Bond of Darkness (18 page)

Ethan stiffened.

"I haven't mentioned anything to him—and I won't, unless I have to."

She waited, the silence as compelling as any leash. Aurelia had always said the same thing whenever he got into trouble and needed help.

"There's a girl." He provided the briefest possible explanation.

"Oh."

Now she sounded unsettled. Good. Maybe she'd drop the subject.

"Can I help? Perhaps talking things over with another woman might suggest some answers?" She was tentative, a little optimistic perhaps.

On the other hand, his heart felt like it was slowly being torn out of his chest without Steve. Maybe somebody else might have some better ideas for how he could win her back.

And the doctor was the one person who might get away with keeping a secret.

"Ethan?"

He closed his eyes. How could he resist a woman who sounded and looked like Aurelia?

"We had a fight. I'd like to talk to her but she won't return calls. All I'm asking is a little time to talk, but—" He spread his hands and abruptly put them down, remembering where he was.

"Hmm. Have you tried a gift? Flowers perhaps?"

"Flowers? She's not a very frilly kind of girl," Ethan objected.

"Every woman likes flowers," Doctor O'Malley pronounced with complete certainty. "Even if she says she doesn't, it's just a matter of finding the right ones. Or maybe another kind of gift."

Ethan half turned to study her, caught by her humming joy in the idea. She was a woman, after all, so she should know.

A gift might please Steve but it would have to be something useful, not frivolous. Not something very expensive, either, lest her damn morals about taking any sort of bribe kick in. It was worth trying, anyway.

After all, what the hell did he have to lose?

Steve parked her Expedition nose out, automatically ensuring she could make a fast departure, despite the billowing mounds of roses spilling onto the gravel and encroaching on parking places. Long stone walkways led across an old-fashioned lawn to a pioneer's bronze statue, forever looking to the horizon. The old bank building's solid bulk rose comfortingly behind him, offering protection from the sun. Its narrow windows, heavy iron shutters, and chipped limestone blocks told of harsher trials it had successfully surmounted, including Indians, outlaws, and supposedly even bootleggers.

Machinery purred quietly in its rear. A lesser establishment's air conditioning might hesitate or whine. But not here, not at one of the finest private collections of early Texas business and legal history, where not all of its oldest books were online. It also held a children's museum, famous for the working replicas which brought to life its extensive collection of antique children's books and toys.

She stepped out of her truck and edged down the path onto the lawn, trying not to collect too many thorns from the rosebushes.

Two small children raced past her from behind the oak trees, skirts fluttering in the breeze.

Steve's heart stopped in sheer surprise. She froze in her tracks, her fingers reflexively stretching for her gun.

One little girl squealed happily and ran faster.

Steve closed her eyes, her blood pounding in her ears. Her hand dropped onto her belt, hopefully casually, and gripped it until her fingers burned.

"Maryam! Kate! Time to go home now," called a woman, gathering her packages from the bench by the library's front door, her soft skirts rippling in the breeze.

"Daddy won't be there yet, Mom," one little girl paused to argue. Her counterpart promptly pounced on her and they tumbled across the lawn, in a giggling mass.

Steve tilted her hat forward, concealing her eyes and her lack of similar memories. Her mother had walked out on her father's career as a cop long before Steve had learned to walk, denying Steve any memories of playtime together. After that, her father and grandfather, a former patrol officer turned desk sergeant, had raised her.

She squared her shoulders, brought her hips into alignment, and marched indoors to find the reference desk. If her boots sounded a little loud on the wood floors, well, that only added to the place's historically accurate atmosphere. Right?

An immense arched entry led to what must have been the main meeting room, back when this had been a great bank, and was now the children's museum. Inside the room, a little boy was peering over a crouching man's shoulder, both of them intent on a very large rubber knife. Probably a precursor to a bowie knife.

Steve's mouth twisted. Grandpa had taught her how to use one of those as soon as she could safely hold it. The lady out front, in her silky dress, was more likely to understand the fancy decor here than the knife replicas.

An intricately carved molding surrounded the entry, so complicated it required a block containing an ornate
S
at each corner to transition between horizontal and vertical.

Steve broke stride and started to spin around. Could it be the Santiago Trust's brand, that very old Mexican brand she'd first seen on Ethan's business card? But linked to a children's museum? Surely not.

She might believe they'd donate to a police charity to draw attention away from their own nefarious deeds. Or the hospital wing—good Lord, that operating room must have been expensive! It could have been a hiding place for their own men.

But there was no conceivable reason for murderous vampiros like Ethan to be kind to children. None whatsoever. Ergo, this couldn't be their logo and had to be the carver's solution to a tricky design problem.

She shook off the fancy and moved faster for the sturdy desk and its reassuringly stolid guardian.

"Excuse me, ma'am, can you help me? I'm looking for information on the First Bank of L?"

The older woman pulled over her mouse, her eyes alight with curiosity. "What else can you tell me?"

"It was around immediately after the War Between the States and apparently one of the more reputable establishments connected with the veterans' land grants."

Come on, talk to me, lady. Somebody's got to do so, sooner or later
. It was harder to investigate these folks than a Columbian drug mafia pulling off a black market peso exchange—and she hadn't even found any evidence of illegal activities. Let alone any idea of how many people were involved, other than Ethan.

"We do have a large amount of material on that period." The librarian raised an eyebrow. "Do you have a better idea of the name?"

"Maybe the First Bank of Lavaca." Steve gambled, seeing a fellow hunter. "They're related to the Santiago Trust."

The atmosphere chilled immediately.

"Lavaca?" The other woman leaned back in her seat, her expression suddenly much more formal. "Are you sure it's not Leon or maybe Lampasas, if it's named for a county? Or it could have been named for a town instead."

Steve kept her expression guileless, wondering what had gone wrong. Was it the bank's name or mentioning Santiago Trust?

"A reference downtown led me to believe the bank owned this building at one time. Also the Santiago Trust's board held their meetings here."

"Really? I'd be interested to see the precise reference. Memoirs really should be labeled as such and used with considerable caution." Soft clucking managed to express both sympathy and disapproval for another curator's carelessness. The mouse was pushed away slightly, indicating disinterest.

"Perhaps. But—" Steve tried again to talk about the bank, Santiago Trust, and where she stood.

"We don't have any memoirs here, except for Mr. Humphreys' accounts of his speculations on railroad stocks, starting in the late 1890s. Are those interesting to you? No? Well, then—"

Should she flash her badge? No, she wasn't on official business.

The older woman somehow managed to look down her nose at Steve, despite the foot difference in their height. "Young lady, we have no material here linking a bank and the Santiago Trust—whoever they may be—immediately after the War Between the States. As the senior librarian here, I would know. Unless you have a more precise name for the bank or are willing to look through our complete catalog…"

She swept her hand over the entire reading room and Steve ground her teeth, considering the reference books' towering stacks.

Shit. It had been a long shot but she truly hated to leave without an answer.

"I'll stay and look," she decided. "At least under Lavaca."

"Very well." The other shrugged. An hour later, Steve was glad she hadn't added, "You fool."

She'd found nothing under First Bank of Lavaca or First Bank of Leon, linking either of those establishments to the Santiago Trust, let alone to this building. Maybe she wasn't looking in the right books but she'd tried. And, damn, how long could one keep looking before acknowledging there was nothing?

She nodded at the librarian and left, considering her few remaining options.

After a goddamn month of searching for the Santiago Trust during every spare minute, she'd exhausted all the online databases. She'd have found something, if there were anything to find. She'd searched the great historical collections but no luck there, either.

The only traces of Ethan's mysterious employer were their logo, that ornate antique brand, on charitable donations like the DNA profiling machinery. All things a monk would have been proud of. Crap.

But Ethan had cold-bloodedly murdered a man, somebody she would otherwise have been glad to see dead. Crap.

But how could she let any Tom, Dick, or Harry just up and kill somebody, even if they did deserve to die?

She unlocked the door and peeled open her Expedition, wanting nothing so much as a long, hot shower and a massage. Or a good lay, although that had always required Ethan and his unique notions. Sometimes leather, sometimes lace—but always damn excellent and impossible without him.

At least she had the long Fourth of July weekend to think about it, while she was vacationing in Galveston with the other cops.

And with any luck at all, she'd stop fantasizing about Ethan, whether he was fucking her—or a man. It was a hell of a way to have a good orgasm.

A single sheet of paper, in very high quality stationery and folded once, lay on her passenger's seat.

Her eyes narrowed and she reached for her gun.

How had that gotten here? She knew for a fact she'd locked all the doors.

She swung around, checking and rechecking her surroundings, keeping her Sig ready but not out in the open. Nothing, not even the faint whisper on her nape which said somebody was watching. This was the only vehicle in the visitors' parking lot, although three cars could be spotted in the staff lot, on the museum's other side.

She circled cautiously around her SUV and found no tracks. There wasn't even a crushed rose petal or a dog barking somewhere in the old residential neighborhood.

She eyed the paper again. One side was labeled with her name, clearly written in Ethan's bold, old-fashioned handwriting. Lines of closely spaced type covered the other side like wallpaper.

It probably wasn't a bomb, since it wasn't a sealed envelope. Besides, the thought of Ethan using explosives on her was laughable. Wring her neck, maybe. Kill her from a distance when he couldn't watch? Never.

Her fingers flexed, longing to touch that innocent looking sheet.

She glanced around one last time to make sure nobody else was watching. Her heart was pounding a little too fast, probably because her SUV had been burglarized, certainly not because this was the first time she'd had any contact with Ethan.

Satisfied of that much at least, she very, very carefully picked up the paper.

Nothing at all happened. Her heart slowed into a more normal rhythm, warming her skin.

Clucking at her own idiocy, she stepped into the sun and unfolded the sheet. Her jaw dropped.

Good Lord. Ethan had just given her an extensive list of El Gallinazo's American bank accounts and at least some of his Swiss accounts. They could put one hell of a dent in everything from his drug running to his money laundering.

Where had he gotten the information?

And why was he giving it to her? Did he hope to eliminate a possible rival?

GALVESTON, MONDAY, JULY 5, 2 a.m.

The fresh, slightly bitter tang of saltwater spray from the coming storm couldn't hide the heavy, pungent foulness of recent death. A string of lanterns hugged the hotel's facade but shrank from the alley's denizens, leaving those uncertainties to the irregular light from a handful of doors and windows, plus a single streetlight. Men and women muttered in a constantly increasing rising tide of unhappiness from the high sidewalks and inside the neighboring businesses. A reporter's nasal voice was pecking at a young patrolman, its owner eager to slice through the cordon to view the murder at its core.

No way, no how the press got to see this one—and they should count themselves damn lucky. Unlike the poor honey-mooners who'd found the bodies.

Steve closed her eyes and yearned for a glass of ginger ale, her grandmother's sovereign remedy for an upset stomach. Even so, she knew damn well she'd have nightmares about being hemmed in by old brick Victorian buildings with dead people at her feet and palm trees lashing at the walls.

The place was crawling with cops but most of them were taking statements from the dozens of passersby, something they'd be lucky to finish before dawn. The photographers were still shooting pictures, their flashes briefly interrupting the alley's shadows in the erratic rhythm of men seeking something distinctive. Two hours of hunting and they hadn't found it yet, any more than Galveston's prized police dogs had brought back a gory-handed murderer.

A few cops still worked the grid pattern into the parking spaces between the hotel and the saloon on the other side of the alley. Others stood around in clumps, not quite blatantly wondering when the corpses would be released. Eyeing Steve but not talking to her, where she stood only a few feet from the shrouded corpses. A handsome German shepherd sat beside his handler in the hotel parking lot, both restlessly considering and reconsidering its exits.