Chapter 15: The Gathering
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Cassidy was in good humor Monday morning, due in a large part to thoughts of her time spent with David and in part to her kids, Cynthia and John. She was grateful to be in the company of her children again, and she showered them with affection up until the moment they went out the door to start their day at school. When she walked through the doors of the 122nd, all eyes briefly glanced at her, but she took no notice. She looked at various individuals on a couple of occasions to return a welcome, but other than that she walked through the precinct with little interest in the people around her. When she reached her squad room, she flashed a smile at her gathering co-workers and made an immediate turn for Lt. Graham’s office.
“Take a seat,” Lt. Graham instructed.
Lt. Graham was seated at his desk when Cassidy entered his office and took a seat in one of the two chairs facing him.
“You dodged a bullet. There were people over my head who were breathing fire every time they spoke your name.”
“But that’s not the case anymore?”
“Yours wasn’t the only neck in the noose,” Lt. Graham bellowed back with a look that said he did not like that response. “The Captain called me in and demanded that I explain what you were doing. And I didn’t know what to tell him.”
“I’m sorry about that, Sir.”
“Here,” Lt. Graham said as he pulled Cassidy’s badge and ID out of his top drawer and set them down in front of her.
“Thank you,” Cassidy acknowledged as she collected them.
Cassidy put the ID and badge in her inside blazer pocket.
“Are there going to be any more surprises?”
“Ah, no,” Cassidy answered indecisively. “I mean, I don’t think so. I haven’t seen any of the reports on Alan Lantz, but it sounds like we’ve got him.”
“Well, let’s get one thing straight right now,” Lt. Graham grumbled back. “You’re off this investigation. You are to have nothing more to do with it.”
“Okay,” Cassidy replied, contritely.
Cassidy was already indifferent to the investigation. Putting it behind her was the plan. Lt. Graham’s order for her do so was completely unnecessary her mind.
“So, we’re in agreement on this?”
“Yes,” Cassidy readily agreed. “The investigation is pretty much over now, isn’t it? I mean it’s just a matter of finding out what this guy was into.”
“Well, there is also the matter of his accomplice,” Lt. Graham corrected.
“Accomplice?” Cassidy questioned back.
Lt. Graham took notice of Cassidy’s confused expression and quickly spoke to it.
“The female voice—you said you heard a woman’s voice in the warehouse.”
Just prior to that moment, Cassidy had no recollection of hearing a female voice in the warehouse or ever saying that she had. She hesitated for several seconds rekindling the memory when Lt. Graham broke into her revery.
“Was there or was there not a third person in the warehouse?” Lt. Graham asked with a concerned look.
“Ah, yeah,” Cassidy returned with a bewildered expression. “I can’t believe I forgot that.”
“If you’re having some issues with your thinking…”
“No, no, I remember. I’m just surprised that I forgot, that’s all.”
“Is it that you forgot or that you made it up?” Lt. Graham sternly challenged.
“What?” Cassidy questioned back with a shocked expression.
“I have detectives out there looking for a female accomplice based on what you told me. So far, they have found no one that’s a fit for that role. Andrew Lantz’s wife died three years ago, he’s single and his daughter lives in California. On top of that, Andrew Lantz was five-eight, not six-feet. He was over-weight, and he was in the early stages of congestive heart failure. Now I’m asking you, keeping in mind that you took a bump to the head, could your recollection of what happened be—distorted?”
Cassidy did not know how to respond to his question. Her memory of what transpired in the warehouse was in her mind, but it existed as a faint, insignificant memory. It took Lt. Graham’s retelling of her own report to awaken it in her head. How and why she had devalued the event so much caused her to question if it happened at all, or to the extent that she reported it. She soon latched on to the idea that her new romance had distracted her far more than expected. She concluded that it did happen.
“No, I think it happened just the way I said.”
“You think?” Lt. Graham questioned with a mixture of concern and suspicion.
“It just seems like such a long time ago now. I’m just having a little trouble piecing it together in my mind.”
Lt. Graham gave Cassidy a wary exam for several seconds.
“If what you say is true then Andrew Lantz’s death was either a suicide done to protect someone else or a murder made to look like a suicide. Either way the only thing we’ve got to go on is the name Christian.”
“Christian?” Cassidy asked with a puzzled look.
The memory of the name flooded into her mind. She remembered the tall man in the warehouse. She remembered the glint of light off his eyes when he looked at her. She remembered how he turned away when the female voice called his name. But her pronunciation was not an exact match for the name Christian.
“Yeah, that’s the name you told me,” Lt. Graham replied. “That was the name you heard, wasn’t it?” He challenged after taking a moment to examine Cassidy’s confused expression.
At that moment, Cassidy’s mind began to wander. The name she recalled had a foreign sound, possibly a European accent. And then she remembered the writing in the pictures. The writing on the cave walls. She remembered the translation of the writing and the name of the author. And then she remembered Janice’s words.
“This is not a word for word translation and the pronunciation of the names are probably off.”
The recollection startled her, and she suddenly looked up at Lt. Graham in wide-eyed amazement.
“Is Christian the name you heard?” Lt. Graham asked again more forcefully.
“No, not Christian,” Cassidy returned hesitantly. “But it sounded something like Christian.”
“So now it’s not Christian,” Lt. Graham returned with exasperation.
Cassidy took a moment to make sense of the memories and images that were racing through her mind. Lt. Graham examined her while he waited for some new thought or memory to come from her.
“Is that all?” Cassidy asked with a sudden look of surprise.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Lt. Graham confirmed with some disgust. “You’re still on desk duty.”
“Okay,” Cassidy acknowledged as she got up and started for the door.
Cassidy hurried out of Lt. Graham’s office and raced to her desk. She paid no attention to the greetings from other detectives. Her focus was on her desk and what she expected to find there. After sitting down, she turned on her computer. When it was fully on, she accessed the Greenbelt Nine case file and navigated her way to the Romanian cave pictures and specifically to the writing on the wall. Her attention went back and forth between the picture and the translation several times. And suddenly, her mind recalled the words from Grigore Stefanescu.
“We dug them up. We let them out. Your city is infested with vampires.”
Cassidy recalled those words again and again. She began to reason that this case had a connection to a 1200-year-old writing on a cave wall in Romania. She told herself that was impossible. There was no such thing as vampires. After a few deep breathes, sober thinking wrestled control away from that outlandish idea. She began to relax into the idea that it was all just a coincidence. Her mind was still settling into that position when Nina raced up to her desk.
“Hi, wow! You’re back,” Nina blurted out excitedly. “I heard about what happened at that warehouse in Brooklyn. I thought you were a goner. It was really making me feel guilty for telling you the cell phone on the other end was in there. But I’m glad to see that it worked out. So, I hear you got him.”
Cassidy endured Nina’s babble with a modest smile and an apprehensive look.
“We’re not sure. They’re still looking into the guy.”
“I thought I heard he confessed in a note,” Nina challenged.
“He did, but we have reason to think that he may have had one or more accomplices,” Cassidy replied while still pondering her answer.
“In that case, I think you’re really going to like what I have,” Nina responded with enthusiasm.
“What’s that?”
“I found a cell number that looks like it could belong to your accomplice,” Nina gushed excitedly. “It’s assigned to a prepaid phone from the same lot as the others and it went active eleven days-ago.”
Cassidy was surprised to hear what Nina was saying, but the claim was not enough to convince her that she was right. Her first thought was to challenge her assertion.
“What makes you think this is the new phone?”
“Because it’s the last phone in that lot to be activated,” Nina explained excitedly. “I checked it against a list that the cell company accidentally emailed to me. All but two of the other phones in that lot were activated more than two months-ago. The two that were activated since then belonged to your suspect, presumably, and they’re no longer active. This is the last prepaid phone from that lot. I think this is your guy. Who else would hold a prepaid phone for that long without using it?”
Cassidy took her time to consider Nina’s new information, and the first thought that popped into her head was the fact that she now had the means to identify the person Albert Haynes was talking to. But that thought became a problem. She would have to convince Lt. Graham to sign a court order request giving her access to the cellphone company’s metadata. She knew a court order would be easier to get than a warrant.
A court order is simply a mandate that requires a person to cooperate or avoid doing something as directed by a court or a judge. It does not involve search and seizures, arrests or the suspension of any civil liberties—all the things that a warrant does. Cassidy knew that a judge would be far more likely to agree to a court order, since the metadata would only contain the basic details of the calls: locations, phone numbers of calls from and to the cellphone, times the calls were made and how long they lasted—not the content of the conversations. And to her way of thinking, that was all she needed.
With access to the cellphone company’s metadata, Cassidy knew that she could track the location of the cellphone while it was activated. Her only concern was that Lt. Graham might not look favorably on her idea because it was hers. After a moment to contemplate the situation, Cassidy looked thoughtfully at Nina.
“I’m going to need you to help me explain this to the Lieutenant” Cassidy instructed.
“Why me?” Nina asked.
“I’m not popular with the lieutenant right now, and I need him to sign off on a request for a court order.”
“I already got it,” Nina declared with a toss of her hands. “The Captain signed off on it.”
“You have a signed court order request from the Captain?” Cassidy questioned with a look of disbelief.
“I’m already plugged into the cell company,” Nina returned with incredulity. “That’s why I’m here.”
Cassidy was astonished. That was the last thing she expected to hear. For the first time, there was a chance that she could learn the identity of Albert Haynes’ secret accomplice. By tracking this prepaid phone, she could pin him or her down to a location in real-time.
“Let’s go,” Cassidy instructed with excitement.
Nina led an eager Cassidy into the IT Workroom, went straight to her computer console, typed in some instructions and waited for the monitor to display the results.
“How did you get the Captain to sign off on a court order?” Cassidy queried as they waited for the data to display.
“It’s what I do,” Nina answered with self-assurance. “I submit requests for court orders a dozen times a month, at least. I don’t investigate crimes; that’s your job. I collect, interpret and analyze technical information and the data it produces. The Captain doesn’t even read my request forms anymore. He just verifies that it's connected to an active case and signs.”
“You’re a godsend,” Cassidy responded with a smile.
Nina accepted the compliment with a smile as she continued to wait. It took several more seconds for the computer to respond. Nina was slightly confused by the results, and Cassidy was even more so.
“Wow!” Nina exclaimed as she examined the map on the monitor. “Isn’t that the same location in Manhattan?”
Cassidy had already recognized the location and was in a state of shock. The sight of The Cavern Nightclub in the middle of the monitor dominated her attention.
“This is it. There’s your proof,” Nina insisted in an excited voice. “It has to be.”
Nina’s words went unheard. Cassidy’s mind was too busy weighing the reasons why this prepaid phone might be at or near The Cavern Nightclub. Her mind could not avoid thinking it was just a coincidence. It was too early in the morning for the club to be open for guests, and the club was not scheduled to be open at all on Mondays. She thought that it might be open for cleaning and deliveries, but who would supervise these activities? David was out of the country. Her best guess was that it was the assistant manager.
“I have to go,” Cassidy announced suddenly.
Cassidy turned and headed for the door.
“What are you going to do?” Nina asked, mildly bewildered.
“I’m going there,” Cassidy explained without hesitation.
“No,” Nina responded spontaneously. “I mean, shouldn’t you take it to Lt. Graham?”
Cassidy stopped at the door and looked back at Nina.
“Take what?” Cassidy challenged with a stunned expression. “All I’ve got is a phone number and a theory on how it’s linked to this case. And right now, my theories aren’t popular with the Lieutenant. I need a name and evidence that connects that name to Lantz or Haynes or the Greenbelt Nine.”
“But you’re on desk duty,” Nina challenged timidly.
“I feel a headache coming on. I’m going to take a sick day,” Cassidy responded assertively. “Text me that number.”
Cassidy turned, opened the door and left the room.
“Okay,” Nina agreed with a bewildered look.
Cassidy was motivated by a renewed desire to see who was in possession of that phone. It was the same enthusiasm that sent her into that warehouse. She kept feeling that the time she spent with David had somehow drained her of that obsession. The new information she got from Nina had aroused in her the familiar quality of excitement. She had to see this person. She had to know if it was one or more of the booth three regulars from The Cavern. She knew that she would recognize any member of that group when she was close enough to see a face. And if it turned out to be someone she did not know, then she would only need to call the burner phone and watch to see who answers.
Cassidy was two minutes out of the IT room when Nina’s text came through. It took her less than five minutes to make her excuse for going home early, race out of the precinct and drive out of the 122nd parking lot. She drove at her best speed, trying not to disturb the traffic or risk an accident. She feared the owner of the phone would leave before she got there. And she did not want to risk the possibility of that person disposing of the phone before he or she could be found out.
It took Cassidy twenty-minutes to arrive outside of The Cavern. There was no sign of a delivery truck of any kind in the area, which did not support the idea of a coincidence. Of course, there was the possibility that whatever was happening there had finished.
“Is the burner phone still here?” Cassidy asked Nina after she answered her phone call.
It took Nina several seconds to reactivate the trace and examine the readout.
“Yeah, it’s still there,” Nina reported. “It hasn’t moved.”
It took Cassidy a few minutes to find a parking space around the corner from club. She kept her connection with Nina open as she maneuvered her car into a space.
“Do you see him?” Nina’s voice blared into Cassidy’s earpiece.
Cassidy had just gotten out of her car and started walking back to the front of the club when she heard Nina’s question.
“I don’t know,” Cassidy answered as she walked.
Cassidy went quiet after her reply. She was busy examining the faces of the people she saw on the sidewalk who all appeared to be pedestrians just passing by. She thought it highly unlikely that her perpetrator could be any of them. Her instincts told her that the person she was looking for was inside The Cavern Nightclub.
“What do you see?” Nina blared into the silence several seconds later.
“No one I know,” Cassidy reported softly. “Is the signal still stationary?”
“Yes,” Nina replied after taking a moment to examine her monitor.
“Whoever has that cellphone must be inside The Cavern,” Cassidy returned while deciding her next move. “I need to get in there.”
Nina became moderately alarmed when she heard Cassidy’s plan.
“Shouldn’t I tell the lieutenant or the captain?”
“No!” Cassidy quickly commanded. “I’m not supposed to be here. Remember?”
Cassidy dismissed the possibility of a physical altercation at her current location. She was confident that her quarry had no idea as to what she was about. That alone was reason for her to believe she would find no danger there. The warehouse was an unoccupied private property business in an industrial sector of the city with evidence in it that her suspect wanted to keep hidden. Her current expedition was nothing like the situation at the warehouse. This was a busy city street on a weekday morning. What was there for anyone to hide in such a commercial setting?
“But what if something happens?” Nina asked with more concern.
“That’s not going to happen,” Cassidy pondered out loud. “I can manage on my own from here.”
For a moment, Nina was silent with uncertainty.
“I really think I should tell someone where you are.”
Cassidy understood Nina’s concern, but she believed alerting her precinct was the wrong course to take. She was sure Lt. Graham would call her in, and she knew that a 9-1-1 call with her badge number would be the quickest way to get assistance if she needed it.
“No, Nina,” Cassidy cautioned. “The lieutenant will have me filing paperwork for the rest of the year if he finds out I’m here. I’ll be okay. This is strictly a look and see. I’m not arresting anyone. But if anything does happen, I’ll call 9-1-1.”
Nina considered her plan for a moment then said, “okay.”
“Okay then, I’ll call you later,” Cassidy said then disconnected the call.
Taking the last few steps, Cassidy came to a stop in front of The Cavern Nightclub. As she was making her approach, she had made up her mind to go inside the club. She tried the door and discovered that it was locked, so she pounded on the door three times with the side of her fist and then she waited several seconds for a response. At the end of the wait she pounded three more times and was in the middle of waiting several seconds more when she began to hear the door unlocking from the inside. After a couple of seconds, the door was pushed open.
“Can I help you?” An attractive woman inquired of Cassidy through the half open door.
The woman looked to be in her mid to late twenties, of medium stature with an attractive figure. Her hair was dark brown and shoulder length. Her face was decidedly elegant which made her look out of place as an employee of the club. Her impassive demeanor added support to Cassidy’s conclusion.
“Is David Burrell here?” Cassidy asked after examining the woman.
“No,” the elegant woman at the door answered snobbishly.
The woman paused with her one-word answer, giving Cassidy a haughty stare.
“Is there anything else?”
Cassidy was unperturbed by the woman in front of her. Getting inside the club was the only thought on her mind.
“Yes,” Cassidy responded without hesitation. “I believe I left my scarf in David’s office.”
The woman gave Cassidy a cold, hard stare for several seconds.
“Are you sure that’s what you’re looking for?” The woman asked with a bland expression.
Cassidy was confused by this question. She thought it a strange inquiry for an employee of the club. She gave the woman a look that said she thought the question peculiar.
“Excuse me?”
The woman ignored Cassidy’s remark, then she stepped back and opened the door wider.
“Come in.”
The woman’s response set off an alarm within Cassidy. She got an impression of something menacing about her, but she was not deterred from going in. Plus, she was intrigued to find out why she felt that way about this woman.
The woman shut the door just after Cassidy passed through. Cassidy turned to looked back at the woman, then they stood for a moment smugly examining each other from head-to-toe. The woman was dressed far too formally to be in the process of refurbishing and re-stocking provisions for the nightclub.
“Is there a special event going on?” Cassidy asked, looking at the elegantly dressed woman beside her.
“Yes, very special,” she answered stoically.
“Do you mind if I ask what the event is,” Cassidy casually inquired.
“No, not at all,” the woman returned with a hint of a smile. “I’ll be happy to tell you, if you answer a question for me first?”
Once again Cassidy was baffled by this woman’s manner. Her response now seemed out of place for a guest of the club. She hesitated a moment before replying.
“What’s your question?” Cassidy asked with an edge in her voice.
With a small smile and no hesitation, she asked, “Why are you really here?”
The woman’s unusual question confirmed to Cassidy that she was not a club employee.
“I haven’t seen you here before,” Cassidy questioned with a stern look. “Are you a new employee?”
“I don’t work here” the woman responded with a hint of a nod. “I’m a guest. But unlike you, I was invited.”
The elegant woman paused to give Cassidy a look of satisfaction, then repeated her original question.
“So, tell me, why have you come?”
Cassidy thought the woman in front of her was acting far too bold to be here alone. For a moment, she considered leaving out of fear that there were others hiding in back rooms. But the thought of losing her opportunity to get answers kept her fixed in place.
“I told you,” Cassidy responded with more than a hint of aggravation in her tone. “I left my scarf.”
The woman gave Cassidy a smug look and a slight smile in response. Cassidy briefly endured her haughty demeanor.
“What’s the event?” Cassidy repeated.
The woman’s smile grew in response to her question. A moment later, she briefly looked off toward the entrance to the main room of the club, and said, “I think Lucian should give you that answer. Please go through,” she continued with a gesture of her hand.”
Cassidy gave the woman a suspicious look. She surreptitiously patted the gun beneath her coat. Her replacement handgun was snugly fixed above her right buttock inside the holster that was attached to her belt. She took comfort from the knowledge that it was right where it was supposed to be. She then turned, walked through the vestibule doorway, past the bar and stopped just inside the main room of the club. The elegant woman came to a stop beside her.
The first thing Cassidy noticed was the layout of the tables in the room. The twenty small round tables in the middle of the room were configured into a U formation. The bottom end of the U was closest to the stage with two tables pushed together. The remaining eighteen tables ranged along the sides of the U in pairs. There was one chair behind each table. The excess tables and chairs were pushed back and lined up against the sides of the room. There was just enough room on either side of each pair of tables for someone to walk through. Several of the tables had one or more place setting of raw meat appetizers and water.
The next thing Cassidy noticed was a man seated in a chair at the bottom of the U. He was sharply tailored, thin with blond hair. His stare was fixed on her. After taking note of him, Cassidy began to examine the room. There was no light coming from the lamps above the stage or the bar. A few overhead lamps, the wall lamps and lighted exit signs produced all the illumination there was which caused the center of the room to be far dimmer than usual and the perimeter to be far darker. After taking all of this in, Cassidy watched the elegant woman beside her walk across the floor, around to the outer side of the U and lovingly nestle herself into the chair next to Lucian. When comfortably seated, she looked back at Cassidy with a smile and extended an invitation.
“Please, come in.”
Cassidy was unsure if she should go further into the room. She believed the woman was toying with her. She was worried by the empty chairs in front of the place settings, but despite that, her mind was telling her to go in and get answers, while her instincts screamed beware. She entertained an internal debate for a few seconds, then walked into the middle of the U formation coming to a stop half a several feet away from the tables at the bottom of the U, facing the two individuals there.
“Detective Tremaine, your presence here is very unexpected and less than a pleasure, I’m sorry to say.” Lucian greeted solemnly. “But now that you are here, welcome,” he added with a glancing smile.
Cassidy was surprised to hear that he not only knew her name, he knew her station. Her trepidation doubled at hearing this. The only thing stopping her from drawing her weapon was the fact that the man and woman in front of her did not present themselves as physical threats to her. They were calm, composed and seated. For several seconds, she stared at them while her mind wondered who they were. She then began the task of assessing the situation when the situation changed.
Cassidy was startled by the sound of the kitchen doors opening at the left end of the stage. She turned her attention to see the vague black silhouettes of people entering the room. Shortly, a man and a woman, became visible in the dim light. They walked calmly into the room together. The man was about six-feet tall, with a healthy build and handsome. The woman was blond, of average height, thin and pleasing to look at. His demeanor was stoic. She had a slightly snooty air about her as she maintained the hint of a smile on her face.
An instant after taking note of their faces, Cassidy heard movement behind her. She quickly turned to see the faces of four individuals entering the room through the hallway entrance at the right end of the bar. Two of the faces belonged to people she had seen before: Christine Meyer and Evan Pritchard. They strode into the room as an arm-in-arm couple. The second pair, a man and a woman, were unknown to her. The woman was tall and lean, nearly to the point of being gaunt. The man was slightly rotund, thicker in the shoulders than most and of equal stature to the woman but only average for a man. Immediately after taking note of their entrance, she turned her attention back toward the kitchen doors in time to see Ryan Sandoval and Alexandra Hays enter the room. After taking in their faces, Cassidy heard more movement from behind. She spun around in time to see a group of four more individuals saunter into the room through the hallway entrance. Brooke Chapman and Ronald Hollis walked casually into the main room with amused expressions on their faces. They were followed by a second couple that Cassidy had never seen before. The woman was below average in height, cute in appearance and maintained a seemingly wicked smile. The man was slightly above average height and had an imperious air about him. Cassidy nearly went into a panic at the sight of them all spilling into the room from every entrance and with their eyes fixed on her.
Cassidy watched as they moved into the room and down along the outer rim of the U. They kept their eyes fixed on her as they went. She watched as they came to stops behind a place setting on one of the tables. Cassidy immediately believed that all of them were involved in the Greenbelt Nine killings, and she also entertained the thought that her life was in danger. She pushed back her coats and put her hands on her hips. She eased her hand back until she could feel the top of her handgun against the edge of her right-hand thumb.
As Cassidy turned to look back toward Lucian, she unlatched her handgun, stripped her weapon out of its holster and brought it up and aimed it at the center of Lucian’s chest with practiced ease and swiftness. In that same instance, a question came into her mind: Who are you? She began to speak it, or at least she thought she did. Her sense of awareness faded out for what seemed to be a second or two. Her knowledge of this momentary fugue state became apparent as her thinking returned. For a moment, she stood in the middle of the U in silence as she actively worked to restore her wits. Shortly, her consciousness was functional enough to process the information from her senses. A few seconds after that, her memories began to reform. The return of her faculties soon brought Cassidy to the awareness that she was no longer in possession of her gun.
Cassidy realized that her arms were still stretched out in front of her, but there was no gun in her hands. Then she noticed that the booth three regulars and the other six strangers had taken seats behind a place setting. They were examining her behind whispers, giggles and smiles. Her mind struggled to understand how they all came to be settled into chairs without her seeing it happen. After glancing around the tables with a startled look, her eyes came to light on Lucian’s table. On it, she saw her gun and her cellphone. She looked up at Lucian with wide-eyed amazement and a question.
“What are you?”
“Oh, I think we’re well past that question,” Lucian responded with an amused countenance.
With that answer, Cassidy’s feeling of dread increased noticeably. The hope that her wildest imagining was nonsense crossed into the realm of plausibility. She silently stared at Lucian for several seconds before she heard footfalls approaching from the hallway entrance again and spun to see who was entering this time. A slim, good looking man with brown hair was the first to walk into the room. He was slightly under six feet in height. His focus was fixed on his movements as he entered. He did not look at Cassidy as he came to a place setting at the top right of the U-shaped formation of tables. He looked back toward the entrance he emerged from. Cassidy followed his gaze in time to see two more individuals enter the room arm-in-arm.
The woman who strode through the hallway entrance was of average height with a slender figure. She too was elegantly dressed. Her dark brown hair fell about a foot below her shoulders. Her facial features leaned toward the exotic and she was easily someone most people would call attractive. Her gaze locked onto Cassidy the moment she walked into the room. Cassidy had never seen the woman before, but the man was familiar to her. He was someone she knew and was very much shocked to see. Cassidy watched him as he escorted the woman into the room without returning her look. He kept his gaze low and straight ahead. The couple stopped in front of side-by-side place settings at the top right of the U. The man pulled out the chair and held it for the woman. She, in turn, lowered herself into the seat with overstated grace while holding her gaze on Cassidy. Her escort fixed his gaze on her as she settled into the seat, and Cassidy held her gaze on him. They maintained this quiet triangle of stares for several seconds. Finally, the exotic woman shifted her gaze from Cassidy to address her escort.
“Aw, Cristiãn (kris-shē-ôn), she’s lovely. Please share,” she said with overly feigned sincerity.
A shiver shot through Cassidy when she heard these words. She looked down to the woman in wide-eyed terror, then she looked up to the man again. As she did, David Burrell looked up to return Cassidy’s gaze for the first time. He held his position and her stare for several seconds before lowering himself into the chair next to the woman he came in with. Seconds after he was seated, Helga, the average height blond woman that came into the room with Christine and Evan, began a malevolent tone of discourse.
“So, what do we do with you?”
A few brief snickers spewed out from around the room.
“She’s a problem that we must resolve.”
Stefan, the man that Helga came into the room with, responded with a severe stare at Cassidy and a hard edge in his tone. There was a brief silence behind those words as the assembled group shifted their gazes back and forth between Lucian and David. Cassidy noted the speaker and then the glances. She then turned her attention back to David for an explanation.
“There is no hurry on that, Stefan.” Lucian gently counseled after a pause. “We are not all here yet, and Detective Tremaine may prove to be useful.”
“Useful?” Stefan complained argumentatively. “Based upon what I’ve heard, she’s a nuisance.”
“I am a New York City police officer and there are people in the department that know I am here,” Cassidy addressed Lucian in a defiant voice. “They will come here if I don’t call back in another five minutes.”
“Let’s see about that,” Lucian said just before going quiet and holding his stare on Cassidy.
Immediately after hearing his words, Cassidy’s self-awareness dissolved away as she slipped off into a trance.
ns216.73.216.13da2
and then Add to home screen.