“Any idea where she is now?”

  “Again, what’s it to you?”

  Five one-hundred-dollar bills answered that question.

  “She lives in an old building they rehabbed into cheap units. It’s not that far from here. Or at least she did. Heard they just got rousted out by the new owners. So I don’t know where she’s hanging now.”

  “What do you know about her past?”

  “Heard she came in from out west years back. She showed up here one day. Said she could fight and wanted in on the action. Physically, she looked like she could handle herself, but just being tall and strong don’t make you a fighter. So I put her through a little test. I got her in the cage with one of my guys. He was in his forties back then, way past his prime, but he was still good and he was a dude.”

  “What happened?”

  Sam lit up a cigarette and grinned as he blew out the smoke. “Buddy, what happened was, she knocked my ‘tough’ guy out in about a minute. He woke up a half hour later wondering how a truck could’ve hit him inside the building. Well, after that, I told El if she really got serious about fighting she could go somewhere. Have to be boxing or some unofficial stuff like we do here ’cause UFC don’t have weight classes that heavy. But she only did it locally when she really needed the dough. She fought recently against a real stud, an up-and-comer. El snookered the lady and broke her jaw with one of the hardest kicks I’ve personally ever seen, guy or gal. She grabbed her thousand bucks and walked out of here. Haven’t seen her since.”

  “She ever tell you about herself? Her family?”

  “As a rule, El didn’t talk about herself. But let me give you a warning, friend. The last time she was here she pulled a gun on me because I told her if she dressed up a little and acted a teeny-weeny bit feminine, me and her might have a good time. I mean, some dinner and drinks and wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am and all. I saw the look in her eyes. She would’ve blown my damn head off without a second thought.”

  “Goodness, and after you had expressed yourself so eloquently to the woman.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Thank you for the advice. I will watch myself when I find her.”

  “If you find her.”

  “No doubt that’s what I meant.”

  He got the address of where Cain had last lived. He drove over there to find a fence erected around the property and guarded by security who could tell him nothing of the people who had once lived there.

  “They’re all gone now,” the guard said. “And good riddance. They were all lowlifes.”

  As Buckley got back into the car his phone rang. It was the hospital. He listened carefully, thanked the person, and said he would take care of all arrangements.

  He didn’t start the car. Buckley stared out the windshield into the darkness as he thought about what the doctor had just told him. An undetected and now ruptured brain aneurysm. Nothing they could do. Ken was gone in under a minute. They weren’t sure if it was connected to his recent beating, but they couldn’t rule that out. In any case, they were very sorry.

  Buckley started the car and put on his seat belt harness. So now he had to bury another brother.

  This was no longer a matter of putting El Cain into the hospital.

  It was now a matter of putting the woman into a grave.

  Chapter 27

  BUCKLEY CHECKED INTO AN UPSCALE HOTEL and ordered a late dinner from room service. He made phone calls and sent emails and texts while he ate his meal and drank his wine and thought about the details and decisions ahead of him. Ken would be cremated. There would be no religious ceremony; such spectacle would have been wasted on both brothers.

  Buckley would scatter his youngest brother’s ashes at the site of their father’s brutal attack by the government. From human being, to a corpse, to residence in a jar before being sent headlong into the winds. All in the matter of the blink of an eye, really. It gave one pause, thought Buckley. Or it should.

  His room was immaculate and comfortable, having all the expected high-end accoutrements. Buckley had grown up with none of these things, for his parents, despite the money coming in from their disciples and assorted business dealings, insisted on living simply, and thought that any largesse spent on their children was out of bounds strictly on principle. Buckley had resented that as a child. But he had come to agree with his parents’ philosophy that people needed to earn what they had. However, the living simply part was not something he had adhered to.

  Buckley had acquired the ability to purchase such luxuries not all that long ago. These included multiple residences, luxury cars, a yacht, and a private jet. It had been a hard slough, but he had gotten there in the end. But these were just toys at the end of the contest. Prizes, nothing more. The real thrill was in gaining the money, in acquiring the power, in beating others out for it. The rest of it left him uninterested, even depressed.

  He had been nearly killed four times, starting from the shootout at the family compound—a DEA-fired round had embedded itself in the wall an inch above his head as he lay on the floor—plus three other instances when he had been an adult and was forging his own path in life. And each time, he had never felt so alive as when he had been minutes, or even seconds, from death.

  He took out an envelope from the drawer, and put five twenties in it for the maid the next day. He made a habit of taking care of working-class people because he related to them more than he did the folks with whom he did business. Many of these people had been delivered into the world already on third base and thought it was their own effort that had gotten them so close to scoring. They believed themselves entitled to the best because they had, through no effort of their own, always been given the best of everything. That made it all the sweeter when he outsmarted this “elite” class of what really turned out to be overentitled simpletons far out of a league they stupidly believed they owned.

  He liked the power that money provided. He liked to make as much of it as possible because he wanted as much power as possible. But he had started making money because he had siblings to feed, and the only thing between them and starvation was…

  Me.

  It made a man careful. It made a man think before he acted. Because one mistake could be fatal, on any number of levels. But having thought things through, you were more willing to take a risk, because it was a highly calculated one.

  El Cain, though he’d never met her, struck him as that sort of person, based on all he’d learned about the woman. Under different circumstances, he might have hired her to work for him. She seemed like a downtrodden person who had risen above all that life had thrown at her. He believed she would be interesting and resolute and capable of great things, given the chance. But she would not be given the chance, if he had anything to say about it. Ken had to be avenged. If Buckley let that pass, what next? Before long, he would have no principles left.

  He went down to the pool area, lit a Maduro cigar, drank his wine, sat by the water, and read the responses to his previous communications. He demanded much of his associates. In return they were well paid and he had their backs, come what may. He required absolute loyalty, but unlike many in his position, he returned that loyalty. Not necessarily because it was right or fair, but because, in the end, it was in his best interests. If you threw those who sometimes disagreed with you under the bus, then they wised up, and all you were left with were sycophants. And that was like inbreeding; it made everyone stupid and weak.

  He didn’t care for women like Rosa, who could have handled things so differently with Ken, or not shacked up with him in the first place. It was clear from her clumsy pass at him that she would have jumped into Buckley’s bed if he so desired. That showed no loyalty to Ken and a lack of respect to Buckley. And actions resulted in consequences. He sent out an email with Rosa’s photo attached, to an associate he had put on standby after learning of Ken’s death. The man answered and things were quickly arranged.

  He went up to his room and slept deeply, with a clear conscience but a burdened mind. He rose the next morning, had his breakfast, and tidied his room, folding the used towels, laying them neatly in the corner by the tub. He checked out of the hotel, liberally tipping people along the way and receiving smiles and thanks in return.

  He drove off in his rental and used the car’s Bluetooth feature to check in with his people. The results were promising.

  Rosa had relapsed in her drug addiction, taking an overdose with fatal results in an alleyway behind the women’s shelter. The police were investigating, but it seemed clear that the matter would go no further than that. Buckley’s thousand dollars had been retrieved from the corpse, so no questions would arise from that. They might make inquiries into the gentleman who had been talking to Rosa yesterday in the café, but no one other than Rosa knew about his connection to Ken. And even if she had told someone about him, Buckley had a wall of respectability around him. And there was nothing unusual about a recovering addict overdosing. So that chapter on Rosa was now closed.

  He received another call five minutes later.

  “We ran the license tag on the car,” said the voice. “The owner is Eloise Cain. I’m sending you her personal details, to the extent we could find any. She’s done some jail time, had some drug problems. Curious thing is, there’s nothing on her until she was about nineteen or twenty. Before that, it’s a black hole.”

  “Then dig into the black hole,” ordered Buckley. “And how do we find her?”

  “She has a credit card. We’re using our resources and contacts to track both. She used her card to stay at a Marriott after she attacked your brother.”

  “And her cell phone? She must have one. She can be tracked that way.”

  “She has no registered account. She could have stolen a phone and just uses local WiFi and other free sources to enable calling and internet services, or it might be prepaid minutes or a burner phone or a hybrid thereof; there’re lots of ways around that. Her credit card is registered to an address that’s no longer valid. There’s a Gmail address listed on the account, but she hasn’t used it recently, and there’s no really good way to track it. So we’re keeping a hawk’s eye on the credit card activity.”

  “If you have her car information, can’t you hack into her satellite mapping service and pinpoint her location that way?”

  “It’s an old car and doesn’t have that feature.”

  “Send me the information on the Marriott; there’s probably more than one in this town. And get me a picture of the woman. Maybe a copy of her driver’s license.”

  “On it, sir.”

  When Buckley received the hotel info, he drove to the Marriott and checked in. He spent the day walking around the property and talking to staff members about El Cain. He explained that he was her father’s attorney and needed to get in touch with her about an inheritance. No one questioned his credibility after looking over his professional appearance and listening to his earnest, cultured voice. However, no one had seen a woman matching her description.

  Until he walked into the hotel bar that night.

  He sat on a stool and ordered a bourbon and soda on the rocks. The same bartender who had served Cain was now serving him. He described Cain generally and asked his question, using his cover story.

  The woman nodded. “Yeah, she was in here. Looked like she could use some good news.”

  “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

  “No. She didn’t really say much.” The woman wiped down the counter and attended to another customer while Buckley waited patiently. When she came back over she said, “But something was weird.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was this thing on the news. On the TV right there.”

  Buckley glanced at the TV and then looked back at her. “Go on.”

  “The FBI was looking for a woman. They had her image up on the screen. They said her name but I don’t remember it. Anyway, they were looking into something that happened to her in Georgia in the early 2000s. Well, the gal on the TV looked like some wild animal, she really did. She was tall with these batshit eyes, with long hair down to her butt.”

  “Why is the FBI looking for her?”

  “They didn’t say.”

  “And the connection to Ms. Cain?”

  She placed her elbows on the bar, leaned forward, and said in a confidential tone, “Inheritance, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Big money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go figure. Some of that money coming my way, mister? Because I could sure use it.”

  Buckley placed three hundred dollars on the bar.

  “I like your style,” she said as the money went into a fanny pack on her belt. “I’m a bartender, we have to be observant, read body language and expressions, see if people are three sheets to the wind, you know.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Well, she was staring at the woman on the screen and looking scared as shit. She even spilt her beer. And when she got up to leave, I watched her go. She’d only had the one drink, but it was like she couldn’t walk straight. Whoever the lady on the screen was, that gal knew her somehow, I’m sure of it.”

  Chapter 28

  ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA, WAS HOME to the Biltmore Estate. At nearly 180,000 square feet it was the largest private residence ever constructed in America, and it was still owned by the descendants of the Vanderbilt heir who built it. It was now open to the public for tours and other events, and it brought a great many people to Asheville every year. The town also possessed a thriving arts and wine and food community. The western part of the Tarheel State was picturesque, with the Blue Ridge Mountains providing a brilliant backdrop to the town.

  As Pine and Blum rode into Asheville, neither one was thinking about any of that.

  They had in their sights one person and one person only.

  As the FBI had finally told Blum after some delay—probably because it wasn’t connected to an official case—the phone number that Pine had seen Wanda Atkins input to her phone was attached to a specific address in Asheville. The Bureau had now provided that information, and Pine meant to make good use of it.

  Dusk was coming quickly, and the streets they passed were filled with people sitting in outdoor restaurants with gas-fueled heaters providing warmth; art galleries were ablaze with light and activity, and cars and pedestrians were making their way to a flurry of destinations. People of means seemed to be having a good time trying to figure out where to plunk down their hard-earned cash.

  “I’ve never been here,” said Blum. “It looks quite lovely.”

  “Only we’re looking for the dark side right now, not the lovely,” replied Pine. Following the navigation instructions, she turned right and then left and slowed the Porsche. “And that’s it, up on the right with the white siding.”

  “How appropriate,” said Blum, eyeing the sign out front as they passed by. “Desiree Atkins runs an occult shop. I didn’t think she’d be baking cupcakes.”

  “She goes by the name Dolores Venuti now,” said Pine. “At least the phone is registered in that person’s name. But it’s Desiree, I’m almost sure of that.”

  They had previously gotten Desiree’s file photo from the Georgia DMV. The picture showed a stern-faced woman with protuberant eyes that Blum had proclaimed were “downright creepy.”

  “But that photo is really old,” Pine had pointed out after seeing it for the first time.

  “I doubt she would have changed that much,” said Blum. “People like her never do. Except to get even creepier.”

  The occult shop was in a small bungalow that one reached by going up a set of warped wooden steps. The large sign out front read in exaggerated calligraphy: THE DARK MOON RISING OCCULT SHOP: PSYCHIC READINGS, CLASSIC WITCHCRAFT PRODUCTS, POWER CRYSTALS AND CANDLES, PROTECTION SCARVES, LARGE APOTHECARY SELECTION, AND MUCH MORE.

  “Protection scarves?” muttered Pine. “People really buy that crap?”

  “More than you think. There’s a large occult business in Arizona, in fact.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “One of my friends is in the business. She’s also a tarot card reader, has a psychic hotline, and does workshops for aspiring occultists. She makes far more money than I do.”

  “Then the world is truly upside down, Carol.”

  Pine pulled to a stop down the street. “The place looks dark.” She checked her watch. “I don’t see the hours posted, but she’s probably closed for the day.”

  “It doesn’t look large enough for Desiree to live there, too. And I doubt this area is even zoned for residential.”

  “You’re probably right—she may very well live somewhere else. And she may not have a home landline. More and more people don’t.”

  “I guess there are ways we can find out where she lives.”

  “It’s all a matter of speed and finding the point of least resistance.”

  Blum eyed her keenly. “Why does that make me think you’re about to do something not quite legal?”

  “Oh, Carol, you know me like a book. Wait here.”

  Pine hopped out of the SUV and walked back down the street. She looked around and found this section of the street pretty empty. Good. She tried the shop’s front door and found it locked. She looked through the door glass for evidence of an alarm system, but didn’t see any. Maybe Desiree had put a protection spell on her shop in lieu of contracting with ADT, thought Pine.

  Pine walked around to the back of the building and sized it up. One door, two windows. Large, mature trees ringed the small, park-like area that ran behind all the shops here. An old picnic table sat under the tree canopies.

  She tried the back door but it was locked, as were the windows. Until Pine worked her knife through the gap on one of them and pushed the simple lock back. She slowly lifted the window, ready to run if an alarm sounded, but fortunately none did.

  She slipped through the opening and closed the window, after lowering herself softly to the floor. Her nostrils were instantly breached by mingled pungent scents. She slipped a small flashlight from her pocket and manipulated the lens opening so that only a small, core beam was produced. She shone it over the walls. They were covered with shelves, which, in turn, were loaded with all sorts of things, many of them grotesque, at least to Pine. A bottle of fake shrunken heads was a real eye-grabber.