The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood 16)

In truth, when Ricardo had first disappeared, she had wondered if the brothers’ relationship hadn’t concluded in the old way, with a grave.

But now? With Eduardo’s office so obviously untouched and looking like he had left in a hurry, perhaps called to aid? It seemed more likely they had both been killed by someone else.

Or someones.

Sitting down in that soft chair, she stared over the year-old receipts, the bills…the notes written in a leather journal that was lying faceup, a whore with her privacy exposed.

Oh, yes, Vitoria thought as she picked the thing up. This was what she was looking for.

Everything scribbled in the little book was in a Spanish dialect shorthand that she recognized from their youth. Smart. It would require a native speaker who excelled at codes to decipher it.

And what did you know, Eduardo, greedy as he was, kept precise notations on things, both the drug deals and—guns, too? Interestingly, they had diversified into arms.

Profitable. Smart.

She turned another page. And another. And another, going backward from the last entry. There was nothing about art; then again, that was the front of the house’s operation, the ruse for the rest, so all those deals were processed and accounted for properly by trained staff with adequate transparency. She had seen the reports herself when she had gotten server access.

Ricardo had set all that up so well, the business had functioned without him for the last twelve months—

Oh, good man, she thought. Eduardo included names in here and numbers of contacts on both sides of the table. As well as pricing and delivery locations. This was perfect—yes, there had been a lapse in supply, but there was no reason to think competitive pricing for cocaine and heroin couldn’t bring back customers who had once been loyal.

The laws of a free market economy applied to the drug trade, after all.

Going back to that final entry, she reread the notation about a delivery on the river to someone named…Assayl…? Must be misspelled. That name certainly appeared often, however.

It would seem logical to start with whoever that was and see if it led anywhere. If that was the last meeting? Maybe Assayl was the killer

Or perhaps another “client.”

During her meeting with Streeter, the man had maintained he knew little about her brothers’ disappearance, and she believed him. Considering the kind of people Ricardo had done business with, both on the abroad side for the importers, and the U.S. contingency for distribution, it was wholly conceivable that her kin had been disposed of in such a discreet way that nobody would find the bodies. But the lack of a message was odd. Typically, there would have been something sent to the family back in South America, a photograph of the bodies, a gruesome memento.

A threat that the trail should be left to grow cold or further unpleasantness would ensue.

Yet there had been nothing sent to her. And as neither of her brothers had ever married, she was their next of kin.

Looking up at the ceiling, she imagined her brothers working here, Ricardo on top, figuratively and literally, doing the strategy and the deals on the second floor, Eduardo tallying everything down below in his Studio 54–meets–Neiman Marcus cave.

And then something had interrupted the flow.

What, though—

As her new burner cell phone rang in her coat, she took it out. “Streeter.”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“You are the only person to whom I have provided this number. Have you forgotten something?”

“Yeah. I dint think of it till I got home. I had this friend of mine. He worked for your brothers, too. His name was Two-Tone ’cuz he had this birthmark on half his face. ’Bout the time your brothers got gone, he and me was out and he said he was leaving on assignment the next day. He never come back.”

“Tell me more,” she murmured, sitting forward.

“He said he was takin’ care of someone. You know. Takin’ care.”

“Where? Here in Caldwell? Or at the West Point house property?”

“No. Somewhere’s else. He said he was goin’ outta town, up north someplace.”

“Can you remember an exact day?”

“It was like, the week of my birthday. That’s why we was out.”

As the man worked on a precise date by drawing all kinds of complex mental notes on an imaginary calendar, Vitoria kept track of the numbers as she waited for the tally to be completed.

“Yeah, I remember now,” Streeter concluded. “It were that Wednesday.”

And look at this, she thought. The final entry in the middle of the journal was the day after.

“What else can you tell me?”

“That’s all I got.”

“Do you have access to your friend’s abode?”

“His what? Hey, I don’t go like that—”

“House,” she snapped. “Can you get into his house?”

“Yeah.”

Although she didn’t know why she was bothering to ask. So much time had passed.

“Go there. See if you can find anything. I want to know where he went and with whom.”

As she ended the call, she glanced around at the desk. She was going to have to go through every sheet of paper here—and also at the mansion. Ricardo had had a lot of files there, all handwritten in Spanish as if he didn’t trust computers very much.

Her brothers’ secrets were going to be her own.

* * *

—

’Lo, the best-laid plans of mice and vampires.

Vishous was distracted and buzzing out of his skin as he walked into the Pit. Somewhere between him resolving not to end up here and the meeting at Wrath’s Audience House breaking up, he’d been tasked with doing a search on social media for any mentions of shadows jumping out of alleys and attacking people.

Not the kind of thing he could do easily on his phone.

As he shut the door behind himself, he listened to all the quiet and thought…God, the place was so empty. And as he went forward into the living area, everything was so neat, no duffel bags crowding the base of the foosball table, no medical journals facedown in mid-article on the couch, no open boxes of cereal on the counter of the galley kitchen.

Fritz had obviously been by. But more than that, no one had really been living in the living room. With Jane and him both avoiding the place, and Butch and Marissa happiest when they were in their bedroom together, there wasn’t much going on to mess shit up.

Shrugging out of his leather jacket, he grimaced and ignored his aching arm as he went to his liquor cabinet by the kitchen sink and pulled out a nice big Goose. Popping the top off the vodka, he drank from the open bottle—

The coughing fit left him with drool down the front of his muscle shirt.

Nicorette didn’t mix with liquor. Go figure.

As he spit the fist-sized wad of gum out of his mouth, however, he decided that that was more a space issue.

Yup, this time, as he took a pull, everything went as planned, the vodka heading down into his gut smoothly, his other addiction taking the wheel.

Going over to his computers, he took off his weapons and his damp shirt. Then he sat down and signed in to three of his Four Toys. Security-cam feeds popped up on one monitor, the Internet on another, and a blog he had been following on the third.

Damn Stoker hadn’t been posting much on her site—which was the outcome V had engineered, to quote Rhage.

After Vishous had wiped Miss Jo Early’s feeds of all the vampire links she had been putting up and commenting on, and then scrubbed her short-term memory, that little threat had been neutralized. Sort of. He and that woman were probably going to have to cross paths again. She was about to have a big problem in her life, and he hadn’t decided how to handle it yet. He’d wanted to bring the trouble up to Wrath, but then this shit with Jane had hit and…

Whatever. Jo Early was about to learn firsthand why she was so fucking interested in vampires, and he supposed he hadn’t mentioned it to anybody because he was still debating whether or not to get involved.

Miss Early was a half-breed, the product of a human and a vampire, and she was about to go through the change. She didn’t know it yet, however. Or he was assuming she didn’t because there was no sign she had reached out to the species—and by law, if a half-breed surfaced, the King had to be told. uth, when Ricardo had first disappeared, she had wondered if the brothers’ relationship hadn’t concluded in the old way, with a grave.

But now? With Eduardo’s office so obviously untouched and looking like he had left in a hurry, perhaps called to aid? It seemed more likely they had both been killed by someone else.

Or someones.

Sitting down in that soft chair, she stared over the year-old receipts, the bills…the notes written in a leather journal that was lying faceup, a whore with her privacy exposed.

Oh, yes, Vitoria thought as she picked the thing up. This was what she was looking for.

Everything scribbled in the little book was in a Spanish dialect shorthand that she recognized from their youth. Smart. It would require a native speaker who excelled at codes to decipher it.

And what did you know, Eduardo, greedy as he was, kept precise notations on things, both the drug deals and—guns, too? Interestingly, they had diversified into arms.

Profitable. Smart.

She turned another page. And another. And another, going backward from the last entry. There was nothing about art; then again, that was the front of the house’s operation, the ruse for the rest, so all those deals were processed and accounted for properly by trained staff with adequate transparency. She had seen the reports herself when she had gotten server access.

Ricardo had set all that up so well, the business had functioned without him for the last twelve months—

Oh, good man, she thought. Eduardo included names in here and numbers of contacts on both sides of the table. As well as pricing and delivery locations. This was perfect—yes, there had been a lapse in supply, but there was no reason to think competitive pricing for cocaine and heroin couldn’t bring back customers who had once been loyal.

The laws of a free market economy applied to the drug trade, after all.

Going back to that final entry, she reread the notation about a delivery on the river to someone named…Assayl…? Must be misspelled. That name certainly appeared often, however.

It would seem logical to start with whoever that was and see if it led anywhere. If that was the last meeting? Maybe Assayl was the killer

Or perhaps another “client.”

During her meeting with Streeter, the man had maintained he knew little about her brothers’ disappearance, and she believed him. Considering the kind of people Ricardo had done business with, both on the abroad side for the importers, and the U.S. contingency for distribution, it was wholly conceivable that her kin had been disposed of in such a discreet way that nobody would find the bodies. But the lack of a message was odd. Typically, there would have been something sent to the family back in South America, a photograph of the bodies, a gruesome memento.

A threat that the trail should be left to grow cold or further unpleasantness would ensue.

Yet there had been nothing sent to her. And as neither of her brothers had ever married, she was their next of kin.

Looking up at the ceiling, she imagined her brothers working here, Ricardo on top, figuratively and literally, doing the strategy and the deals on the second floor, Eduardo tallying everything down below in his Studio 54–meets–Neiman Marcus cave.

And then something had interrupted the flow.

What, though—

As her new burner cell phone rang in her coat, she took it out. “Streeter.”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“You are the only person to whom I have provided this number. Have you forgotten something?”

“Yeah. I dint think of it till I got home. I had this friend of mine. He worked for your brothers, too. His name was Two-Tone ’cuz he had this birthmark on half his face. ’Bout the time your brothers got gone, he and me was out and he said he was leaving on assignment the next day. He never come back.”

“Tell me more,” she murmured, sitting forward.

“He said he was takin’ care of someone. You know. Takin’ care.”

“Where? Here in Caldwell? Or at the West Point house property?”

“No. Somewhere’s else. He said he was goin’ outta town, up north someplace.”

“Can you remember an exact day?”

“It was like, the week of my birthday. That’s why we was out.”

As the man worked on a precise date by drawing all kinds of complex mental notes on an imaginary calendar, Vitoria kept track of the numbers as she waited for the tally to be completed.

“Yeah, I remember now,” Streeter concluded. “It were that Wednesday.”

And look at this, she thought. The final entry in the middle of the journal was the day after.

“What else can you tell me?”

“That’s all I got.”

“Do you have access to your friend’s abode?”

“His what? Hey, I don’t go like that—”

“House,” she snapped. “Can you get into his house?”

“Yeah.”

Although she didn’t know why she was bothering to ask. So much time had passed.

“Go there. See if you can find anything. I want to know where he went and with whom.”

As she ended the call, she glanced around at the desk. She was going to have to go through every sheet of paper here—and also at the mansion. Ricardo had had a lot of files there, all handwritten in Spanish as if he didn’t trust computers very much.

Her brothers’ secrets were going to be her own.

* * *

—

’Lo, the best-laid plans of mice and vampires.

Vishous was distracted and buzzing out of his skin as he walked into the Pit. Somewhere between him resolving not to end up here and the meeting at Wrath’s Audience House breaking up, he’d been tasked with doing a search on social media for any mentions of shadows jumping out of alleys and attacking people.

Not the kind of thing he could do easily on his phone.

As he shut the door behind himself, he listened to all the quiet and thought…God, the place was so empty. And as he went forward into the living area, everything was so neat, no duffel bags crowding the base of the foosball table, no medical journals facedown in mid-article on the couch, no open boxes of cereal on the counter of the galley kitchen.

Fritz had obviously been by. But more than that, no one had really been living in the living room. With Jane and him both avoiding the place, and Butch and Marissa happiest when they were in their bedroom together, there wasn’t much going on to mess shit up.

Shrugging out of his leather jacket, he grimaced and ignored his aching arm as he went to his liquor cabinet by the kitchen sink and pulled out a nice big Goose. Popping the top off the vodka, he drank from the open bottle—

The coughing fit left him with drool down the front of his muscle shirt.

Nicorette didn’t mix with liquor. Go figure.

As he spit the fist-sized wad of gum out of his mouth, however, he decided that that was more a space issue.

Yup, this time, as he took a pull, everything went as planned, the vodka heading down into his gut smoothly, his other addiction taking the wheel.

Going over to his computers, he took off his weapons and his damp shirt. Then he sat down and signed in to three of his Four Toys. Security-cam feeds popped up on one monitor, the Internet on another, and a blog he had been following on the third.

Damn Stoker hadn’t been posting much on her site—which was the outcome V had engineered, to quote Rhage.

After Vishous had wiped Miss Jo Early’s feeds of all the vampire links she had been putting up and commenting on, and then scrubbed her short-term memory, that little threat had been neutralized. Sort of. He and that woman were probably going to have to cross paths again. She was about to have a big problem in her life, and he hadn’t decided how to handle it yet. He’d wanted to bring the trouble up to Wrath, but then this shit with Jane had hit and…

Whatever. Jo Early was about to learn firsthand why she was so fucking interested in vampires, and he supposed he hadn’t mentioned it to anybody because he was still debating whether or not to get involved.

Miss Early was a half-breed, the product of a human and a vampire, and she was about to go through the change. She didn’t know it yet, however. Or he was assuming she didn’t because there was no sign she had reached out to the species—and by law, if a half-breed surfaced, the King had to be told.