Blood, Ash, and Bone

CHAPTER Thirty-nine

The ball swirled around me. I watched the window of our suite, waiting for the light to go on. And then I realized it wouldn’t. Trey would find his way in the dark. Behind me a polka roared to life, pierced by a shriek of feminine laughter. I scanned the ballroom quickly. Nothing unusual, only the dancers in a black and white blur. I looked back at the courtyard.

Hope had vanished.

My stomach lurched. I punched in Trey’s number. He answered on the first ring.

“Don’t do it,” I said. “It’s a trap. Or a ruse. Whatever it is, she’s gone.”

“No sight of her?”

“None.”

“Stay where you are. I’m on my way back to the ballroom. Let me know if you see her.”

“Where are you now?”

“At the hotel room. I’ll get my spare gun and be right down.”

He hung up, and I saw the light go on in our suite. He’d been two minutes from the courtyard. I took a deep breath of relief, feeling my ribs strain against the corset. I was done. Forget Hope. Forget Savannah. I was ready to be back in Fulton County.

The lights on the dock flickered with the rising wind, and the light in our room went out. Hope did not appear, and I didn’t budge from my vantage point. Don’t leave the window, not for any reason. I held my breath, waiting for a scream, a cry, the crack of a rifle. But nothing happened. The only sound was the band behind me and the voices of the guests.

No Trey. I scanned the ballroom again. Still no Trey. I called his phone. No answer. I looked down into the courtyard. Nothing.

“All right, Trey,” I muttered, “what are you up to?”

I gave him sixty more seconds. I counted them off in my head one by one, willing him to appear. When he still wasn’t back in the ballroom, I hiked up my skirts, hid the gun in the folds of my skirt, and made for the hotel room, instructions be damned.

***

The lights were off when I opened the door. “Trey?”

No answer. I bustled to the window and pulled the curtains back. The courtyard remained deserted. I reached for the desk lamp with one hand, still holding Trey’s gun with the other. Damn it, why wasn’t he answering his phone?

I examined the desktop. Nothing seemed to be missing, but the pens clustered in a pile like loose kindling, and the edges of the folders were skewed and uneven. Not how Trey left his desk, ever.

Our room had been searched.

I cursed and called him again, cursing louder when it went straight to voice mail. “I don’t know what you’re doing,” I said, “but we’ve got a bigger problem than Hope. Someone’s gone through your files. Call me back ASAP.”

I turned on the floor lamp. And my stomach plummeted.

I saw the sofa cushion on the floor in front of the bar, the crooked chair. I went into the bedroom. The search had gotten sloppier in here. My suitcase lay like a gutted fish. The comforter crumpled at the foot of the bed. I reached to turn on the bedside lamp, but I couldn’t find it.

Then my foot crunched broken glass. Not just a search. There had been violence here.

I took a deep breath and willed myself calm. I called Trey again. And standing there in the darkened room, I heard a soft vibration. I got down on all fours on the broken glass and followed the sound under the bed.

Trey’s phone.

My heart stopped, then hammered. I reached under the bed and pulled it out with a trembling hand. I was going to be sick, pass out, scream, cry. I breathed until the worst of it passed, then stared at the phone. How had it gotten under the bed? Where was he? Slow down, I told myself. Think. There was a way to figure out what had happened. He’d shown me himself, the two of us in bed, the rain lashing the window.

I pulled up the password sign-in with shaking fingers. What was the formula? Okay, it was Saturday, Saturday was the seventh day. No, the sixth. What was the date? The fifteenth. I typed in the words, then fed that into matrix six. I hit enter, got a nine digit code. I entered that.

Access approved.

I sobbed once in relief. I was in. I scrolled down the library until I saw the file. I clicked it.

It began with the door opening. “Find it,” a voice said. Male. Monotone. “Start with the safe, then the bedroom. I’ll post up at the elevator.”

The door closing, the sounds of searching. Then something muffled and unintelligible. A radio? A different voice suddenly. “Who? F*ck.” An electronic crackle. “Seaver’s on his way. Go to Plan B.”

And then twenty seconds later, Trey was in the room. I heard the door open and close. Heard the last snatches of our phone conversation. Silence. Then there was only the sound of blows, and grunts, the whiplash of flesh colliding with flesh, the hard reverberation of bodies.

Trey’s voice next, strained from exertion, but calm. “Who are you?”

Not people he recognized. The first clue. They didn’t answer.

Trey again. “You’re law enforcement, both of you. Savannah metro uniformed patrol.”

“Not tonight, we’re not. Now you gonna come easy, or you gonna make it hard?”

No response. A shuffle of footsteps, more fighting. The golf clubs tumbling, the thunk of metal on flesh.

Somebody hissed in fury and pain. “Goddamn f*cker broke my arm!”

Satisfaction jolted me. Trey could hurt people, and I wanted him to hurt these people, I wanted to hear him break every one of them. But I knew that wasn’t how things had ended. My stomach clenched, knowing what was eventually coming, ordained by the empty room.

There were two of them, one of him. They were cops. They had guns, and he hadn’t made it to his weapon yet.

Something unintelligible, then Trey again. “What do you want?”

“You.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the order.”

“Whose order?”

A shuffle of feet. More meaty blows. Another sound, a hard slap against the wall, muttered curses, another crash. More grappling, the hotel door opening and slamming shut. A new sound, a muffled rapid clicking. The thump of a body hitting the floor. Silence.

I started shaking.

The first voice again, still monotone. “Get him in the cart. Now.”

More noises, frantic and hurried. Dragging, muttering, a curse from the man with the broken arm.

Anger burned in my chest. I would kill them. I wanted it more than I’d wanted anything in my life.

“Tape him tight.”

More muffled sounds, banging and clattering. The rip of duct tape, the door shutting, the hiss of silence. I shut off the recording.

They had Trey. I’d sent him right to them.

I rocked back and forth on the floor. In all that uproar, he’d found a way to leave me the phone—a key and a clue and a warning, all rolled into one. He needed to leave it so that they wouldn’t take it from him later. He needed me to know that the bad guys were Savannah metro cops, in uniform. Cops he didn’t know. Three of them.

A noise then, my own cell phone, ringing. I knew who it would be before I put it to my ear. I swallowed hard and willed myself calm.

“What do you want?” I said.

The monotone voice was unemotional. “You have the document?”

“I don’t have anything. We—”

“Then find it. You have two hours, if you want him back. Don’t call the cops. Don’t call your detective friends. Don’t call 911, or we take him apart piece by piece, understand?”

I closed my eyes. Focus. Think. Listen.

The voice grew firmer. “I said, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” The voice softened, calm, persuasive. “There’s no reason he has to die, not if we keep things simple. Can you do that?”

“Yes. Please let me—”

“We’ll be in touch.”

The line went dead.

I sat in the rumpled wreck of my dress, phone in hand. Two hours, they’d said. I had two hours to find Hope and convince her to give me whatever it was she had.

My phone vibrated in my hand again. I stared at it for a moment, lost, dazed. I put it to my ear.

Hope’s voice was angry. “I told you not to call the cops!”

A bright fury rose. “We didn’t!”

“Liar! They were there, I saw them, the same ones. I told you—”

“You know them?”

“What?”

I licked my lips and spoke as calmly as I could. “Listen to me. We didn’t call those cops. They were already there. And they took Trey. So if you know who those men are, you’d better tell me and tell me quick.”

Her voice wavered. “I don’t know who they are, but I know…I know…”

“What?”

“They’re cops, bad ones. One of them shot Winston. You can’t—”

“I need that Bible, Hope.”

“It’s not the Bible they want.”

“Whatever it is. Give it to me. Now.”

“I can’t, they’ll—”

“I don’t goddamn care! I need it or they’ll kill him, and I swear to God, if they hurt him, I will track you down and I will end you!”

“This isn’t my fault! I needed money, that’s all!”

I closed my eyes. This was an opening. “I’ll get you money, however much you need. Just give me—”

“I can’t! It’s all the leverage I have now! If they come for me—”

“Hope—”

“They’re dangerous!”

“So am I. You have no idea.”

“I can’t!”

I took a deep steadying breath. “Hope, I will give you enough money to vanish. You don’t ever have to show your face around here again. But I need whatever it is you have, or they’ll kill us all. Me, Trey, you. You have to give it to me.”

A muffled sob at her end, then her voice, almost a whisper. “Meet me at our old break spot behind the tattoo shop. One hour. Bring ten thousand dollars.”

Then she hung up. I wanted to throw the phone against the wall, but I couldn’t. I closed my eyes and willed down the sick creeping horror. No official channels. No Phoenix. No best friends, no reluctant helpmeets. Not even Garrity could save me this time.

Because the bad guys were cops. Trey had made sure I knew that, and Hope had confirmed it. I examined my phone. Could they be listening? Did rogue cops have access to that kind of technology?

I didn’t know. I got angry then at all the things I didn’t know, at the situations I found myself in. Hope’s refrain was my refrain—I hadn’t meant for any of this to happen—and like Hope, I was in way over my head.

But I knew where I needed to start. There was only one person who could help me now, and I was willing to pay whatever price he asked.

I stood up and shucked the ridiculous dress, kicked it in the corner. I peeled the corset off, tossed it on the heap. I got jeans and a t-shirt. I went to the safe for my gun, but it was empty. Ransacked too. Luckily, I had Trey’s H&K with me, and a fresh mag.

I dressed quickly, then pulled Trey’s new leather jacket from the closet. I put the ammo in one pocket, the nine-millimeter in the other. The jacket didn’t fit well, but it was tangible and comforting and smelled like Trey.

I practiced a draw in front of the mirror. It was awkward and slow, and I knew I’d have to do better in the real world. I barely recognized myself—my eyes dark with smudged make-up, my hair tumbling from its bobby pins in tangles and tendrils. I looked haunted and strung out, wild and desperate.

Like a woman capable of anything.