By a Thread

couldn’t exactly complain to the cops that we’d gotten away with murder, not without implicating himself. Despite how rich and powerful Dekes was, I doubted that even he would want to deal with the hassle of four dead bodies, how they’d gotten that way, and where they’d come from. When the cops got around to questioning him, the vampire would probably claim he’d never set eyes on any of the men before—even if everyone already knew they worked for him.

Blue Marsh might be hundreds of miles away from Ashland, but sociopathic assholes were the same no matter where you went.

I stuffed the gloves, rags, and empty bottle of bleach I’d used into a plastic bag and shoved the whole thing into my suitcase to dispose of at another, safer location. I also stopped long enough to put a fleece jacket on over my T-shirt, hiding the bleach stains on my dark clothes. Then Bria and I locked the suite and left. On our way to the elevator, we left the luggage cart in the hallway where I’d first found it.

Checking out of the hotel was a calculated risk. When the bodies were found, the cops would be sure to look at the guest list and who had left when. Our departing this late at night might draw some unwanted attention, but I wasn’t overly concerned. I could always manufacture some reason for why we’d had to leave in the middle of the night—an illness, a family emergency, a problem at the Pork Pit. Besides, I doubted the cops would look too hard at us. After all, we were two women. How could we possibly have had the brawn and brains to kill four men and dispose of their bodies in the pool? And the fact was that we simply couldn’t stay here where we’d be sitting ducks for more of Dekes’s men—or the vampire himself.

We made it down to the registration desk without any problems. I stepped up to deal with the paperwork while Bria got the night bellman to load our luggage onto another cart—one that hadn’t been used to haul around dead bodies. The clerk behind the counter was a college girl who looked barely old enough to drink.

“Are you arriving or departing?” she asked in a voice that was way too perky for this late at night.

“Checking out,” I said, matching her chipper tone. “The hospitality wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”

I’d thought there might be a few more of Dekes’s men waiting in the lobby to help Pete just in case we got past him, but the area was as quiet and empty as the pool on the back side of the hotel had been. That didn’t mean I didn’t keep an eye out, though, as I stepped outside at the front of the building. Behind me, Bria pushed along the cart that held our luggage. The valet on night duty was slumped over a podium, his white linen jacket draped over his shoulders like a blanket. He jerked awake at the sound of our footsteps and the wheels of the cart rolling across the cobblestones. I palmed one of my silverstone knives, just in case he was part of Dekes’s crew, recognized us, and decided to do something stupid like scream.

But the valet just blinked at us with sleep-crusted eyes. He didn’t know who we were, and he didn’t care. He started to get up, but I marched over and scanned the rows of keys on the metal rack behind him. It didn’t take long for me to spot a solid gold key ring shaped like a dollar sign. The dollar sign wasn’t a rune in this case, not really, but it was still one of Finn’s favorite symbols.

“No worries,” I said in a bright tone, plucking Finn’s keys off the board. “We’ve got it. We’re in a bit of a hurry, so just tell me where the garage is.”

The valet started to protest, but the hundred bucks I slipped him was more than enough for him to jerk his thumb over his shoulder. He’d already gone back to his half doze before we’d rounded the side of the building. The dark opening of the garage waited up ahead.

“Careful now,” I told Bria in a low voice. “Let me go first. Dekes might still have a guy or two down here, waiting in a car to drive Pete and the others back to whatever hole they crawled out of.”

Bria nodded, leaving the luggage cart at the entrance, and I stepped in front of her. Together, we eased into the parking garage. All around me, the concrete let out low, uneasy mutters. Even here at an upscale hotel, the stone resonated with sharp notes of fear, worry, and paranoia. Not surprising. Most people didn’t like parking garages, since they were great places to get mugged—or dead.

But no one was lurking behind the thick concrete posts or in the midnight shadows that filled in the spaces between the rows of luxury cars. That didn’t mean we didn’t run into trouble, though.

Because Finn’s convertible was a mess.

The windshield had been hit in at least three places with a baseball bat or tire iron, and deep, jagged cracks crisscrossed the glass like the thick, silvery threads of a spider’s web. The side mirrors had been knocked off, the radio had been busted, and the leather seats had been ripped to ribbons. Dents covered the car’s hood, while scrapes sliced down the sides where someone had used his key on the slick silver paint.

Looked like someone had told Pete what car we were driving, and the four dead men had decided to bust it up for fun before they came up to the suite and did the same to us.

Bria let out a low whistle. “Finn is going to freak when he sees this.”

Freak was an understatement. I could already hear Finn bitching about how he’d lent us his brand-new baby, and we’d gotten it busted up in less than twenty-four hours. Although that was something of a record, even for me.

“Well,” I said. “At least they didn’t slash the tires too. Let’s go.”

I retrieved the cart and threw our luggage in the backseat before shoving the now-empty cart over into one corner of the garage. Then I helped Bria brush the broken bits of glass, metal, and plastic out of the front seats as best we could. Five minutes later, Bria drove the convertible through the open iron gate at the edge of the hotel grounds and stopped just outside it.

“Where to?” she asked.

“The Sea Breeze.”

Bria looked at me, her eyes full of worry. “You think that Dekes sent some men there too?”

“Probably not, given what I heard Pete say outside the room about going after Callie tomorrow, but there’s only one way to be sure.”

Bria put her foot down on the gas, and we left the Blue Sands hotel behind, with even more trouble probably waiting on the road in front of us.

Bria steered the convertible toward Callie’s restaurant. We were the only car on the road, and only the steady whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the tires on the pavement broke the silence. The night was dark and eerily quiet. Trees crowded up to the very edge of the narrow, two-lane road and then arched and twisted over it, blocking out everything but a small strip of stars overhead. Thin black tendrils of weeping willows waved back and forth like skeleton fingers in the constant breeze, while the swamp grass and cattails undulated in perfect time below next to the rippling surface of the water. Every once in a while, the convertible’s cracked headlights would catch an animal hiding in the marshes on either side of the road, and its eyes would flash like fiery rubies before we zoomed past.

It seemed to take forever, but it was only a few minutes later when we pulled into the sandy lot that fronted the Sea Breeze. The weathered structure was dark inside and locked up tight for the night, although a lone streetlight burned at the edge of the road. Mosquitoes and other bugs buzzed around the harsh glare, their moving mass of bodies throwing twisted shadows across the landscape.

“Looks like Dekes and his men decided to leave the restaurant alone—at least for tonight,” Bria said.

“Or maybe they just went straight to the source,” I replied. “Where’s Callie’s house? Does she live alone?”

“No, she’s not alone. She’s already moved in with Donovan. Callie said that she didn’t want to try to move and plan a wedding at the same time.” Bria paused. “They’re getting married this summer.”

My heart twinged with old, familiar, bitter hurts, but I kept my face smooth. “Good. She’ll be safe enough with Donovan tonight, but we’ll drive by there anyway and make sure. Dekes probably sent his men after us to show Callie exactly what would happen to her if she doesn’t sell out to him. Bodies tend to motivate people far more than threats do. Maybe he thought she needed some more encouragement besides Stu Alexander. We’ll come back out to the restaurant tomorrow and talk to Callie about what to do next, about how we can stop Dekes for good.”

Bria shook her head. “What you really mean is that you’re going to pump Callie for information about how you can get close enough to Dekes to kill him. I don’t know why it surprises me anymore, but it still does.”

I stared at her. “Dekes sent his men to rape and murder us tonight, just because we dared to stand up to his goons. That’s plenty enough reason for me to kill him, but what makes you think that he won’t do the same to Callie? Or worse? His men certainly wanted to have a go at her. We’re just minor annoyances, tourists passing through who were tougher than they looked. Callie is the one that Dekes really needs to get rid of in order to build