The Grave Robber: A Charley Davidson Novella by Darynda Jones

Author:Darynda Jones [Jones, Darynda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Charley Davidson, 1001 Dark Nights, Darynda Jones, paranormal romance
Publisher: 1001 Dark Nights Press
Published: 2023-09-04T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Five

“I’m gonna wing it.”

—Me about something I most definitely should not wing.

Half an hour after leaving Halle’s place, I was knocking on the door of a lakefront mansion I might’ve been able to afford if I sold my soul. And my internal organs. And my Harley. No way was I selling my Harley.

A man in his late fifties wearing a T-shirt and a thin pair of sweats answered. I’d felt underdressed until I saw him. Thanks to a late-night text from Jason, he knew I was coming.

“Mr. Nordstrom,” I said, greeting him with a nod.

He took my hand in a firm shake. A businessman, through and through. “Mr. Vause, call me Donald.”

“And please call me Eric.”

He gestured me inside. “I have it set up in my office, but if you have any questions—”

“I have several thousand.”

He pressed his lips together and nodded. “I thought you might.” He led me down a long hallway with wooden floors to his home office.

“Sorry for the late-night visit.”

“Please, don’t apologize.” He shook his head and rubbed his red-rimmed eyes with a thumb and index finger. He’d been crying. Jason must’ve told him about the fate I’d seen for his daughter. “Anything I can do,” he said, his voice cracking. “Any time, day or night.”

“Thank you.”

He sat me behind a massive oak desk and woke up his computer. A video was already cued up. “Just press play.”

I viewed the grainy video from a surveillance camera set up in Halle’s kitchen on the houseboat. The angle captured a tiny bit of her bedroom as she slept in the background. I could only see her blond head given the covers she had pulled up to her chin.

After a moment, a dining room chair slid slowly across the kitchen floor, scraping the tile and not stopping until it butted up against a cabinet. Creepy? Yes. Legitimate? That remained to be seen.

The video flickered as the timestamp jumped forward, the clips pieced together rather shoddily. The next clip showed a cup launching itself off the countertop and crashing against the fridge. The clip had sound, and the crash was loud enough to wake the dead. Metaphorically. But Halle didn’t move. Didn’t even flinch. That fact was even more suspicious than the cup.

“There’s one more event,” Donald said.

I waited until the next flicker. This clip was from the same camera, only this time, I saw Halle’s face in the background, blurry and monochromatic but clearly her. She breathed softly with her hands under her chin, which didn’t change, even when the blanket covering her slid down to reveal her complete state of undress.

Though I should have looked away, I didn’t blink until the door to her bedroom slammed shut with a violent boom that would’ve shaken the whole boat. It was almost a warning to anyone watching—a very possessive one.

“That’s it,” Donald said. He’d walked away to gaze out a huge plate glass window, unable to watch what his daughter had been going through.

The timestamp between the three clips

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