One Grave at a Time (Night Huntress #6)(74)

Noose? That snapped my attention to the belt dangling from the closet rail, the bottom of it hooked into a circle. All the clothes were pushed to either side, leaving that single item in the middle, but with the bloody remains of Denise’s head all over the wall, I hadn’t focused on it at first glance.

Bones edged around Spade and Denise to pluck out the belt, a muscle in his jaw flexing as he sniffed it.

“How did he get in, Denise?” I asked, kneeling so we’d be more at eye level. “Can you tell us anything that could help us find out who he is?”

Her gaze rolled around again, and she blinked several times, as if she were fighting to stay conscious. It was Bones who spoke, and his voice was dryer than ashes.

“Not he, Kitten. She.”

Denise managed to nod, while her eyes rolled back in her head. “Sarah,” she mumbled right before passing out. “Sarah shot me.”





Thirty-three



I didn’t want to believe it, but even with pieces of her head not fully regenerated yet, I didn’t doubt Denise’s statement. The woman we thought we were protecting from Kramer’s evil intentions must actually have been his accomplice instead.

“I’ll kill the bitch,” Spade snarled, emerald blazing from his eyes and fangs flashing out from his upper teeth.

From the roiling fury leaking out of Bones’s aura, Spade would have to take a number and get in line.

“Get Denise cleaned up, Charles,” Bones said. “She’s been through enough without waking up covered in her own blood and brains again.”

Spade scooped Denise up, carrying her out of the room while still muttering under his breath about all the different ways he was going to kill Sarah. I was too shell-shocked to begin plotting her death, but I knew my own murderous rage would come soon.

“Kramer hates women, why would he partner up with one?” I wondered, trying to sort through this bombshell.

“Easy. He knows what he intends to do with her once she’s fulfilled her usefulness,” Bones replied shortly.

She’d been useful indeed, getting her enemies to lead her right to Lisa and Francine. No wonder Kramer had been so smug the last time I’d seen him. Guilt burned its way over my emotions. We’d promised Lisa and Francine that we’d protect them. Instead, we’d helped the co-conspirator in their murders to orchestrate the worst sort of betrayal right under our noses.

“Where’d she get the gun?” Ian asked.

“We kept three of them here in anticipation of the accomplice’s accompanying Kramer in his attack,” Spade replied from another room in the house. “Showed each of the women where they were, how to use them . . . though Sarah already knew how to shoot, bloody slag.”

She must have forced Lisa and Francine to go with her at gunpoint. After what they would’ve seen her do to Denise, I had no doubt the women would have been too frightened to refuse.

Bones gave me another of those unreadable looks before he spoke. “She didn’t leave with Lisa and Francine on foot. Did you have another car here?”

“Yes.” The bitterness in Spade’s voice was clear despite the sounds of a shower turning on. “I left it for Denise in case of an emergency.”

Sarah used it to cart away Francine and Lisa instead, probably stuffing them in the trunk after binding and gagging them. If she really wanted to ensure a smooth ride, she’d have bashed them in the head and knocked them out for the trip. Just thinking about it made me want to bash my own head in frustration. From the looks of Denise, they’d been gone for hours, long enough to be far away by now. Sarah probably put her plan into action shortly after Spade left to meet us at the facility.

Maybe she left something that would give us a clue as to where she was taking them. I doubted it, but just standing around was making me crazy. I left the ruined bedroom and went downstairs, looking for trash cans. Please let Sarah be stupid enough to have jotted down incriminating information on something, then thrown it away.

“I’m surprised you didn’t hear any of her plans from her thoughts, Crispin,” I heard Ian say.

“They were scattered, unstable, and frequently incoherent. I thought it was because of Kramer’s abuse, not malicious intentions,” was Bones’s measured reply. “Believe me, I wish I’d paid closer attention.”

Me too, but the brief time we’d spent with Sarah had been mostly while we were flying. That made her scream mentally and verbally—not much coherency there. Then while we waited for Spade, she’d only shown a fear of vampires—understandable ninety-nine percent of the time with people who had just found out about their existence—and a desire to meet Lisa and Francine.

Boy, had we been wrong about her motivations behind that. The other sickening part of this whole situation was the knowledge that if Sarah was Kramer’s accomplice, not his third intended victim, that woman was still out there. As if in pitiless reminder of how time was running out, I passed a clock on my way to the kitchen. Five minutes after three in the morning, making it officially October 31. Halloween was upon us, and we’d been the ones tricked all over the place.

“One of us should fly over the area to see if we can spot the car while the others stay here and search for clues,” I stated, heading for the trash can in the corner. “Someone should go by Elisabeth’s apartment, too. Kramer might have damaged her phone after she sent that last text, and there’s still a third victim to be found. Maybe Elisabeth’s noticed another woman who Kramer’s been hanging around—”