Looking over her shoulder, she stared at the desk.
Five minutes later, after having successfully pried open the secret compartment in the lower drawer, she took the key she’d found the night before back to the lockbox. She had no doubt it was going to open the thing.
And it did.
Reaching inside, she found only one document, and as she unfurled the thick, creamy pages, she had exactly the same sense she’d had when she’d first talked to Rehvenge on the phone and he’d asked her, Ehlena, are you there?
This was going to change everything, she thought for no good reason.
And it did.
It was an affidavit by Rehvenge’s father fingering his killer, written while the male was dying of mortal wounds.
She read it twice. And a third time.
The witness was Rehm, father of Montrag.
Her mind flipped into processing mode, and she raced for her laptop, getting the Dell out and calling up the clinical search she’d done on Rehv’s mother… Well, what do you know, the date the affidavit had been dictated by the dying male was the same as the last night Rehv’s mother had been brought into the clinic beaten up.
She took the affidavit and reread it. Rehvenge was a symphath and a killer, according to what his stepfather had said. And Rehm had known it. And Montrag had known it.
Her eyes went to the ledgers. Given what was in those records, father and son had been total opportunists. It was hard to believe that that kind of information wouldn’t have been used at one time or another. Very hard.
“Madam? I’ve brought you tea?”
Ehlena looked up at the doggen in the doorway. “I need to know something.”
“Of course, madam.” The maid came over with a smile. “What may I answer for you?”
“How did Montrag die?”
There was a sharp rattle as the maid all but dropped the tray on the table in front of the couch. “Madam… surely you do not wish to speak of such a thing.”
“How.”
The doggen looked at all the papers that had been scattered around the disemboweled safe. Going by the resignation in the female’s eyes, Sashla knew that secrets had been revealed, secrets that didn’t reflect well on her previous master.
Diplomacy and deference quieted the maid’s voice. “I would not wish to speak ill of the dead, nor to pay disrespect to the Sire Montrag. But you are the head of household, and as you have requested…”
“It’s okay. You’re doing nothing wrong. And I need to know. If it helps, think of it as a direct order.”
This seemed to relieve the female, and she nodded, then spoke in a halting tone. When she fell silent, Ehlena glanced down at the glossy floor.
At least she knew why the rug was missing now.
Xhex was on the graveyard shift at the Iron Mask, just as she’d been at ZeroSum. Which meant as her wristwatch flashed three forty-five, it was time to do sweeps of the bathrooms while the bartenders were doing last call and her bouncers were hauling the drunk and drugged-up out into the street.
On its surface, the Mask was nothing like ZeroSum. Instead of steel and glass, it was all about the neo- Victorian, with everything black and deep blue. There were a lot of velvet drapes and private, deep couch booths, and fuck the technopop shit; the music was acoustic suicide, as depressive as anything that ever carried a backbeat. No dance floor. No VIP section. More places for sex. Fewer drugs.
But the escapist vibe was the same, and the girls were still working, and the liquor was still going fast as a mudslide.
Trez ran the place in a very low-key kind of way-gone were the days of a hidden back office and the pimptastic presence of a flashy owner. He was a manager, not a drug lord, and the policies and procedures over here didn’t involve any knuckle-busting or pistol-whipping. Bottom line, there was a lot less to police because of the lack of wholesale and retail drug business-plus Goths were moodier and more introspective by nature, as opposed to the hyped-up, sparkly jackass set that had regulared ZeroSum.
Xhex missed the chaos, though. Missed…a lot of things.
With a curse, she hit the main ladies’ bathroom, which was by the bigger of the two bars, and found a woman leaning into the darkened mirror over the sink. With an intent look, she was sweeping her fingertips under her eyes, not to clean up her eyeliner but to drag it down farther onto her paper white skin. God knew she had plenty of the Cover Girl smudgible to go around; she was wearing so much of the shit, she looked like someone had punched her twice with an and-iron.
“We’re closing,” Xhex said.
“Okay, no problem. See you tomorrow.” The girl pulled back from her Night of the Living Dead reflection and hustled out the door.
That was the fucked-up thing about the Goths. Yeah, they looked like freaks, but they were actually a lot cooler than the frustrated-frat-boy, wannabe-Paris Hilton types. Plus they had much better tats.
Yup, the Mask was a lot less complicated…which meant Xhex had more than enough time to indulge in her deepening relationship with Detective de la Cruz. She ’d been down to the Caldwell police station twice already for interrogation, as had many of her bouncers-including Big Rob and Silent Tom, the two she’d sent to find Grady for her.
Naturally, both of them had lied beautifully under oath, saying they had been working with her at the time of Grady’s death.
It was clear at this point that she was going to get grand juried, but the charges weren’t going to stick. Undoubtedly the CSIers had gotten busy pulling fibers and hair from Grady, but they weren’t going to get much on her that route as vampire DNA, like blood, disintegrated quickly. Plus she’d already burned her clothes and boots from that night, and the knife she’d used was widely available at hunting stores.
All de la Cruz had was circumstantial evidence.
Not that any of it mattered. If for some reason things got too hot, she was just going to disappear. Maybe head out west. Maybe she’d go back to the Old Country.
For fuck’s sake, she should have left Caldwell already. Being so close and yet so far from Rehv was killing her.
After checking each of the stalls, Xhex went out and around the corner to the men’s room. She knocked hard and put her head in.
The rustling and gasping and pounding sounds meant there were at least one woman and one man. Maybe two of each?
“We’re closing,” she barked.
Evidently her timing was spot-on, because a woman’s high cry of orgasm echoed around the tile and then there was a lot of recovery panting.
Which she was not in the mood to listen to. It just reminded her of her short time with John… Then again, what didn’t? Since Rehv had taken off and she’d given up sleeping, she’d had many, many, many hours during the day to stare at the ceiling in her hunting camp and count the ways she’d fucked up.
She hadn’t been back to that basement apartment. And was thinking she was going to have to sell it.
“Come on, move it,” she said. “We’re closing.”
Nothing. Just that breathing.
Sick of the postcoital respiratory-theater group in the handicapped stall, she fisted up her hand and slammed the paper towel dispenser. “Getcha asses out of here. Now.”
That got their hustle on.
The first one out of the stall was what she thought of as a woman with crossover appeal. The female was dressed in the Goth tradition, with torn stockings and boots that weighed four hundred pounds and a lot of leather strapping, but she was Miss America beautiful and had a Barbie body.
And she’d been done but good.
Her cheeks were flushed and her overly black hair bed-headed, no doubt both effects caused by her having been worked out up against the tile wall.
