Death Becomes Him - 9

Rory’s funeral had been set and Trent was finishing off the last bits of business at the hotel so he could take the next two days off to go up for it. Before shutting down his computer, he made one final check of his email to be certain there were no last minute ones he needed to deal with.

The first thing he saw was a message with no subject. He started to send it to his spam folder when the address caught his attention. He frowned but was intrigued as the email came from ‘ghovamp.com’. Probably a fanfic group planning of holding a con here in town. That had happened before, with the administrators looking for available housing for the attendees, although they would usually put something it the subject line to indicate that.

It opened at his click. There were three short sentences.

I’m not dead. Meet me at Lafitte’s at midnight.

Tell no one.

What the fuck? What kind of game is someone trying to play? Who’s not dead?

Of course the second he thought that, he knew. Not that he believed a word the message said. Still his heart beat faster.

It can’t be. This is insane. And if it was him, which it’s not, why wait until now to get in contact with me?

He was certain whoever sent the message had chosen Lafitte’s for a reason. It was one of the central stops for all the ghost and vampire tours, and a place where he and Rory often met up after they got off work. Sending him there would give veracity to the idea it was Rory who had sent the email, if that’s what they were trying to do.        

He started to hit the delete button. Not that that will erase the message from my mind. Instead, he forwarded the message to his personal email, then deleted it before getting off the Internet and closing down the computer.

After gathering up what he needed to take with him, he walked out to the front desk of the hotel. His mind was still spinning, and his traitorous heart was still beating in overdrive, but he managed to keep it together while he let his people know he’d be back in two days. Then he handed Jennie, one of the clerks, his duplicate house key. She was going to stop by a couple of times a day to feed and walk Beau while he was gone.

On the drive home, all he could think was that the message had to be from someone who was trying to mess with his head. The problem was, he couldn’t think of anyone he knew who would do that. He didn’t have any enemies. Hell, he didn’t even have any disgruntled ex-lovers. Since Rory’s disappearance he’d made it a strict policy not to let himself get involved with anyone on more than a very short term basis. “You can’t get hurt if you don’t let someone in” was his motto and he’d stuck with it.