But if that was true, why wasn’t The Voice allowing the other PI to come on board?
Logic told her that she’d better just go with her growing bond with Kiko and Breisi…and whatever she had in The Voice—the devil she already knew.
Shit. “I’m here because Klara was a friend in the biz,” she lied, taking the easy way out. “Her roommate called.”
Matt glared at the ground. The muscles in his forearms bunched, veins rising to the surface of his flesh as he went taut. His anger pulsed between them.
“Matt, are—”
“Do you believe in vampires?”
Dawn took a step backward. Did he just say what she thought…?
“Do you?” When he raised his head, his eyes were a cool, cutting blue.
Her new cell phone vibrated on her belt, but she had more important things to deal with instead of answering it.
“Believe is a pretty strong word,” she said, still hedging.
“Do you think they exist?”
Part of her needed to talk to him about this, needed to hear that he was ruling out vampires in this case. Hearing it from someone relatively sane would’ve done a lot for her desire to cling to delusion. After all, Matt never mind screwed her. He didn’t go around with bladed crossbows or stakes. And up until a few seconds ago when the word “vampire” had entered the picture, she’d thought he was the most normal thing going on in her life right now.
Up until a few seconds ago.
But, once again, common sense told her to pretend that she thought he was joking around, to blow him off for the sake of keeping their investigation to themselves. Acting!, as Kiko would’ve said.
So that’s what she did. “You’re talking about Dracula and Lestat—things with fangs that run around with capes and bloody appetites?”
Wonderful performance. Applause, please.
“Did you see Klara’s body, Dawn?”
Again, her stomach dipped, grew heavy with a red-tinged illness. “Not in detail.”
“She bled out through a neck wound, and I’m not talking about two neat little punctures, either. I’m talking about a tear, like someone was feasting on her.”
“God, okay, I’ve got the gist of it.” Pain sharded through her temples. Was he testing her, trying to shock the truth out of her? “You think a vampire did that?”
Somehow, she’d again succeeded in making it sound ludicrous.
After giving her a long look, Matt walked to the end of the wall, thumbs hitched in his belt loops. From there, the beat of cop lights swirled over his body as he fixed his gaze on the crime scene. The wall was blocking her own view, thank God.
“Let me tell you something,” he said. “When I was a boy, my parents and I left the theater one night…I was ill…and when we went out the back door, into the alley…” He stopped, cleared his throat. “We ran into this man. He was crazed. My dad tried to hand over his wallet—he didn’t want any trouble—but the man…he…” Matt looked lost, like he couldn’t believe what he was saying. He tilted his head. “He took my dad, and with these…teeth…fangs…he ripped out his neck. Then, while I sat there like a coward, he did the same thing to my mom. I finally found my legs and ran away. I screamed and screamed, but…”
Stunned, Dawn walked closer to him, but Matt evaded her. The patrol vehicles’ lights seemed to grab at his clothing, unsuccessful in their attempt to hook him back as he returned behind the wall to the dim lighting.
“It happened a long time ago,” he said, tone flat.
“I’m sorry. That’s beyond awful.”
“But useful. It gave me the incentive to become a detective. I took criminal justice classes in college, discovered that the police academy didn’t agree with my…point of view…” His laugh was etched with hard finality. “And here I am.”
How could he talk about this so rationally? “So you think…a vampire…killed your parents?”
“The police reports said it was some raging psycho who belonged in a mental ward. But they didn’t see the guy, his bared teeth, the inhumanity of him. That’s why I decided they were full of crap and I was going to work my way around the system. PIs have a lot more freedom to maneuver than cops.”
“Matt…”
He held up his hands, warding her off. “Really. It was years ago. You know how it is.”
His clear-cut reminder of a parent’s death weighed her to the spot. But it also linked her to him, because they were both struggling to shed a child’s misery and loss.
“And now you’re a vamp hunter, is that what you’re saying, Matt?”
He laughed.
“Right?” she repeated.
“Are you able to come to that conclusion through personal experience?”
He knew about the red-and silver-eyes?
Panicked, she brushed past him, searching her way out of the trap he’d so carefully built around her. The cop lights bathed her as she came to the end of the wall.
“Wait.” He grabbed her arm below where she was wearing the jacket sleeves pushed above her healing burn wounds.
Was it her imagination, or was he checking them out a little too closely?
She yanked her arm away.
It didn’t stop him from finishing. “The best way to stay safe is to stay home. I mean it. This isn’t your area of expertise.” He shrugged, his gaze shyly going to the ground, then back up to her. “I want you in one piece, for selfish reasons.”
“Because we’re going to get busy after this is all done? Flattering. But I’m not one to wait around for other people to take care of my problems. Frank’s my responsibility.”
“That’s noble, it really is.” He came to hover above her, his body blocking the streetlight. He was all darkness and heat. “But there’s something more going on that you really don’t understand. I don’t know exactly what it is yet, but I’ll find out. You should ask your boss about it. Demand some answers. Then stay out of it.”
“I’ve already asked questions until I’m blue in the face.”
“Then dig a little deeper into Mr. Limpet yourself.”
“So I can help you with your detective work?”
He backed up a step, smile flashing. “When you’re ready and willing, I won’t turn you down on that. I’m just waiting for you to come to me when you’ve sorted some things out, Dawn. That’s all.”
Cutting him off, she raised her hand in an abrupt good-bye, walking back to the crime scene and leaving him in the dirt.
Demand some answers. Yeah, like it was that easy.
As she took in the news vans that had just arrived, the ever-growing crowd of onlookers, the fear lancing the night air, her heart rate picked up.
Where were Breisi and Kiko?
Accessing her cell phone, she headed toward the street, finding a message from them. Nearby, a large dog barked behind a dilapidated fence. As she dialed Kiko’s number, Matt’s words hammered into her.
I won’t turn you down on that.
Was that some kind of snide comment on what she had already been offering him? He could turn down her body but not her help, huh? Ass.
Yet what niggled at her even more was his talk about The Voice. How could she check into him? Where would she even start? Damn it, she was really some detective.
Behind her, a scream of tires signaled an approaching vehicle. She saw headlights making their way toward her. When she realized it was the 4Runner, she disabled her call to Kiko and waved the vehicle down.
It heaved to a stop.
Through the open window, Kiko yelled, “Get in!”
And she did, without question.
Which bothered her a whole lot more than it had earlier tonight.
Eighteen
The Bait
Breisi was making record time through the streets as Kiko leaned over the seat, asking Dawn what happened to her.
“Lonigan,” she said. “We had an intense tête-à-tête behind that wall. He was hanging out there.”
Her coworkers exchang
ed a significant look.
“What, it’s not like I was making out with him in our special hidden spot.” Dawn hesitated. “Did you…I don’t know…ever wonder if the guy is just after the same things we are? Or if he’s following the trail of vampires and not just Frank?”
“Wondering about it now,” Kiko said.
“He wasn’t happy to see me…us…there. Not even remotely.”
Kiko raised his eyebrows. “Hey, maybe he’s a PI who has a bit on the side, one of them mercenaries who doesn’t want the competition. You know, Breisi, those people we’ve heard about who travel the world bagging vamps for big cash? There’s this website where you can contact them. I’ve been on it.”
“It’s possible.” Breisi kept her eyes on the road.
“You should’ve heard this story he told me about his parents.” Now that Dawn wasn’t near Matt, caught in the mind-spinning web of his proximity, she suddenly got a strange sense of having heard the details of his parents’ deaths before. Weird. Why? “He saw them murdered by what he thinks was a vamp, and that’s what drove him to PI work. And you know what else? If he’s, like, this ‘hunter,’ what the hell does that make the client who hired him?” She didn’t dare ask what that also might make Frank himself….
Instead, she forged ahead. “If I do the math, it adds up to trouble. If Lonigan is involved with the paranormal and he’s investigating Frank, it sounds like he might know more about Robby’s case than we first suspected. Things you guys might not want public.”
“Could be,” Breisi said.
“And Lonigan said…more.”
Kiko waited for her to go on. Serious Kiko.
“He pretty much said it’s a bad idea to trust Limpet,” she said, watching her psychic coworker just as closely. “Said I should be investigating his intentions.”
“That’s not a good way to spend your time,” Breisi said.
“Why?” Dawn scooted up in her seat. “How much do you two really know about your boss?”
Kiko faced front, like he was hiding his reaction. “We know enough.”
She wasn’t going to get anywhere when it came to The Voice. Kiko was loyal to a fault, even if Dawn suspected he wanted to take more of a lead when it came to hunting monsters. But Breisi…? Her face was still emotionless as the streetlights whisked over her broad features.
Behind that facade, was she actually pissed at Dawn for doubting the boss? Or was there something much deeper going on: resentfulness about Frank’s disappearance—maybe because of something The Voice had ordered him to do?
“So,” Kiko said, “I assume Lonigan got a load of Klara, too. He must’ve been doing his detective thing before we got there. I wonder who he pays off in the department.”
At the mention of the victim, jabs of red taunted Dawn. She slammed them away.
“Me and Breisi barely got out of there with the telephoto pictures,” Kiko added. “Burks helped when that detective started harassing us, but he caught a glimpse of Breisi’s digital camera and told us to hand it over. That’s when we made a run for it. Luckily the 4Runner is outfitted to flip its license plates, so it’ll be hard to trace us. Needless to say, we got real worried about leaving you, Dawn, but we called to see where you were so we could pick you up.”
“Sorry for the trouble.”
Breisi shrugged. Wow, she clearly gave two shits about Dawn, didn’t she? Yup, they’d really bonded last night.
“Klara’s neck,” Kiko was saying. “It was like some kind of frenzied animal got to her. No punctures, like vamp bites in the movies.”
“You said that we can’t depend on a certain set of vampire rules,” Dawn said. “So it’s par for the course.”
“That’s what the boss tells us.”
Matt’s last words came back. Demand some answers. Good advice. So why wasn’t she being more aggressive about it?
Red, blood, an image turned to a slab of white nothingness…
Dawn cleared her mind.
“By the way, we talked to the boss,” Kiko said. “I sent him those cell phone pictures already. He’s wondering if Klara got caught by one of those red-eyes with the iron teeth.”
“What if Klara is just some unfortunate soul who crossed paths with a random cretin on a regular L.A. night?”
Even as Dawn asked, she knew it sounded foolish. The fact that nobody answered just proved it.
God, you knew your shit was messed up when a vampire attack turned out to be a more logical explanation for a violent death than regular old murder itself. After all, they had just interviewed the actress about Robby. And vampires had been loitering around Robby’s old property.
One plus one equaled a connection. Not a satisfactory answer, but a definite coincidence.
And that meant…Klara could very well have been killed because she’d talked to them. Dawn leaned her head against the window. It was cool against her skin.
So what exactly did that mean? Was there some greater power—a vamp who had ties to Robby—who needed to shut Klara up? And what did Robby and Frank have to do with it?
In the back of her brain, on the white, white screen of thought, a film reel spliced itself together and flickered to life: Robby in Diaper Derby, a kid who hadn’t aged in twenty-three years.
The packed box of her mind blew open, setting free an obscene possibility that had been lurking for days. A possibility she’d fought tooth and nail.
“Robby’s a freakin’ vampire,” she said.
With a guffaw, Breisi held her hand out to Kiko. Muttering under his breath, he dug into his pants, fished out a twenty-dollar bill and gave it up.
“Excuse me?” Dawn said.
Kiko smiled at her, as if welcoming her to a rite of passage. “Breisi said you’d admit what was going on in under a week. I told her you were too bullheaded and it’d take at least two.”
“Nice.” Dawn shook her head. “Thanks for sharing all your theories with me, guys.”
“It wasn’t about theories. Remember when I told you that you’d have to see to believe? That’s what it was about, Dawn. Telling you that Robby might be a vamp wasn’t the point. Part of your training is to come to accept what’s happening, and that’s not easy. But you’re getting there, even if we have no proof about what Robby is or isn’t.”
“Hopefully Marla will follow your lead,” Breisi said.
Dawn wanted to lay into him, but he had her nailed. It was true that she’d scattered all the pieces of Robby’s story in her mind, never allowing them to come together. Not wanting them to, even after everything she’d seen, experienced.
Demand some answers, Matt had said.
Trouble was, she was pretty sure she couldn’t bear any more of them. Robby was hard enough. What was she eventually going to find out about Frank…?
She told herself not to think about it.
Dawn was still unnerved when they arrived back at the office, where she decided to go ahead and approach Breisi instead of Kiko. Five-to-one that his unswerving devotion to the boss would make him a harder person to question.
Or maybe Dawn knew that strong-and-silent Breisi would actually be the last person to give up answers, and that’s what she really wanted—to remain clueless.
In the foyer, she pulled the older woman aside. “Can we chat?”
Since Breisi was all but rolling back and forward on her heels, raring to get to her dungeon, Dawn predicted the answer. The massive door of Breisi’s private domain loomed behind her, like a black hole she was only too happy to be sucked into.
“Maybe later,” the other woman said, gravitating toward the door/hole, caught in its pull. “All right?”
Dawn followed her. “Can’t I just talk to you while—”
“No,” Breisi snapped. She placed a proprietary hand on the door’s iron entrance handle.
As Dawn gave Breisi a please-extract-that-pole-out-of-your-ass look, the other woman deviously relaxed most of her body. But Dawn could tell Breisi was only acting! again—she was still whit
e-knuckling the handle.
“I’m sorry.” She worked up a smile…or whatever. “Dodgers lost, Klara’s dead…my conversation is not flowing right now.”
“Got it.” Dawn backed off, hands up in the air. “Thought we could talk about Robby—like how him possibly being a vamp means that they can be seen on film and all. You know—just want to continue the education.”
“Later then.”
Breisi didn’t move. Dawn didn’t budge, either—not until she realized that the tech geek wasn’t going anywhere until Dawn herself took off.
Foiled again. As she moved toward the stairs, she risked one look back over her shoulder, finding that Breisi was still guarding the door.
Man, what was down there?
On her way up the stairs, she ran into Kiko.
“Hey,” he said, “grab a mattress. I know it’s late, but I’ve got a million things to do before we head out.”
“Who can sleep right now anyway?”
Demand some answers.
Even if she didn’t like what she heard. And, truthfully, Limpet wasn’t the only person she needed to know about.
There was still something about Lonigan’s parent story that was nagging at her. Something that she wasn’t necessarily hiding from, either.
They reached the second-floor landing. The soft hush of an old house at rest mingled with the shaded hallway, making Dawn a little cold, inside and out.
“Are there any computers with Internet access?” she asked. “I wanna look up a thing or two.”
“You’re kidding, aren’t you?”
Kiko led her to the right, down a part of the hall she hadn’t explored yet. He pushed open a door, revealing dark wood, the ticking of a small Swiss mantel clock, and a bank of computers lining one side of the room. All of them stared out with black gazes, like the eyes of carnival dolls.
“No paintings of wanton women in here?” Dawn asked.
Kiko laughed, showing her to the first computer. “Nope.”
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