Finn shook his head again. “Forget about the theme park. Deirdre wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like that. More important, she wouldn’t have stashed those jewels anywhere she couldn’t get her hands on them in a matter of minutes.”

   Owen crossed his arms over his chest. “You think they’re here in the hotel somewhere?”

   Finn nodded, never taking his eyes off his laptop screen. “They have to be.”

   “Well, if that’s the case, wouldn’t Deirdre have kept them in her own suite?” Owen said.

   “And no doubt that’s the first place Roxy and Brody searched and came up empty,” I said. “But we haven’t looked there yet. Maybe we’ll find something they missed.”

   “Which is why I’m pulling up the hotel schematics right now,” Finn said. “I want to make sure that Deirdre didn’t have any false walls added to her suite or anywhere else in the hotel.”

   This suite had its own printer, and Finn asked Owen to help him hook his laptop up to it. Bria kept surfing, scribbling down all the places that folks had already looked for the jewels, concentrating on the hotel locations.

   While the others worked, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called Silvio. He answered on the second ring. In the background, I could hear him typing away as fast and furiously as ever, even though I had no clue as to what he could be working on since I wasn’t even in Ashland right now.

   “I thought that you were going to have a nice, relaxing weekend while I was gone.”

   “And I thought that you were going to do the same. In trouble already?” Silvio countered in a dry, knowing voice.

   “Is that any way to talk to your boss?”

   “It certainly is when that boss is you. What’s going on?”

   I huffed at his tone, but I told him everything that had happened, including our search for Sweet Sally Sue’s jewels.

   “So let me get this straight,” Silvio said when I finished. “You’ve only been at the resort for, what, three hours now? And you’ve already got people trying to kidnap and kill you? I think that’s a new record even for you, Gin.”

   “Roxy and Brody want to torture and murder us after we find the gems,” I corrected. “It doesn’t make any sense for them to kill us before then.”

   For a moment, Silvio stopped typing, and there was complete silence. “Your optimism never ceases to amaze me.”

   I didn’t think that it was optimism so much as it was fatalism, but I didn’t argue with him. In the background, the typing noises started up again, with every rapid-fire keystroke sounding like a tiny gun going off in my ear.

   “Hmm,” Silvio murmured. “I’ve pulled up the hotel website. Looks like the four of you have a lot of ground to cover. Do you need me to come down there? It might not hurt for you to have some backup.”

   He was right. My friends and I were severely outnumbered, and it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have Silvio waiting in the wings. Still, I hesitated. I didn’t want to endanger another of my friends. And I really had wanted the vampire to have a nice, relaxing weekend, free from all the blood, bodies, destruction, and drama that went along with working for me.

   “I thought that you had plans,” I said, trying to talk him out of coming down here. “You know, finally having coffee with that cute younger gentleman you’ve been flirting with for the last few weeks at the Pork Pit?”

   Silvio huffed. “I’m too old to flirt with anyone. That cute younger gentleman and I just happen to share some of the same interests.”

   “Uh-huh.”

   “Besides, he can wait. I can be down there in a few hours. Just give me the word, and I’ll load my electronics into the car.”

   I would load up the car with knives, guns, and other assorted weapons, but then again, I supposed that electronics were Silvio’s weapons of choice. So I decided to let him do some damage with them. “Actually, I need you to stay put for the moment. I want everything you can dig up on Roxy Wyatt and Brody Dalton. Criminal histories, credit reports, where they went to elementary school. I want to know every little detail about them. They work for Tucker, but I’m guessing that they haven’t been nearly as careful as the vampire.”

   “You think that they’ve left a trail behind that you can follow back to Tucker and the Circle,” Silvio said, picking up on my train of thought.

   “Maybe. At the very least, it sounded like they’d dropped several bodies for Tucker. I want to know who’s been on the vampire’s hit list. It might give me some clue about him or the other members of the Circle or at least what their business interests are.”

   “Done. I’ll have an update for you tonight, or first thing in the morning at the very latest. And I’ll go ahead and load up the car anyway. Just in case.”

   “You don’t have to do that. I can take care of myself, you know. I am an assassin after all. People actually fear me and stuff.” I sighed. “Normal, sane people, anyway.”

   “Uh-huh. Talk to you soon, Gin.”

   Silvio hung up on me. I thought about calling him back and ordering him to stay put in Ashland, but I knew that he wouldn’t answer. Not when he was hot on the trail of Roxy and Brody. Even if he did pick up, I could talk until I was blue in the face and he’d just ignore my protests.

   Sometimes I thought that Silvio Sanchez was more the boss of me than the other way around.

   * * *

   Finn finished surveying the hotel schematics, but he didn’t find any obvious hiding places where Deirdre might have stashed the jewels. So we decided to check out her suite for ourselves.

   The four of us walked down the hallway to Deirdre’s door. Finn slowly hefted the skeleton key in his hand, as though it were as heavy as a brick. After a moment, he curled his fingers around it, slid the key into the lock, and turned it.