“And you’ve never seen his spirit?” Dallas asked.
“No, and I do not expect to,” Hagen said. “I saw him when he went down. I grant you, the storm was still raging. But the water turned black and created a whirlpool beneath him, and the wind howled. It was as if...” He paused and shrugged, as if feeling a little silly. Like a living person explaining a ghostly interaction. “It was as if hell-hounds were baying. I was dying myself, of course. But still, something of that stays with me. I do not expect to see him ever again.”
“There is another piece to the story,” Melody said. “Before the ship set sail, a soldier was killed, one of the men guarding the room at the fort where they kept important papers and other things. Some people suspected Valmont LaBruge. But he was a rich man—a very rich man. And he had a lot of power in the town back then. But he died that night and, I firmly believe, went straight to hell, and the truth died with him.”
Dallas frowned. “I guess LaBruge really was after that treasure chest. When he didn’t find it in the fort, he must have assumed it was on the ship.”
“I will never understand how any thing could have been worth the lives of others,” Hagen said.
“Sadly, history has shown that many men value things above human life,” Dallas told him. Then he rose and said, “It’s been a true pleasure to meet you. And you have my most sincere thanks for all the help I know you’ll give.”
“We would do anything for Hannah,” Hagen said passionately. “We would die for her.”
“Except that we are already dead,” Melody reminded him.
“There is that,” Hagen admitted.
“I understand the sentiment,” Dallas said. “Thank you.”
He bade them good-night and headed up the stairs. As he entered Ian Chandler’s room, he wondered why the old merchant had never made an appearance. Then again, his body had been found, and he’d been given a Christian burial. Maybe that had made the difference.
There was certainly no sense of the man or any other presence in the room. Dallas stripped down to his briefs and found that the bathroom was nicely supplied with travel-sized toiletries. His own place—a rental for now—wasn’t far away, just over in the Truman Annex, but he hadn’t wanted to leave Hannah. There was something about her and this house, though he couldn’t lay his finger on it. He was going to have to leave her at some point, of course, but he could ask Liam to keep an eye on her. And her cousin was coming, of course, though what good another young woman was going to do, he wasn’t sure.
Safety in numbers, maybe?
And yet, Jose Rodriguez had been with other people just before he was assaulted.
Maybe the sketches made from Katie O’Hara’s descriptions would help them find the men who’d been with Jose the night of his murder.
Dallas stared into the night. “I won’t let this go, buddy,” he said quietly. “I won’t drop it until I find the man who took your life.”
He lay staring at the ceiling for a while. The drapes were closed, but light from the street still filtered in. He could even hear—faintly—the revelry going on down on Duval Street.
There was something appealing about the room. The heavy furniture had sat in the house for years and years. It befit a wealthy merchant with a fleet of ships at his command.
He began to drift off to sleep. As he did, he thought about the last time he’d lost a colleague in the field.
Adrian Hall had been a good agent. Smart and talented, the best in her class at Quantico. Eventually they wound up being best friends with benefits, filling holes in each other’s lives without making difficult emotional demands. The relationship worked because they were both convinced they weren’t cut out for a long-term relationship, and they shared a desire to, silly as it sounded, save the world, or at least as many innocents as they could.
They’d been trying to capture a serial rapist/murderer in Alabama. Adrian had gone undercover as a prostitute who was so desperate for money that she was willing to solicit tricks despite the fear pervading the streets. They’d been prepared. He’d been key man on the team, she’d been wearing a wire and carrying a tiny handgun in her garter belt, and they’d done everything right.
And yet, in the blink of an eye, the killer had taken her. She’d never even had a chance to use the gun.
Dallas had been barely a block away, hiding with backup in the bushes. He’d gone running the second he heard the killer curse at finding the wire and call her a bitch cop. And he had found her, dead as Jose Rodriguez had been dead. She had bled out, her throat slit so savagely that she’d nearly been decapitated.
He’d held her—held her dead body. There had been no goodbyes.
But in the end he’d caught the bastard.
Because she’d managed to leave a clue in her own blood, just as Jose had done.