One Dark Wish, page 43
The bowing man took a cell phone from the dead man’s pocket and tossed it to Zack.
The dead man’s messages were open, and Zack clicked on an image. A short, silent video appeared along with the sent and read receipt.
Allison covered her mouth with one hand. Her entire body shook and she tasted bile. The ill-suited man had sent the video of their kiss to Stuart.
“I don’t understand.” Zack handed the phone back to the bowing man.
If he was freaked out, like her, there were no outward signs. He met the bowing man height-for-height and refused to back down.
The bowing man glanced to one side, and she noticed another tuxedoed man deeper in the shadows. There were two of them?
Still, Zack maintained his stance.
The bowing man put the phone into a different pocket than the sword. “My lord has decreed that now is not the time for your understanding. ’Tis the time for your choosing.”
“What are you talking about?”
The bowing man hit his chest with his fist. “My lord believes you are ill-suited for your life’s work. You have other passions he’d encourage you to pursue.”
The bowing man’s boss didn’t want Zack to be a soldier? Now she was getting annoyed.
“Was that the message?” She took Zack’s hand. “Or the warning?”
“The warning is for you, my lady.” The bowing man nodded at Allison. “You must choose wisely.”
She took a step back and swallowed the bitter taste in her mouth.
The veins in Zack’s neck bulged. “What the hell does that mean?”
The bowing man wrapped an arm around his waist and bowed. “My lord will have to be cruel to be kind. Thus bad begins and the worse remains behind.”
Chapter 1
“Who’s there?” Allison stopped in the dark Charleston alley, sure she’d heard footsteps other than her own. When no one answered, she rechecked the address on her phone. The building had to be here somewhere. Clutching her phone in one hand, she held up her gown’s skirt and walked on the cobblestones.
Now that she was close to the river, she heard waves splashing the wooden wharf and halyards clanging against aluminum masts. Normally, by ten p.m., she’d be tucked into her bed in pj’s, grading papers. But tonight’s action required full-on body armor: black strapless gown, hair twisted into a braided knot and decorated with crystal daisy hairpins, high heels, and the jasmine perfume she only wore on special occasions.
The hairs on her neck rose, and she paused near an out-of-business bakery. Although the sun had set, the summer humidity pressed down on her like a damp blanket. The air wasn’t just hot—its heft and weight carried a warning.
So similar to the bowing man’s warning seven years earlier.
Voices came from behind her, and she tucked herself into the sunken doorway of a seventeenth-century brick warehouse. A minute later, two men in tuxedoes with black masks covering half their faces walked by at the same time her cell phone buzzed. A light appeared with the message, and she pressed it against her stomach. Keep moving, gentlemen.
The first man stopped a foot away. “Did you hear something?”
She almost choked on the stench of moldy bricks.
“Nah,” the second man said. “Probably rats.”
Rats? She exhaled, making sure to breathe through her mouth so she wouldn’t gag. She’d forgotten about the rats, especially being so close to the water.
They moved on until stopping fifty yards away, in front of the last eighteenth-century mansion next to the river. All of its windows, along with the front door, had been boarded up. But it still had its split, semicircular staircase with wrought-iron railings. Instead of going up the stairs, the men went around and disappeared.
After a few more breaths, she checked her text. It was from Maddie. Except the caller ID name had been changed to MADDIE THE BESTEST FRIEND EVER. Allison smiled. Maddie’s almost-eight-year-old daughter had probably changed the ID.
Allison swiped the screen to read Maddie’s message.
Good luck! Text when it’s done.
I will. Thanks for the dress.
She left her alcove and stopped near the stairs, where the masked men had disappeared. No one came or went. There was no sound. Yet those men had gone somewhere.
Although she didn’t want to call more attention to herself, she used her phone’s flashlight. A rat only a foot away scurried off. She moved and her light glinted on a polished brass knob attached to a door beneath the protruding staircase. The knob was engraved with JL embedded in a lily.
How odd.
She put her phone into her evening bag and opened the door. A dim light appeared, leading her into a narrow hallway. The walls were decorated on both sides with mirrors and candles in sconces.
The hallway veered right, and she climbed a narrow flight of stairs, the sound of electronic music getting louder. Once on the landing lit by candles, she stopped. A man in a tuxedo and a black mask covering his eyes stood in front of another door, arms crossed. Despite his dress clothes, his dark pupils shining through the mask’s slits backed up his stance.
She took a coin out of her skirt pocket and handed it to him. “Allison Chastain Fenwick Pinckney.”
“Chastain? Interesting.” The man tossed the Roman silver denarius into the air and caught it. “Esse aut non esse.”
“To be or not to be?” Seriously? “Id est quaestio.”
He shoved the two-thousand-dollar currency she couldn’t afford into his pants pocket and opened the door. She paused from the heavy reverb caused by too many speakers in too small a room and blinked from the pulsing lasers.
“Et rutam et dolore, sweetheart.”
Neither rue nor regret? She slipped in, and the closing door hit her back, causing her to stumble in her high heels.
A strong hand grasped her elbow, arresting what might have been a nasty fall. She was grateful for the low light that hid the hot flush flooding her cheeks.
Once she was stable on her feet, the masked man dropped her arm, hit his chest with his fist, and bowed his head. “My lady.”
She looked around for something—anything—that might make sense out of the night so far, not to mention the last two months. Yet all she saw were grinding bodies on the dance floor. The scent of alcohol and sex masked the cloying smell of incense. Her eyes burned from the smoke drifting in the air.
A sex club?
“Tha…thank you.” She stumbled over her words. “I can’t believe I’m so clumsy.”
The man with dark skin, dark brown eyes behind his mask, and a buzzed head, who wore a tux that clung to his wide chest and thick thighs, smiled. “I am called Marcellus. ’Twas my privilege to serve you.”
Before she could answer, the man disappeared into the crowd.
Allison smoothed down her skirt, hiked her gown’s corset, and clutched her handbag. It was time to learn why Stuart had been murdered.
* * *
Zack Tremaine halted at the end of Charleston’s dankest and darkest alley and answered his cell phone. The ID showed the call coming from Iron Rack’s Gym in Savannah. “What?”
“Kells just figured out you left Savannah. Again,” Alex Mitchell said in a voice that couldn’t have sounded more disinterested. “Your boss is pissed.”
“Kells can go to hell.” Zack moved toward the building Allison had entered. She’d almost seen him and he’d had to hide behind a dumpster. The chauffeur in a nearby limo had earbuds in and his eyes closed. The rats were doing their own thing.
“Kells is already there. That’s why he called a staff meeting. To which I was not invited.”
Because, as an unpredictable ex-con, no one wanted to deal with Alex and his moods.
“A staff meeting at this time of night? Why?”
“No idea.”
Random staff meetings didn’t surprise Zack at all. It’d been almost three months since Zack’s Green Beret unit had been suddenly—and dishonorably—discharged and forced to leave Fort Bragg.
Now that he and his men, including their former commanding officer, Colonel Kells Torridan, were managing a run-down gym in Savannah, Zack had adjusted to their new, much quieter life. Unfortunately, Kells hadn’t adjusted. He still believed their group of eight men—nine including Alex—who lived above the gym were an active Special Forces unit, with Kells in charge. He even continued to dress the part.
Only now, instead of having missions in the world’s hot spots, Kells was determined to find out why they’d been dishonorably discharged by a secret congressional committee. Since their new mission to redeem their reputations and reclaim their lives was going nowhere, Kells had decided to channel his anger, paranoia, and frustration into a let’s kick Zack in the ass daily party.
Not to mention the insults.
Zack rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Alex, is there anything else?”
“Your sister, Emilie, called. Your godmother, Vivienne, told Emilie where you’re living now.”
Fantastic. Since the night of the dishonorable discharges, he’d been avoiding his family. Not because he didn’t love them, but because he wanted to protect them. Unfortunately, Vivienne and Emilie didn’t understand that sentiment. “What did you tell Emilie?”
“That you were in a meeting and would call her later.”
“Thanks.”
“How’s the girlfriend stalking going?”
“Allison isn’t my girlfriend. I’m just gathering intel.”
“Riiiiiiiiiight. This is only the eighth time in the two months since her husband’s murder that you’ve gone to Charleston to check on her.” Alex crunched a chip or a cracker.
“Because her husband was also one of my best friends.” Zack peered up at the boarded-up building that’d taken Allison. “Can you run down an address for me?” After giving Alex the street name and number, Zack said, “It’s an abandoned mansion near the Cooper River.”
“I’m checking now.”
Zack would’ve done it himself except all he had was a crappy burner phone. With the state of his permanent record, he wasn’t about to take any chances by getting online in a public internet café. “Have you heard of the Satyr Club? Everyone is wearing formal clothes and masks.”
“Nope.” Typing sounded in the background. “Could be a sex club. Satyrs are those mythical Greek fertility spirits with exaggerated—”
“Never mind.” Zack didn’t like to think about what Allison was doing in there.
“I found something.” Alex paused. “Huh. It is a sex club that requires rare coins for entrance payment.”
“What kind of coins?”
“Old ones like Roman denarii and gold pieces of eight.” Alex whistled low. “These things are expensive. Like thousands of dollars.”
“Any idea how I can get into this club without Roman currency or a tux?” Because right then, he wore jeans, a black T-shirt, and combat boots and had eleven dollars in his back pocket.
“Call Vivienne. She might own the place.”
“She doesn’t own it.” Vivienne’s exclusive clubs were run out of private homes. “Any other ideas?” Zack wasn’t expecting anything. Their unit was in a dismal financial state.
“Uh-oh,” Alex whispered. “Kells just came out of the staff meeting.”
“No—”
“Zack?” Kells said in a firm voice laced with fury. “Where the fuck are you?”
Shit. “In Charleston.”
“I distinctly remember not giving you leave. Again.”
Zack leaned his shoulder against the brick building. “I remember that too.” And, obviously, I didn’t care.
“Yet you went anyway.”
Maybe I wouldn’t have if you’d apologized. “Yep.”
“Against my orders.”
“Yes, sir.” He’d known when he’d disobeyed orders that Kells would be annoyed. But Zack hadn’t given a fuck. He was tired of being Kells’s kickboxing bag.
Kells cursed under his breath. “You need to stop trailing Allison. If her husband’s death two months ago had anything to do with our unit, you would’ve found it by now.”
“Sir, Allison may be in danger.” Jeez, how many times did they have to have the same argument?
“You’ve no evidence she’s another target of her husband’s murderer. I want you back in Savannah ASAP.” Kells softened his tone the smallest bit. “No good will come of spending time with her. Her husband chose to engage with Remiel Marigny and paid the price. Just because we share our enemy—”
“Who’s a vicious arms dealer.”
“Doesn’t mean we need to get involved in Stuart’s death.”
“But—”
“When you return, we’ll discuss your leaving without permission.”
Whatever. Zack hung up. Yes, he was all about the insubordination tonight.
“Thou truly art a lily-livered boy.” The male voice came from the darkness behind Zack. “A most notable coward.”
A loud whoooooomph made Zack duck and turn. The man emerged from the shadows, swinging a two-by-four. Zack slammed his fist into the man’s stomach. The man stumbled back and swung again, this time the board clipped Zack’s forehead. Pain shot through his head, and he hit the ground hard, his elbows taking the brunt of the fall. As he rolled to his side, he noticed that his spit tasted like he was sucking on pennies. His vision splintered.
The man tossed the board away and stepped over Zack’s body, saying, “Good night, sweet bastard prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
Oh fuck.
Despite Zack’s fractured sight, he saw a pair of dress shoes walk away.
The farther the assailant walked, the wider the picture became. Zack blinked as the darkness swallowed him. But in those last few moments of lucidity, he saw a tuxedoed man stop near the iron-railed staircase, wrap an arm around his waist, and bow.
Chapter 2
Allison pushed through the dance floor and rushed through another room where half-dressed people sat at a bar. More bodies wrapped around each other on settees lining the shadowed perimeter, and she held her breath until making it into a hallway with a double staircase.
She paused to inhale fresher air. Once she felt less shaky, she hurried up two flights of stairs. On the third floor, she pressed her hand against the carved wooden door that marked the end of the sexy nightclub and the beginning of the real club—the real club where she might find some real answers about Stuart’s death.
After more in-and-out breaths, she entered. The parlor was lit by candles, and despite the windows being boarded up on the outside, velvet curtains covered the glass. Men and women in evening clothes sat on sofas drinking green cocktails out of crystal glasses. Two men with masks guarded the entrance into the next room.
“Allison?” A woman with long black hair pulled into a high ponytail and wearing a red one-shouldered silk gown appeared. The woman, older than Allison, walked with such grace her dress moved and shimmered like it’d been melted and poured on her perfect body.
Allison clutched her handbag against her stomach and gritted her teeth. What was Isabel Rutledge doing here?
Diamond earrings sparkled in Isabel’s ears and a gold chain around her neck disappeared in her neckline. After kissing Allison on both cheeks, Isabel said in her refined Savannah drawl, “I wasn’t expecting you.”
Allison didn’t want to be rude, but she had more important things to do than talk to Isabel. Especially since Isabel was the kind of person who, because of her beauty and confidence, made every other woman in the room feel less than.
Allison checked out the room again, but no one looked like he was the leader of a 350-year-old antiquarian club. “I’m here to see Hezekiah Usher.”
Isabel took Allison’s elbow and led her toward the armed guards “Are you sure you want to do this? Hezekiah has strange…yearnings.”
Great. Something else to worry about. “What are you doing here?”
Isabel’s smile exposed sparkling white, perfectly aligned teeth. “My family is a longtime member of the Usher Society.”
Of course it was. As a Rutledge, Isabel was a member of one of the oldest families in the south. Almost as old as the Pinckney and Fenwick families.
Almost as old as the Chastain family.
Isabel motioned to the guards. “Mrs. Allison Chastain Fenwick Pinckney has an appointment.”
Allison hated that long name. Yet in this secret world, on the knife’s edge of polite society, your names—your people—carried more weight than your reputation and wealth.
The door opened and Allison entered the beautifully appointed room. Despite the mansion’s outward decay, this office gleamed with oiled mahogany, polished brass, and low-lit bankers’ lamps. Her heels sank into the thick rug as she moved closer to the plumpish, bald man sitting behind a desk large enough to land a 747. Again, velvet curtains protected the boarded-up outside from the inside.
The man stood and held out his hand. “Mrs. Pinckney? I’m Hezekiah Usher.”
They shook hands over the desk covered with stacks of papers and books and maps. Once he released her hand from his sweaty grasp, she sat in the leather chair across from him.
“Isabel.” Hezekiah motioned to the other woman. “Would you leave us?”
Isabel retreated, but Allison, who could read bitch as well as the next woman, recognized the anger in Isabel’s eyes.
Hezekiah wore a gray suit made of shiny cotton that matched the sweat beading on his head. “Mrs. Pinckney, I want to extend my condolences on the death of your husband.”
The desk lamps blinked, then dimmed.
When the lights returned to full power, she said, “Thank you.”
