by Tes Hilaire
That was what convinced him it couldn’t be Gabby. If she was tainted with that much darkness, she wouldn’t have survived Logan’s calling of the light in those mines last summer.
The door banged open, and as if his thoughts drew him, Logan stepped into the room. Valin’s hand clenched around the cross as he quickly shoved it into the cushions of the couch he sat on. A musty old couch that was rarely used, which meant the resultant stirring of dust made him sneeze.
Logan ground to a halt just inside the door, his gaze zeroing in sharply on where Valin sat.
“Valin,” he said, his shoulders seeming to ease slightly as he realized who it was in the room with him.
“Hey, Logan.” Valin tossed a leg up onto the stack of tomes in front of him. Logan’s gaze flickered to them, disapproval tightening the skin around his nose, but he didn’t say anything.
“Do I want to know why you’re in here?” Logan asked carefully.
“Probably not. Though no worries. I will take nothing but what I brought in with myself when I leave.”
Logan shrugged, moving past him into the room. “Really, not my business.”
And okay, life as Valin knew it had just ended. Did Mr. Goody Two-Shoes, next in line as major-stick-in-the-mud just say something wasn’t his business?
In an amazing act of personal restraint, Valin clamped back the quip that sprang to his tongue and watched as Calhoun Senior’s pride and joy (okay, maybe not joy, that man didn’t seem to take pleasure in anything) ruthlessly stripped daddy dearest’s shields off the trunk in the back of the room. A pop of the physical lock and few seconds of rifling later and Logan had his favorite knife in hand and, after a moment to test the sharpness of his blade, was stuffing it and its holster deep into the folds of a wadded-up sheet he grabbed from the floor. Valin’s eyebrows rose even farther when the Paladin then dug back into the trunk and pulled out a smaller, but no less lethal knife and hid that in the sheet too.
Well, damn. Logan was disobeying a direct order, wasn’t he?
Valin blinked, wondering if when he opened his eyes again Logan wouldn’t be there. Like maybe he was asleep and—
“Do you know where Alex is?” Logan asked, letting the lid drop with a loud bang.
Guess not.
Valin shrugged. “I think he’s still trying to sleep off those cracked ribs somewhere.”
“Good. I have something I need to take care of tonight. I’ll contact you both tomorrow.”
“Anything I can help with?”
Logan didn’t answer, simply stared at him with those damn steely gray eyes of his that made him look eerily like his father.
“All right. Anything you want me to do while you’re off doing your thing?”
“You can start by putting the cross back.”
Crap. Busted. Only…Valin let his gaze drift to the bundle Logan held conspicuously against his thigh. Tit for tat, anyone? “Okay. But can I suggest using this instead of a sheet?” He grabbed up a nearby canister of worthless maps, tossing it toward the Paladin. “Would probably fit.”
Logan grabbed the canister out of the air and opened it up. “Thanks,” he said as he dumped out the contents and rearranged the blades inside. When he was done he looked back at Valin, indecision plainly written on his face.
Valin arched a brow in question.
“Actually, there is something you can do for me,” Logan said.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“You could make yourself scarce until I next contact you.”
Valin felt his mouth tugging into a grin. A favor for Logan that was bound to twist Senior’s panties? Oh yeah, he could definitely do that. And while he was out, maybe he’d go and check out that area where they ran into the succubus the other night.
***
Jessica didn’t move for a good hour, leaning on her hood, staring at the deserted block of run-down buildings as she wrestled with the block of pain that kept her from her memories. So far, nothing had come of it. The afternoon had worn through, giving over to the early fall evening. The ME van left with the CSU team. All that remained was a squad car wrapping up the scene. It was time for her to go. Only she didn’t know where. It was obvious Mike didn’t want her help. Not now. And she was not going to go to some damn doctor. Not yet, at least. Not until she figured out what the heck was going on.
The missing time after the alley, her encounter with those freaky jerks and their fake teeth and that third man—who according to Logan wasn’t even fucking there—and now this? It felt like it was beat-down-Jessica week. And, as if that weren’t enough, queue Mr. Calhoun himself. He and his damn stormy gray eyes were probably the most unnerving things of her entire week. There was just something about him that made her suck in a breath and her hands break out in a warm sweat. She’d think it was her realization that he’d obviously taken to following her, which was admittedly unnerving, but it had started before then. From the moment she’d bumped into him by those vending machines, she had a strange feeling that not only had she met him before, but that somehow she knew him on a level that she damn well knew was impossible.
Logan Calhoun was not the type of man you forgot. And she had an exceptional memory. Well, most of the time.
She rolled her shoulders. Damn it. Why couldn’t she remember what happened the other night?
Even that thought brought the pain with it. She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to breathe through the spiking pressure that ran down from her frontal lobe into her brain stem. This was pointless and useless. There were no clues here beyond what they already took for the investigation. She should leave. Told herself to. But the moment she turned and put her hand on the door handle she swore, jerking it back.
Not without some answers.
With no idea as to what else she could do to find them, she began to walk down the street, heading in the direction she would’ve taken as she drove away. She’d walked perhaps a half block before the first signs of civilization returned—a pimped out 1980s Bentley thumping with an oversized woofer as it made its way down the cross street. Another half block and the buildings lost some of their desperate edge; broken windows were replaced by boarded-up ones, then soon after, grimy single pane glass. She even saw a couple of street kids dart furtively into one of them, their high-pitched, prepubescent voices announcing they’d made her for what she was by sounding the alarm to whatever elicit activity was going on inside.
She strode on. Up ahead a large black man in a long trench coat stood in front of a black security gate that protected the glass front door of a shop, his overdeveloped muscles straining as he tried to juggle three good-sized boxes. Jessica paused. The man dug into the unevenly faded coat, then fumbled with a large set of keys as he tried to fit it into the lock. A dozen curses later the protective barrier swung open as well as the glass door and he struggled inside with his burden. Lights flicked on. Then, a moment later, a humming neon sign announced adult toys and movies.
Jessica cocked her head, her eyes taking in the shabby storefront. It was nothing much, but it was more than any of its neighbors could lay claim to. What’s more, it had one of those bulky white security cameras proudly on display in the front window.
A place like that was bound to open late and stay open late. And even if it was closed, it was likely that those security cameras stayed on.
Jessica strode toward the door, her back stiff with determination. She pulled open the black security door, the hinges squeaking, the glass door opened more easily. Other than that one squeak, there was no little bell to announce her entrance, no buzzer either, and the dim lighting and rows of narrow shelves begged to be hidden in. She might’ve thought the store owner was going for discreet and anonymous for his clientele. Except the front window security camera was not the only one playing watch dog.
Better and better. Unless they
were fake, of course.
“Can I help you?”
She turned to see the owner coming out of a side door. Probably led to a staircase and a second-floor storage area. The man had shrugged out of his trench coat and wore black jeans to match his black leather vest, which held in his advancing waistline beneath his stained, white undershirt. Not that he was fat. Simply big, and if the scars and tats he sported were any indication, he was a fighter before he retired to the good life of pimping porn.
The man folded his arms, muscles flexing over them as he stared her down, his eyes telling her he knew exactly who, or rather what, she was. There was nothing threatening in the look, simply a man telling a potential challenger that this was his territory and he wasn’t going to take shit from any outsider—whether they wore a shield or not.
“Am I that obvious?” She went for direct, quirking her lip slightly to show him that she wasn’t here to make his day bad.
“Maybe not, but the bulge under your jacket is. That coupled with the excitement down the street earlier today…” He shrugged, his shoulders rolling as he strode stiffly across the room—all that muscle, and he probably had bad knees from fighting which explained the expanding girth.
Jessica waited until he’d maneuvered behind the counter by the register, figuring he’d feel better with his own shield of authority in front of him, even if it was just one of those un-sturdy glass display cases. There were all kinds of interesting things in the cabinet. Things Jessica chose not to stare at too long. Who really used that crap anyway?
“I was hoping I could take a look at your video feed from the other night.” No need to explain why. If he already knew about the commotion, then he knew she was homicide and looking for any lead she could get.
He rolled one hand within the other, cracking the knuckles. For a second Jessica got a horrible feeling that maybe she’d done it again. Misjudged the situation and was quickly sinking in over her head, but then he nodded, muttering an unenthusiastic, but not exactly disagreeable, “Yeah, okay.”
She resisted the urge to shift impatiently as the owner rifled through a black lock box behind the counter. There didn’t appear to be much in it. Some more keys, papers, a couple dozen of those mini-VHS tapes. He pulled one of these out that said “Tuesday-B” on it but no date. Probably had just enough tapes for a week.
“Old system,” she said as he popped open a cabinet and pulled out an ancient, handheld video recorder similar to the one she grew up with.
He grunted. “Not much new around here.”
True. And beggars shouldn’t be choosers. She’d take what she could get.
“There are two tapes for that night. But I’m guessing you want the second half of it. Midnight on?”
Her brow rose halfway to her hairline. Least it felt like it. “How do you conclude that?”
He arched his own brow in retaliation, but otherwise ignored her as he fiddled with the video recorder. It didn’t take him long and then he was swiveling the view finder around to her.
“Here. This is what you’re looking for, right?” He pressed play and Jessica bent closer to stare at the grainy picture on the screen. For a few more seconds there was nothing more than the deader-than-a-morgue street scene outside, but then a figure dashed by, a female, dressed to kill—a man’s wallet that is, definitely not his libido. A couple seconds later two men dashed by. One a big-ass son of a bitch and then another, not as tall, but mean and lean looking, dressed in form-fitting black.
Jessica’s hand absently moved toward her gun, anger punching through her even though she knew this was something in the past and she could do nothing about it. The prostitute didn’t look like anything more than a kid and those men…
Another figure scooted by, keeping low and hugging the shadows while still trying to make a decent pursuit. It took a moment for it to click; the figure never turned toward the store and was visible only a couple seconds, but then it hit her. The familiar ill-fitting blazer, the cant of the shoulders as if the person held a gun out in front of them, and the hair.
No fucking way.
“Play that again.”
The guy rewound, zipping past the last pursuer and all the way to the beginning, most likely assuming she was concerned with the original three persons in the video. Not that he wasn’t right, but they weren’t the ones putting the chill of horror in her veins. How could she have pursued a pair of possible rapists and not remembered?
Yet there she was, sneaking by the front of the shop once more. Holy crap.
“Again?” he asked when she’d slid out of sight on the video. She nodded. And this time when he played the tape she paid more attention to the other three, straining her eyes to make out more in the fuzzy picture. Damn. They were too far away to make out any real facial features, yet…
“Is this in color on a big screen?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
Of course not. Not that it would’ve really mattered, there wasn’t enough light on the street to make much difference. Still, there was something decidedly familiar about those men. Especially the second one.
Yeah, maybe because you chased them down the friggin’ street, Jess?
“Can you zoom in on the men at all?”
“Yeah, but they’re low-res images, so you won’t get much detail.” He did what she asked, and though the face was still fuzzy…what was it about the second man that made her think she knew him? As in knew knew him.
She closed her eyes, concentrating hard on the images, but the more she tried the more they slipped away and the more her headache grew.
Damn it. If she could just remember…
Didn’t matter. She had the evidence that something else had happened that night. Something that might account for the missing gap in her memories. Or at least give her a place to start.
“Can I have this?” she asked the owner.
The tattooed goliath shrugged. “Sure. What the hell.”
His agreeability surprised her somewhat, but she didn’t question it. She almost grabbed the tape and bolted, but then remembering Mike’s warning about illegal collection of evidence she took a deep breath and told the shopkeeper she’d be right back. It took her fewer than five minutes to dash back down the street and get her car and get back to the shop. Digging through the piles of paperwork scattered across her backseat, she finally found the form she wanted and pushed back into the shop. She was still Tattoo Guy’s only customer so he didn’t grumble too much as she carefully filled out the form, having him sign it before tearing off the receipt and giving it to him. Next she popped the security tape into a plastic bag along with the rest of the paperwork. Then, with a thanks and a good-bye to her agreeable host, left.
Her heart was still thudding as she closed her car door, tucking the new evidence into the passenger seat beside her. She didn’t know why she was so keyed up. Even if those two men had anything to do with the victim in the alley, with this much distance between here and there it wasn’t going to be much of a lead. Still, it held some answers, though a hundred additional questions for each one it answered.
“Where else have I seen that man?” she asked softly of the small gray tape. As expected, it remained stubbornly silent.
Sighing, she put the car in gear and drove around aimlessly, zigzagging back and forth along the various cross streets, driving past a group of abandoned buildings and their struggling counterparts that refused to join them in their early graves. She must have driven for well over an hour, but never left a half-mile radius of the alley, her route decided by the piercing pain in her head that signaled forgotten familiarity.
This street. Not that one. Right there, that lone street lamp shining among its broken friends. The headache spiked. She pulled the car over, staring at the small disc of illuminated cement and pavement. Two men. Both taller than her. One practically a giant, f
lanking her on silent feet. The other—
Pain split across her forehead, driving a stake deep into her skull. “Goddamn it!”
She clutched her head, breath hissing between her teeth as she fought to hold the image over the pain. Smug bastard. Smug, handsome bastard. Face didn’t fit his clothes though. Too refined, too…
She sucked in a breath, logic fighting against what she wanted to believe. Or rather, what she didn’t want to believe. Just like the idea of vampires was impossible, so was this.
Hand shaking with a mix of anger, betrayal, and denial, Jess dug into the back pocket of her jeans, pulling out the mangled card. She had to turn on the overhead light to read the smaller script under the name, but soon enough she’d tapped in the number and was pressing the phone against her ear. It rang once, twice. Her hand shook, a shaky breath rattling in her tight chest. Jessica stared out at the dimly lit sidewalk, using the pain to steady her. Finally he answered, his voice breathless, the sound of thumping music in the background, not like a stereo, but rather a nightclub.
The Logan she knew didn’t seem the type to cruise clubs. But the one in the videos? The one who had leered at her as he dusted off his…
Black skintight tee, black leather pants, black shit-kicker boots.
“Jessica? Is that you? Where are you? Are you okay?”
Her fingers tightened on phone. She dragged her gaze from the flickering streetlight, forcing her eyes ahead. “I’m here.”
There was a burst of static, then silence, his voice sounding kind of echoey when he spoke again. “Where? Where is here?”
She rattled off an address, ending with a curt, “Can you be there in an hour?”
“Are you in trouble?”