by Jenna Black
He sighed heavily, pain and regret making his chest ache.
How long did they have before he would have to disappear from her life once more? For the time being, their fates were inexorably twined together, but when the Banger was caught and the threat was gone … Carolyn needed to move on with her life. Even if she really were safe with him, how could such a relationship survive? He couldn’t be with her in the daytime, and he couldn’t ask her to change her life around to be with him in the night. They would have only the few stolen hours between sunset and her bedtime, and though at first she would probably stay up too late and make herself miserable from lack of sleep, eventually she would realize that they were not meant to be.
It would tear his heart out afresh to lose her now. If he allowed himself to hope for something he could never have, it would kill him.
Unable to sit still, he rose from his chair and crossed to the bed. Using just a hint of glamour so he wouldn’t awaken her, he straightened out the sheets and tucked them under her chin. Then he brushed a gentle kiss across those tempting lips and told himself not to think about what tomorrow might bring.
CAROLYN WAS GOING POSITIVELY stir-crazy. When she’d awakened this morning, she’d called to check the messages on her home answering machine. She had a message from Ted, her contact at the fingerprint lab. To her disappointment, but not surprise, there’d been no match for the partial thumb print on the envelope.
Ever since that, Carolyn had been pacing the suddenly cramped-feeling hotel room, trying to figure out her next step. Gray was no more than a man-shaped lump under the covers, and Hannah had gone to her house to pack a bag, so there wasn’t even anyone here she could bounce ideas off of. The only good news was that Jules had left Drake’s fingerprints for her at the reception desk, and she was able to eliminate Drake from the suspect list.
Why was the Banger so careful to avoid leaving fingerprints at the scenes of his kills if his fingerprints weren’t on file? With his glamour, surely he didn’t fear being arrested. Carolyn couldn’t help thinking his fear was of being identified. Of course, just because his fingerprints weren’t in the AFIS database didn’t mean they weren’t on file somewhere. Chewing her lip, she continued to pace. Where else might his fingerprints be on file?
Carolyn wished Hannah would hurry up and get back to the hotel. Her best friend and business partner had also promised to bring Carolyn’s laptop, printer, and scanner. The hotel had broadband access, and Carolyn’s fingers were just itching for the Internet.
Finally, at ten-thirty, Hannah made her grand entrance, her arms full of computer equipment. Together, they set everything up. Carolyn wondered if the silence that hovered over them when they worked could be considered companionable, or whether it was just tense. Hannah obviously knew Carolyn and Gray were sleeping together. She hadn’t voiced any disapproval, but it wasn’t hard to read on her face. Carolyn wasn’t about to explain herself, not even to Hannah.
“So,” Hannah said, when everything was hooked up and Carolyn booted up the computer, “if it’s okay with you, I’d like to get a little work done today. I brought my computer too, and I have some research to do. If I leave, will you promise not to go haring off without me if you find something?”
Carolyn smiled. “I promise not to go haring off without telling you if I find something. After all, if I leave I’ll need someone to keep watch.”
Hannah’s pretty face scrunched in displeasure. “When did I volunteer to be a baby-sitter?”
“Hannah …”
Hannah sighed dramatically. “I know, I know. If you need me to, I’ll stand guard. But if you leave this hotel room alone, then you’re going to have to check in with me every hour. And you’ll have to promise to be back long before sunset.”
“Yes, mom. Now go on upstairs. Get some work done. And don’t worry about me.”
Hannah gave her a penetrating look. Carolyn stiffened, bracing herself for whatever her best friend was going to say. But Hannah shook her head and restrained herself. Her eyes said quite clearly that she had no intention of not worrying, but thankfully she beat a strategic retreat.
Carolyn hit the Web and started searching for possible fingerprint repositories. The more she searched, the more her heart sank. The list was intimidating, and she didn’t know how she could possibly narrow it down. There were a surprisingly large number of businesses that fingerprinted their employees. There were fingerprints of children, to help find them if they were lost. Fingerprints of military personnel, of FBI-wannabes, even some of medical professionals.
None of these repositories was public record, of course, which meant if she wanted to examine them she would have to come up with a convincing pretext. And she’d probably have to have a different pretext for each source. If she didn’t whittle the damned list down, it would take her forever and a day to conduct her investigation. Too bad she knew diddly-squat about the Banger, other than that he was a male, a vampire, and a Killer. No personal details, and she didn’t even have a profile for him. You needed a body of knowledge for comparison to create a profile, and she didn’t have a body of knowledge about killer vampires!
But then again, maybe she did know something. Gray had said that vampires got stronger as they got older. And all the evidence pointed to the Banger being very, very strong, which no doubt meant he was quite old. Carolyn wasn’t sure just how old was “old” for a vampire, but the more she thought of it, the more she suspected it meant too old to be in any of the current fingerprint databases. Perhaps what she really needed was to find historical data, perhaps some kind of fingerprint archive.
She surfed the Web some more, and the results at first were disappointing. Fingerprints had been taken as far back as the early 1900s, when the army had started fingerprinting its soldiers. But the chances that any of these fingerprints still existed a hundred years or so later seemed slim, and the chances she could gain access to them if they did, even slimmer.
She was about to take a break in an effort to calm the frustration when something caught her eye. Each time she’d come up with a list of search results, she’d done a screen print, knowing from experience that after hours of surfing it could be really hard to remember where she’d seen a particular link that she hadn’t yet examined. At the bottom of one of those pages of screen shots was something that looked like it might actually be a public-access fingerprint repository.
Carolyn typed in the Web address for a company called Origins. The Flash intro displayed a series of images of artwork, each followed by a fingerprint image with a name written beneath it. When the home page opened, she was amazed at what she saw.
The founders of Origins were a pair of art historians who had frequently been consulted to verify the authenticity of newly discovered works by well-known painters. They’d done their best to authenticate the works based on traditional methods, but had then hit on an exciting concept—what if somewhere on the paintings, you could find a fingerprint you could match to the artist’s?
At first blush, it sounded far-fetched to Carolyn, but the owners of Origins claimed to have had success with the technique. Paintings had often been handled extensively since they were originally created, but occasionally the artist’s prints survived. Whenever they had a chance, Origins tested paintings for prints. When they found the same prints repeatedly on paintings by the same artist, they considered it a strong possibility that the prints belonged to the artist. Origins had built an impressive collection of artists’ fingerprints—mostly of more modern artists, to be sure, but “modem” in the art world was a relative term. They’d also gathered a large number of collectors’ prints, a necessary step toward eliminating those prints that didn’t belong to the artist.
What had started as an experiment and a hobby had turned into a business and expanded. Origins worked with museums around the world, as well as with private collectors, authenticating paintings and even identifying those who once owned them.
Surely she wouldn’t be so lucky as to find
a match there. And yet … To Carolyn’s mind, it seemed like the Banger feared being identified by his fingerprints, and he seemed to be very old. Here was a database of historical fingerprints. So, might the Banger be an old, wealthy vampire who had once collected art?
Only one way to find out.
FOUR HOURS AND FOUR hundred dollars later, Carolyn was obsessively checking her e-mail for the results. She’d told the nice lady she’d called at Origins—Ellen Hadley—that she was trying to authenticate a painting she’d inherited from her grandmother. Her grandmother had claimed it was by a famous artist, but Carolyn couldn’t remember the name of the artist, and could find no signature on the painting.
Ellen was a little taken aback that Carolyn had already lifted a print—supposedly from the inside of the glass that protected the painting—but she didn’t seem to find it suspicious. Carolyn had promptly e-mailed a digital image of the partial print, and had paid a premium to expedite the search. If Ellen’s time estimate was anywhere near accurate, the results should be arriving any time now.
Hannah had come downstairs to keep Carolyn company during the tense wait. When Carolyn checked her e-mail for the umpteenth time, Hannah clucked her tongue.
“Relax already. You know this is a long shot.” Carolyn shrugged and tried to relax as her friend suggested. “Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but somehow I feel convinced I’m on the right track. I feel it here,” she said, thumping the middle of her chest.
“Uh-huh,” Hannah replied, sounding entirely unconvinced.
All right, so maybe it was crazy. But knowing that didn’t change the way Carolyn felt, and she wished Origins would just hurry up and give her the answer one way or another.
It was almost four o’clock when her computer announced a piece of incoming mail. Carolyn’s heart leapt into her throat, and she shared a nervous look with Hannah. When she saw that the e-mail was from Origins, her pulse accelerated even more.
Holding her breath, she double-clicked the message.
Hannah was leaning over her shoulder to see, and Carolyn heard her friend’s startled gasp.
The fingerprint appeared to belong to a man named Archibald Montgomery. Born 1865. Died 1902. Ellen was sad to report that Montgomery wasn’t the artist, but instead a filthy-rich collector of Impressionist paintings. He’d had neither wife nor children when he’d died, and his estate had passed to a distant cousin who’d sold everything at a spectacular auction.
But apparently, he hadn’t really died.
Hannah cleared her throat. “Of course, this ID is based on only a partial print, and a smudgy one at that. We can’t be certain—”
“What are the chances that our partial would match someone who supposedly died more than a hundred years ago when we’re hunting a vampire, and it would be nothing but a coincidence?” Hannah had no answer for that.
Carolyn sent a quick thank-you to Ellen, then immediately began searching for information about Archibald Montgomery.
He wasn’t famous enough to warrant tons of Web pages, but after an hour or so of searching, Carolyn found another interesting fact about him that practically cemented his place on top of the suspect list. While he had officially been declared dead in 1902, he’d actually disappeared mysteriously in 1899. Was that the year he’d become vampire? Another interesting tidbit—when the cousin had sold the estate, he’d claimed that much of Archibald’s money had gone missing.
By now, even Hannah was grudgingly convinced that they’d found their man. The question remained, how could they put their knowledge to good use? Carolyn chewed her lip as she stared at her computer screen and thought furiously. Hannah hoisted herself onto the desk beside the computer, her legs swinging freely, and appeared to do the same.
Another idea entered Carolyn’s mind, and she quickly typed in the Web address for the Philadelphia Department of Records.
“Onto something, Sherlock?” Hannah asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe this is a little nuts, but … Gray said Kate Henshaw was still living in the same house she’d lived in as a mortal. He said he thought she found that comforting. What if Archibald Montgomery is still living in the same house?”
Hannah’s nose wrinkled. “That seems unlikely. Rich people in his day could afford mansions they’d never be able to support in this modern age. If the house still exists, it’s probably been made into a museum or fancy condos or something.”
“Hmm, maybe. But filthy rich people also tended to own lots of property.” She navigated the Records site until she found the page she wanted, one she’d stumbled on accidentally on one of her long-ago skip traces.
Hannah hopped off the desk and came to peer over her shoulder once more. “Historical data?”
Carolyn nodded. “Believe it or not, they have scanned records of transfers of deeds, dating back to the 1600s.”
Hannah’s eyes widened. “No shit?”
The scanned images were laid out in various folders, with a folder for Grantor, a folder for Grantee, and a folder for Miscellaneous. The Grantor and Grantee folders had subfolders to let you narrow your search by century and by decade. However, the Miscellaneous folder had the information she really wanted. Unfortunately, that information was not so clearly sorted. Worse, it wasn’t searchable. She double-clicked on the first folder, then brought up the first image—of an old handwritten document, listing the grantor and grantee names, as well as the address of the property in question. Smiling smugly, Carolyn magnified the view so Hannah could see.
Hannah groaned. “Crap. I know where you’re going to go with this, don’t I? You’re going to suggest that we go through these lists page by page, line by line, hoping to see Archibald Montgomery’s name, aren’t you?”
Carolyn nodded, grinning at Hannah’s sour expression. “Good, old-fashioned detective work. And we don’t even have to leave the privacy of our own hotel rooms to do it.” Hannah’s expression soured even more. “Come on, Hannah. At least we don’t have to do this in the bowels of some musty old courthouse!”
“I’m jumping for joy.” She sighed. “But I suppose I have to help you. I’ll go up to my own room and log in. You start at the top of the list, I’ll start at the bottom, and we’ll meet in the middle.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Carolyn agreed cheerfully.
Not quite so cheerful, Hannah trudged to the door. “Behave yourself while I’m gone,” she said. She didn’t wait for Carolyn’s answer.
GRAY YAWNED AND PUSHED the covers away, rubbing at the grit in his eyes. Carolyn was sitting with her back to him at the desk, peering at her computer’s screen, hunched slightly forward.
“Good morning,” she said without turning.
He smiled and sat up straight. “Good evening.” He wanted to grab her immediately and tumble her beneath him onto the bed. But she seemed very much absorbed in whatever she was doing, so he restrained himself. “Whatcha doing?” he asked, slipping out of bed.
She finally turned to look at him. Her eyes fastened immediately on his burgeoning erection, but though her cheeks flushed with desire, she made no move to act upon it.
“The Banger is one Archibald Montgomery, who supposedly died in 1902.”
He sank down onto the bed once more, all thoughts of sex momentarily taking a backseat. Carolyn explained her day’s activity.
He shouldn’t have been so amazed. The woman was incredible, an amazing detective with an indomitable will, and that so-frequently annoying stubbornness of hers served her well in her chosen career.
“So now,” she continued, “I’m making myself go blind by poring over scanned images of transfers of deeds. Real exciting, let me tell you. And I’ll have you know Hannah is upstairs doing the same thing, so you be nice the next time she comes down.”
He snorted. “I’ve been nice to her! She’s the one who’s constantly trying to do me bodily harm.”
Carolyn laughed at that and turned back to her work. “Why don’t you take a shower, then you can help me look. My eyes are starting
to glaze over.” She pointed to the armoire. “I brought you a change of clothes.”
His first impulse was to scold her for setting foot anywhere near his house, but he swallowed it. There was no reason to think it was dangerous to go there during the day, and she’d obviously come to no harm. “Thanks,” he said, and though he suspected there might have been a slight edge to his voice he seemed to have avoided offending her.
The appeal of a hot shower was undeniable, but Gray couldn’t help noticing the heightening of his senses—the first warning signs of his growing hunger. The scents of the room were dizzying, and very faintly under the sound of the mouse-clicks, he heard the beat of Carolyn’s heart. He took a deep, calming breath and picked up the phone.
He hated to be dependent on Jules for anything, and he hated to have Carolyn in the room when he made his request, but perhaps it was for the best. She needed to remember what he was, and that he was dangerous.
Jules answered on the second ring, his tone of voice changing the moment Gray identified himself.
“Well,” Jules said, “you’re about the last person I expected to hear from.”
“And you’re about the last person I wanted to call, but …” The words stuck in his craw, and he waited for Jules to start mocking him for his reticence.
“You’re hungry,” Jules said, and there was no mockery in his voice.
“Yes,” Gray forced himself to say. “I should have fed night before last, but as you know things kind of got out of hand.”
“Control yourself or you can bet I’ll make you sorry you were ever born.”
Gray suppressed a surge of temper. Don’t cuss out the man you’re asking a favor of, he reminded himself. “Don’t worry, I’m not desperate. Besides, Carolyn has some very interesting information to share, so I’ve decided to let her live.” She looked over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow at him. He mouthed the name “Jules” and she nodded sagely.