Trail of Dead (Scarlett Bernard #2)(49)

Kirsten was silent, but Jesse piped up. “I thought about that. I think she did it for two reasons: first, she was trying to disguise the fact that she stole those…herbs. She made a big show of violence near where the amulet had been kept, but the area by that box looked undisturbed. If Kirsten hadn’t thought to check there, no one would have known they were missing.”

“Okay,” I said, processing that. “And the second reason?”

“Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I think she’s f*cking with us,” Jesse said. He explained that Olivia had drained Samuel’s blood and then gone to the trouble of covering up the wound. “You told me once that the Old World gets involved if a crime doesn’t look human,” Jesse added.

I nodded, and then remembered that he couldn’t actually see me nodding. “Yes. There’s a cleanup person like me in San Diego. He’s not a null, though, and I haven’t met him.”

“Well, Olivia didn’t even try to hide the fact that she murdered Samuel and drained his blood, but she still went to the trouble of shredding that spot on his neck with a serrated blade, to cover the bite marks. It’s like Olivia wants to shove this murder in Dashiell’s and Kirsten’s faces, teach them that they can’t protect their own. She would know how much that would bother them. At the same time, though, she doesn’t want anyone else to be too motivated to hunt her down.”

Kirsten’s voice said, “You think she’s just trying not to piss anyone else off, besides us?”

“Something like that,” Jesse said. “She’s deliberately poking you and Dashiell, though. If nothing else that thing with the Reeds would have made it clear that she was starting something.”

“It’s all misdirection,” I said softly, and Jesse asked me to repeat myself. “She’s jerking us around. We look at Erin; she does the Reeds. We look at the Reeds; she steals the amulet.”

“So?” Jesse asked.

“So the question isn’t what’s the next logical step in the investigation, Jesse. The question is what are we not paying attention to?”

There was a long pause, and my gaze wandered down to the file. Her final days. I hadn’t been paying any attention to the week or so between the last time I’d visited Olivia and her actual death. But there was somewhere I could go to find out. “I gotta go, Jesse.”

His voice was immediately on alert. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” I frowned. How much to tell him? If I didn’t explain that I wasn’t at the mansion, they were going to make a wasted trip out there, and that would just piss him off more. Then again, if I did tell him I’d left, he would yell at me until I explained where I was. But he would do that whenever he found out I’d left. I might as well save them the trip to Pasadena. I asked to be taken off speakerphone, and Jesse switched me to his hands-free thing so we could talk somewhat privately. “Listen, Jesse, I’m not at the mansion anymore,” I started, then rushed to add, “but I’m safe, and I’m not anywhere I go regularly.”

There was a very long silence, and I held the phone away from my ear for a moment to make sure I hadn’t dropped the call. Still had the signal. “Hello? Jesse?”

“We’re here,” Jesse said flatly. “But I wish you hadn’t done that.”

“I know. I had to.”

“Did something happen?” he said, his voice concerned now.

“Not the way you mean. But I’ve gotten some background information on Olivia, and I’m going to follow up on something by myself.”

“You can’t just do that,” he protested. “Dashiell said—”

“Jesse,” I said tiredly, “since when do you give a shit about Dashiell’s orders?”

There was a pause, and then to my surprise, he laughed. “You know, you’re absolutely right. You’re a big girl. Just tell me where you’re going to be,” he said. “No, wait, don’t tell me.”

I blinked. “You think she bugged the phones?” I said skeptically.

“Hey, you’re not really the person to accuse anyone of paranoia.”

“Fair enough,” I admitted.

“Just promise me it’s somewhere really safe.”

“I promise,” I said. “Lots of cameras, lots of people, security guards. Won’t take more than an hour. I’ll be fine.”

“Call me after?”

“You bet.”


Even in the strange car, my body remembered exactly how to get to the cancer ward at UCLA’s Medical Center. On autopilot, I took a ticket, got a parking spot, and trooped up to the same floor where Olivia had spent months getting treatments. You could practically follow the sense of grief to find the place: sadness lingered on this floor like a bad decoration. The staff overcompensated by garnishing every flat surface with cheerful holiday decor. If I hadn’t just seen similar decorations at Kalista’s, I would have assumed that everything red and green in the city had escaped and taken sanctuary here on the oncology floor. There was even a twelve-foot Christmas tree, trimmed like a damn magazine photo, just before the nurse’s station. I didn’t stop to look at the ornaments or read the names on the presents under the tree. It would just make me sad.