Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

Jasmyn blanched. Sylvie hid a grin. These brats were too easy. Wright’s grim expression made her amusement fade. These brats were too easily led. Look how they’d fallen for Odalys’s scam.

She was glad when the cops came; uniforms swarmed the room, cuffing the teens, taking pictures, tagging and bagging the stolen goods. Sylvie sidled toward the door, toward Wright, who had slipped out already and was sitting quietly on a poolside bench, the Hands a casual, towel-covered lump beside him.

Adelio Suarez stopped her by stepping before her. She blinked. He’d snuck up on her by the simple expedient of being out of his suits. In jeans and a T-shirt, he had slid past her radar. “Going somewhere?”

“Things to do,” she said.

He cast a glance out toward Wright. “What’s he taken from the scene?”

“You don’t want them,” Sylvie said. “You can’t deal with them. Bella died because she owned one. I don’t think your badge would make you any more immune.”

He strode past her, whipped the towel aside—Wright moving too slowly, stunned by sun and worry—and grimaced. Lio’s throat worked. “What the devil—”

Sylvie came up behind him, dropped the drape of terry cloth over them again. “Shh,” she said. “Don’t look at them. Don’t think about them. You’ll like it better that way. I’m going to take care of them. You take care of the thieves, and everything will be fine.”

He licked his lips, turned toward her, uneasy and exhausted—an off-duty cop who cared enough to come back on shift. “Shadows . . .”

She shook her head. She was going about this wrong, implying she was waiting for his permission. “We’re leaving. We’re taking the Hands. Try not to screw up and lose the teens, huh?”

Wright rose hastily, towel bundled tight enough, the cloth thick enough to disguise the shape. Suarez stepped out of their way.

“You got that pendant still?” Sylvie asked. Wright nodded, handed it to her. She hurled it into the depths of the pool as they passed. It made a satisfying plop . If only the rest of her problems could be disposed of so easily.

The downturn to his mouth echoed her anger. She was done playing pawn to Odalys’s queen. In the core of her being, the little dark voice roused to excitement, filled her senses with the taste and smell of gunpowder, of blood.

SHE DRAGGED THE HANDS, HERSELF, AND WRIGHT BACK TO THE office, her nerves roiling in frustration. Her internal voice, balked of immediate prey, turned itself on Sylvie and what it saw as Sylvie’s unaccountable reluctance to confront Odalys immediately. But it just wasn’t that easy. Odalys had a shop, yes, and they’d been there. Found it empty and warded, a cold end to a trail that they’d just set foot on. Without a last name, even the phone book was an impossible barrier.

“Tell me you got something on Odalys,” Sylvie said over the ringing of the warning bell.

“Are those more Hands?” Alex said. “You think you got them all?”

“I don’t know,” Sylvie said. “How many murderers do you think die in Miami in a given year? Did you get anything for me?”

“Odalys Hargrove,” Alex said. “At least, that’s the name on the property-tax forms for Invocat. She has a condo in North Miami Beach, overlooking the ocean drive.”

“Expensive area,” Sylvie said. Wright took the towel from her, the Hands sticking out at weird angles as if they were attempting to peel back their winding cloths, and said, “Upstairs?”

“For now,” Sylvie said. “We’ll give Wales a call. He’ll have to do a house call and pick these up.”

Wright tucked them tighter into the towel and headed up the stairs. The bell’s chiming grew mournful, softer, as its rotation in the stone bowl slowed. Sylvie looked after him, her thoughts about Odalys temporarily derailed.

“He’s adapting fast,” Alex said.

“He’s had to,” Sylvie said. “Plus, Demalion’s coaching him now.”

“You don’t sound happy about that.”

The bell chimed twice while Sylvie thought. She wasn’t happy; she knew that much. But isolating why was as impossible a task as sifting through broken donax shells to match piece to piece.

Sylvie sighed. “It’s sort of like walking into a room where two people suddenly stop talking. I keep catching him looking at me, and I don’t always know which one it is. He’s switching back and forth pretty freely now.”

“Adapting,” Alex said. “Maybe they’ll share—”

“Some things don’t share,” Sylvie said. “Toothbrushes, underwear. Bodies. Did you get anything on Patrice Caudwell to link her with Odalys?”

Alex nodded, pulling the computer closer on the desk as if she wanted to hug it to her, proud as a mother with a talented child. “Oh yeah. You can thank family greed for it, too. Before she died, Patrice Caudwell, our dead toddler pusher, was worth about fourteen million dollars in actual money. After her death? One million. She made thirteen million dollars vanish in her last week alive, all without leaving her house, wired it to multiple other accounts. Beyond that? She’s tied up her entire estate. Her grandchildren can’t get hold of any of it.”

“She left it to Odalys?”

“That’d be too simple,” Alex said. “Honestly, I can’t even begin to follow all the ins and outs right now. It’s iffy enough just digging deeper through what’s a matter of public record. I get enough to know that there’s some really weird clause involved, turning the accounts into something like a scavenger hunt, something like waiting for lost royalty to show up and flash that crown birthmark. The good thing about that is since the majority of her money is tied up in this crazy-ass legacy, the family’s searching aggressively for the cash transfers.

“Interesting thing is,” Alex said, “Odalys got a big, and I mean big, infusion of cash in her accounts. No way of my telling where it came from, but it’s there. Five million dollars there.”

“Caudwell paid Odalys.”

“That’s my assumption,” Alex said.

“For what? Blackmail? Odalys had to have known she killed the toddler, or she wouldn’t have grabbed her hand for her spell . . . but.”

“But it doesn’t really make sense,” Alex said. “Caudwell was dying. And the death was ruled accidental.”

“So what was Caudwell paying Odalys for?” Sylvie frowned.

“She had household help, right?” Wright asked, clunking down the last few stairs with enough noise that Sylvie realized he had been deliberately stealthy for the first set. But then, she’d been discussing him and Demalion, reason enough for him to play eavesdropper, even if Demalion wasn’t a sneaky son of a bitch by nature.

“She did,” Alex said.

“So you show them Odalys’s picture? Ask ’em for a description of anybody that visited in the last week or so? Maybe they met Odalys, knew why she was there. And hey, Patrice Caudwell was older, became an adult in the fifties. She had money. But I bet you she didn’t know enough about computers to do the transfers herself. Bet she had a money manager. Did you talk to them ?”

Alex slunk down into her seat. “No.”

“There’s something to be said for legwork,” Wright said. “Sometimes you gotta walk the beat.”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “But sometimes your boss won’t let you.”

Wright turned a surprised glance at Sylvie, and she said, “Don’t give me that look. We’re dealing with black magic and murder. Alex stays behind the screen. Demalion can tell you what happens when she doesn’t.”

“You just don’t want to pay me danger fees,” Alex muttered. “The snake thing was once, Sylvie. Once.”

“Once is enough,” she said. “A god intervened to save your life. How often do you think that happens? Still, Wright’s got a point, and most of his questions can be asked and answered on the phone line. Try to track anything down.”