Page 118 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

“I knew it,” Galen muttered. “Fucking cowards all.”

Dwayne closed in, grabbed Galen’s arm with what must have been a cruel grip, and Ellery was about to cry out when Galen swung with his cane, first smacking Dwayne in the shin and then, with a truly prodigious swing as the man was crouched down assessing the damage, he landed a solid blow on his back. Dwayne went down with a grunt, and Ellery’s mother caught at Ellery’s hand and dragged him and a stumbling Galen through the doorway to the receiving room, slamming the door shut behind them as Dwayne scrambled to his feet.

“Hide,” she gasped. “Quickly. He’s got no choice but to shoot us, particularly if the FBI storms the place.”

She tapped the bug that had been put under a tacky flower on her tweed Chanel jacket. “Hello,” she muttered. “Are you people there at all?”

Ellery had a sick feeling in his stomach, and he pulled out his phone. Unlike the reception under the carport, which had been stunning, stellar, the Wi-Fi among the gods, their bars had gone down to zero once they’d crossed the threshold,

“Blocker,” he muttered. “Or a dead router. Or he killed all Wi-Fi in the house. Whatever was powering our bugs is dead.”

They heard shouting in the foyer, and Taylor gave them both grim looks. To Ellery’s right was a small staircase, probably a servant’s passage, leading up and away toward the back.

“You go there,” Ellery pointed, because it was small and immediately hid anybody going up from view.

“What about you?”

Ellery gave Galen a speaking glance, and Galen grunted. “I’ll take the closet. Ellery, follow your mother.”

“I’ll take under the desk,” he said. “Everybodygo!”

Normally, hiding under a desk would be a really bad idea—but in this case, Ellery thought he could swing it. A truly massive antique, a mix of ebony and cherrywood, the desk sat back in the corner by the staircase. If somebody went up the staircase in pursuit of Ellery’s mother, Ellery could tackle him, and if they saw him huddling underneath, Ellery was certain his mother would be on the assailant’s back like a vicious killer primate out for blood.

And hiding underneath it was like scooting back into a deep, dank cave.

One that stank of sweat and wet metal and semen, Ellery discovered with a roil of his stomach. Oh God. He eyed the stained leather cushion of the rolling chair in front of him and spotted suspicious crusty blotches.

The antique carpet under his hands was as rank as a movie theater, and he wanted to vomit.

Whatever had been going on here—whoeverhad been going down here—this ostentatiously tacky mansion was being treated like a brothel, and the man in power didn’t appear as though he was in charge of a damned thing. Therealpower was the man with the gun.

The sudden splintering of wood toward the french doors was the only indication Ellery had that his mother must have locked the things behind them as he and Galen had scoped the room. Clever woman, his mother, and absolutely bloodless in a crisis, but Ellery didn’t want her anywhere near the damned gun.

“Where’d they go?” The voice was smooth, cultured—Newton Dwayne, the choir director, whose face no longer matched his cherubic mask from before his stint in prison.

“I have no idea.” Gannett Hoover sounded… well, out of it. Shocky. As though he couldn’t have recognized the people they were pursuing even if they’d been in the same damned room. “Maybe they went out the rear, toward the ballroom.”

“I’ll check there,” Dwayne muttered. “If you see any of those people,use this!”

“Why?” Hoover mewled. “Why should we shoot them? They could have come in, asked their questions, and left, and we could havefled.Why would you even pull out your gun?”

“Because they knew!” Dwayne growled. “All those kids escaped last night—how long do you think it would be before they connected us, huh? How long before every domestic in this whole hornet’s nest blabbed?”

“But my wife…,” Hoover breathed. “She wasn’t a threat. She… she….”

There was a rustle, and Ellery had the impression that the men had shifted position. He could picture the shorter, squatter Dwayne grabbing Gannett Hoover by the fine cashmere sweater. “You may be a sniveling pile of shit, Gansy, but don’t you ever forget who you belong to. That screaming cow was going to take you from me, and that wasnevergoing to happen. She was just as much deadweight as fuckin’ Retty, and Mel should have gotten rid ofthatdumb cow back in college. So yeah, I shot your wife, but it’s not like you were fuckin’ her, Gansy. Face it—your teeny weenie can’t get it up unless I’m balls-deep in your ass.”

“I hate you,” Hoover breathed. “I loved her. She was kind. But I hate you. You… you turned me into thisthing, and I kept getting you kids to feed you because I was just… oh God… you’re going to fuck me for the rest of my life, aren’t you?”

Dwayne’s next words chilled Ellery to the pit of his groin. “If. You’re. Lucky. Nowstay here!”

There was the sound of pounding footsteps, and then, to Ellery’s horror, a sort of meandering step, not to the couches, which Ellery had first assumed, but toward the desk.

Without peering into the dank cave where Ellery crouched, Gannett Hoover collapsed into the stained leather chair.

“I know you’re somewhere in here,” he said, loudly enough to carry. “Up the stairs, the closet—do you think you’re the only ones who’ve ever needed to hide from him?”

Ellery breathed very lightly through his nose, and didn’t twitch a muscle.

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