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“We can’t stop now,” I said, pacing the room. Back and forth, back and forth. The other three watched me for a few minutes, and then Monroe went back to tapping away at his laptop, probably trying to find out other places where the cowboy might have gone if not Otherworld.
I knew that that would come to no good. The cowboy had been savvy. The moment he realized that we had found Constance Ashbeck he had bought his ticket out of here. He had been ahead of us this entire time.
And now it was Friday evening already. We had only the weekend to close this case, and I could not imagine how on Earth we were going to do that without the cowboy. The damned guy was probably kicking back on some beach in Otherworld, drinking a magical alcoholic cocktail and having the time of his life. And I was here trapped in this hotel room with my team, my friends, who had risked their jobs to help me. Who had gambled that with me on their side, we would come out on top of this. And we were about to lose big.
Everyone was about to lose their jobs. I should have left it alone. I’ve should have done this by myself and never involved any of them. I knew how much their jobs meant to them. They were the hardest working team that I had ever met. And the worst part was how bad I knew Storm was feeling right now. He thought that it was his fault. He had tried to protect his team from this exact eventuality, but his desire to help me had persuaded him otherwise. I was always messing things up for myself, but now I had messed things up for them. Big time.
So I paced, back and forth, back and forth, and then I came to an abrupt stop.
“What?” Storm asked. “Did you think of something?”
The idea had put that had popped into my mind was insane. Even worse than the current situation we were all in. And yet once it had popped into my head, I couldn’t shake it off.
“Maybe,” I said. “But you’re not going to like it.”
Chapter 24
STORM
It was late Saturday morning and Storm was home from Edinburgh. He arrived at his apartment to find that the place looked like a troop of angry, starving adolescents had trampled through it. The kitchen was an explosion of dirty dishes and half eaten food. The bin was overflowing. What looked like half a home-baked cake had been dropped onto the floor and not cleaned up. A fine dusting of white powder covered all of the surfaces. Storm hoped it was flour, since it looked like someone had been baking.
The trail of flour continued down the corridor and all the way into the lounge, where empty pop cans and bottles and the plastic wrappings of various sweet and savory snacks were littered all over the floor. Every single one of the drinking glasses that Storm owned were all over the dining table, along with several empty alcohol bottles. A carton of juice had spilled over and pooled onto the table and the carpet, and dried into a sticky residue.
Saskia and Jenny were each sprawled over a couch, fast asleep and oblivious to Storm’s arrival. Their music was blaring loudly and they also had the TV switched on at full volume, but they were completely passed out. It did not seem possible that two people could have made so much mess in the span of twenty-four hours.
Storm heard a key turning in the lock of his front door, and turned to see his cleaner letting herself in. She took one look at the mess, and at the girls sprawled over the couches, and gave him a mutinous look.
Storm asked her if she would come back tomorrow and he would pay her triple the usual rate and make sure the girls were not lying all over their mess. He had no idea why they had chosen to sleep on the couches when there was a perfectly good double bed in the guest bedroom
He gently tapped his sister on the shoulder, but her only response was to snore and roll over. Storm sighed. The last thing he felt like doing was waking Saskia up and having an argument with her. He had no doubt that this mess and antisocial behavior was an effort to punish him. She was aware that they were due to have dinner with Evaine at 7:00 pm that evening and she had promised to turn up to it. Which she wouldn’t be doing if she was still passed out drunk.
Storm went to get an alarm clock from his bedroom and set it for 5:00 pm. He placed it right next to Saskia’s head where she could not fail to hear it. Full of pent-up energy and needing to fill the hours until dinner, he decided to spend the rest of the day working on his drowned girl case. A whole list of people who had been on the boat that night still needed to be interviewed.
Work would be a good distraction. Storm had agreed to meet Diana at 8:00 pm that night and go together to the Ronin house, where she said she would enact her fail-safe plan to find the killer. She had refused to divulge what that plan was in advance, insisting that he wouldn’t like it but that it was going to work.
Given that his whole team was at risk of being fired when the chief returned to work on Monday, Storm knew he no alternative but to try. After all, if it worked, they would catch Devil Claw, a serial killer who had murdered twenty-eight women over eight years with impunity and was nowhere near stopping. Diana’s methods might be unconventional, but in his experience they usually got results. He had decided to trust her about this case, so now he might as well go all the way. And that made him damned nervous.
Worried that Diana might try to go to the Ronin household without him this evening, Storm had insisted that she meet him outside of the restaurant where he was going to be having a very short dinner with his sisters. Saskia and Evie were going to be mad at him for walking out after just an hour, but what alternative did Storm have? He hoped that hour would be enough to talk some sense into Saskia.
Either way, Storm was going to have to leave the dinner at 8:00 pm on the dot because if he was late to meet Diana there was a risk she would come into the restaurant looking for him. The last thing he wanted was for her to meet his sisters. They’d be mad enough at him for leaving for work, especially since the dinner had been his idea. They already had a problem with him working all the time. He wasn’t looking forward to giving his excuses. He doubted they would think the Steffane Ronin was as important as he thought it was.
After a few hours chasing down witnesses, Storm drove to the restaurant, arriving fifteen minutes early. Evie had chosen the restaurant — or, more likely, her staff had chosen the restaurant on her behalf. It was a Michelin starred Chinese place. Parking his car in busy central London was a problem, and by the time he had found a spot he was already feeling annoyed. He tried to talk himself into a good mood as he headed for the restaurant.
But the person he saw waiting outside it for him did nothing to help his mindset. It was Diana. She was dressed in very classy little black dress, and her hair had been styled half up and half left tumbling down her back. She looked gorgeous. She always looked gorgeous. But what the hell was she doing here?
She gave him a twirl as he approached. “Well?” she said “will I do?”
“You weren’t supposed to be here until 8 o’ clock,” he said.
“I came early,” she said cheerily. “I thought you could do with the moral support. Don’t pretend you don’t need i
t. You’ve been grumpy as anything these past few days.” She slid her arm into his, attaching herself to him like a limpet.
Before Storm could think of an excuse to get rid of her, a chauffeur driven Bentley pulled up on the curb beside them. The chauffeur hurried out to open the passenger door, and Evie climbed out as gracefully as royalty, perfectly balanced even on her extremely high heels. She was wearing a lilac knee-length sheath dress that was the height of respectable fashion, and looked wonderful with dark-haired looks. His sister always looked wonderful. She was the spitting image of their late mother, but a more petite version.
It was ironic that she was so small because she was a formidable powerhouse. She had spotted him already and swept towards him with her arms open. She gave him a perfunctory hug and allowed him to kiss her on both cheeks. “Constantine,” she said. “You’re looking well.”
“Thanks, Evie,” he said. “As are you.”
