said. "But neither of you were answering your phones. We knew you had to come home eventually though, so we sat in the car like two teenagers. It was actually quite refreshing. Your mother and I haven't been alone in a car in front of a dark house for many years."

  Brittney groaned. "Alright, so what was so important that it couldn't wait for morning?"

  Craig gestured at the couch. "Why don't you two sit down? You both look exhausted. Were you out at the nightclub? Afterlife?"

  Chloe glanced at the clock hanging on the wall -- it was two minutes past midnight. She took the offered seat. "No. Brittney had a job to do tonight, and I was just out there waiting for her."

  "I see," Craig said. He looked directly at Brittney while she took a seat beside Chloe. "You know, I'm not sure we've even said how proud of you we are. But we are, Brittney. You've really changed a lot in the past year, and it's noticeable. Working for the FBI has certainly made an impression on you."