Page 36

Chapter Twenty-Five

J ohn adjusted the angle of the flexible head of the video camera he was threading between the slats of the heating vent, checking the monitor to be sure it would cover the whole miserable little apartment.

He was in a foul mood, and had been ever since that bruising encounter with the asshole carpenter who’d taken it upon himself to be Nancy D’Onofrio’s champion.

Knightly had been an unpleasant surprise, causing John to lose even more face with his employer—something he could ill afford to do.

For that, Knightly would die screaming. After this shitbag job was behind him, he would take care of that little item.

The carpenter’s gruesome death would be a personal side project.

There were occasional things he did purely for love of the craft, not for the money.

But first, the money. And the helpless, luscious, fuckable D’Onofrio girls.

He’d taken care of the worthless turd he’d hired for local backup, but that did nothing to satisfy the bloodlust raging inside him, which made it uncomfortably hard to concentrate.

That had been just a matter of taking out the garbage before it began to stink.

Pure practicality. No element of recreation, so it blew off no steam.

He looked around Nancy D’Onofrio’s wretched apartment and quickly concluded that she hadn’t located the sketches, or she’d be living much better than this.

He’d searched her sister Antonella’s apartment in Brooklyn the day before.

It was lined with books rather than CDs, but had more or less the same pathetic square footage.

He’d searched every nook and cranny, studied every scrap of correspondence, and rigged watching and listening devices.

Vivien, of course, was currently unhoused, crashing with her sister. He’d been through her ramshackle van, but had found nothing of interest.

The carpenter’s house was the next step, but patience was key to not getting caught or killed. Hard though that was to justify to a demanding boss.

They were always home, and the carpenter never left her alone.

No doubt the dirty pig was fucking her for most of the day.

John didn’t blame the guy. God knows, he was looking forward to his turn.

He thought about that a lot as he sat in the woods, staring through binoculars at the carpenter’s house.

His search of the D’Onofrio daughters’ living spaces had turned up nothing useful.

The time had come to make another attempt upon the D’Onofrio daughters themselves.

At first, he’d leaned toward the younger ones, who were more careless and distracted, but his instincts prodded him in the direction of the oldest daughter.

If one of them knew something, she would probably know the most. Besides, having her snatched from his jaws had sharpened his appetite for her to a knife’s edge.

He was constantly imagining it. Her, beneath him, begging and struggling and writhing.

Knightly couldn’t afford to hover over her forever. Eventually, he would falter. And John would be ready.

His phone chirped, and he cursed. He’d hacked Nancy’s phone so that he could monitor her voicemail, and the app alerted him any time a new message was left for her.

He now knew far too much about the personal and professional problems of the musicians she represented.

They had bored him to the point of wondering if he should obliterate the whole entitled, whining pack of them, just to make them shut up.

But that was just his frustration talking.

He had to stay under the radar. He selected the most recent message and played it back.

“Hey, Nancy,” a woman said. “This is Andrea. I’ve been calling your cell, but it’s not on, which seems odd.

Anyhow, I hope you’re checking messages.

I’m just calling to tell you that I’m really sorry, but you’re going to have to find some other cat-sitter for Moxie.

I decided to take a personal-leave day and drive up to Boston Thursday night so I can see Freedy’s showcase.

I know I promised you kitty coverage, but Freedy and I get so little time together as it is, you know?

Hope you don’t have problems finding another solution. See you at the conference. Bye!”

Boston? Conference? John went back to Nancy’s cluttered desk and shuffled with his plastic-gloved hands through the paperwork scattered over it, looking for something that had flickered at the edge of his attention. Ah, yes. There it was.

A conference program for The FolkWorld Conference. Thursday through Sunday. The Amory Lodge Hotel in Boston. It would be crowded, but she would be distracted, and open to meeting new people, schmoozing, networking. Interesting.

Nancy D’Onofrio was about to have the networking experience of a lifetime.