Page 68 of Immortal Unveiled

“You’re saying he worked for them?”

“Possibly.”

“Then why would they kill him?”

“Demons have no loyalties. He’d become a liability. They had to get rid of him.”

Manus noticed her swallowing hard. “You think they took whatever Kilgore wrote down about the translation?”

“Most likely. But demons aren’t perfect. They might have missed something. Let’s look.”

Manus stepped over the body to look to the side of the desk where he’d seen the computer tower earlier in the day. The old-fashioned machine lay on its side, its metal housing missing, the interior smashed up as if somebody had taken a sledgehammer to it. Manus examined it more closely.

“Motherboard’s a goner.” He knew enough about IT to know there was no getting at the data that was saved on the hard drive.

“Maybe there’s a paper file,” Kim suggested.

Manus scanned the desk and looked at the different trays. Despite the mess in his office, Kilgore had a system. Manus pointed the flashlight at the file drawers that stood along one wall and read the labels.

“Alphabetical files,” Manus noted, then looked at the trays on the desk again. “And dated trays, going back a couple of months at least.” He looked at Kim. “Go through the file cabinets. Start with B for Britton, then N for Nancy. I’ll go through these trays in case he hadn’t had a chance to file your mother’s translation yet.”

Kim followed his command, pulled out her own flashlight, and went to work. Manus plowed through the files, one after the other, but it became clear very quickly that Nancy’s file wasn’t among the ones on the desk.

“Anything?” He looked over his shoulder.

Kim closed the drawer marked with a large N. “Nothing. There’s an empty hanger in the Bs where Britton should be located, but it’s empty.” She sighed and leaned back against a side table, clearly frustrated. “We’re too late.”

“There are other ways of finding out what your mother found,” Manus said though he was just as frustrated as Kim. If only they’d gotten here a few hours earlier.

“Let’s go,” Kim suggested and turned, walking toward the door.

The light of Manus’s flashlight illuminated her back. Simultaneously, he heard a siren in the background.

“Fuck!”