Melissa clapped a hand over Christopher’s mouth before he could say anything potentially insensitive. “Thank you two for what you did. Bill me for the rest of your time and we’ll call it even?”
Wolfe glanced at Scarlett for confirmation, then nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
At that moment Nikki Shaw came around the corner at the end of the hall, car keys clutched in one hand and the other one holding the strap of an overstuffed messenger bag. Her eyes were wild and her shoulders were tense until she saw Christopher, at which point her whole body seemed to deflate. She closed the distance between them and yanked him into a hug by the front of his wrinkled dress shirt, pulling Melissa into the embrace a second later.
“I got here as soon as I could, I’m so glad you’re okay,” Nikki said when she stepped back, flicking a tear off her mascara-coated lashes. “How’s your dad?”
“He’s going to be fine.” Christopher looked truly touched by her concern. “Thank you for coming. Any idea what we’re going to tell the press?”
Nikki opened her mouth to respond, but her eyes caught on movement over Christopher’s shoulder and stayed there. Wolfe craned his neck to see what she was looking at and hid a smile when he spotted Frogger with a cafeteria-issued bagel in one hand and her phone in the other, tapping out a text with her thumb. Her curly hair bounced with every step she took in her battered red Chuck Taylors, and she looked up when Nikki made a choked-off sound in the back of her throat, clearly struck speechless.
Melissa caught Wolfe’s eye and winked. “Oh, I don’t think you two have met! Nikki, this is Frogger Sampson.” She was much more chipper than she’d been a moment ago. “Frogger, this is Nikki Shaw, Christopher’s campaign manager.”
Nikki seemed to snap back to reality. “Um. Hi. You’re, uh… nice to meet you?”
Frogger blinked rapidly behind her glasses, and if Wolfe wasn’t mistaken he thought he saw a blush darken her cheeks. “Hey. You, too.” She put her phone away and squared her shoulders. “I seem to have forgotten to get coffee to go with this bagel, and if you just drove up you’re probably hungry. Do you want to come with me to the cafeteria?”
Nikki nodded and shoved her keys in the messenger bag before thrusting the bag into Christopher’s arms. “Yes, I do. Very much.”
The rest of them managed to stifle their good-natured laughter until the two women were out of earshot, but just barely.
~***~
That evening, as the sun sunk below the tall pines that surrounded the town of Petersham, Sebastian rode down Route 2 in the backseat of Constantin’s Mercedes—but due to his concussion and his overall disagreement with this plan, Constantin wasn’t the one driving it. Instead Scarlett was behind the wheel, her blond hair tucked up underneath a black driving cap and her M1911 on her lap. They’d deliberately waited for the late hour in the hopes that the night shift might be less familiar with Anton’s habits.
Wolfe occupied the passenger’s side, and he adjusted the cufflinks on the black suit that Sebastian had stolen for him from one of his father’s bodyguards. He twisted around in his seat to look at Sebastian, his freshly-shaven face pale in the illumination from the dashboard. “You sure this is gonna work?”
“Not in the slightest,” Sebastian replied. His fingers itched for a cigarette. “All I know is that short of a missile launcher, this is the only way we can get into Blakely Manor to retrieve the Rapture formula for Danh Sang.”
“Are these guards gonna buy the story?” Scarlett wondered as they pulled up to the chain-link gate. “That you’re doing a surprise quality control check? Is that even a thing with drug cookers?”
“Let’s hope so,” Wolfe muttered, checking the angle of his tie in the visor mirror.
Sebastian buzzed his window down and leaned out of the car to speak into the intercom next to the driveway, glancing upward to make sure the rotating camera on the fence caught a good shot of his face. “My name is Sebastian Codreanu. I am here on behalf of my father to inspect your facility.” A pause for dramatic flair. “I suggest you let me in.”
The intercom buzzed an acknowledgement and the gate swung open, so Scarlett drove through. Even with the ample headlights on the Mercedes it was difficult to see their surroundings until the trees parted to reveal Blakely Manor, its stone arches and barred windows stately and intimidating in equal measure. Scarlett pulled around the fountain in the middle of the circular driveway to drop off Sebastian and Wolfe, then parked with the nose of the car facing outward in case they had to make a quick getaway.
Wolfe walked a step ahead of Sebastian as Constantin always did, reaching for one of the heavy oak doors but pausing to glance back at Sebastian. “You ready?”
Sebastian took in a measured breath and forced his expression into his best impression of his father’s stern condescension. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Wolfe opened the door, and together they walked into the lion’s den.
~***~
Unbeknownst to Wolfe and Sebastian, they were not the first ones to infiltrate the bowels of Blakely Manor. That honor went to Diana Johnson—or rather to Dajana Jagr, with her recently bleached hair cut into a ragged bob and coke-bottle glasses masking the hazel of her eyes. Getting admitted to Blakely had been easy once Tara combined some false police reports with an equally fake letter from Dajana’s concerned (and wealthy) parents. They only wanted what was best for their troubled daughter and were more than willing to pay for it.
Diana had taken the three medications they’d foisted upon her after admission, holding them in her gullet until she could sneak off to a bathroom and stick her fingers down her throat. Not the most elegant solution, but it was better than being drugged to the gills and unable to defend herself if need be. She hoped violence wouldn’t be necessary, since the only person in Blakely Manor who could recognize her from her work with Anton was Elena Ivanova. She was easy to avoid—after all, she spent most of her time in the basement torturing people.
That was why it was a bone-chilling shock when Diana came out of the bathroom and found herself face-to-face with none other than Xander Murray.
The Mass Art Murderer’s former campus snitch stared at her for a moment, clearly just as surprised as she was and no doubt drugged for real. Any hope that he wouldn’t know who she was went out the window when a slimy smirk curled his thin lips. “I remember you,” he said, the words a bit slurred but understandable. “You were in the parking lot the day Jake and I got into it at Caruso’s—you work for Codreanu, don’t you?” Then before Diana could strike him, he drew in a huge breath and screamed at the top of his lungs: “HELP!”
Diana turned and found herself faced with two huge orderlies clad in white, a coffee stain on one of their shirts indicating they’d come from the break room down the hall. Footsteps indicated there were more of them on the way, and when Xander’s hand snatched the glasses off her face she kneed him in the balls. She saw the syringe as it swung toward her bicep, snarled and tore at it but the orderly had already pushed the plunger down.
The fall to the floor felt like it happened in slow motion, her body going numb as her vision began to fade.
Before she lost consciousness, Diana recognized one of the faces floating above her as that of Doctor Ivanova. “Bring her downstairs. We have some work to do.”
~***~
At around two o’clock in the morning, Scarlett pulled Constantin’s Mercedes into the parking lot at Pope John Paul II Park in Dorchester, the lights from North Quincy visible across the dark gleam of the Neponset River. There were no other cars around at the late hour save for one, a dark blue Lexus sedan belonging to Thanh Ngo. When Wolfe and Sebastian emerged from the Mercedes Ngo signaled to his boss with his hand and Danh Sang got out of the back of the Lexus.
Sang raised an eyebrow when he saw Wolfe. “Where is Constantin? I miss his scowl.”
“He was indisposed and not a fan of working with you,” Sebastian replied. He stuck a hand into the pocket of his leather
jacket and held it out to Sang. “The Rapture formula is on here.”
“It could not have been easy to retrieve,” Sang said, his dark eyes flashing with excitement when he saw the drive. He plucked it from Sebastian’s open palm and examined it like a jeweler would a diamond. “I must admit, I was skeptical when I received your text message.”
“Let’s just say that when you dislocate your shoulder as a distraction in a place like Blakely, you don’t get the best care.” Wolfe rolled the aforementioned shoulder to try and get circulation back into it. “Are we good here?”
Sang held up one finger for patience, and handed the drive to Ngo. He plugged it into a small laptop computer sitting on the hood of the Lexus, and a second later he gave Sang a thumbs-up. “We are indeed. It was a pleasure doing business with you.”
They started to get back into the car, and Sebastian took a step forward. “Wait—what about my father?”
Sang paused. “He will be dealt with accordingly, but the less you know about when and where, the better. It might be a good idea for you to take a vacation.”
Wolfe watched Sebastian carefully as Sang and Ngo drove away and they got back into the Mercedes. “You okay?”
Sebastian stared at him for a moment before he shook his head. “How can I be? I just signed my own father’s death warrant.” He looked out the window, hands curled into loose fists in his lap. “I wish it had not come to this.”
They were all quiet for a moment as Scarlett drove back to Morrissey Boulevard, buzzing up the Expressway past National Grid and The Rainbow Swash. “This is probably a terrible time to mention this,” she said, the natural rasp to her voice as familiar to Wolfe as radio static, “but Constantin told me something the other day, after he saved Lacey and Jake.” Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “Said he has a daughter that he’s never met somewhere in Romania. And since Sang just told us in no uncertain terms to get the fuck outta town…”
Wolfe’s brain processed that little revelation and he sighed. “I’ll have to find my passport and book some plane tickets. Can you fly with a grade three concussion?”
Scarlett glanced at him with one eyebrow cocked. “Do I look like a fuckin’ doctor?”
“I haven’t been back there,” Sebastian said quietly, catching their attention. “I speak the language and eat the food, but we left when I was a child, and the memories I do have are… horrific.” Then in a whisper that conveyed equal parts surprise and hurt: “Why? Why would he tell you and not me?”
“That’s a question for him,” Scarlett replied, not unkindly. She was gentler with Sebastian than she was with most people, which Wolfe appreciated. “And I think that the only way he’s gonna be able to answer it is if we go find his kid, so let’s do that instead of getting roped into your old man’s murder.”
~***~
Epilogue
It was the beginning of October before Danh Sang got word that Sebastian Codreanu and his little friends had left Boston for Bucharest. Once that happened, he used a burner phone to send two text messages to the Mass Art Murderer. According to Anton—who gave up the information under duress, to put it mildly—the famed killer was understandably concerned about privacy and would only respond if the messages were sent to a similar burner phone in a particular way.
The first message was four lines from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 71: “No longer mourn for me when I am dead/Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell/Give warning to the world that I am fled/From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell.”
The second message was a time and place for a face-to-face meeting: Public Garden, 10am. Middle bench on north side of pond.
At five minutes to ten Sang approached the bench in question, hands in the pocket of the raincoat he wore over his suit. It was cloudy and gray, a light drizzle falling on the joggers and clusters of tourists walking the paved pathways and pausing to take photos with the Robin Williams Bench or the Make Way for Ducklings sculpture. At first the bench was empty, and Sang felt a flare of anger—had that damn Rom lied to him?—but right as he reached for his phone, a man in a long trench coat sat down on the bench.
He carried a Boston Globe rolled up under one arm, and he looked familiar even from behind—almost like Jim Wolfe, but not quite. Something different about his gait and the way he carried himself, less like the weight of the world was on his shoulders and more like he enjoyed piling bricks on the bodies of others. He snapped open the newspaper heedless of the moisture, like he didn’t plan on staying in his spot for long.
Sang rounded the side of the bench. If it weren’t for decades of being a hardened criminal he would’ve balked when he realized that the Mass Art Murderer was none other than Joshua Wolfe, older brother to James and Jacob and the state’s former chief medical examiner. Even so, he had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Doctor Wolfe, what a… surprise.”
Josh glanced at him, his face eerily blank for a half-second. Then a smirk curled up one side of his mouth. “Danh Sang. Figured you’d be the one to take Codreanu out eventually. None of the others had the balls.”
“I will take that as a compliment.” Sang sat at a polite distance on the other end of the bench and took the sports section of the paper when Josh offered it. He held the newspaper in front of him but couldn’t make out the words, fight-or-flight making his vision warp. “Once he had the proper motivation, Anton was quite… informative regarding his arrangement with you. I understand that he did not intend to utilize your services again, but I think we could come to an agreement that would benefit us both.”
Josh didn’t look at him again and Sang was grateful for it; when the man wasn’t pretending to be normal, he was downright terrifying. “I’m listening.”
“With Anton indisposed and the Rapture formula in my control, the Red Dynasty is poised to take its rightful position at the head of Boston’s criminal underground,” Sang explained, checking his peripheral to make sure Thanh Ngo was still nearby. Just because he thought the Mass Art Murderer might be useful to his cause didn’t mean he wanted for a second to be truly alone with him. “His son doesn’t have the work ethic to run Stela, let alone the rest of Anton’s interests, but he isn’t stupid. I am planning a complete takeover—however, if it is not executed with surgical precision it will surely fail.”
“Cut the shit, Sang.” Josh’s voice was flat and cold like a sheet of ice. “What are you asking for?”
Sang suppressed a wince. “A distraction for the police and the politicians. Perhaps the return of the Mass Art Murderer?”
The smirk from before turned into a grin, full of shiny white teeth and devoid of any human emotion. “It just so happens I have some unfinished business, so providing we can iron out the details… you’ve got yourself a deal.”
Josh stuck out a hand and Sang shook it.
This city will not know what hit her, Sang thought, too lost in his own ambitions to see he had made a deal with a much bigger devil than himself. And neither will Sebastian Codreanu.
THE END
Acknowledgements
They say the sophomore season of a TV show is always harder than the first one. I have no idea who “they” are or if that’s true, but I do know that writing and self-publishing my second book was infinitely easier than my first. These acknowledgements sections never get any easier to write, mostly because there are so many people in my life that I’m grateful for and want to thank.
Mom and Dad are always going to be first, because you’ve continued to believe in my crazy dream even when it’s not going so great. I've learned so much from both of you and I love you to pieces.
Nurse Caitlin will always have a huge role in the Wolfe & Vaughn universe, and like I said the last time, it wouldn’t be what it is without her. She’s pretty cool and I’m so glad we’re friends.
While I was writing this book I met some super-cool people, including my best friend. Kaja, you’re a kind, supportive, all-around awesome human being and I am so happy you decided to
message me that day. My life is better with you in it, babe.
To Katie, Aimee, Lavender, MK, Thistle, Delta, Tuuli, Pluto, Erin, Frankie, Sarah, Lexi, Nev, Paige, Twelve, Loch, and the rest of my Tumblr fam: THANK YOU. Whether you know it or not, you helped keep me sane while I was doing this—and yes, you fall into the category of “super-cool people”.
I probably forgot somebody I wanted to mention, so presume that if we’ve ever interacted at all I appreciate the hell out of you.
If you like the cover of this book, it was created by Mindbomb Design on 99designs!
Last but certainly not least, I want to give a huge shout-out to my Kickstarter backers! Without them this project would not have been possible. In no particular order, thank you to: Katie F., Faith G., Geoff R., Katelyn, Lyndsey Aldous, Miley Doerr, Jaxon Fischer, Ryan Wildgoose, Georgia Sokolov, Tango Charlie, Tuuli Ruponen, Giovanni Rivera, Enzo Rivera, Brizeida Rivera, Kaja, Dżaneta, Robert Thomas, Joseph Yankech, David C., Rai Knightshade, and Aimee Schwintz.
About the Author
Samantha Simard possesses a deep love of books and she's been writing stories since she learned to read. She's a fresh voice in the mystery fiction world, and wants her characters—many of whom are LGBT+ and/or minorities—to reflect the broad, ever-changing world in which we live. Her other interests include reading, archery, video games, and searching for a way to consume coffee intravenously. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University and is continuing her education with a Master’s of Fine Arts, also from SNHU. You can visit her website or follow her on social media to tell her she needs to write more.
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