30
I had two knives in my hands before Tucker took another step into the restaurant. Silvio was also on his feet, his tablet clutched in his hand as though he planned to brain the other vampire over the head with it. Sophia was at the far end of the counter at one of the cooking stations, but she had a death grip on a cast-iron skillet, ready to wade into the fray.
Mosley turned his head, wondering what had alarmed the three of us. I didn’t know if he recognized Tucker, but his eyes narrowed, and he tightened his grip on the knife and fork in his hands. Everyone else was still absorbed in their food and conversations, and they didn’t notice the sudden tension in the restaurant.
Tucker held up his hands and slowly walked toward the cash register where I was standing. “I’m not here to fight. I just want to have a simple conversation.”
I gripped my knives a little tighter. “And what’s to stop me from cutting you down right here, right now?”
He glanced around. “Well, all of these nice folks, for one thing. You wouldn’t want to ruin their meals, would you?”
He was right. More than two dozen people were in the restaurant, chowing down on their barbecue and side dishes. They hadn’t come here to witness a murder, and I wasn’t about to subject them to that, especially not Elissa, after what she’d just been through. No matter how badly I wanted to kill Tucker.
“Plus,” he continued, “I have someone stationed outside the restaurant with a gun aimed right at you. Just for some added insurance.”
I glanced out through the storefront windows. I didn’t see anyone lurking on the sidewalk, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there, maybe sitting in a car at the curb. Not that a gun would do them much good outside, since the windows were bulletproof. But if a fight broke out inside the restaurant and my customers started fleeing out the front door, the shooter could always decide to target them instead of me. So as much as I hated it, I had to play along with Tucker. Besides, I thought that I knew exactly why he was here, and part of me wanted to see if I was right.
“Fine,” I snapped. “What do you want?”
He tilted his head at an empty booth in the back corner of the restaurant. “Why don’t we go over there and discuss it? Away from prying eyes and ears?”
He looked at Silvio, who shrugged back at him. Thanks to his own enhanced vampiric senses, my assistant would still be able to hear our conversation no matter how softly Tucker talked.
“Lead the way,” I said.
“So you can stab me in the back with one of your knives?” Tucker laughed. “I don’t think so. Why don’t you put those away so we can have a civilized conversation like normal people? And I do hope you know that it’s not a request.”
He gestured with his hand, and I had no choice but to slide my knives back up my sleeves, step out from behind the cash register, and head over to the booth. I started to sit down, but Tucker called out behind me.
“Other side, please. I prefer to sit with my back against the wall. Plus, I wouldn’t want Ms. Deveraux getting any bright ideas about sneaking up behind me and whacking me on the head with her lovely skillet.”
I ground my teeth. That had been exactly what I was hoping would happen, but I glanced over my shoulder at Sophia and shook my head, telling her and Silvio to stand down. Sophia went back to her cooking, while Silvio sat back down on his stool. Mosley relaxed a bit too, although he kept glancing in this direction.
Once I was sure that my friends were going to hold their positions, I did as Tucker had commanded and sat down in the booth. He unbuttoned his dark blue suit jacket and slid into the opposite side.
He stared at me, and I looked right back at him. His gaze focused on my hair, once again its usual dark brown color and pulled back into a ponytail.
“You dyed your hair back already.”
“You sound disappointed. Why? Because I don’t look quite as much like my mother anymore? You should be careful about dwelling on the past, Tuck. One day you might wake up and be just like Bruce Porter.”
He arched his eyebrows, but he didn’t respond to my taunt.
I leaned forward and fixed my cold gray gaze on his inscrutable black one. “Actually, I’m glad that you came by today.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“Because I have something that belongs to you.”
I started to drop my hand down under the table, but Tucker waggled his finger at me. “Ah-ah,” he warned. “Slowly, Gin. Slowly.”
I rolled my eyes, but I did as he asked. With slow, exaggerated movements, I reached into my jeans pocket, pulled something out, and set it on the table between us.
The gold tube of Heartbreaker lipstick glinted in the sunlight streaming in through the storefront windows.
Tucker stared at the lipstick a moment, then arched his eyebrows again. “And why would you think that belongs to me? I am many things, Gin, but I am not into women’s makeup.”
I sat back and crossed my arms over my chest. “Because you set this whole thing up, you sneaky son of a bitch.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I snorted. “Oh, that’s rich coming from you.”
Tucker crossed his arms over his own chest, mimicking my hostile posture. “Please. Enlighten me.”
“I’ll readily admit that I have the world’s worst luck,” I said. “But I thought that it was a very strange coincidence that I found a woman’s body at Northern Aggression the very same night that I went there looking for a missing girl. I really should have known by now that there are no coincidences. Especially where you’re concerned.”
Tucker kept staring at me.
“You see, I heard that little chat you had with Damian Rivera in his office several nights ago. You were telling him to clean up his mess—or else—but you weren’t talking about Rivera’s habitual drunkenness and DUIs, were you? You were talking about the fact that Bruce Porter was a serial killer and the police had discovered a pattern to all these pretty blond girls being murdered and dumped all over Ashland. Care to tell me which one of the cops on your payroll tipped you off about the Dollmaker investigation?”
Tucker didn’t say anything, and his face remained as impassive as ever, so I continued.
“But you knew that I was there and that I was listening to every single word that you and Rivera said, since I’d left the window open on my way out of the office. Given your freaky vampire senses, you probably heard me out on the roof too. And Rivera royally pissed you off when he mocked you about being reduced to the Circle’s errand boy. But Rivera was right about how powerless you were compared with him. You couldn’t act against Rivera yourself. Not openly. Not without the rest of the Circle’s approval. So you decided to use me to do your damn dirty work for you.”
My accusation hung in the air between us like a storm cloud crackling with lightning, and I could almost see the wheels turning in Tucker’s mind as he debated how to respond.
“While I’m highly flattered that you think that I’m some sort of genius criminal mastermind, I really have no idea what you’re talking about, Gin.” Tucker tapped his fingers on the table. “I certainly didn’t tell Bruce Porter to kidnap and murder all those poor women.”
“No,” I said. “But you were the one who drew my spider runes on the dead girl Porter dumped at Northern Aggression.”
Tucker’s fingers stilled, and surprise flashed in his eyes before he could hide it. He hadn’t thought that I would figure it out. I’d been right when I felt I was trying to solve two separate but connected puzzles. One had been figuring out that Porter was the Dollmaker. And the other one was about Tucker giving me the one clue that had led me straight to Rivera.
“Now, I don’t know exactly what happened. If you followed Porter from the mansion that night and realized that he was dumping a body at the nightclub, or if you found out about the dead woman some other way. But you wanted to get rid of Porter and Rivera, and it was too good an opportunity to pass up. So you drew my spider runes on that dead girl’s palms, knowing that someone in the police department or coroner’s office would recognize the symbols as my personal rune. You also realized that Bria would find out about the marks sooner or later, that she would tell me, and that I would be pissed off enough to investigate.”
Tucker didn’t say anything, but his mouth quirked up into the faintest smile. That was all the confirmation I needed.
“But you still had another problem to solve. Porter had been very careful, and nothing linked him or Rivera to any of the victims. You had to point me in that direction somehow, so you decided to leave a little clue behind for me to find.” I tapped my fingernail against the top of the gold tube. “A very expensive brand of lipstick that you somehow knew that Porter used in his ritual.”
Tucker eyed the lipstick, but he still didn’t say anything.
“But then you had another problem. Where to leave the lipstick so that I would find it. You checked with your sources, probably the same cop who tipped you off about the Dollmaker investigation, and you heard about Elissa Daniels. You realized that Porter had grabbed her and was going to make her his next victim. Now, I don’t know if you found out that she was Jade’s sister or if you just followed me back to Jade’s house when I drove her home from the police station. But that night, you broke into Jade’s house, getting as far as opening the kitchen door. I imagine that you were going to leave the lipstick behind somewhere in the house for me to find. But I heard you creeping inside, and since you couldn’t afford to be seen, you slipped away.”
He tipped his head at me. “It seems that I’m not the only one with good hearing.”
I ignored his compliment. “But you still needed to plant the lipstick somewhere. So I imagine that you started following me around, waiting for your chance. Somehow you realized that I was heading back to the scene of the crime at Northern Aggression. You managed to get there ahead of me, and you finally planted the lipstick for me to find. But once again, I almost caught you, and you had to leave in a hurry. But you didn’t really care, did you? Because you knew that I would find the lipstick and that I would trace it back to Rivera. Then one thing would lead to another, and I would most likely kill him and Porter and solve all your problems for you.”
A faint smile lifted Tucker’s lips. “That was the idea, although Damian almost ruined everything by sending his men over to Ms. Jamison’s home. I didn’t realize that he had his own sources in the police department or that he would be smart enough to send his men over there to destroy any files she had. Still, you killed them in the end, and the men were another link back to Damian, so it all worked out for the best.”
I shook my head. “I have to hand it to you. Clever, Tuck. Very, very clever.”
He gave a modest shrug. “I do try to be efficient about these things.”
White-hot rage burned in my heart that he had so thoroughly used me, along with more than a little embarrassment, especially since I hadn’t realized what was really going on until I’d been tied to that chair in Porter’s cottage. The only saving grace was that I’d rescued Elissa. But the real irony of the situation was that I probably wouldn’t have been able to save her if Tucker hadn’t manipulated me. Without that lipstick trail to follow, I never would have connected Rivera and Porter to the Dollmaker, and I never would have found Elissa in time. So as much as it pained me to admit it, I owed Tucker.
At least enough to let him walk out of here alive today.
“How is Miss Daniels, by the way?” Tucker’s black gaze flicked past me, and I knew that he was looking at her on the other side of the restaurant.
“She’s still alive,” I snapped. “Not that you really care.”
He shrugged again. “No matter what you think about me, what Porter did to those women was an abomination. I wanted to stop it the moment I learned about it.”
“So why didn’t you?”
His mouth puckered, as though he’d bitten into something rotten. “Let’s just say politics and leave it at that.”
“Politics? Really?” I snorted. “Is that why you went back to the mansion and beat Rivera to death?”
For the first time, a genuine smile played across his face, although his black eyes remained stone-cold. “Oh, no. That was just fun. Believe me, Damian had it coming. He’d hurled one too many insults my way over the years, when he was nothing but a lousy drunk. The only useful thing about him was his massive family fortune, and his problems were starting to outstrip even that.”
I could almost sympathize with him there. I would have enjoyed hurting Rivera too. I waited for Tucker to go on, but he didn’t elaborate, and I knew that he wouldn’t say any more about Rivera. So I decided to change course.
“Tell me one thing,” I said. “Since we’re having such a civilized conversation.”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you kill me when you found me lying next to Porter on the riverbank?”
Tucker blinked, as if he hadn’t expected me to remember that. I’d thought that the man in black had seemed familiar, and later on, after Jo-Jo healed my concussion, I’d remembered that he’d been bundled up just like the man in the car that had driven away from Northern Aggression. Once I’d realized that Tucker was the one who’d planted the lipstick at the nightclub, the connection had been obvious.
“I didn’t think that murdering you when you couldn’t fight back was very sporting,” he murmured. “Besides, you’d done the hard work of killing Porter. I figured that you’d earned a brief reprieve.”
“Is that also why you brought my knives to me?”
He shrugged again. “Damian gave the knives to me after Porter took them off you. I had no use for them.”
“No, I suppose you didn’t,” I said. “But do you know what’s really funny? How many times you’ve tried to kill me versus how many times you’ve helped me. I’d say they’re about even now.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
I might not have one of my knives in my hands, but I could still hurt him. “I’m talking about the night that Mab burned my family’s mansion to the ground. How you saw me in the woods but pretended you didn’t. How you dropped some money on the ground and just walked away.”
The vampire shifted in his side of the booth, actually looking uncomfortable, as if I’d caught him doing something that he didn’t want anyone else to know about—ever.
All around us, people ate their food, sipped their drinks, and carried on with their own conversations, but a tense silence fell over our booth. I kept quiet and waited, hoping that I’d rattled Tucker enough to get him to start talking, but of course I hadn’t. Frustration, anger, and annoyance rushed through me at his continued silence.
“Why did you come here?” I snapped, tired of Tucker and all his damn mind games. “What do you want?”
For a moment, I thought that he wasn’t going to answer, but he finally looked at me again.
“You were right. I did realize that you were spying on us in Rivera’s office that night.” Tucker drew in a breath and slowly let it out, as if he was dreading what he was about to say. “I came here because I wanted to explain about your mother.”
I couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d lunged across the table and slapped me across the face. In an instant, all my frustration, anger, and annoyance crystallized into cold, cold rage. On top of the table, my hands curled into fists, my nails digging into the spider rune scars embedded in my palms.
“Really?” I snarled. “You want to explain about my mother? Well, maybe you should start by saying why you didn’t save her. Why you let Mab Monroe and the rest of your precious Circle fucking murder her.”
For the first time since I’d known him, Tucker’s face twisted with regret. Once again, I thought that he wouldn’t answer me, but to my surprise, he began to speak in a flat, emotionless voice.
“Ashland society is a very tight-knit circle, as I’m sure you know,” he began. “My family used to be one of the wealthiest and most respected in the entire city, at least until my father gambled everything away. He was a drunk, you see, just like Damian Rivera, although Damian was at least smart enough not to spend all of his mother’s money.”
He smiled, but it was a dark, humorless expression. “But my father insisted that we keep up appearances and maintain the same lifestyle that we’d always had, even though doing so put us deeper and deeper in debt. He too was a member of the Circle, but without any real money to his name, he quickly fell through the ranks, losing all his power and position, until the others regarded him as little more than a pet. And then, when he died, I became their pet, forced to pay off his many debts.”
“Their servant,” I said.
He nodded, not bothering to deny it. “Everyone treated me that way, except for your mother. Eira was always kind to me, even when we were kids. She was the only one of them who ever treated me like an equal.” He paused, as if he was having difficulty getting his next words out. “I loved her for that and so many other things.”
I asked the question that had been bothering me for days now. “And did she love you back?”
He gave me a sad smile. “She actually did, once upon a time. But my Circle duties took me away from Ashland. I wanted to stay, to be with her, but of course, I couldn’t exactly say no in my position. And by the time I came back, she had married your father.”
“So you missed your chance with her.”
“I did. I regretted it, of course, but she seemed happy, so I moved on.”
He waved his hand, but I could hear the lie in his voice. He hadn’t moved on any more than I had from her murder.
“So you wished my mother well in her marriage, and then, years later, you let Mab Monroe burn her to death. Some love story.”
Tucker actually flinched at my words, but he quickly smoothed out his features. “Once I realized what was going to happen, I tried to persuade Eira to leave Ashland, to flee, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She thought that she could take on the Circle and win. She was wrong about that. And so are you.”
He leaned forward, his black eyes glittering in his face. “You asked me why I came here. Well, consider this a warning, the only one you will ever get from me. You’re right. I wanted Damian and Porter dead, and you helped me make that happen. So I covered up your involvement in this whole messy affair. Think of it as a quid pro quo.”
So that’s why he’d gone to all the trouble to write Porter’s fake suicide note. He almost made it sound like he was protecting me. But I knew better. He was protecting his own ass.
“But?” I asked the inevitable question.
“But if you continue your investigation into the Circle, the other members will eventually notice, and they will take appropriate steps to deal with you. And not just you but your friends and family too. Owen Grayson, Finnegan Lane, the Deveraux sisters, Bria. Everyone you love and care about.” He snapped his fingers. “They will kill them all, just like that, just like they killed your mother and sister.”
“And will you be the one leading the charge, Tuck?” I asked in a soft voice.
“Of course. That’s my job.” His mouth twisted. “And a good pet always obeys his master’s orders.”
This time, I leaned forward, letting him see the cold, hard determination in my wintry gray eyes. “I’m not going to stop. I will never stop until I find out who every single member of your cursed Circle is. I will kill them all, one by one, until I find your boss. And then I’ll kill him too. Consider that my warning to you.”
He stared at me, a sad smile tugging at his lips. “You really do have your mother’s stubbornness. It’s going to be the death of you, little Genevieve. Just as it was the death of her.”
“Genevieve Snow died the night my mother and sister did,” I snarled.
He gave me another sad smile. “And so did I.”
Tucker slid out of the booth, got to his feet, and buttoned his suit jacket, putting his armor back on in more ways than one. He gave me a deep, respectful nod before striding over to the front door, opening it, and stepping out into the cold winter sunshine.