"The Sea Breeze. "
Bria looked at me, her eyes full of worry. "You think that Dekes sent some men there too?"
"Probably not, given what I heard Pete say outside the room about going after Callie tomorrow, but there's only one way to be sure. "
Bria put her foot down on the gas, and we left the Blue Sands hotel behind, with even more trouble probably waiting on the road in front of us.
Bria steered the convertible toward Callie's restaurant. We were the only car on the road, and only the steady whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the tires on the pavement broke the silence. The night was dark and eerily quiet. Trees crowded up to the very edge of the narrow, two-lane road and then arched and twisted over it, blocking out everything but a small strip of stars overhead. Thin black tendrils of weeping willows waved back and forth like skeleton fingers in the constant breeze, while the swamp grass and cattails undulated in perfect time below next to the rippling surface of the water. Every once in a while, the convertible's cracked headlights would catch an animal hiding in the marshes on either side of the road, and its eyes would flash like fiery rubies before we zoomed past.
It seemed to take forever, but it was only a few minutes later when we pulled into the sandy lot that fronted the Sea Breeze. The weathered structure was dark inside and locked up tight for the night, although a lone streetlight burned at the edge of the road. Mosquitoes and other bugs buzzed around the harsh glare, their moving mass of bodies throwing twisted shadows across the landscape.
"Looks like Dekes and his men decided to leave the restaurant alone - at least for tonight," Bria said.
"Or maybe they just went straight to the source," I replied. "Where's Callie's house? Does she live alone?"
"No, she's not alone. She's already moved in with Donovan. Callie said that she didn't want to try to move and plan a wedding at the same time. " Bria paused. "They're getting married this summer. "
My heart twinged with old, familiar, bitter hurts, but I kept my face smooth. "Good. She'll be safe enough with Donovan tonight, but we'll drive by there anyway and make sure. Dekes probably sent his men after us to show Callie exactly what would happen to her if she doesn't sell out to him. Bodies tend to motivate people far more than threats do. Maybe he thought she needed some more encouragement besides Stu Alexander. We'll come back out to the restaurant tomorrow and talk to Callie about what to do next, about how we can stop Dekes for good. "
Bria shook her head. "What you really mean is that you're going to pump Callie for information about how you can get close enough to Dekes to kill him. I don't know why it surprises me anymore, but it still does. "
I stared at her. "Dekes sent his men to rape and murder us tonight, just because we dared to stand up to his goons. That's plenty enough reason for me to kill him, but what makes you think that he won't do the same to Callie? Or worse? His men certainly wanted to have a go at her. We're just minor annoyances, tourists passing through who were tougher than they looked. Callie is the one that Dekes really needs to get rid of in order to build his seaside casino. People are more vicious about money than any other thing, and it sounds like the vamp has already sunk quite a bit of dough into his project. He's not going to let one woman stand in the way of it, no matter what he has to do or how ugly things get. If Dekes is the kind of man that I think he is, then he likes ugly - revels in it, even, like a hog in slop. "
Bria didn't like it, but she couldn't argue with my logic. My sister might not be as far gone into the shady side of life as I was, but she'd seen her share of bad things as a cop, and she'd dealt with a lot of scumbags, especially since coming back to Ashland.
"Fine," she muttered. "We'll come out here for brunch in the morning and talk to Callie like I planned. But that's hours away. So what do you want to do after we check on Callie's house? If you're right, Dekes can track us to any hotel that we might stay at here on the island, and I don't think you want to ask Donovan if you can sleep on his couch. "
"One step ahead of you, baby sister. One step ahead. " I pulled my cell phone out of my jeans pocket and scrolled through the screens until I found what I was looking for. "Do you know where 213 Mockingbird Drive is?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"Because that's where we're going to stay tonight," I said. "I took the precaution of renting a beach house under another name just in case we ran into trouble down here. "
Bria shook her head. "You can't do anything like a normal person, can you? Not even relax enough to go on vacation for one measly weekend. "
The cold reproach in her voice made me shift in my seat. "I like to be prepared. There's nothing wrong with that. "
Bria snorted, but she made a U-turn in the parking lot and headed back the way we'd come. Callie had given my sister Donovan's address before we'd left the Sea Breeze earlier tonight, and we pulled up to the detective's house a few minutes later.
It was a two-story ranch house made out of gray brick with a wide, flat yard surrounded by a matching gray wooden fence. It was an anonymous suburban home in a nice middle-class neighborhood. No lights were on inside the house. A few televisions flickered through the windows of some of the other homes on the block, but everything else was dark and quiet. Dekes's men hadn't come here, which meant that Donovan and Callie were safe and snug inside his house - and probably in bed together for the night.
Even though there was nothing particularly special about it, I couldn't quit staring at the detective's house. It was a perfect, modest home and just the sort of place that I could see Donovan settling down and being happy in. Kissing his wife good-bye in the morning, coming home to her at night, mowing the yard on Saturdays, playing football with the kids on Sundays. Yes, that's exactly the kind of life I could picture the detective having - with Callie.
"Well, you were right," Bria murmured. "Dekes sent his men after us instead of them. Do you want me to knock on the door and let them know what's going on?"
"Nah. It looks like they're asleep for the night," I said, my voice thick and husky with emotions that I didn't want to think too much about right now. "Let's not wake them. There will be plenty of time to talk tomorrow. "
Bria drove away from the curb. Try as I might, I couldn't help but look back a final time before we turned onto the main road and Donovan's house disappeared from sight.
We passed the Blue Sands hotel again with its gleaming white stone and perfectly landscaped grounds. Bria kept right on going, steering the car all the way to the other side of the island before eventually veering onto a wide, smooth road. We drove through a ritzy subdivision, although the houses were so large and spaced so far apart that subdivision didn't adequately describe the upscale community.
A few minutes later, we came to the end of the road and stopped in front of a three-story beach house that was half a mile away from its closest neighbor.
"Two-thirteen Mockingbird Drive," Bria said.
"Wait here," I told her, and got out of the car.
I'd rented the beach house a few days ago under the name Aurora Metis, which was an alias of mine, and had arranged to have it stocked with some staple foods, fresh linens, and all the other essentials that someone might need for a long weekend at the beach. Given how many people were gunning for me back in Ashland, it hadn't been out of the realm of possibility that some of them might follow me to Blue Marsh, and I'd wanted a safe house to retreat to in case that happened.