Dragon Gate (18 page)

“They’re in Wales,” Graham said.

“Your home is still a crime scene, so you’ll want to make other arrangements for tonight.”

“Very well,” Graham said. “Do you have any news for us?”

“It’s early in the investigation,” Kramer said. The Boulder police were more cautious in the way they handled things since the JonBenet Ramsey case back in the nineties. “You said no one else was at the house. Correct?”

“That’s correct,” Graham said.

Kramer nodded and jotted a note in her pad.

I figured Graham knew it would only raise more questions if they discovered I was there at the time. Rayna looked at me, but she seemed to understand too.

Graham shrugged. “Like I told you on the phone, my sister and I have been here all day.”

“And how are these three involved?” Kramer asked, pointing at Kelly, Brand, and me with her pen.

“They’re providing security for me and my sister at the moment. After our parents were killed, it seemed prudent.”

“No offense, Mr. Shade, Ms. Chan, and Mr. Easton, but you don’t look like a security team.”

“That’s the idea,” I said.

“Have you noticed anything unusual since you’ve been guarding them?”

“It’s been quiet,” I said. “We haven’t seen any threats or suspicious behavior from anyone, though clearly we would have seen something if these two didn’t have to work today.”

“Fortunate,” Fredericks said. He looked to me as if he knew they weren’t getting the full story. Cops tend to get that look a lot. It comes with the territory since they spend their days having people lie to them.

“Not so fortunate for Tess, Chantelle, and Mr. Jenkins,” I said.

“Had you been there, the casualties would have been higher,” Kramer said.

“On their side,” Brand said with a twinkle in his eye.

I gave Brand a look, and his grin faded.

“We’re very good at what we do,” I said. “There is certainly a chance that we could have stopped them, though it depends on how they attacked. I’m afraid I don’t have that information.”

Kramer almost smiled. “Do you have a card, Mr. Shade?”

“Of course.” I pulled out my wallet and gave her a business card.

She frowned. “Private investigator?”

“I sideline as an executive protector. I trained with Beckland and Associates.”

She nodded. “Excellent firm.”

“They are.”

She turned back to Graham. “Dr. Noble, you told me on the phone that you locked the house before you left.”

“That’s right.”

“And yet the back door was open with no sign of forced entry.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Horace Jenkins was found in the backyard without his head.”

Rayna covered her mouth.

“Jenkins is a smoker, so did you find any cigarettes near the body?” Graham asked. “We don’t allow him to smoke in the house. I mean, we
didn’t
allow that. I’m sorry. He was a good man.”

“He had a pack of cigarettes in his pocket,” Kramer said. “I’ll note that it’s possible he stepped outside to smoke. Have you had death threats, Dr. Noble?”

“Detective Jenkins, we’re on TV a lot, so we get death threats from time to time, but we haven’t had any recently. Do you think the killers were after us in particular? Earlier, one of the officers I spoke to said it looked like a home invasion team.”

“No, Dr. Noble. This was more of an execution. There are a lot of valuables in the house, and while we’ll definitely need you to do an inventory later to see if anything is missing, I saw some obviously expensive items that any burglar would have taken.”

“So you think we’re being specifically targeted.”

“That’s our theory. Four members of your family have been murdered in the last few days. Where I come from, we’d call that a clue. So yeah, I’d say it’s likely.”

I liked her.

“But why?” Graham asked.

“You tell us. Do you have any enemies?”

“I can’t imagine anyone actually trying to kill us.”

“Perhaps you should engage your imagination, Dr. Noble.”

“It just doesn’t make sense.”

Graham was convincing. He was quite the salesman, I’ll give him that. Still, I could tell Kramer wasn’t in a buying mood.

“Detective Fredericks has a few more questions for you.” Kramer turned to me. “Mr. Shade, I’d like a word.”

She led me outside.

“How can I help?” I asked.

“You have a team of three people to protect the Nobles.”

“That’s right.”

“Shouldn’t you have more?”

“Dr. Noble isn’t particularly thrilled to have three of us. He refused a larger team.”

She nodded and handed me a card. “If you think of anything or see anything, please call me. If he’ll accept police protection, we could probably arrange that too.”

I laughed. “No offense, Detective, but Dr. Noble will refuse protection. He doesn’t think he’s in any real danger.”

“In spite of all these deaths?”

“I didn’t say he was the brightest bulb on the branch. The only reason he’s letting us stick around is because his sister insisted.”

She sighed. “Some of these rich people seem to think that money makes them invincible.”

“If I see or hear anything that might be useful, I promise to call. In the meantime, we’ll do everything we can to keep Dr. Noble and Ms. Noble safe. And if you have any questions we might be able to answer, just call. We’ll do anything we can to help you.”

“Just be aware that this is clearly the work of a team. They are vicious. I’m not sure what they used to chop off the heads. Machetes is my guess.”

“Are you thinking MS-13?” I asked, suspecting that was where she was heading with the machete comment. MS-13 or Mara Salvatrucha is a criminal gang known for hacking people apart with machetes.

“I haven’t ruled it out.”

“Well, the Nobles aren’t drug dealers if that’s what you’re thinking. If they were, I wouldn’t work for them. And I can’t imagine how they could have come in contact with anyone from MS-13, but I’ll certainly be on the lookout.”

“Off the record,” Kramer said, “I know you’re holding out on me. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

The subtext here was that if she thought she could get away with it, she’d force the issue, but because the Nobles were rich and connected, she knew she had tighter boundaries. The department had to be careful when it came to people with money because, quite frankly, money is power. If the Nobles were even middle class, this entire conversation would have gone much differently—especially considering three corpses at their house.

“I understand,” I said.

She nodded. “You have my number. If you need us, please call.”

“Thank you, Detective.”

She looked at my card one more time then tucked it in her back pocket. “We’ll be in touch,” she said.

KELLY CHAN

After the police left, I pulled Rayna aside. “I need to talk to you. Is there someplace a bit more private?” I whispered.

“Sure,” she said. “Follow me.”

She led the way to a room filled with mats that had mirrors along one wall. It reminded me of my dojo, though I suspect they taught yoga or Jazzercise here instead of martial arts.

“This room will be vacant until seven tonight, so as long as you don’t need me for hours on end, I think we’re good.”

Rayna sat on the floor because there were no chairs, so I sat down on the mats too.

“What do you need, Kelly?”

“Answers,” I said. “First, how is Lucas going to react to his daughters’ deaths?” What Jonathan had told me earlier bothered me, so I wanted Rayna’s take. She knew her uncle.

Rayna frowned and didn’t speak for a moment. I could tell she was trying to choose her words with caution, and I suspect she needed time to compose herself too. “I wish we could have protected them. I feel terrible about it.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

She sighed. “Let’s just say it bothers me a lot more than it will bother Lucas.”

“Do tell.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. He’ll
say
a few things about how bad it is, and he might yell at Graham or Jonathan, but at the end of the night, he won’t really care. It’s not as if he lost his sons.”

“How many sons does he have?”

Rayna smiled, but it wasn’t a smile of joy. “Three. Wesley and Lucas Junior live in Boulder. His oldest son, Vance, is on the other side of the gate. He didn’t come with us because he married a noblewoman, so he now owns land.”

“What you’re saying is that Lucas doesn’t care because they’re women?”

“He holds on to the old ways more than my father ever did. Graham is closer in attitude to Lucas than our father. Where I’m from is probably best compared to how it was in Europe during the Middle Ages. Women simply don’t matter that much.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Rayna. It’s still that way in parts of the world today. Islamic countries, for example, or even China. The one-child policy led to incredible numbers of infanticide and forced abortions when the parents realized they were going to have a girl.”

“Did that have anything to do with you becoming a Sekutar?”

I shook my head. “No. I was born here in the States, but my father sold me to DGI after my mother died and he didn’t want to take care of me.”

“That’s horrible! I’m so sorry.”

I shrugged. “Ancient history. We’re all the people we are today because of what we’ve been through. If my father hadn’t sold me, I might be a lawyer or even an actress since that was my childhood dream.”

“Yes, well, if we’d remained on the other side, I’d probably be dead right now,” Rayna said. “Strange how the roads of life provide us exits to different destinations.”

“All right, so Lucas might be mad, but it will mostly be for show,” I said. “I think that’s criminal, but based on what Jonathan said, it unfortunately doesn’t surprise me.”

“Was there something else?” Rayna asked.

I nodded. “Tell me about those destroyers.”

“I don’t have anything useful to tell you about them. I’ve only seen them in cages, and that was when I was a little girl. I do have vivid memories of Thomas feeding a horse to one of the destroyers. The destroyer ripped the horse in half and devoured it in less time than it takes me to tell you about it. That’s why Graham and I called them destroyers. They’re really called bolons, and according to legend, two bolons can take out an entire army.”

“How do you kill them?”

“You don’t. At least, I don’t know of a way.”

I shrugged. “If it comes down to it, I’ll go with decapitation. That generally works on everything.”

“They don’t really have necks, so that might be harder than you think.”

Esther popped into the room. She looked at Rayna then at me. “Am I interrupting?”

“It’s all right, Esther,” I said so Rayna would know whom I was addressing. “We’re just enjoying some girl talk.”

“That sounds like berries to me, but I’m here to tell you Graham is ready to go.”

“Well, it certainly wouldn’t be proper to keep a man waiting,” I said without getting up.

“Is it time to go?” Rayna asked. She started to rise.

I motioned for her to sit. “Don’t even think about going right now.” I turned to Esther. “Have Jonathan tell Graham we’ll be ready in a bit.”

“Okay,” Esther said and popped away.

“Graham won’t like that,” Rayna said.

I smiled. “Good.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

JONATHAN SHADE

That night, we all stayed in a hotel. Brand shared a room with Graham, Kelly shared a room with Rayna, and I had a room to myself. Esther stood guard in the hallway so she could pop in to warn me or Kelly in case of danger.

We didn’t expect danger, of course. The Marshall Clan wasn’t up on technology, so they weren’t likely to be checking local hotels. From what I’d seen of them, they were physically dangerous, but they weren’t likely to be much trouble.

After we all got cleaned up, we met for dinner in the hotel restaurant. Graham wanted to go somewhere else, but everyone was tired, so he decided to make do.

Rayna sat on one side of me, Kelly on the other. Graham did his best to ignore the conversation. He just wanted to eat and go to his room to work on the development and rollout plan for his wonder drug. I didn’t know how he expected to make that work since it required their saliva, which didn’t seem like something they could easily mass produce, but that was above my pay grade. Brand ate quickly so he could guard Graham. When they excused themselves, Graham told Rayna to charge the meals to the rooms and he’d cover them all.

“We need to go kill the Marshalls tomorrow,” I said.

“Just like that?” Kelly asked.

“They’re the enemy. We kill them, we can go home.”

“You know, a year ago, I’d have suggested that, and you’d have shot it down as an option. You’d try to find a nonviolent way to resolve things.”