by Erin R Flynn
“I think she does, Seraphine,” he drawled. “She might not be egotistical or brag of her power, but she is good at dismissing those not in her league and knowing the terrain.”
“True, but we could all always use better security.”
“Agreed.” He cleared his throat. “Carter alluded to something changing in your life when I spoke to him yesterday.”
“He ran to you?” I growled, not liking that when he had set stuff up with him before.
“No, not remotely.” He sighed when I didn’t reply. “He was mine for thousands of years, Seraphine. We are friends. We normally speak every other week or so, and it just happened I called yesterday. I swear it was a coincidence and he mentioned you weren’t yourself, validly, but he wasn’t sure what to do and he worried you were mad at him for something he suggested.”
“He just misunderstood me,” I grumbled. “He was a butthead, but we all have our days. You’ll find out if you visit early. Others will learn soon, but the truth will be top secret.”
“As is anything important,” he chuckled. “I would love to come early and sneak into your bed.”
“I’m not sure that’s what I offered.”
“No, but you won’t deny me either,” he murmured in my ear in a way that made me shiver.
No, I wouldn’t.
My next call was to Axel. We were having our first official date, and he’d offered to reschedule when Topher had showed up, but we’d been chasing each other for so long that it was time. Plus, he promised it was just what I needed.
To which I told him he wasn’t getting laid on the first date. I was pretty sure he was still laughing.
“Hey, hi,” he greeted, sounding a bit winded.
“Aren’t you supposed to be training?” I asked. “I thought I’d get your voicemail.”
“I have a minute while barking at some to get their asses in gear,” he promised. “Besides, you don’t call during training, so I figured it was important.”
“How flexible is the plan for tonight?” My mind was on the woman from the parking lot. “I might need someone to help me cover for misbehaving and join me for some fun.”
He was quiet a moment. “I could give the reservation to someone else and find a place in whatever area. I mean, I’m not taking you to some shithole though.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” I chuckled. “I promise if we get messy, I’ll let you shower with me to make up for it.”
He let out a soft groan. “We might get to hunt and shower? Yeah, I’m fine with changing the plans.” He cleared his throat. “You said you don’t have much dating experience. I was going for calm and a bit normal, so really it’s not throwing anything off. But can I get a rain check for a Saturday date? There’s something fun I think you’ll like that would be a nice date.”
“Sure,” I agreed. “It looks like we’ll be leaving town next Wednesday to take the tour, but my weekends aren’t booked yet. That can always change.”
“Right, sounds good. I’ll let the others know here.”
“Thanks. See you tonight.”
“I’m looking very forward to it,” he admitted before hanging up.
So was I.
I lost myself in work, the piles of everything piling with Harris, Cooper, Davis, and the new teams getting integrated into new offices. Technically LA should handle the Vegas everything and same with Florida and Memphis, but we were the hub now, and they were my people going in. Monroe and Galvin agreed that we would handle and support the first wave and clean up, and they could take over from there.
But there was a lot in that first wave, even Vegas where we’d been in. Memphis too. No one had been back in too long, and they were needed. We were making progress though. Monroe and I agreed to permanently assign Cooper in Vegas. It was a big office, and he’d liked it there, making it clear he wanted to be reassigned out of Chicago.
I’d sent him to Memphis for the temporary assignment because we weren’t as tight with the vampires there and there were tensions given they should have told me, not Vlad, about what they knew. So he was smoothing things over.
Poor Davis was the one in the worst shit, as no one had been to Des Moines yet. Here I’d sent her to the smallest area where we’d figured the least amount of trouble since she didn’t have the experience Harris and Cooper did, and she was about on her last leg. I’d approved a few more agents from our office to help her until she made her way through it.
“Chief, we got a tip,” Shaw told me as people were packing up for the day. “A woman says she saw some guys hassling a woman she thinks is a vampire, demanding she bite them. Well, she said ‘suck,’ which might make it something else, but she wasn’t sure because they said not to eat them.” She gave me a look that it seemed more like a possible sexual assault or rape.
Which was smart of the woman to not be anything she couldn’t explain later.
“Where’s it at?” I asked, nodding as she told me the address. “I’m having dinner with Axel not far from there. I’ll check it out.”
“You sure?” she muttered, blinking at me when she felt whatever she picked up from me as a fairy. “Sure, boss. I’ve got dispatch tonight, so I’ll let you know if we get anything.”
“Thanks for handling that.” I gave her a wink that I had this in hand as I took the report of the call.
I smiled. Time to go hunting some predators who were about to realize they were prey.
6
“Good thing this was right by the Thai place we were meeting at,” Axel said as he got out of his car. “What’s the tip?”
“A woman thought a vampire was being harassed by some guys, but we’re not sure,” I admitted. “Badges out, it’s a dicey neighborhood.”
“Sounds fun,” Carter chuckled, all of them moving their badges around their necks and in clear view like when they were on a raid. They were currently just my security detail, but they were still FBI now.
I checked the address and sniffed the air. “I don’t smell any vamps recently.”
“No, I don’t either,” Carter confirmed, looking like he was suppressing a grin. “I do however smell something else.”
“Yeah, and it has friends,” I purred, following the scent of cocaine I was picking up. It led me several doors down, and the guys on the porch did not look happy to see me.
“We doing this off your nose?” Emilio worried. “Is that legal?”
“It would be if it was a detection dog as long as it wasn’t a setup,” I told him. “I don’t think I can ignore it once I’ve smelled it, do you?”
“You ain’t got no business here,” one of the guys called over as he stood, flashing his gun at me. “Keep walking, bimbo.”
“Get on the ground,” I told them as I pulled my gun, the others following suit. “We’re FBI. On the ground with your hands behind your head.” I headed right for the door—knowing they had the guys on the porch—and seeing enough through the window to give me every reason to enter without permission. I went right in and scanned the room, Axel at my back with Carter. “Hands up, FBI.”
“You’ve got no right to be here,” someone bitched, shooting me a look of death.
I rolled my eyes, nodding to the drugs all over the table. “Your blinds aren’t even drawn. You’re cutting and bagging in your damn living room.” I turned when someone came down the stairs, and he locked on the gun first, almost tripping down the last stair as he threw his hands up. “Move along the wall. Carter, clear the rest of the house. Zip ties, and we need gloves and bags for weapons.”
“Got it.”
“I suggest you leave before you have problems you can’t handle,” someone warned me quietly.
I met his eyes and knew he was the boss there. He might not be the boss of the gang or wherever he got the drugs, but he was boss of that group there and the situation. “I suggest you do as you’re told and not cause a problem so we get everyone detained safely.”
“On what grounds?” he pushed. “Our attorneys are going t
o eat you alive.”
I flashed power in my eyes. “No, they won’t, and we were called on a tip, so just let this play out and keep calm.”
“Clear,” Carter called out from upstairs.
“Call it in to Havers,” I said back.
“Not CPD?” Axel asked.
I shrugged. “I’m sure they’ll be involved, but we’re FBI. They’re human, so we call the human division.” I slid off my ring before heading for the leader, wanting to touch him when I restrained him and read him his rights. By the time we were outside, I knew two people from law enforcement that were in deep, deep shit.
I waited until backup started arriving to take people in before pulling out my phone and finding Agent Atkins of DEA in my phone.
“Thomas, hey, how are you?” he greeted.
“Good, better, but I just handled a bust, and you’ve got a dirty agent.”
He was quiet a moment. “What proof do you have?”
“None that would stand up in court,” I admitted. “I got images off the boss guy that one of yours will handle this and make it go away—make me go away if needed. Now that last part was a feeling, but I’ve got a face and him in a DEA jacket. I could pick him out fast.”
“That’s enough for me to point a finger to start looking.” He sighed. “You need our roster?”
“Yeah, I called in regular FBI for this bust, but you want in? There were several pounds of coke on the damn coffee table, and they’re all carrying. I smell more than coke and a lot of it.”
“Give me the address, we’ll at least help out, which would give us a lead in to sniff around to find dirt.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” I admitted. I gave him the address, and he promised he’d be there soon.
CPD started showing up, and about ten minutes later someone from vice I’d met before arrived. He had been part of the shit investigation into the club and wasn’t a bad guy, but it brought up some issues I had with what had happened and the CPD. I gave him a warning look to tread lightly as greeting.
He held his hands up in surrender. “I was cleared by IA and the vice shakeup while you were gone, Chief Thomas. I’m sorry about what happened, and I didn’t want to be there, you knew that.” He waited until I nodded. “Lieutenant Hill.”
“Lieutenant?” I muttered, shaking his hand since I’d never gotten his name.
“Yeah, I got a promotion after passing the exam and there were some open spots in vice so… Yeah.”
“Okay then, but we didn’t call CPD.”
“No, but this is a known house of the gang in the area, and patrol provides FBI support, but the address got flagged,” he explained. “What happened?”
I raised an eyebrow at him, reminding him I didn’t have to answer. “I’m turning it over to Chief Havers. I’ll let him explain to CPD if he wants, but the guys were pretty sure they’ll be out tonight and this is no big thing when I saw them cutting and bagging coke from the damn window before I could even walk through the door.”
He opened his mouth but then closed it, giving me a curious look. “You think there’s something CPD dirty.”
I didn’t see any reason to deny it, so I didn’t. “Yes.” I turned away when Brian arrived. Normally he wouldn’t be called in directly, but it was common to transfer over to the same rank. “I invited Atkins to the party because I got some images. There’s a problem with CPD too, and I doubt they’ll do much because I know what the guy looks like.”
“No, but we can keep them out and not give them a chance to try and taint anything or mess us up. Fill me in.”
So I did as I headed to the house… Minus a few things. Brian was a boy scout and believed very much in staying in his own lane, so I left out the hint I’d given the woman or I was pretty sure I was going hunting on the call.
“I thought you were going to some fancy, fancy place?” Brian muttered, giving me a funny look. “Axel was saying he got reservations.”
I shrugged. “He told me it was the Thai place I wanted to check out over here, so I said I’d check out the tip.” I let out a whistle as I took in all the bagged guns. Then I moved my hand over my face, the smell of the drugs agitating my wolf. Emilio tossed me some Vicks VapoRub to put under my nose, and I thanked him, thinking that was smart to start carrying in my bag.
Normally at crime scenes I was doing all I could to pick up more scents, so it was a good trick for when I didn’t want to.
“You’re going to want to see this,” Carter told me. “I thought we were going to have an easy night and some Thai.”
“We might still have the Thai,” I chuckled, knowing he said that just so Brian heard again that the plan was for Thai. He led us out to the garage, and I snickered. “We’ve seen this trick before.” All along one wall were hanging license plates, and behind it were orders and product so they could speak in code and not just whatever the drug was being called on the street at the moment.
“That’s new,” Brian muttered.
I followed his gaze, and my eyes went wide at the huge overhead storage racks filled with large plastic totes. One was on the ground and stuffed with tightly wrapped bags of pot. “I hate pot is still illegal.” I followed Carter back into the kitchen and then in the dining room where there were a few dozen stacked boxes. The top one was opened and filled with cans of Pringles. “Well sure, they needed munchies.”
“After the pot, nice,” Emilio chuckled, catching on first. “Yeah, they better not eat what’s inside like chips.” He held one for me to look in.
“Wow, that’s a lot of opioids,” I muttered, glancing back at the boxes. “This is a huge fucking bust.”
“You do throw fun parties,” Atkins said from behind us. He was already holding out a tablet to me. “That’s every file from our office.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me for busting dirt,” he grumbled, shaking his head before holding his hand out to Brian. “Good to see you again, Chief Havers. What can the DEA do to help?”
“You got room on your desks because we honestly don’t?” Brian admitted, yanking off his FBI ball cap. He must have just hit the gym when he got the call because he wasn’t in his normal work suit. “We’ve been giving backup to Sera’s teams being implemented in other offices, and it’s been a time eater.”
“And we thought Des Moines would be the easy one,” I sighed, knowing what he meant. We’d found some issues with people fucking with the coven and a lot of no one doing shit. Their damn fire department had refused to put out a fire some assholes had set to one of their homes thinking fire would kill vamps.
Well yeah, but fire burned everyone. Vamps could go out in the sunlight, and they’d been seriously deluded as they’d ranted about the coffins they’d expected to find.
None of the vamps in my coven had been amused to learn people really thought they slept in coffins. I promised there were idiots everywhere, so it wasn’t just them that had to deal with it.
I flipped through the files and found the guy about ten in. I told Atkins and gave him exactly what I’d seen, and it wasn’t much, but it might place his agent with the gang, and that was enough to really get things going. He was hesitant, and I understood that, hell, I respected him as a boss for not just taking whatever people said as real accusations, but he knew me too, and I wouldn’t bullshit him.
“So, um, are you about wrapping up?” Axel asked, his tone trying not to be pointed or pushy, which of course made everyone note it.
“We were supposed to be having dinner,” I explained to Atkins.
“Yeah, at a fancy place I thought,” Brian muttered, giving him a look asking what was up.
Axel played it off, shrugging easily. “She’s had a lot going on suddenly, so I gave the fancy reservation to Alok and Tasar and thought a more causal Thai place.” He cleared his throat. “But I think that’s out now. We can eat at the place I was planning for after dinner.”
“Well, don’t leave us hanging, man,” Atkins teased him, smiling when Axe
l shot him a nasty look. “I’m married with kids. Let me live vicariously through you young ones.”
“Dave and Busters.”
I smiled at him, suppressing my real reaction and remembering I was the boss and at work. “I’ve never been there.”
“I figured,” he admitted.
“How can you never have been to Dave and Busters?” Atkins asked, giving me a look like he wasn’t buying it.
I shrugged. “I was a dork in high school and college. I didn’t have friends even after because all my undercover work made it hard for anything…” I didn’t want to say “normal,” and “social” didn’t sound right.
Fine, I was a weirdo. I wanted to go.
“I’m thousands of years old, and I’ve never been,” Emilio grumbled as if saying to let it go. He did it for me because we were friends, and I appreciated it.
Someone laughed from upstairs, and those of us fast enough took off out of instinct. Carter reached the room first, and I crashed into him when he froze. I caught myself and moved around him, seeing Sander laughing his ass off as he pointed to the bed.
“They stuffed the bed with the cash. That so couldn’t be comfortable,” he explained in between gasps.
Sure enough, there was a small slit on the box spring that gaped, and I could see a bill. I accepted gloves from Carter and squatted down, pulling at the slit so it ripped. Hundred dollar bills came spilling out it was so stuffed. I shook my head and checked the mattress, finding even more.
“I bet I make less than Atkins too, and once again I’m at the center of a huge bust,” I grumbled as I stood, pulling off the gloves.
“In my defense, I have more years than you,” he muttered. He might be a rank below me, but he had maybe fifteen years on me. Yeah, that was fair. I even understood it for Brian, as he had more years too.
It was just the sexism and how often I was in the middle of the shit, but when I was undercover I couldn’t get all the credit. Now I could, and it seemed I mostly just got more crap.
“Well, you guys have fun, I’m off to my date,” I said, giving a wave as I stepped aside to let them check it out.