Suffocate In Spirit - Shadows of the Night 4

Chapter 63

Hi,

okay, it's finally happening: we're coming to the last chapters of this book. I don't want to tell too much in advance, but this feels like "setting the stage" for the final part of the show ;-) Anyway, I hope you like it! :-)

Lara

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Chapter 63

I checked. Then checked again. Puzzle pieces were aligning, and they made less sense together than on their own. The date of one of the mysterious round-sum payments correlated. One transfer was made on the 8th of April, the day half-witches were found dead in the Crimson District, and the day Nathanial Norson started investigating on that case. Another transfer happened on June 7th, the day Nathanial Norson died.

Was this the information on the drive? But why would Chris Hayes have that kind of thing on a drive everyone was trying to get their hands on? Unless... I stilled. Unless those half witches belonged to the Bloody Warden. I made a note to investigate into it.

There were no eye witness reports among the files I had access to. Nathanial Norson died in a hotel belonging to the head vampire. Round-sum transactions coinciding with the case Norson was investigating and with the date of his death.

I ran my fingers through my hair. I felt like a dog chasing its own tail. Where was the connection? Was this all just a big, impossible coincidence? A swamp of facts and random information I got lost in?

The knock on my door startled me. I looked up, torn from my dark musings and theories, and checked my watch. I didn't expect any visitors at my apartment door, given that no one was supposed to know where I was. What was more, it was daytime, so it couldn't be one of the vamps.

Once I thought about it, I half expected parka dude to be there. I knew Alexander was sending someone to guard me during the day, even when I was in my apartment. Far be it from him to fail to protect 'what was his'. I dragged myself to the door, feeling the deep lethargy that had settled in my bones, and opened it.

I was wrong, about more than one thing. Guess erring is human after all. It wasn't parka dude. In fact it wasn't even someone I had included in my short list of potential visitors. Not at this door and in this apartment.

I stood in the doorway, and for a moment all I could do was stare at him. I hadn't reckoned with him, hadn't prepared myself for the sight. There were hundreds of conversations I had in my mind, conversations in which I would explain why things turned out the way they did. But no matter how often, no matter how many different scenarios I played out in my mind, they never ended well. Because there were no words that could excuse why I left and why I betrayed people that mattered.

I blinked, felt my hand tighten against the wooden handle. "Andy."

His hair was longer, a messy blond that fairly reached his shoulders, but he looked just like I remembered. White shirt and jeans. The kind of stance, that particular set of shoulders that reeked of confidence and determination. My leapt and lurched forward. Yeah. I was happy to see him. I would have been even happier to see him, had it been under different circumstances. Hadn't there been that line of worry between his brows, that troubled flaw that had settled somewhere deep in his brown eyes.

"Will you let me in?" He said.

Such a simple question, yet enough to throw me into a merry-go-round of stun. I blinked at him.

"Of course I will. Come in." I stepped back and he walked in. "How did you find me?"

I closed the door, turned and came to a halt. He'd stopped right in front of me, blocking the way into the apartment.