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Back Up From the Grave Save as PDF
Chapters (52)
  1. Dedication
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents
  4. Prologue
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  32. Twenty-eight
  33. Twenty-nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-one
  36. Thirty-two
  37. Thirty-three
  38. Thirty-four
  39. Thirty-five
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Epilogue
  43. An excerpt from Halfway to the Grave
  44. An excerpt from One Foot in the Grave
  45. An excerpt from At Grave’s End
  46. An excerpt from Destined for an Early Grave
  47. An excerpt from This Side of the Grave
  48. An excerpt from One Grave at a Time
  49. About the Author
  50. By Jeaniene Frost
  51. Copyright
  52. About the Publisher

Someone else appeared behind the glass wall where Madigan had been watching Katie. At first, all I could make out was a fiftyish man—guess that was old to a teenager—with salt-and-pepper hair who was the same height as Madigan though built stockier. Bones let out a hiss when the blurry imagery cleared and his face became distinct. I gasped, recognizing him, too. Tai smirked.

“Thought so. Saw him on TV before.”

So had most of America. Richard Trove was a former White House chief of staff and a current political advisor. You couldn’t flip channels during the last presidential election without running across him, but there was only one reason I could think of for why he’d be at a secret underground facility watching a genetically-engineered, tri-species child execute some poor guy on command.

He was Madigan’s shadow backer.

We doubted there was anyone above Trove, though to be sure, Denise shapeshifted into a replica of him and walked into Madigan’s cell. As with Don, Madigan recognized him at once and seemed delighted to speak with him. After several hours of mostly nonsense, we gleaned enough tidbits to convince us that the buck had stopped with Richard Trove. He’d been in office when Don’s operation started, and though he’d left the government since then, he was widely believed to be the power behind several current senators and at least one former president. Plus, he was wealthy enough to finance Madigan’s operations on his own if he didn’t want to run the expenses through a puppet politician.

After some digging, Tai found out that Trove would be in New York City this weekend for a political fund-raising dinner. We didn’t know where he’d be after that, which meant we had to choose between going after him or Katie. Trove won since we already had two vampires and a ghost tracking Katie. We texted Ian the information Timmie had relayed about her potential location, then contributed an astronomical amount of money in order to get reservations for the fund-raising dinner. Finally, we went shopping.

At fifteen thousand dollars a plate, we couldn’t show up in jeans and tee shirts.

Two days later, we checked into the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue. At 7:00 P.M. sharp the next night, we stood in line to enter the Grand Ballroom. Security was tight since more than a few prominent political figures were expected. Not a problem; Bones had several aliases who had been law-abiding citizens for decades. All it took was Tai hacking into a few databases to update the photos, then having a trusted forger print the documents, and voila.