Novels by Gracy

Graves poured himself a glass of brandy from a decanter on the shelf, then poured a second and set it in front of Nash. His hands were still unsteady. Nash left the glass untouched."You want to know about the Ninth Account," Graves said. It wasn't a question."Everything."The old man sat down heavily in the chair across the desk. Bishop stood by the vault door with Fitch slumped at his feet, and for a moment the only sound was the faint hum of the lamp."Then I'm afraid I'll disappoint you," Graves said. "I have served it for ten years, and I could not tell you its name, its face or its voice. It has none of them. It never calls. It never meets. Its orders come through dead drops, a locker at the central station, a hollow book in the public library, a sealed envelope left in a church collection box. Never the same place twice. The instructions are always typed, always brief, and always perfectly clear.""And payment?""That's the strangest part." Graves turned his glass slowly on th

The burners never reached full heat.Leopold Graves didn't see it happen. He had turned away from the window the moment the flames caught, as he always did. In forty years he had never once watched a man burn. He considered it vulgar, a lapse of professional dignity. He climbed the stairs to his office with his hands folded behind his back, already composing the death certificate in his head.Inside the chamber, the roar of the burners stuttered, coughed and died. The blue flames shrank to nothing. The steel walls ticked as they began to cool, and the hiss of gas fell silent.Upstairs, in the narrow service corridor behind the chapel, a broad-shouldered man with a gray beard tucked a pair of bolt cutters back inside his black overcoat. The severed gas line dripped beside him.His name was Bishop. Twelve years ago he had been a special-forces commander with three medals and a report on the Ravell family's weapons contracts that he never got the chance to file. They had buried him alive

Every empty coffin in Kingsreach passed through one place.Graves & Sons stood on the corner of Sexton Street, a handsome old building of black stone with a slate roof and tall mahogany doors. It was the oldest funeral home in the city and by far the most respected. Mayors had been buried from its chapel, and so had judges, bishops and bankers. When a great family lost someone, it was Graves & Sons who came to the house in their quiet black cars, and they handled everything with perfect discretion.That discretion was the whole business. Behind those mahogany doors, Leopold Graves ran the city side of Black Toll. He forged the death certificates and owned the coroners who signed them. He controlled the dockside crews who carried drugged men and women out of the city in crates. On the island, his name had been a whisper even among the wardens. In the Kingsreach underground they simply called him the Mortician.Eight years ago, he had buried Nash's empty coffin. And tomorrow night, his

"Not here," Elara said, catching his sleeve. "There are cameras everywhere."She pulled him down the service ramp beside the hotel, out of the rain and into the underground garage. The air smelled of oil and wet concrete, and the fluorescent tubes overhead buzzed and flickered. Rows of expensive cars sat in silence. She didn't stop until they were deep among the pillars, far from the entrance, and then she let go of him as if his sleeve had burned her.Her white gown was soaked at the hem. Rain had flattened her hair against her cheeks. She had never looked more beautiful, or more frightened."You have to leave," she said. "Tonight. Do you understand what you just did up there? You humiliated Tristan in front of the whole city. You put that stone on the table in front of everyone." Her voice cracked. "You're going to get Ivy killed."Nash reached into his jacket and took out a folded sheet of paper. He opened it carefully, because it was old and fragile and burned brown at the edges,

For one second the ballroom was utterly silent. Then it erupted.Five hundred voices rose at once. Guests crowded toward the stage, phones held high, while waiters froze with their trays and somewhere near the bar a woman laughed in pure nervous disbelief. Over all of it came the voice of Edgar Ravell, cold and sharp enough to cut through the noise."Where has that stone been?" The old man had risen from his chair. He was tall and silver-haired, with the bearing of someone who had bought and buried rivals for forty years, and he was looking at the sapphire as if it might bite him. "Eight years. Where has it been?"Tristan moved before anyone else could answer. Nash watched him do it, watched him feel the room slipping through his fingers and lunge to grab it back."Where do you think?" Tristan snatched up the microphone again, his voice loud and furious. "He fenced it! He sold it to some criminal the night he ran, and now he's bought it back to use as bait. Don't you see? This is blac

The satellite phone buzzed on the table at four in the afternoon. Nash answered it before the second ring."Your police captain has been a very busy boy," said Moth.His voice crackled across three hundred miles of ocean, thin and cheerful. Moth was Black Toll's resident hacker, a skinny prodigy who had once robbed three central banks without leaving a trace, and who had been crated and shipped to the island by people who preferred his talents buried. He lived in the old radio room now, surrounded by humming servers."Tell me," Nash said."Harker made three calls this morning, all within an hour of you walking out of his precinct. The first went to Ravell Tower, private line, top floor. The second went there too, twenty minutes later, after nobody gave him the answer he wanted. The third is the interesting one. Unregistered number, no owner, no billing history, no location. It picked up on the first ring.""Who answered?""Nobody. That's what I mean." Moth's cheer faded. "Harker talke