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What happened, Jack? Did you really drive home drunk? For a moment, tears blurred the numbers on the notepaper. It just doesn’t make sense. None of it does.
For one thing, Jack was never a drinker. Chloe had told that to the police. They’d given her a pitying look, as if she were a rosy-cheeked innocent. In the end, they hadn’t listened to a word she’d said.
Her tears dried as she felt a pair of steel-gray eyes boring a hole between her shoulders. Irritation flooded her, momentarily washing out grief and the daunting sense of responsibility thrust on her as executor. Is there a problem? Oh, yeah, there’s a problem. The room is a thousand degrees, my feet hurt in these stupid shoes and that guy over there is giving me the screaming willies.
The guy in question was named Sam Ralston. He’d shown up for the funeral along with two of Uncle Jack’s other friends. They were big, handsome men, pleasant, mixed with the other richy-rich guests well enough, but there was something off about the lot of them. Something other.
Who was Ralston to Uncle Jack? It was hard to say. Although she referred to Jack as her uncle, he was actually a distant cousin, and she’d never quite worked out his place in the family tree. Even though Jack had been her guardian after her parents’ death, he’d not been around a lot of the time. At fourteen, it wasn’t as if she’d needed supervision 24/7—at least not once the initial shock had passed. So, there were chunks of Jack’s life she knew nothing about, Sam Ralston among them.
Jack had named him as the other executor, which was why he was here with her and Mr. Littleton, the family lawyer. Whatever was in the safe Jack had installed in his palatial bedroom would have to be documented as part of the estate, even if it was meant for Chloe.
Too bad. When she’d found out Ralston would be her partner in settling the estate, Chloe had actually shivered, as if someone had opened a refrigerator door right behind her.
“Do you need help?” Ralston asked, his baritone voice threaded with impatience.
“No,” Chloe returned.
“You know you need a key, too. The safe has a double lock.”
“Got it.” She turned and gave Ralston a look over her shoulder.
The view, at least, was no hardship. More than once, she’d found herself staring at him, her body clenching with an unexpected and unwelcome fever of desire. He was somewhere in his thirties, tall and hard-bodied, with thick dark hair combed back from a broad forehead. He had the kind of face advertisers of leather jackets and fast cars would have liked—strong bones, a few character lines, and a dark shadow of beard no razor could quite obliterate. His nose was blade straight, his lips full and sculpted above a slightly cleft chin. The set of his head and shoulders said he owned whatever room he was in, and the rest of the planet besides.
Yummy and forbidding at the same time.
At the moment, he was returning her glare with a face carefully scraped clean of expression—and yet every line of his body screamed “Hurry up!”
So what’s the rush? she wondered. He’d been like this—barely repressed urgency—ever since he arrived.
A career as a wedding planner had honed Chloe’s skills at reading people. Too many couples ordered an event based on what they thought was correct rather than what was in their hearts. Chloe was good at ferreting out the truth from a shared look, an inflection in the voice, a finger drawn down the picture of a fluffy white dress in a magazine.
Just like her gut said Ralston and his buddies might have fat wallets and Italian-cut suits, but they’d break heads just as easily as they tossed back their single-malt whiskey. Now he was standing a little to the side, just out of the splash of late afternoon sunlight pouring through the French doors—a shady guy staying in the shade.
Ralston shifted, making a noise like a stifled sigh.
“Cool your jets,” Chloe said evenly. “Whatever’s in here is what Uncle Jack left me.”
“He already left you a nice bequest,” Ralston pointed out.
“So?”
Chloe cursed the lawyer for staying tactfully silent. She turned back to the safe and away from Ralston.
“Whatever is in the safe is going to be the interesting part.” He sounded amused, the first sign of warmth she’d seen in him. “He liked his secrets.”
“How do you know?”
“I know—knew—Jack.” Now he sounded sad. She liked him better for it.
“How did you come to know him?”
He gave the same nonanswer he’d given her once before. “We hung out in a few of the same places.”
Chloe began spinning the dial on the safe, her mouth gluey with unease. What was in there? Gold bars? The deed to a private island in the Caribbean? A stack of bearer-bonds with tons of zeroes? Jack had possessed a Midas touch, turning every business venture into a wild success.
Poor Jack. People would remember his GQ style and his tragic death, but Chloe would remember him starting a game of hide-and-seek with her when she was six. He’d sent the care package of flowers and chocolate when her engagement had fallen apart. He’d always been there, a steady friend and the best of listeners in a world where people were too busy to slow down and truly care. Sure, he’d had money, but he’d always offered his heart, too. People—especially their family—had never stopped grabbing long enough to notice.
Chloe swallowed hard, her fingers fumbling with the dial. The safe lock clicked. She swallowed again, feeling as though she was gulping down the entire situation and it was stuck painfully in her throat. Blinking to keep her vision clear, she took the key to the second lock out of the pocket of her sleeveless, indigo sheath dress.
The key slid into the lock. Chloe turned it and then pushed down on the long handle. The safe opened on a silent glide of hinges. It was wide enough that she had to step back to accommodate the swing of the door.
The men were suddenly behind her, Ralston so close that she could feel his lapel brush her shoulder. The lawyer was a bit better about personal space, but she could sense him hovering. If curiosity had a frequency, theirs was vibrating high enough to shatter glass.
All three of them made a noise when they saw what was in the safe. There was nothing but a white box about eight inches tall and maybe four feet by three feet, with a note taped to the lid. Chloe reached in, pulling the note off. The clear tape made a ripping sound as it pulled a tiny patch of the box’s white lid away with it. She unfolded the note and felt the men lean in as she read.
Chloe,
If you’re reading this, I’m gone. Keep this secret and safe. When the story comes out, you’ll know what to do with it, and I know you’ll do the right thing. Trust Sam. Be careful.
Love you, kid,
Jack
Chloe reread the note. Trust Sam. Why? With what?
“What could it possibly be?” asked Littleton, a little breathlessly.
“Let’s find out,” said Ralston, lifting the large white box out of the otherwise empty safe.
Chloe took it out of his hands before he had taken one step away from the safe. “Uncle Jack left this for me, remember?”
His eyes flared with surprise, as if people rarely snatched loot out of his grasp. “I was just going to put it on the bed.”
Chloe looked up into his steel-gray glare and smiled sweetly. “Thanks. I can manage.”
Her heart kicked a little at Ralston’s 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. Remembering to hide every second of every day.
An unexpected jolt of melancholy hit Sam. He swatted it away with an answering annoyance. “I’ll ask some questions. A few odd things have come up in the estate.”
Winspear raised a dark brow. “Such as?”
“He left his niece a wedding dress.” The image of Chloe and the dress came back, along with that strange, restless feeling.
“A dress hardly seems alarming. Unless it was, as I have heard human girls exclaim, a dress to die for?”
Sam closed his eyes, fighting down a sarcastic retort. “Never mind. It’s a puzzle piece I can’t make fit.”
“Then I would talk to the niece. Maybe there’s a dressmaker or a delivery company that can provide a clue.”
Sam gave a small, ironic salute. “Shall do.”
Winspear looked dubious. “Can you talk to—what’s her name? Chloe? Or do you want me to do that?”
“I think I can handle her.” In fact, handling her sounded like a solid plan—he could spend hours executing that particular mission, if he left his scruples at the door.
A faint trace of a smile lurked in Winspear’s face. “I’d be careful if I were you. She looks like the smart, quiet type. They’re dangerous.”
“I’m a vampire. She’s just a wedding planner.”
Winspear gave a rare, low laugh. “So was Cinderella’s fairy godmother. Don’t underestimate her.”
Sam stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I’ll steer clear of mice and pumpkins.”
* * *
