Page 136 of The Third Grave (Savannah 4)

Nikki felt a new fear. Now they were both armed. If they found her . . . Oh, Lord. She flattened herself to the weathered siding again.

“You really think I’m nuts?” Tyson demanded, an amused, evil smile in his voice.

Ashley didn’t back down. “Paranoid for sure.”

“Is that right?”

“Okay, then.” Nikki heard the sharp, distinctive click of a clip being shoved into a gun’s magazine. “Let’s find out.”

CHAPTER 33

“Just send backup,” Reed ordered, his voice low as he jogged toward the abandoned inn, his cell pressed to his ear. He cut the connection to the department and slipped his cell into his pocket as the night closed around him. A full moon was on the rise, offering a shadowy silver light, and stars winked bright in the vast sky above the tree line, but dread filled his soul. What the hell had the Marianne Inn to do with anything?

Why wasn’t Delacroix answering?

Why the hell had she lied to him about the locket, about visiting Austin Wells?

Because she’s not the cop she wants you to think she is. He mentally kicked himself for not calling and checking on her himself. He knew a detective in New Orleans—Reuben Montoya. They’d worked together long ago and he could’ve given Reed the goods on Delacroix. But he hadn’t. He’d trusted the department.

Dear God, why was his wife here?

He had a bad feeling about what was going down out here in the woods, a real bad feeling. As he approached the old lodge, he kept to the side of the lane using whatever brush he could find as cover, his eyes searching the surrounding darkness.

Hugging close to a row of live oaks, he rounded a wide bend to a weed-choked clearing where the Marianne Inn loomed on the shore of the river.

Windows on the lower floor of the huge, rambling structure glowed eerily, the upper story steeped in darkness. The inn, like its counterpart the Beaumont manor, was abandoned and falling into total disrepair, though tonight, it seemed, the Marianne was in slightly better shape, most of its windows intact, its chimney not yet crumbling, its wide porch still flanking the structure.

Was Nikki inside?

Dread pounded through him.

His jaw clenched so tight it ached.

He pulled his service weapon from his holster and focusing, trying to keep his emotions under control, hurried forward, surveying the grounds.

Two vehicles were parked near the front door: a dark pickup with smoked windows and a white SUV—a Bentley? With stickers of a family—man, woman, son, daughter, and dog—and a license plate holder announcing: LIFE IS BETTER AT THE BEACH scrawled across the top and TYBEE ISLAND written along the bottom.

The SUV had to belong to Ashley Jefferson.

So what was she doing here, and what did it have to do with Nikki?

His bad feeling was getting worse.

He had no idea who owned the pickup but was about to find out. As for Nikki’s Honda?

Nowhere in sight.

Was that a good sign?

Or an omen?

Her text replayed in his mind:

At the Marianne Inn. Settler’s Road. Get here fast. Be careful!

His stomach churned. He had assum

ed she’d written the text herself. But what if someone else had her phone? What if she’d been coerced into sending it? No—she was clever enough to have added something that would cue him that she wasn’t writing it of her own volition. But someone else could have her phone.

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