“If we’re done being childish,” Luc interjected, organizing his trail mix into tidy and organized rows on the conference table, “I have some more names—Christine, after Evans, Hemsworth, Pine, or Pratt. Take your pick.”
“No,” Ethan said, brow arched at the arrangement of nuts and raisins.
“I like order,” Luc said with a grin, then swept the row of raisins into his mouth. “And that’s just more raisins for me.”
“We are surrounded by weirdos,” Kelley said to Lindsey. “Normals on the island of misfit vampires.”
“Vampires are misfits by definition,” Luc said. “And in case you weren’t sure, we are, in fact, done with the funny business.” He glanced at me. “Sentinel, lay it out for us.”
“We have his car,” I said. “We have his fingerprints, but currently no matching identity. We have garbage from his car that may have DNA, and it’s possible he may have mob friends, or at least visited a known mob hangout. He said he wanted money because he had a debt, so we’re currently speculating he owes money to the mob and was hoping my ransom would pay that off.”
“Why you?” Luc asked, leaning back in his chair and crossing booted ankles on the conference table. “Not that I don’t think you have your finer qualities, of course, but you aren’t the only person in the city who could earn a ransom.”
“He’s a vampire,” Ethan said. “And so are we, and relatively famous ones. He probably assumes—and correctly—that I’d pay whatever ransom was necessary to get her back. Shortly before I hunted him down and ripped the limbs from his body.”
“Of course,” Luc said smoothly, crossing his arms and rocking as he considered. “And presuming Merit didn’t rip his limbs off first. But I still think we’re missing something. We think he did the grab, including the pizza delivery routine, because he knew her schedule. Because he knew she went for evening walks. How did he come by that knowledge? The vehicle didn’t show up on the surveillance video, and he’d have needed to be close to see her coming and going in the first place. Otherwise, why even consider the possibility that she’d take an evening walk by herself in the first place?”
The air began to pulse with angry magic. I glanced at Ethan, found his eyes cold and hard as steel. “You think he has a connection to the Houses.”
“I think if you’re a Housed vampire, it’s a perfectly natural thing to discuss the first vampire pregnancy with your friends. I think he talked with someone, got the information, and the brain cells started to fire, and he figured he’d found a way out of his current financial trials and tribulations.”
“He hasn’t tried again,” I said.
“He hasn’t had an opportunity,” Luc said. “You’ve been either on the grounds or surrounded by cops. Could be he’s laying low—both from us and from the folks to whom he owes money—waiting for an opportunity.”
Ethan’s phone buzzed, and he pulled it out, checked the screen. “That’s Malik. Catcher and Chuck are here,” he said, rising from his seat. “They’ve got an updated sketch.”
Catcher and my grandfather met me, Ethan, and Luc in Ethan’s office. We were joined by Malik and Jonah, who’d been working together on the proposal for the mayor when my grandfather arrived.
“You worked fast,” I said, glancing at the clock. Barely two hours had passed since we’d left Mrs. Plum.
“She makes a good witness,” my grandfather said.
“May we?” Catcher asked, gesturing to the monitor on Ethan’s wall.
“Please,” Ethan said, and Catcher sent the digital sketch to the overhead screen.
“That’s him,” I said immediately. Mrs. Plum and Kat had done good work. Just as Mrs. Plum had suggested, the first sketch had been a kind of vague outline. She’d filled in the blanks, including the shape and color of his eyes—hazel—and the set of his jaw.
“Have you seen him before?” Ethan asked.
“No,” I said. “Or not that I remember.” I looked at my grandfather. “You’ll use this to canvass the neighborhood again?”
“We will.”
“What about the Brown Mule?” Ethan asked.
“Not surprisingly, no one was willing to talk to the CPD about the vehicle or the owner. But we’ll try again with the sketch.”
There was a knock in the doorway before Margot rolled in a cart laden, if my nose was right, with delicious food. Ethan must have ordered refreshments. Given Peanut’s interested kick, that was fine by me.
Margot pushed it to the middle of the room, began removing silver domes and pulling out the tray’s extra leaves, which provided more serving space.
When she happened to glance up at the screen, her smile fell away. “What is this?”
I looked back. She’d gone sheet-pale, and there was something hot and angry in her tone and bafflement in the question. She looked from Jonah to me to Ethan, then back to me.
“What is this?” she asked again.
“That’s the revised sketch of the perpetrator,” Ethan said, putting down his cup and moving toward her. “Are you all right?”
“The perp—” She looked at me and seemed to go paler. “You think that’s the man who attacked you? There’s no way.”
I joined Ethan at her side, put my hand on her arm. “Do you know him, Margot?”
She swallowed hard, seemed to firm her courage, then nodded.
“That’s Rowan Cleary. My ex-boyfriend.”
8
Angry magic buzzed in the air, spilled by all of us who cared for Margot. Jonah’s expression, I noticed, had gone positively murderous.
“So that’s the asshole,” Luc said, gaze on the sketch. Then he looked back at Margot. “I didn’t realize I never saw him.”
“No,” she said. “He wasn’t there when you helped me move back in.” She glanced at me. “This was before you came into the House.” Then she looked back at the screen, and there was misery in her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about the details, if that’s okay.”
“That’s fine,” my grandfather said, gesturing her to the sofa. “Let’s sit down, and you can tell us what you can.”
“In broad strokes,” she said, taking a seat. “We lived together. He was emotionally abusive, although he couched it in cleverness, in constructive criticism.” She paused. “He hit me, once. And I ended it.”
I felt immediately guilty that I’d teased her about romance and relationships. That I hadn’t realized—or respected—the boundary she’d tried to draw. And as if sensing my regret, Margot reached out and squeezed my hand, putting me at ease. That nearly brought tears to my eyes.
“He called me last night,” she said.
“Did he?” Ethan asked.
“It was our anniversary—or would have been. He said he was out of town, but he was thinking about how wrong he’d done me, and he wanted to talk to me about it. He didn’t mention Merit or anything else. Just said he wanted to talk. I told him not to contact me anymore.” She lifted her chin, anger putting color in her cheeks. “He wasn’t out of town.”
“It doesn’t appear so,” my grandfather said. “When was the last time you’d talked to him before that?”
Margot’s brows lifted. “I honestly don’t remember. More than a year, I’d guess.”
“Did he have any other friends in the House?” Catcher asked. “Or other Houses?”
“He’s a Rogue, but he has vampire friends. A couple of people in Navarre, and a vampire or two in Grey, or at least he did while we dated.”
Plenty of Cadogan vampires had friends in Navarre and Grey. It wasn’t much of a stretch to assume they’d talked about my pregnancy and how I was dealing with it.
“I don’t really know them specifically,” she said. “We didn’t go out much with other vampires, and I don’t remember him naming names. Just general talk about a friend here or there.”
“Did he ever mention a place called the Brown Mule?” my grandfather asked.
“Not that I remember.”
“What about the mob?” my grandfather asked.
Margot’s brows lifted. “You cannot be serious. Why would the mob be interested in him?”