Spell Bound - Kelley Armstrong [93]
“You said there was a man with her.” Giles, I was guessing. “Could you describe him?”
“Better than that. He’s in another picture. I sent you all of them. I took a bunch, because I was sure my friends would never believe me.”
I checked my phone. There were two with Giles—I passed the phone to Cassandra.
“He’s with the movement,” I said. “He’s the leader. A guy named—”
“Thank you, Eloise,” Cassandra cut in. “That’s very helpful.”
I glanced over to give her shit for interrupting. The expression on her face stopped me. She was staring at the photo. When she caught me looking, she passed the phone back.
“Well, I think that’s everything we need,” she said to Eloise. “Savannah? Any final questions?”
“Nope.”
As we got up to leave, Eloise rose, too. “Do you have to go already? I was hoping you could stay for a drink. I’d really like to get to know you better. You seem like such an interesting person.”
What a nice thing to say. It would be even more flattering if she was talking to me.
“We need to check out a few things,” I said. “But we’ll call tomorrow if we can make it. Right, Cass?”
“Hmm? Yes, of course.”
Which proved she was paying no attention at all. A middle-aged shlub brushed his hand across her ass on the way out and she was so distracted that she didn’t say a word. Nor did she even seem to notice when I veered off track to discreetly return the dog-collar bracelet to the table where she’d found it.
“Okay, what’s up?” I said as we stepped onto the sidewalk. “You know that guy in the photo, don’t you?”
“He’s the man you met? The one who was in charge of the group?”
“Um, yes. It’s all in my report. You did read my report, right?”
“I skimmed it. Aaron mentioned something about the leader possibly being a vampire, but he said you’d vetoed the idea, so it didn’t concern us. That was the man, though, wasn’t it?”
“He’s not a vampire. Warm skin. Breathing. Didn’t try to charm me, which would have made things easier. The only reason I suspected vampirism was because Roni hinted he’d been around a long time. Oh, and I met Anita Barrington, too. She’s the woman who called herself Althea.”
I paused. “Gary Schmidt said something about immortality. If Anita Barrington is a key member of this movement, that must mean something. Maybe they’re promising their followers immortality, which is bullshit, but—”
I noticed Cassandra had fallen a few paces behind me. I turned. “Cass?”
“What was the man’s name?”
“Giles.”
“Last name?”
I shrugged. “Didn’t get one. So you know him? He’s not a vampire, is he?”
“I . . . don’t know.”
“Okay. Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Not yet.”
I stopped and turned to her. “I’m your partner here, Cass. If Lucas brought me here, obviously he—”
“—trusts you to uncover the truth. Which is exactly why I’m not sharing this with you. I need to verify a few things first, and we need to finish helping Lucas with that little boy’s disappearance before we launch into something new. You look into this bodyguard situation, while I make a few calls.”
twenty-nine
Great plan. Except I wasn’t sure how to look into the bodyguard situation. I guess Lucas wanted me to check out the possibility that Frankie Salas was in desperate need of cash, so desperate that he’d betray the Cabal.
I liked that explanation. It exonerated Bryce. Unfortunately, I’d already forwarded Salas’s details to Paige, and she’d sent back a clean bill of financial health. He rented an apartment that fit well within his means. He had a reasonable loan on his car, and he paid it every month. His credit history was clean. If this guy owed money, it was for something less legitimate—drugs, gambling, women. But if he was that kind of guy, he’d never have made it through the background checks to become Bryce’s bodyguard.
The only other thing was to search Salas’s apartment, in hopes that if he was involved in Larsen