Roaring Dawn: Macey Book 3 (The Gardella Vampire Hunters 10) Read Online Free PDF Page B

lid in place. He didn’t see any need to start the stopwatch. Even if Grady did manage the impossible, who cared whether it took twenty minutes and five seconds or twenty minutes and fifteen seconds?
    He turned and wandered into the kitchen where he knew his nephew, like the good Irish Catholic boy he was, kept a fine bottle of whiskey beneath a loose floorboard.
    Linwood poured two fingers of the liquid amber, then splashed in a third one to help wash away the memory of Camilla, and looked out the window.
    The house—the one he’d lived in with his wife until she was gunned down in the crossfire of two feuding gangsters and he realized he needed a change of scenery—overlooked a small park. As it was May, even though it was nearly eight o’clock, the sun still cast a welcome light over the swings and climbing bars below. All were in use, and he felt a twinge of sorrow that he and Camilla had never had children. Grady was as close as they’d come, and they hadn’t even met him until he came to Chicago after the war.
    That in itself had been Divine Providence if it ever was, and Linwood gave thanks every day for bringing the boy—who had never even been a boy as long as he’d known him—into his life. It was miraculous, truly, for, thanks to his mad, deeply disturbed sister’s elopement and disappearance, Linwood hadn’t even realized Grady existed until the boy looked him up in Chicago.
    He didn’t know what he’d do without him.
    He rested his glass on the windowsill so he could take out his handkerchief and blow his nose. Boy needed to dust his damned house once in a while.
    When he looked down to pick up his drink again, he noticed something most curious. Crosses, carved into the wood, there on the sill. Three of them. They were filled with something metallic, something shiny. Like silver?
    Linwood frowned. They certainly hadn’t been there when he’d lived here. What a strange thing to do.
    His attention strayed to the kitchen counter, where Grady had set his pocket watch along with the signet ring he’d been wearing. The ring was silver. And come to think of it, it was a relatively recent addition to his nephew’s wardrobe. A silver ring. And silver crosses set in the windowsill.
    What was the boy up to?
    He heard a rattle and a thump from the other room and grinned to himself, picturing the blarney-brain kicking ineffectively at the coffin from inside. A glance at the kitchen clock told him Grady’d been messing around in there for less than four minutes. I’ll give him another five or so before I check on him .
    “Got some of that for me?”
    Linwood nearly dropped his glass—which would have been a waste—and whirled. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw his nephew standing there, rubbing his wrists, wearing a very smug expression.
    “Holy Mother of God,” was all he could say.
    By now, Grady’s smugness had exploded into a delighted grin as he held out a tangle of ropes.
    To be honest, Linwood was happy to see such a carefree expression on the man’s face, for the last few weeks had been dark ones. It was as if something had happened to change the easygoing yet determined Grady into someone withdrawn, irritable, and frustrated. He’d been the kind of man who could charm the knickers off a nun and have her apologize for taking so long to pull ’em down, but lately, things had been different.
    Ever since Linwood had come home from the hospital, in fact.
    Part of Grady’s change was due to his uncle’s near-fatal injuries, he knew, as well as the shocking death of Harry Houdini. But Linwood sensed something else was wrong with his nephew.
    He’d tried to ask about it, even probed a little about the sweet little colleen he’d been seeing—Macey was her name, he thought , and she had beautiful, dark eyes—but Grady had simply acted as if he didn’t know what Linwood was talking about. He looked at his uncle as if he’d lost a few marbles, to be honest.
    Maybe he had been confused