Possessed by a Warrior. Sharon Ashwood
frown—part fear, part perverse enjoyment. He was a bit too pushy for his own good. Trust Sam.
She walked the few steps to Jack’s orgy-sized bed. The whole room was in a black-and-white color scheme, making the scene look like a homage to liquorice allsorts. When she set the large white box on the ebony silk counterpane, the mystery of the package seemed even more emphatic.
The room was utterly silent, the rasp of Littleton’s rapid breathing the loudest sound in it. Chloe felt for the box’s opening. There was no tape. The lid lifted off, revealing a nest of blue-white tissue paper, the type meant to keep cloth from turning dingy with age. Ralston was at her elbow, close enough that her skin tingled with the breeze of his movements. Even now, her body felt magnetized to his nearness.
He pulled back one piece of tissue at the same moment that Chloe picked up the other. Despite the fact that they were strangers, they shared a look. It was utter astonishment.
“A wedding dress?” Chloe asked aloud. She touched the beaded bodice with one finger. The glittering stones were cold. Definitely not plastic. She’s seen a lot of dresses in her career, and she could tell the work was exquisite.
“What the hell?” Ralston looked utterly stunned. “Jack would never have married.”
“When the story comes out,” Chloe said, repeating the note Jack had left. “What story? What was Uncle Jack doing with a dress?”
Ralston’s eyebrows shot up with sudden dark amusement. “Well, it’s tiny. At least we know it wasn’t for him.”
Chloe smiled, but her mind was already racing ahead. There were only so many reasons Jack would lock something away for safekeeping, whether it was treasure or weapons or even a gorgeous dress: because it was valuable, because it was meant for someone important to Jack or because dangerous people wanted it for the wrong reasons.
She was willing to bet the confection of lace and satin was all three.
Chapter 3
Death. That had been Jack’s code name.
So who killed Death? It was almost a joke.
Irony sucks. Sam finally left the bedroom, taking a last look at Chloe Anderson bent over the white froth of the wedding dress. The image of her, sad and beautiful, stroking the symbol of so many feminine hopes and wishes—it brought a rush of something that was neither lust nor hunger, but held a hint of both. Strangely unnerved, he had elected to retreat. He could tell she wanted to be alone with her memories of Jack, and Sam appreciated that. The soft-spoken beauty was the only one in the family who seemed to care the man was dead.
And someone had to do the weepy thing. Sam was better at revenge.
The thought made his fangs descend, prepared to rip and tear in savage retribution.
His mind went back to Jack’s last phone call, wringing each word dry of meaning. Jack had been running from his killer. Ambushed. Not much made Death run.
Sam banged out of the side door of the house, grateful to be in the clear air. The sun had just dipped behind the trees, making the outdoors safe for the undead. He took a huge breath, smelling green trees and the sweet pungency of the sun-warmed dirt. This was what he liked: solitude and no walls to hem him in. The past few days at Oakwood had been pure torture.
The people were the worst, and not just because they were a banquet of veins he couldn’t touch. They were nasty. He didn’t mind good, honest greed, but he couldn’t stand all the whispered speculation about who would score big-time in Jack’s will. And Sam called himself a mercenary. He was a rank amateur compared to Jack’s aunt Mavis and that litter of useless, grasping cousins.
No wonder Jack was so good at covert operations. He’d needed them to survive his relatives.
Jack had been good. There went that verb tense thing again. It was hard to think of Jack in the past.
Sam swore under his breath. What were the Horsemen going to do now? There were only three of them left: Sam, the werewolf Kenyon, and Dr. Mark Winspear, the vampire they called Plague. Jack was—had been—their team leader.
He started toward the gate, his shoes crunching on the white gravel drive. It was so clean, Sam could imagine the hired help dusting each tiny pebble every morning, working inch by inch across the broad sweep that led back to the road.
Sam walked through the gates, approaching the oak tree where the Porsche had crashed. The tree had survived better than the car, but not by much. It would have to be felled before there were any serious windstorms. One heavy branch dangled from the trunk, hanging on by a thin layer of bark.
Plague was frowning at the ground around the roots of the oak. He was tall, olive-skinned, and dressed in chinos and a short-sleeved shirt. The doctor looked enviably casual.
In contrast, Sam felt hot and irritable in the black suit he’d put on for the paperwork-signing and safe-opening portion of the entertainment. “Find anything?”
Winspear looked up, his dark eyes serious. “About half a mile down the road. Shell casings. The local cops missed them. Kenyon is going over the woods again, sniffing for more. Maybe he’ll find a bullet in a tree.”
His voice still held a faint trace of an indefinable accent. Despite the English-sounding name, he’d once mentioned growing up in Italy. The last of the Horsemen to join, he was by far the most private. No one could actually say they knew Mark Winspear. Still, he was the best at what he did. He was not only an accomplished doctor, but was what the vampires called an “eraser”—someone who possessed a rare ability to manipulate human memory.
“Kenyon looked at the casings and believes the bullets were silver,” the doctor added. “We’ll know more once we’ve gone over the car.”
“So it was assassination,” Sam said, stating what was rapidly becoming the obvious.
The doctor was peering awkwardly under the dangling branch, examining the marks in the soil, and made a sound that held a world of resignation. “The car had to be going eighty, by the amount of damage. That raises questions. Jack loved his Porsche too much to risk it at that speed on these roads. And you know how slim the odds are of a vampire actually getting drunk, despite the headlines.”
Playboy Dies Living Fast and Hard. Sam swore. “He might have been drugged. Can you do a tox screen?”
Winspear’s mouth was a grim line. “The body was badly burned, but if it’s possible, I’ll get the information we need.”
He looked stricken, and for a moment Sam felt sorry for him. It didn’t seem right that he had to do an autopsy on a friend, but who else had the expertise to examine dead vampires? Not the city morgue.
Sam shifted impatiently. “You have any theories about all this yet?”
Winspear stood, folding his arms. “I don’t like to speculate before I have all the facts.”
“Jack had a lot of enemies. We all do. We need some way to narrow down the list.”
Winspear shrugged. “What stands out? What was Jack up to during the last month?”
“I don’t know.” The Horsemen had been taking a short break from the job and from each other—a necessary thing when so much of their work was all about death and carnage.
“I can’t answer that, either—I was out at my cabin. It was just by chance that I’d arrived back in town when you called.”
Sam grunted in irritation. Patient deduction wasn’t his forte. He liked the part where he got to hit things. “Jack seems to have been close to his niece. He might have mentioned something. Small details can provide clues.”
“Maybe.” Winspear looked away.
Sam understood his doubts. The Horsemen were the only ones who knew who and what Jack really was. The rest was all playacting, learning to fit in with the latest slang and electronic gadgets.