Predator and Prey Prowlers 3 (23 page)

“Jasmine.”

As though scandalized, Dallas put a hand over his mouth. “Oops. Well, you said it, I didn’t.” Then he walked over to kiss Valerie deeply, hungrily. Her hands roved over his body until they broke apart. “Keep an eye on him for me, darlin’. I’m going out.”

“Dallas, don’t do it!” Bill shouted as the other Prowler, his captor, began to walk from the room. “I swear if you touch them, any of them, it will be to the death for us. Either way, you’ll break your daughter’s heart.” All the mockery and amusement disappeared from Dallas’s face then, and he stared back at Bill with sad eyes.

“I don’t even know if Olivia is still alive, Bill. Word is she’s been missing for months. I need allies if I’m going to find her, and so I need Jasmine on my side. I’ve got a dilemma here, and I’m trying to solve it as best I can. If you make me kill you, and Olivia hates me for that . . . well, at least I tried.” With that, Dallas turned and strode from the room.

“Wait!” Bill shouted after him. “What do you mean you don’t know if she’s alive? What the hell do you mean?”

The house threw back echoes, but that was the only response. Valerie stared at him, and a few moments later he heard the front door slam and an engine fire up out front.

Courtney,
he thought, and he began to struggle again, twisting his wrists so hard against his bonds that they cut his flesh and he began to bleed. Valerie watched for a few minutes, but soon grew bored and left the room.

Oh, Courtney, no . . .

C H A P T E R 12

Molly made the drive back from her mother’s house in a kind of daze, where the music on the radio merged with the sound of the engine to numb her mind and heart. Emotions tore at her, crashing against one another, regrets and anger at her mother, grief over Artie’s death, longing for someone to help her make sense of her feelings, not only for Jack but for the pub itself. A place she belonged; a place she even now planned to leave.

All her life, Molly had felt like a girl out of place, detached from life. Artie had changed that, given her moments, sometimes entire days when things felt right and good. But then he had been killed. Now, with Jack and Courtney at Bridget’s Irish Rose, she had found somewhere she was not only wanted, but needed.

How could she leave now?

The clash of her emotions overwhelmed her so much that she was still in a daze when she parked Courtney’s car in the alley lot and walked around the front of the pub. It was nearly seven and the kitchen chaos would be in full swing. Through the windows she could see people seated around tables inside Bridget’s, laughing and talking, eating their meals. Others lingered just inside, sat at benches to one side of the hostess’s station waiting for tables, or crammed into the bar until their names were called. When Molly clutched the brass handle on the door, it thrummed with the noise and energy from within. She pulled it open and stepped inside; it enveloped her, and she felt it again, that certainty that she was not only welcome here, but that this was where she belonged.

Whatever her true feelings for Jack, she would have to work them out for herself. Meanwhile, she could no longer deny a simple truth of her heart: she did not want to leave.

A hand fell on her shoulder and Molly turned to see the harried expression on Wendy Bartlett’s face. The hostess looked as if she had already had a long night, and it was early yet.

“Molly. Courtney wanted to talk to you as soon as you got back.”

“Where is she?” Molly asked.

The hostess frowned and her eyes searched the restaurant for a moment before she shrugged. “She was just here. Ask Jack, maybe?”

Then Wendy went back to her station, marking the erasable map of the restaurant’s table layout and grabbing up a few menus before turning to call out a name to the people waiting for tables. Molly avoided making eye contact with those impatient folks, not wanting to see how they glared at her when they thought she was there to have dinner and had been bumped ahead of them on the waiting list.

She glanced over at the bar and noticed that Matt Brocklebank was still on duty and Bill Cantwell was nowhere to be seen. A buzz of alarm passed through her entire body as her brain began ticking through the frightening math she had been learning of late. One missing bartender and no sign of Jack. Throw in that Courtney was looking for her, and all Molly could think was that something else had happened.

Great,
a cynical little voice in her mind said.
This is the place you’re so sad to leave?

When she did not see Jack in the restaurant either, Molly headed for the steps that led up to the apartment. She had already started up when he pushed through the kitchen door with a tray of salads in his hand. Jack did not notice her, but Molly pursued him to a table where two thirtyish couples were deep in conversation about babies’ bathroom habits. Jack dished out the salads and asked if he could get them anything else. When they demurred he slipped the tray under his arm and turned around, nearly bumping into Molly.

“Hey,” she said.

Jack was startled but only for a second. Then he laughed softly. “Good thing I wasn’t carrying anything breakable. Have you talked to Courtney?”

“Not yet.”

A shadow seemed to cross his features and Jack beckoned her to follow him back toward the kitchen. In a corner where one of the computer registers the wait staff used blinked silently at them, the two stood face to face for the first time since Jack had played interpreter for her and Artie. Molly felt a kind of electric static in the air between them, as though she had reached out to touch Jack and they both felt an instant shock.

“What’s happening?” she asked anxiously.

“A lot,” Jack replied, his expression grim. “I finally got a lead on the Ravenous, what it is and maybe . . . I hope . . . what to do about it. I met someone I think can help, and she’s on the way down right now. There’s more to it than that, though. Bill didn’t show up for work. He’s two hours late, more if you consider he’s almost always early.” Molly stared at him as the implications of that statement sunk in. “Oh, shit,” she whispered.

“Yeah.” Jack nodded. “Courtney’s out of her mind. Matt’s been filling in, but it’s busy as hell. And when Eden gets here, I’m going to have to bail for a little while to deal with this Ravenous thing, if I can.”

Molly had a feeling there was a great deal he was not telling her about the Ravenous, that Jack was more than a little afraid. Still, the situation with Bill seemed both more immediate and more frustrating. At least he seemed to have a plan where the Ravenous was concerned. With Bill, there was not much they could do.

“Has she called—”

“Castillo,” Jack interrupted. “She went up to call.”

His gaze ticked past her, and Molly turned to see Courtney hurrying down the stairs, her momentum making her look far more dependent upon the cane than she truly was. The three of them met at the bottom of the stairs. Courtney’s focus was on Molly.

“Jack told you?”

Molly nodded. “I’ll do whatever I can. Just let me change my top.”

Courtney sighed gratefully.

“What did Castillo say?” Jack asked.

“Took me forever to get him on the line,” his sister replied, shifting her weight off the cane and against the post at the bottom of the steps. “He’s investigating the body but he said he’d go by Bill’s right now. He’ll call the restaurant number if he has any news.” Molly touched her arm. “He’ll turn up. He’ll be okay. I’m sure he’s just trying to track down our visitor from last night.”

Courtney nodded but said nothing, fear in her eyes. They both knew that Bill would have called unless there was trouble, but neither of them was going to say it. Then Molly frowned and looked at Jack.

“Do . . . do you think Artie can help?”

Jack glanced away, then scratched at the side of his head as he looked back at her. “I’ll ask,” he said. Then his gaze shifted toward the front of the pub and something flickered across his face. “Here’s Eden now. If this works, we can get rid of the Ravenous. And hopefully, figure out what’s up with Bill.” He started toward the front of the restaurant, and Molly followed his path with her gaze until she spotted a beautiful girl standing by the hostess’s station and staring around expectantly.
Eden,
Molly thought.
What the hell kind of a name is that?
The girl was maybe eighteen, though she could have been younger. Her porcelain features seemed to have a glow all their own, and the way her face was framed by babydoll curls, she looked almost angelic.

Then Jack was striding toward the girl, taking her hand and smiling as he greeted her. Eden’s eyes shone as she spoke to him, and he led her on a weaving path back across the floor to the stairs. He paused for only a moment to make introductions.

“Let me know if Castillo calls,” Jack said, before going up to the apartment with Eden.

Molly stared after them, and struggled to pretend she did not feel the things that were in her heart at that moment. But she was not fool enough to lie to herself for long. The feeling in her was jealousy, and not a simple twinge of it either, but full-blown possessiveness, enough to make her blush with the realization of it.

“She’s pretty,” Courtney said, her voice soft and knowing.

When Molly glanced at her, this bright, stylish young woman who had become almost a big sister to her, she saw in Courtney’s gaze that the other woman had registered her response to Eden immediately.

Embarrassed, Molly glanced down. “I’m so confused,” she confessed, and until that moment she had not even realized just how tangled her emotions were. She had been hiding from those feelings, and now they had been tugged into a knot inside her.

“Sometimes things are less confusing than we make them,” Courtney said. “It just takes someone to snap their fingers and wake us up to make us see that. Take it from someone who knows.”

With that, she turned and hurried toward the front of the pub, once again ready to deal with the difficulties involved in running the place. Molly bit gently on her lower lip, amazed at Courtney’s strength, and deeply afraid that she was about to lose this home she had spent her whole life waiting to find.

Castillo left his car double-parked in front of the brownstone in Brookline, the bubble light flashing blue on the dashboard. Bill Cantwell lived in a second-floor walk-up in what was an upper-middle-class city neighborhood. Real estate values in this part of town had skyrocketed years earlier and though it was no longer the trendiest place to live in the Boston area, it was still on the list.

Even the foyer of the building was cleaner than most. It made Castillo wonder why Cantwell bothered working at Bridget’s. There was no way he made enough as a bartender to afford an apartment in a building like this, so it only stood to reason he had saved some of the money he made playing in the NFL. A lot about the guy didn’t make sense, but at the moment, the biggest question was, Where the hell was he?

Castillo had buzzed the apartment three times, but there was no response. The building manager wasn’t home either, so he had to resort to hitting the buzzer for all twelve of the building’s apartments. One responded, home during the day.

“This is Detective Jason Castillo with the police. I understand if you don’t want to let a stranger into the building, but if you won’t buzz me in, I’d like you to come downstairs to see my identification, and then open the door for me.” There was a protracted silence. Castillo sighed and was about to hit the buttons again.

“You here to see me?” a voice asked on the intercom.

“Not unless you’ve seen Bill Cantwell in 2C today.”

“I live on the fourth floor. Haven’t seen him. Come on in.”

The door buzzed, and Castillo pushed it open before it could stop. It amazed him that in any modern city a stranger could be buzzed into a building like this simply by claiming to be a cop. He could have been lying, after all. But today was not the day to try to alter the fundamentals of human nature.

He went up to the second floor two steps at a time. Though there were a million reasons Cantwell might not have shown up at work today, Courtney Dwyer’s feelings on the subject had been pretty clear. The guy would not have pulled a no-show without checking in. To Castillo that meant one of two things: either Cantwell really had killed Paul Manning and stuffed him in the trunk of his car, or something had happened to the bartender. The latter, unfortunately, seemed more likely.

Much as he had not wanted to be pulled away from the investigation into Manning’s murder—he wanted to get it wrapped up and swept under the rug as quickly as he could officially manage to do so—Cantwell’s disappearing just had to be related. The DOA’s mother had given him the names of a few of her son’s known associates, and Castillo had tracked two of them down already. Nobody seemed to have a clue about where he was the day he was murdered, but they did share a piece of information that Ellen Manning apparently did not know.

Her son Paul had a girlfriend, an older woman in Newton. The relationship was supposed to have been a big secret, but Paul hadn’t been very good at keeping secrets. He considered the girlfriend a major find, and had crowed about her loud and clear to his drinking buddies.

That was the next stop, this Padgett woman’s house out in Newton.

First, though, he had to see if he could figure out what happened to Bill Cantwell. Castillo stood in the hall in front of apartment 2C and glanced around. Nothing out of the ordinary as far as he could see. Plants on small tables at either end of the corridor—despite the fourth-floor resident’s willingness to let strangers into the building.

He knocked hard on the door, called out to identify himself, even though he was certain in an almost preternatural way that there was no one inside. Cop instincts. Like knowing sometimes just by looking at a kid on the street whether he was carrying a weapon or not. Instinct.

The big man was not home, but Castillo knocked again just to be sure. Then he paused and wrinkled his nose. Something in the air, an acrid odor like burnt hair, maybe an electrical short. He was going to have to try to track down the building manager or the super. Just before he turned to go back down to the first floor, Castillo tried the knob.