J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [931]
Damn shame he couldn’t brainwash them permanently. But that parlor trick with the Pontiac driver was as far as he could go with the influence: brief and unsustainable for longer than a couple of seconds.
Fucking free will.
After the computer booted up, he went to the Caldwell Courier Journal site. . . .
Hello, front page. The “Farmhouse Massacre” was covered in a number of articles—the blood and the body parts and the strange oily residue garnering all kinds of Pulitzer-light description. Reporters also interviewed the police who’d been there, the postman who’d called 911 in the first place, twelve kinds of neighbors, and the mayor—who was evidently “calling upon the fine men and women of the CPD to solve this terrible crime against the Caldwell community.”
Consensus was: ritual deaths. Perhaps tied to an unknown cult.
All of which was just background chatter obscuring what he was really looking for—
Bingo. In the last article, he found a short two-paragrapher reporting that the crime scene had been broken into the night before. The “fine men and women of the CPD” had grudgingly allowed as how one of their late-night patrol cars had done a drive-by and found that person or persons unknown had ransacked the scene. They were quick to point out that relevant evidence had already been removed and they were putting a black-and-white there full-time from now on.
So the Brotherhood had followed up on his little message.
Had Xhex gone there, too? he wondered. Maybe waited to see if he’d show up?
Shit, he’d missed a goddamn shot at her. And the Brothers.
But he had time. Hell, when his body went full-on shadow? He had an eternity.
Checking his watch, he got his hustle on, changing quickly into black slacks and a turtleneck and that hooded raincoat. Drawing on his leather gloves, he slid his black baseball cap on and gave a gander in the mirror.
Yeah. Right.
Rummaging around, he found a black T-shirt that he ripped to ribbons and wound around his face, leaving room for his lidless eyes and the cartilage that was left of his nose and the gaping maw that was now his mouth.
Better. Not great. But better.
First stop was the bathroom to check and see how his troops were getting along. They had all passed out in a heap on the floor, their arms and legs intertwining, their heads here and there . . . but the fuckers were alive.
Man, they were so bottom-of-the-barrel, dregs-of-humanity types, he thought. If they were lucky, collectively their IQ might creep into the triple digits.
They were going to be useful, however.
Lash locked the house up tight with a spell and stepped out into the garage. Popping the Mercedes’ trunk, he lifted the carpeted panel, took out the bundle of coke, and loaded up both his non-nostrils before getting behind the wheel.
Gooooooooood mornnning! As a choir of chaos lit him up from the inside, he backed down the drive and headed out of the neighborhood, going the opposite way from the cops and ambulances that had arrived at the house across the street.
Which now had a drive-through as opposed to a living room.
Once he hit the highway, the trip downtown should have been ten minutes, but because of rush-hour traffic, it was more like twenty-five—although with the racing in his mind and his body, he felt like he was at a total standstill the entire time.
It was a little after nine o’clock when he pulled into an alley and parked next to a silver van. As he got out, he thanked God for the blow—he actually felt like he had some energy. Trouble was, if his Extreme Makeover didn’t finish up fast, he was going to go through that stash in the trunk in a matter of days.
Which was why he’d called for this meeting now instead of waiting any longer.
And what do you know, Ricardo Benloise was on time and already in his office: The maroon AMG he was squired around in was