Dead Silence (The Body Finder 4)

Everyone around them seemed to be wearing black. Or leather.

Or black and leather.

And there were piercings and tattoos, and a sea of dyed hair and heavily lined eyes . . . not all of them belonging to the girls.

Even wearing Rafe’s jacket, Sam didn’t look like he was a day older than twelve.

The only plus side of the club was that it was dark in there. And the strobing white lights that pulsed from the stage made it hard to focus on any one thing for too long. The music was also distracting. It was fierce and nearly ear-shattering, but that was the reason everyone was there, wasn’t it?

Violet studied her surroundings with the same cautious eye she would any potentially dangerous scenario, carefully trying to assess if there was anything out of the ordinary. Anything in the pulsating, alternating light and dark flashes, among the screams and pounding beats of the music, that didn’t belong in this place.

Any echoes or imprints.

“That’s the opening band,” Sam shouted above the noise of the cheering crowd, drawing her attention. The band on the stage was just finishing up. “Safe Word’s up next.”

Violet nodded, still glancing around her. She caught a giant man watching her. Glaring was more like it. His head was shaved and practically polished, his scalp shone beneath the flashing lights. His neck was wide—nearly as wide as his head—making it hard to tell where jaw became neck, and neck became body. His massive arms were crossed in front of his chest as he stood against the wall by a doorway.

He looked like a bouncer, and probably was, Violet realized, as she guessed that the doorway might lead backstage. Or maybe outside, to another club entrance, and the giant was meant to keep stragglers from sneaking in the back door without paying their admission.

Violet couldn’t imagine anyone trying to sneak past him, though.

She smiled at the enormous man, and was just about to raise her hand—to wave possibly—when Rafe nudged her. “Knock it off, V. I thought the point was to go unnoticed.”

The bouncer frowned at first, and Violet wondered if she wasn’t supposed to bother him while he was working, but then his expression changed, and he flashed a huge grin back at her. There was nothing menacing about him then. He was just a guy, a big guy, standing by a door.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Rafe muttered, dragging her away. “What kind of detective are you?”

Violet shrugged, letting Rafe lead her toward the front, near the stage, as the next band was setting up. “You never know who can help.” And then her eyes widened and she lowered her voice. “Besides, maybe he knows something . . . about the symbol.”

She felt Rafe’s grip on her wrist tense. “What symbol?” he asked, and for the first time she realized she hadn’t told them, either him or Sam, about the brimstone cross she’d noticed on the flyer.

“That one,” Violet said, drawing Rafe’s attention away from her as she pointed at the drum set already onstage. It was there too, in the center of the large drum that faced outward. That very same symbol . . . the brimstone cross.

She heard Sam draw in a sharp breath from behind her.

“Violet,” Rafe said, using her full name now, his voice quiet and filled with warning. “Tell me what you feel. Right now, when you’re looking at those guys up there . . .”

He didn’t point, didn’t move so much as a single muscle, he just held on to her, his fingers clamped around her wrist. But she knew who he meant.

Them . . . the band.

She turned her gaze upward, her eyes roving over each and every one of them as they took their positions, taking in everything about them. She spent time on each of them, studying them individually, making sure to separate them not just from one another, but from anything around her that might interfere. It was easier now, with just the prerecorded track playing in the background—still loud, but not shattering her eardrums.

There were five of them in all. Five possible suspects wearing leather and spikes and chunky boots and tight jeans. They looked like everyone else in the club.

Everyone but her. And Sam.

She took a step back, Rafe’s hand still clutching her as she shook her head. “Nothing,” she whispered at first, and wondered if they’d heard her. “I don’t feel anything at all.”

Violet washed her face and changed out of her smoke-infused clothes. For a nonsmoking club, there’d been a lot of smoke in the air. Short of showering, there was nothing she could do about the smell that clung to her hair, so she pulled it back into an elastic, keeping it as far from her face as she could.

In her room, she huddled in her bed, nesting in the jumble of blankets as she started poring through the pages of her grandmother’s journals once more. She’d already read these entries—in fact, she’d already read all of them now—but she hoped against hope that maybe she’d missed something the first time through.

After nearly an hour of scanning the same entries and not learning a single new bit of information, she slammed the book she was holding shut.

It was useless. There was no more mention of the Seven in her grandma’s diaries.

In fact, after that ominous entry about Muriel, Muriel is dead, she’d never mentioned her team again.

Not once.

Ever.

It was the strangest thing, Violet thought, trying to imagine what possible reason her grandmother could have had for not writing about them.

Had she quit the team? Had it disbanded after Muriel’s death?