Page 72 of Fortune's Ashes
She sniffed but she didn’t say anything.
‘I’ll get my people out looking for him straight away,’ Lukas said.
‘They can’t—’ I began.
‘Don’t worry. They won’t hurt him,’ he told me. His eyes flashed. ‘But they won’t let him get away, either.’
I sighed. I’d have to hope that Stubman didn’t put up a fight when the vamps got to him. Despite Lukas’s words, things wouldn’t go well if Stubman resisted.
‘I spoke to Candace,’ he told me.
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Did she have anything useful to say?’
Lukas’s face was dark. ‘Adele was definitely one of Quincy’s clients. Candace said Quincy had been worried about her because one of his other clients who’d dated her wasn’t keen about taking no for an answer. This client had apparently decided that they were destined to be together whether she agreed or not.’
Shit. This was it; this was why all this had started. ‘Who was this client?’ A name could seal the deal as far as Stubman’s guilt was concerned.
‘Candace didn’t know. All she knew was that he was human.’
‘Why didn’t this come up at the time? After Adele was killed, I mean?’
Lukas’s voice was taut with anger. ‘Candace told me that she’d mentioned it but, between Quincy’s disappearance and the troublesome client being human, her information wasn’t taken seriously enough.’
He met my eyes. ‘If Supe Squad had been investigating, maybe it would have been. I checked back through the old investigation files and it was barely mentioned. After Quincy disappeared, the focus was on whether he was the murderer. When it was established that he wasn’t, the dating agency was dropped as a line of investigation.’
He was right: that would not have happened if Supe Squad had been in charge at the time, but it wasn’t appropriate to say so. Anyway, hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
I turned to Buffy. ‘Did you find out anything about Simon Carr?’
She took a while before answering. ‘Yeah,’ she said shortly. ‘He was friends with Quincy but he never used his dating agency. He really did meet Adele at yoga.’
I opened my mouth to ask another question, but before I could a white-coated doctor pulled back the curtain and smiled. ‘Good afternoon! I hear we have a nasty head wound that needs attention.’
Buffy straightened her back. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she said and left without another word.
I smiled back at the cheery doctor and gave Lukas a meaningful look. ‘Don’t let her race off after Stubman,’ I warned. ‘Keep an eye on her.’
Lukas frowned but nodded and went after her, while I hopped onto the narrow examination bed.
The doctor introduced herself and manoeuvred around to examine my head. She sucked in her breath. ‘You’re talking without any issues and your pupils aren’t dilated, so any concussion is likely to be mild. But you might have fractured your skull,’ she warned. ‘We should do an X-ray to be sure.’
‘How long will that take?’
‘We’re quite backed up, so it’ll be a few hours.’
I shook my head. Nah. ‘Stitch me up, doc. I’ll come back later for that X-ray.’
‘That’s not a very good idea.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘You can’t be too careful with head wounds.’
It probably wasn’t a good idea to run off from the one place where I’d be safe, especially given my condition and the echoes of my last Cassandra vision that were still bouncing around my head. My next death could well be imminent.
My stomach lurched without warning, as if my jellybean were suddenly reminding me of her presence. After my conversation with the young werewolf mother, I was already thinking of her as a girl. Lukas’s vampires would find Stubman; I should do as the doctor said and stay here to make sure my jellybean and I were okay.
This was all very new to me, and I wasn’t used to having to worry about my health. I considered my options, sighed and eventually conceded. ‘Alright then.’
‘It’s for the best.’ The doctor patted my shoulder. ‘Wait here and I’ll make sure you’re booked in. I’ll be back later.’
Once she had gone, I reached up and gingerly touched the back of my head. The pain was less than it had been and my thoughts felt clear and unfuzzy. That had to be good, right? But I should still err on the side of caution. I could wait for the X-ray without breaking my promise to Grace about Supe Squad. It would be tomorrow morning before the DNA results came back and potentially implicated me in Cobain’s murder, so there was still plenty of time to resolve all this shit.
