Unspoken (Shadow Falls: After Dark #3)(83)

She shook her head. “Not if we don’t find Stone it won’t be.”

“We’ll get him.” Chase’s gut knotted when he saw the sheen of tears in her eyes.

She wiped a few tears from her face. “The new manager said Stone took off, and most of his workers did too. What’s the chance these guys know where he is? They obviously don’t know since they weren’t important enough to go with him.”

“I’d say it’s pretty good,” Chase said. “They were obviously in the gang.”

“I wish I believed that,” Della said. A few more tears slipped from her lashes. And for one second he wanted to tell her that Eddie wasn’t going to let her father go down for this murder—that he would sacrifice himself, but Chase had vowed not to let that happen. And still planned to stop it.

“It’s not over.” Chase started his car. And he was determined to find Stone and make sure that neither Eddie nor Della’s dad paid for his crime.

*

Della tried to push the feeling of doom and gloom away as Chase drove. But all she could feel was a ticking clock. Thanks to her, her dad could be convicted of murder. Thanks to her, he might get the death penalty. There was no pushing that gloom away.

Chase parked on the side of the street.

“Which house is it?” she asked, looking out.

“Pope said her house backed up to a cheap Mexican restaurant. All three of these houses are adjacent to this strip center.”

Della climbed out of the car; the Mexican food scents flavored the air. Onion, grilled meat. Even though she might like the taste of onions, the smell was almost overpowering. Then again, it might be because of the scent of garlic mixed in.

Or was it?

She got a light scent of something really terrible. She saw Chase lift his head as if trying to decipher the smell as well.

Burnett parked beside them.

The three of them walked around the corner. No one said anything; as crazy as it seemed, it was almost as if they all sensed something bad was about to happen.

The three houses lining the street were each painted a different shade of blue.

Two kids played outside of the first one. Della’s mind went back to the little girl with the knife at her throat. She blinked, pushed the thought away, and fought the desire to tell the kids to get inside.

The second house had a FOR RENT sign nailed to the front door. Burnett headed for the porch. Della saw him tilting his head to the side, listening if anyone was there. Then he lifted his face again as if trying to catch a scent.

Della and Chase continued on and moved up the porch steps of house number three. Della hadn’t gotten both feet up the last step when the smell grew tenfold. A really, really bad smell. She took another step to the door.

“Wait.” Chase caught Della’s arm and stopped her from getting closer.

“Why?” Della asked and put her hand over her nose. She’d barely got her nose covered when the noise hit. The buzzing noise. She looked at the window on the porch and her first impression was that the glass had turned liquid and moved. But no, it was not moving glass, just flies. Thousands of insects, buzzing around and covering the inside of the window.

The stench found its way behind her palm. And Della instinctively knew that Stone’s girlfriend was going to be another dead end.

“Dead” being the key word.





Chapter Thirty-five

Following Burnett’s orders, Chase dropped Della off and then came right back to the murder scene. He got there just in time to see people in hazmat suits take out a body, piece by piece.

Chase had seen a lot of ugly crimes, but this one took the cake.

He stood by Burnett. “I’m not staying at the school any longer,” Chase said. All he could think about was Della or someone else there meeting up with the lowlife monster who did this.

For once, Burnett didn’t argue. “At the office we have a couple of rooms in the back.”

“No, Natasha is leaving today, right?”

“Yeah,” Burnett said.

“Then I’ll stay at my cabin.”

Burnett frowned. “I would prefer that—”

“I know you would prefer it, but I prefer to stay there. And I’m an agent, not a Shadow Falls student.”

Burnett nodded. “Fine.” The man ran a hand through his hair. “Don’t mention this to Della. She’s got enough on her mind right now, but I just put two agents on her parents’ house.”

“Why?” Chase asked.

“Because I don’t believe in coincidences,” Burnett said. “If you’re right about the half were being a part of the group that murdered Mr. and Mrs. Chi, then it’s probably the Bastard gang doing it. All three of the murders that we’re looking at them for were less than three miles from Della’s home. It got me thinking, why there? Maybe Stone wasn’t so much looking for you, but for Della’s uncle. He might be watching Della’s house, thinking one of you would show up there. If we suspect that Della’s father saw the murder, then Stone might think Della’s father knows about his brother and has contact with him.”

*

“The examiner listed the girlfriend’s cause of death as homicide,” Burnett told Della the next day when she walked into the office.

Yesterday, Burnett had made Chase bring her back to Shadow Falls, before he’d called the regular police and other agents to come help out with the murder investigation of Jamie Brown, Stone’s girlfriend. Della spent the afternoon and last night mulling over everything and worrying. Kylie and Miranda had tried to get her to talk, and Della had pretty much lost it. Again.