Page 77 of Brimstone Bound
I thought about her story. All the pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place. Tony had found Anna’s attacker. He’d probably told Becca what had happened, and that had set her off too. But whoever had attacked Anna had realised what Tony had discovered, followed him here then killed him to keep him quiet. She’d done the same to Becca, no doubt incapacitating her in the same way she’d incapacitated Tony – and Anna. She’d obviously thought I wasn’t strong enough to need to be drugged first, and had slit my throat on the mere off-chance that Tony had also confided in me.
‘I bet your drink was spiked in Crystal,’ I murmured. ‘Some sort of poison or drug to weaken you.’
Anna was pale. ‘Whatever it was, it worked. I still don’t feel well. I can’t keep any food down. I still have to go to St James’s Park tomorrow night, but I feel as weak as a kitten.’ She met my eyes. ‘I can’t not go. We have to be there. I can’t control my wolf at full moon. If I’m not in the park when I change, anything might happen – I could end up killing someone. It would be devastating for my clan if I did that.’ She swallowed. ‘It would be devastating for all werewolves.’
And vampires, too, I imagined. In the last few days I’d come across more than one human who was looking for an excuse to get rid of the supes. ‘Let’s not worry about that right now,’ I said briskly. ‘Let’s focus on who your attacker was. We need to find them before the moon turns.’
‘Tony didn’t tell me who it was,’ Anna said. ‘I asked him, but he refused to say. I think he was afraid that I’d go and find her myself.’
Either that, I thought sourly, or Tony wanted to deal with the mystery woman so he could prove to DSI Barnes that he was keeping his end of the bargain. I ran a hand through my hair. What a fucking mess.
‘Do you have anything to drink in here?’ I asked. After all that alcohol, my mouth was dry and my tongue felt furry. I needed to rehydrate myself while I thought about what to do next.
‘There’s water and juice in the mini fridge,’ Anna said.
I walked over and opened it. As I reached for a bottle of water, I spotted the sandwich on the bottom shelf. ‘What’s this? Where did this come from?’
‘The sandwich?’ Anna shrugged. ‘Tony gave it to me. Not to eat but to store. He put it in there when he first arrived. He was planning to pick it up after he’d checked into his room, but then he called me and said there was a problem with his fridge. He made me promise not to touch it – but even when it was fresh there were no worries on that score. Just the thought of it turns my stomach. I’ve not been near it.’
I pulled it out gingerly. The sandwich was unwrapped, but it had been sealed inside an evidence bag. I held it to the light to examine it more closely. It looked like roast beef and sauerkraut.
‘Oh,’ I said faintly. I sank down onto the floor.Oh.
‘What is it?’
‘What did you eat after you left Gregory’s place on Sunday morning?’ I asked.
There was a beat of silence before Anna answered. ‘A roast-beef sandwich,’ she said in a small voice. ‘From Sullivan’s Sandwich Shop. It’s my favourite. I grab a sandwich from there pretty much every day.’
‘Did you tell Tony that?’ I swung my head towards her. ‘Did he know?’
Anna bit her lip and stared at me wide-eyed. ‘Yes. He asked me about it.’
I stared at the sandwich in my hands. Bingo.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Other than the bartender, Lukas was the only person left in the DeVane bar. I marched up to him, my arms swinging, grim determination propelling me forward.
‘D’Artagnan. From the look on your face, you’ve found what you were looking for,’ he murmured.
I raised my chin. ‘I have.’ My voice hardened. ‘Butch Cassidy.’
‘I’m pretty sure he died over a hundred years ago. I don’t think he ever came to London, either.’
‘Not that one.’ I told him what Anna had revealed, together with my discovery of the sandwich.
He rubbed his chin. ‘So Brown visited the sandwich shop to speak to this Butch Cassidy. When you went outside, he deliberately aroused her suspicions. He wanted to see if he could goad her into giving him a spiked sandwich.’
‘That’s what I think. She wanted to weaken Anna because the only way she could take Anna’s rank from her is to openly challenge her during the full moon. She wouldn’t beat Anna in a fair fight, so she thought she’d even up the odds. But she took it too far when she tested Anna in the park. Cassidy probably only wanted to check that the poison was doing its job. Unfortunately for everyone, the attack made Anna go to Tony, which then led Tony back to Cassidy. Deliberately or otherwise, he asked one too many questions and got himself a poisoned sandwich in return.’
‘She broke into Brown’s flat to kill him and retrieve the sandwich.’
‘But he’d already gone to the DeVane Hotel with the sandwich. Maybe he meant to drop it off for testing afterwards, or maybe he had an inkling that Cassidy would go after him. Either way, she knew she’d been found out and she tracked him down to the DeVane. She injected him with the same poison she’d used in the sandwich and killed him. She wanted to avoid any further scrutiny, so she made his death look like auto-erotic asphyxiation.’
Lukas frowned. ‘But before she did that, she dealt with you. She’d noted you in the store, and was worried that you knew what Brown did. She saw you running after Becca as well, and was concerned about Becca’s involvement. Cassidy panicked and tried to cover her tracks. She wanted to make every death look different to avoid anyone connecting the dots. Becca suicide. Brown misadventure. You—’
‘Murder,’ I filled in flatly. ‘And all because she wanted a leg up the werewolf ladder.’
