Page 63 of Last Resort

Minutes later they lost sight of him. Carr was gone.

Erik rejoined Ben and Hendricks and shook his head. “I didn’t see him.” Ben cursed, agreeing. All of them were out of breath.

“He shouldn’t have been able to get away like that,” Hendricks muttered, clearly pissed off at losing their suspect. “It’s almost like he?—”

“Has a magical artifact helping him?” Erik supplied. “If the rumors we heard are true, then I suspect Carr wanted to power up his item before the ritual tamped down the site’s power. He might have hung around to see what was going on, figuring we’d be too distracted to notice him.”

“Whatever he did, it worked, dammit,” Hendricks groused. “Stay out of trouble.” He gave a warning look to Ben and Erik before he drove off. Erik figured the chief needed to vent his anger by snapping at someone since Carr slipped their grasp.

Ben and Erik walked back to the Commodore Wilson site, where a few stragglers were just leaving. Jaxon and Arjun had waited for them and hurried over.

“We thought we saw Carr, but lost him. He’s a slippery bastard,” Erik said.

“Always was,” Jaxon agreed. “I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry again. Let’s go get second breakfast.”

The four of them adjourned to The Spike, which offered hearty breakfasts as well as being a favorite place for lunch and dinner. Erik always enjoyed spending time with Jaxon and Arjun, although the couples’ busy schedules often interfered with plans to get together. Between Jaxon’s time on Broadway and Arjun’s adventures in high-tech, they had plenty of entertaining tales to share.

Erik suspected that Arjun and Jaxon took the lead, spinning stories to lighten the load for him and Ben, given the current situation. He went with the flow, appreciating the chance for a light-hearted meal with good friends.

Afterward, Ben walked Erik back to Trinkets. “I’m going to the office; I’ll just leave work early and be done sooner.”

“Okay. Be careful—Carr’s still out there, and he’s not done yet,” Erik warned as he entered the security code.

Ben kissed him. “You too. Keep the doors locked until your usual time. Carr’s got more reason to be looking for you than for me.”

“I will,” Erik promised. “Text me later?”

“Count on it.”

Erik stepped inside and, with a stomach full of tangled emotions, watched Ben walk away. He still felt strange after the ritual, as if the combined power of the group and the dark energy of the genius loci was discordant music barely in earshot. Knowing Carr was still in town worried him, both on his own account and for Ben’s safety.

The whole sordid business was coming to a boil, and Erik couldn’t shake the feeling that he and Ben needed to solve the mystery of Edwin’s missing treasure before Carr beat them to it.

Time was running out.

NINE

BEN

Ben arrived at the rental real estate office before Jenny and started a pot of coffee. He eyed the boxes of Raines’s personal effects that were stacked in an unused office, where they’d sit until the search for legitimate next-of-kin had been exhausted. Having the boxes nearby gave him the creeps, but he didn’t like the idea of putting them in a storage unit where they would be more vulnerable to theft.

“What a mess,” he muttered, waiting for the coffee to brew.

It took a moment for Ben to notice the strange skritching from the back of the office. He had turned off the security system since Jenny was due soon, and now he wondered if he should have waited.

Ben grabbed the gun from his desk drawer and advanced on the back door, clearing each room as he passed. He moved silently, staying low to get the drop on an intruder.

He caught a glimpse of a man in a dark stocking cap and jacket hunching by the back door to pick the lock and opened his mouth to shout a warning before firing. Before he could speak, a cold wind swept through the hallway, turning the air frigid. Furious screams nearly deafened him, and a plume of red smoke streaked past Ben, slamming against the back door and shaping itself into a spectral face twisted with rage at the intruder.

“Get out!”a voice shouted so loud it shook the window glass.

Ben stepped back, wide-eyed, heart pounding. His gun wouldn’t protect him against what he guessed to be Tom Raines’s furious spirit.

For a moment, Ben spotted Holden Carr’s face through the window. Carr held up something long and slender, covered with gold, and shouted something Ben didn’t understand.

Raines’s ghost shrieked in torment and dissipated in long streaks of red mist as if the gold artifact had shredded his soul.

Ben raised his gun to fire, but Carr had vanished.

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