Which was to say, they had no leads at all on him.
Mrs. Herbert Cambourg, of the vivid dreams, couldn’t go any further than that. She had no recollection of ever meeting the man in person, and yet she was completely certain that she had dreamed about him.
She even seemed a little obsessed with the guy.
Not that Erika could relate.
At all.
And there was something else that was weird. As Erika considered when she’d shown this trailer footage to Mrs. Cambourg, and taken that specific and yet ambiguous statement from the woman, she could remember everything about arriving at the top floor of the triplex penthouse at the Commodore and watching this file with the young and beautiful widow. She could picture the sitting area they’d gone over to, and Keri Cambourg’s long blond-streaked hair and black turtleneck with leggings. She could also recall with perfect detail the sparkly diamond necklace Mrs. Cambourg had been wearing, even though the woman had been casually dressed and it was hardly a glamour gig for a homicide detective to show up and want to talk to you about your murdered husband.
Then again, Herbert Cambourg had somehow been torn in two like something out of Game of Thrones. So it had seemed like common decency to cut the woman a little slack when it came to anything making any sense.
It was right as they’d been talking about the mysterious man from the trailer footage that things got strange. Just as Keri Cambourg had let fly with the man-in-her-dreams statement, a security alarm had gone off down below on the triplex’s first floor, where the collections of odd objects and eerie books were… where the murder had happened.
As a shiver went through her, Erika closed her eyes and pictured the next sequence of interactions with precision, slowing it all down: In her mind’s eye, she saw herself stand up, and watched, sure as if she were viewing footage from a security camera, as she told the woman to lock herself in the panic room. Then, to reassure Keri Cambourg, she explained that it was probably just someone from the CPD who had failed to call in their on-scene.
After that, Erika had descended the curving staircase alone, passing by all the modern art on the walls, arriving at the first floor and…
She was back upstairs with the widow, telling Mrs. Cambourg everything was fine, that it was a false alarm, that no one was down there.
After which Erika had left.
Rubbing her eyes, she reviewed it all again: Watching the footage from the trailer with the widow. The alarm and the stay-here-I’ll-go-check. Then the descent—
Back up with the widow. Then leaving.
The sequence of events was just like the footage playing again on her computer screen, something she knew each second of, something that, no matter how hard she mentally probed, did not change. And her conclusion at this moment was as rock solid as it had been the first time she’d come to the realization.
There was a black hole in her memory.
Sure as if her recollections were a tape that had had part of its recording spliced out… no matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn’t remember actually walking around the first floor and checking that nobody was—
As a sharp pain pegged her over the left eye, she groaned, but she was not surprised. For reasons that made no sense, the sudden spiking headache happened every time she tried to break through the amnesia. And yet she couldn’t resist trying to pull something, anything, out of the void. But wasn’t that the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result?
On that note, she fired up the video for a third time, sat back, and watched the mouse run across the windowsill, and the man enter the trailer, and…
Even though she was getting nowhere, she reminded herself it was better than going home alone.
Too many demons waiting for her there.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Black Dagger Brotherhood Mansion
As Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, stood with his shitkickers planted on the mosaic depiction of an apple tree in full bloom, the Bastard who was in front of him in the mansion’s grand foyer looked like shit on a Triscuit. Which was not only an hors d’oeuvre even Rhage wouldn’t amuse his bouche with, but a very real commentary on what under better circumstances was a male with a lot going for him in the Cary Grant department. Syphon, son of some other guy-who-had-been-good-with-a-rifle, had dark circles under his baby blues, and lids that were half-mast and sinking, and hollows in his cheeks.
And the streaked-back hair thing he’d been rocking on and off for the past month was just reinforcing the facial wreckage, making him look like the “before” in a skin-care ad.