“Right,” said Ray.
Kit straightened, frowning like someone had just told her there was no Santa Claus. “And unofficially?”
Leaning back, Ray crossed his arms over his chest, his face as grim as his father’s had ever been. “That’s something you should ask your friend Paul.”
Kit drove quickly, her silence a testament to her nerves, though her hands were steady enough. They couldn’t be sure there was a problem yet. There’d been no follow-up to the text, but that wasn’t unusual for Paul. Their conversations were usually one-sided.
So why had her heart sunk into her gut when she’d gotten his text in the middle of that tasteless club? And why was it still caught there now?
“You sure you trust Paul?” Grif asked again, out of the blue.
“Yes,” Kit said, grateful for the distraction from her own thoughts. “I mean no… but he’d never put me in danger, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Not physically anyway.
To distract herself from
“You mean Ray DiMartino?”
She nodded.
“Ever hear of the Desert Dukes Gang?”
“Sure.” No one could truly call themselves a lifelong Las Vegan and not know someone who knew someone who knew where the bodies were buried. Most rumors led back to the Dukes… and most weren’t rumors. “They haven’t held any sort of power in this town in a long time, though.”
Not since Howard Hughes overtook the Strip. Corporations turned a light on every shady place after that, and the town was different for it. Better, most argued… but those generally weren’t lifelong Las Vegans, either.
But Grif knew his local history. “They ran the city back in the 1960s. Tony started working for the family when he was only seventeen. That means his loyalty is endless and his memory is even longer. He told me Ray’s father knew for a fact that one Griffin Shaw was killed on the same day as Evelyn Shaw.”
“There are no official reports of that,” Kit said tightly, turning onto the long street that led to Settebello. She’d checked after he claimed he’d been killed in 1960.
“Exactly,” Grif said, like that meant something.
“And how did you say you knew the family again?”
“I brought back their little girl, Mary Margaret. That’d be Ray’s aunt. They thought she’d been snatched, and accusations were flying between them and their rivals from New York. Bullets were about to follow.” He looked out the window like he was really remembering it. “Turns out, she fell under the spell of some early New Ager with a funny accent. Australian or something like that. Ran away to a compound with no indoor plumbing but a lot of vegetable gardens. I brought her home.”
Kit didn’t feel the need to lash out this time. Instead, she wanted to cry. He really believed this-she saw it in his eyes-which meant he really believed he was an angel, too. Swallowing hard, she said, “And you’re wondering if Sal DiMartino had you rubbed out despite what you did for his niece?”
“Tony’s words do make a man wonder. Besides, power and money have always ruled this town, and gratitude only runs skin deep. They could have easily allied themselves with someone more powerful than the lone wolf who’d found their little girl.”
Kit bit her lip, and fought back tears. Dangerous had been bad enough. Now she’d have to tell Fleur that Grif was crazy. Blowing out a breath, Kit decided to play along. “So why don’t you ask her?”
“Who?”
“You know. Mary Margaret.”
Grif shook his head. “She was just a kid.”
“Not anymore.”
Grif frowned as they turned onto Mockingbird Street. Kit had never been so grateful to see a dark, spooky street in her life. Yet, looking up, she frowned, too. “This block is far darker than the others.”
“You said you’ve been here before,” Grif said, noting how she’d slowed.
“Not for some time. And not at night. The streetlights are out, too.” She pulled up in front of a gate with a giant, decorous S-more beautiful than it was functional. Kit turned off the car. “I don’t see Paul’s car. In fact, I can’t see a thing.”
“I can,” Grif said grimly, opening the door. “Stay here.”
“The hell I will.”
Grif cursed under his breath as she followed but said nothing more.
The air was even cooler than the previous hour, and Kit shivered, glad she’d brought her vintage fur capelet. Grif assisted her as she ducked beneath the gate, gravel crunching beneath their feet as they headed toward the barn. The faintest light shone between the slats of its front-facing window, though nothing else moved in the night.
“Must be expensive to hold and run this sort of place in the middle of a city.”
“Chambers can afford it,” Kit murmured, stepping over a suspiciously dark pile. These shoes had taken her from a gala to a strip club to a horse ranch in one night. One thing was sure, Griffin Shaw got around.
Yeah, and he thinks he has wings to do it. Kit rolled her eyes, but stilled when Grif stiffened, palm tensing over her own. “What was that?”
“City boy,” Kit whispered, pulling him forward. “Don’t you know a horse when you hear one?”
But the noise sounded again, and this time it drew out like a long, low foghorn pushing its way through a thick mist.
Holding her a little tighter, Grif started again toward the barn.
The whitewashed stables were pristine and impressive beneath the full beat of the day’s sun, but ghostly in moonbeams that sliced through the clouded night.
“Paul?” Kit called out, earning a glare from Grif, but the door wasn’t only unlocked, it was slightly ajar. Her eyes quickly acclimated due to a light in the long room’s farthest corner. Given the sounds, it seemed a groomsman or trainer was still working there. Maybe a horse was ill or giving birth. The barn’s center was covered by a thick rubber matting that absorbed the clack of Kit’s heels as they walked, but that only heightened her sense of heading into an abyss.
“Get behind me.” Grif’s voice was low and tight as they advanced past the pine-paneled stalls.
“The breezeway doors are open,” she whispered, recalling that the exercise yard was on the other side. All she saw was a sliver of moonlight peering inside like a curious visitor. Meanwhile, the dark figures moving through the stable windows looked like shadows shifting in another world.
“What is that smell?” she asked as they rounded the corner. Then her gut-holding her nerves, which were holding her heart-registered the visual like a punch. It also registered the scent as fresh blood.
“What is…?” she tried to say, but her voice was airy with the loss of breath.
The body was strung up along the front of a giant treadmill, a way to exercise the horses when the Vegas heat grew too extreme. She recognized that much. She tried to add, “Who is…?” but she knew that, too. After all, she’d seen Paul only hours before, and his face-as always-was pristine. So instead of asking questions with unfathomable answers, her mind locked onto the one fact she could actually grasp.
I gave him that watch.
Then she screamed.
Next thing, Grif’s hands were under her arms, his voice insistent but nonsensical in her ear, his breath rising and falling, it seemed, for them both. He pushed her back around the corner, but it was too late. Kit had seen the extended reins holding Paul’s arms wide, a second pair securing his legs against the giant treadmill. An iron bit pulled his mouth into a macabre grin, and a bloodied whip lay abandoned in the pool of blood at his feet.
But the shallow movement of his tattered chest told her he was still alive.
“Get your phone,” Grif was saying. “Call the police.”
But then the sound came again, slipping around the corner to steal her focus, and the coolness fled the air as the world blurred. The horse in the nearest stall stomped its displeasure.
No, I just saw him. He’s at a party. He’s with a girl…
Grif’s arm moved around her waist. Nearness and support. She would have liked that… except that it meant that what she’d just seen was true. That it’d happened. That, like Nic, Paul was also dead.
