by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor
The other hip this time.
When Mowry descended on me, I rolled fast and he landed on the ground, facedown. I kicked out, smacking him in the side of the head—one of my all-time favorite offensive moves—and bounded to my feet.
“You bitch!”
The vamp girl came for me, clawed fingers going for my face. Not really wanting to hurt her—she might be idiot enough to be with Mowry, but she probably wasn’t lethal—I grabbed her arm and threw my weight down against her body so she lost her footing and collapsed on top of her beloved leader.
“Get off me!” he howled.
Catching my breath, I turned to help Jake in time to see him pick up one of Mowry’s minions and throw him against the other three. And I gaped when they all went down like so many bowling pins. Good grief, he was strong!
“Let’s go!” he said, holding out his hand.
He didn’t have to say it twice. I jumped over the sprawled bodies and grabbed on to his hand, and we burst into the night together.
I quickly looked around. The street was deserted.
“Annie…where is she? I didn’t think she’d get too far drugged.”
Jake was concentrating—doing his human-antenna act just as he had before we’d gone into the nest.
“Gone. She was a little woozy but she wasn’t totally out of it. The night air probably sobered her fast.”
“And the fear,” I said, checking to make sure members of the vampire cult hadn’t followed us out to the street. “Fear can do that to you.”
“You know that bears some discussion, but not here. Car keys.” Jake held out his hand.
“I can drive,” I insisted, limping to my vehicle.
“You’re bleeding.”
So I was. The cut had been aggravated by the fight. I bent my elbow at the arm and raised my hand so the wound was above my heart in hopes that would stop the bleeding. What it did was dangle my keys directly in front of Jake’s face. He snatched them from my hand, unlocked the Camaro and held open the passenger door.
“Get in.”
I’d had enough conflict for one day. I did as he ordered, telling myself I could better tend to the cut if I wasn’t driving. I buckled up and put pressure below the wound in hopes it would stop bleeding.
At the same time, I kept an eye on the door in the concrete wall. Nothing. No movement. They were probably too busy licking their wounds. Or so I hoped. Whatever, I breathed easier.
“Let’s drive around—we need to find Annie. I want to make sure she’s all right.”
“And maybe take her to a cop shop and make a report?” Jake suggested.
Annie had gone willingly with Mowry. He’d scared her, had even cut her, but not badly. Supposing what he might have done, had Jake and I not shown up, wouldn’t hold diddly weight with the state’s attorney. We didn’t have much of a case. And without Annie, we had nothing.
The other problem was arresting Mowry at this point in the murder investigation—he was a murder suspect, but we had no proof that he’d killed anyone. Taking Mowry in at this time could be a big mistake, one his lawyer could potentially use against us if we did get something on him later. I didn’t want the murderer slipping through our fingers on some technicality.
After riding around in circles for several minutes, Jake said, “Okay, it’s official. We’re not going to find Annie tonight.”
“Damn! I guess not.”
“All right, then.” Jake had barely aimed the Camaro out of that neighborhood before saying, “So, who are you really, sister to Silke? A private investigator? A cop?”
I thought about backpedaling, but the pretense of being Silke with him was over. So I took the offensive once more.
“How about you, Jake? Trading secrets?”
“A little gratitude would be in order here, considering I saved your pretty butt.”
“I fought my own fight.”
“With one man instead of more. Though you were pretty impressive, I admit. You didn’t learn to kick other people’s butts like that watching an action movie.”
He wasn’t going to let it alone this time. No more playing games. He was angry. I could hear it in his voice, see it in the tension drawing his hands into fists around the steering wheel. While he hadn’t actually saved me, he certainly had contributed to the good fight. Impressively, as well. And he’d seemed to be looking out for me all along. He’d warned me away from both Hung Chung and Elvin Mowry. For some reason, he seemed to be looking out for me.
I decided Jake deserved some answers. I needed someone I could trust who would watch my back. And no matter how we’d danced around each other the past few days, no matter that I still didn’t know his intentions, I decided I did trust him, especially after what had just gone down.
I finally said, “Cop, and I need to call this in.”
I pulled out my cell and called Norelli, who’d been sound asleep. To say that he was thrilled would be a gross exaggeration. I couldn’t help but savor that. I quickly filled him in on what had gone down and not only asked him to get the patrol officers keeping an eye out for Annie, but I suggested he put a stake out on Mowry’s nest. To my surprise, Norelli agreed and said he would make certain Mowry himself developed an extra shadow 24/7.
As I finished the call, I realized we were headed away from, rather than toward, Heart of Darkness. Jake must not have driven to work. Then I realized the street we were on was only vaguely familiar.
“Jake, where are you taking me?”
“Home.”
Right. Only it didn’t happen to be mine.
Chapter 10
When I protested going to his place, Jake said, “That cut on your arm needs some attention, so you have a choice—the E.R. or my place,” and I could tell he meant it.
Since I didn’t want to spend hours in some overcrowded emergency room, and I wanted to know more about Jake himself, I went along with his plan. He’d just put himself on the line for me. He could have been hurt, at the very least. In my book, his backing me up counted for a lot. At his place, he could fix me up and I could peel him open and find out what he was all about.
Jake lived in a gray-stone two-flat on the west side not far from the bar, but beyond the gentrified area. No name on the mailboxes, either. When he led me up to the second-floor apartment, I noted the hallway was clean and the faint scent of lemon oil lingered on the wood trim. The stairwell led into the middle of the apartment where there were no windows.
The central pieces of the room were a ceramic-faced fireplace with a carved wooden mantel and a sofa whose deep red suede-looking material glowed mellowly in the dimly lit room. Not exactly a guy color, I thought, making me wonder if someone else had picked it out.
“Do you live here alone?”
“I do,” he said. “Can I get you something? Wine?”
“Sure, I could use something to help me relax.” Truth be told, my adrenaline had been at an all-time high earlier, and I was still pumped from the action.
His back to me, Jake said, “So you’re a cop.”
“Detective Shelley Caldwell.”
“Silke’s twin sister, if I’m not mistaken.” He turned from the cart, two stemmed goblets in hand. “Your looks are similar, but you’re not really alike. That’s why I knew you weren’t Silke.”
“No one else seemed to notice.” At least I hoped not.
“I assume your going undercover has to do with the deaths in the area.”
I didn’t feel obligated to confirm the obvious, but how did he know there had been more than one death? I was pretty sure Norelli and Walker had only been questioning people about Raven.
Jake handed me one of the glasses of wine. The red was dense, reminding me of blood. I thought to check my arm.
“Let me see.”
He set down his glass and gently pulled my arm toward him. At first touch, my breath caught in my throat.
“It’s fine.”
The blood had begun coagulating—I’d done a pretty good job of sto
pping the flow in the car—but dried blood stained my makeup-whitened skin and the cut itself looked pretty nasty. It was just now making itself known by throbbing sharply, as if in warning.
Jake seemed fascinated by it. He traced his finger along my flesh parallel to the still oozing wound. “You’ll have a scar.”
The comment drew my gaze to his scar, half-camouflaged by his beard stubble. I wondered how he’d gotten it. I hadn’t thought on it much. I guess I’d assumed he’d had an accident. But after seeing him fighting, I wasn’t so sure.
I shrugged and joked, “New addition. It’ll go with the others.”
He raised an eyebrow and met my gaze. “I’d like to see the collection.”
“I just bet you would.”
“In the meantime, let me take care of you.”
He left the room for a moment, but his mere absence didn’t settle my nerves. I sipped the wine and paced the space, inspecting it thoroughly. Not that the light from that single lamp showed me much. It did set a mood, though, and it was enough to get a feel for the place. On the cart where he’d gotten the wine rested a small framed portrait of a young and beautiful woman with dark hair and eyes. The one who’d picked out the sofa fabric? I wondered. I kept wandering and stopped before a photographic display spread on the wall behind the sofa. There were more than a dozen framed photos of cities—American, European, Asian—all taken after dark.
Jake came back into the room, hands filled with first-aid items.
“Great photos,” I told him. “Yours?”
“Yeah, you could call it a hobby.”
“You’ve traveled all over the world.”
“Actually, I’ve lived in all those places.”
I was feeling a warm glow from the inside out, not only from the wine but also from the rush of the battle. And, truthfully, from being alone with Jake. I blamed the adrenaline. I still hadn’t come all the way down from my high.
“Sit,” Jake said, indicating the sofa.
He set the medical supplies on the table next to it. I set my arm directly under the lamp so he could better see what he was doing. Hydrogen peroxide came first. I gritted my teeth so I wouldn’t yelp at the pain. Then I noticed how focused he was as the mixture of peroxide and blood bubbled up red and spilled over my flesh. Again, he seemed fascinated…and then he tore his gaze away from the cut and looked directly into my eyes.
I got a jolt. Not more adrenaline exactly, but something even stronger.
Before I could analyze, Jake asked, “So what were you doing going after a bunch of wanna-be vampires on your own tonight? Where was your backup?” He gently cleaned the flesh around the cut.
“I looked for my backup, but they’d already left. Sometimes I act on impulse.”
I wanted to tell him everything, starting with LaTonya, but I still didn’t know who or what Jake was, and until I did, I couldn’t fully trust him with information that was being withheld from the press. For all I knew, he could be a reporter himself, a plant. That would go with his having traveled around the world so much. Perhaps it had been on assignment, to get unusual stories. Only, if he was a reporter, how had he been put on this particular story? As far as I knew, he’d been working at Heart of Darkness for some time.
Jake had finished securing two butterfly bandages across the cut to keep it closed. Now he covered it with a light coating of antibiotic cream and patted off the excess with a gauze pad. Quite a neat-looking, professional job.
I said, “I’m hoping to bring this case home before anyone else gets hurt.”
“You mean dies.”
“That, too. It’s hard to know what to believe about Raven’s murder, whether or not she was meant to die. Tonight, Mowry gave Annie a drug and cut her, but he didn’t kill her. And I don’t think he meant to. It looked more like an initiation. And from what I’ve read about vampire cults, a pretty tame initiation at that.”
“So you think what happened to us after we got Annie away from them was pretty tame? What the hell do you do for excitement?”
His darkened visage made me laugh. “You have a point. But I’ve been trying to make sense of this—”
“So you’ve been overthinking it,” he finished for me. “It’s simple, really. Either we’re dealing with a real psychopath…or a real vampire.”
I laughed again. “Yeah, right.”
But he’d said it with a straight face. So Jake was either into black humor, or he was a little loony, I thought, wanting it to be the first one. Of course he had to be joking. And I was in a fine mood. Normally, I would respond with a wisecrack rather than a laugh, but tonight I couldn’t manage it. Whether or not I’d needed help, he’d really looked after me earlier.
I was grateful to him.
And attracted.
“You’re trying to simplify things, make what you know fit in some neat package,” Jake was saying. He reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair back from my face. “You’re going to have to start thinking outside of the box.”
Vampires? Not likely. I shook my head. “Pretty far out for me. So what’s your part in what happened tonight, Jake? Why involve yourself?”
Was he a reporter or a cop or what?
“I need to see justice done,” he said simply.
A concept that needed no explanation. I could relate. “To whom?”
“To the person responsible for a lot of things—” he glanced back at the portrait on the liquor cart “—including my mother’s death.”
The breath caught in my throat. “That’s your mother? She was killed like Raven?”
“She was burned to death.”
“Oh, Jake, I’m so sorry….”
A fire. How horrible. Not knowing what else to say, I put a hand on his arm. A hand that he patted, as if feeling the need to comfort me. For some reason, the back of my throat grew thick with emotion. His pale eyes were filled with sadness when his gaze met mine. The woman in the portrait was so young. He might have lost her when he was a child.
“I’ve been searching for the truth for a lot of years,” he said. “There are just some things you never can put behind you.”
“I understand more than you know.” I might not be related to LaTonya Sanford, but she haunted me all the same. “I’m assuming you don’t know who—”
“Not yet. But I’m in the right place at the right time. And I will find the guilty one.”
“So you think whoever killed Raven killed your mother? Why? What’s the connection?”
“The way the blood was taken.”
“But you said she burned—”
“That, too.”
The cop in me said, “If you beat me to figuring it out, you’ll tell me, right?”
He didn’t answer, and I didn’t press him. I didn’t have all the facts yet, but I would get them. Just not right now. He’d finally reached out to me, and I didn’t want to spoil it. Plus, I didn’t want to ruin whatever it was we had going here.
In one night, everything had changed between us. Jake had backed me up. He hadn’t laughed at me or questioned my reasoning; he’d just gone along with me and then had acted. He could have been killed, but he hadn’t hesitated. Then he’d taken care of my wound and had shared his deepest secret, one that formed an unlikely bond between us.
Before me stood a man who might actually understand and appreciate me. And he seemed to be someone I could count on.
Jake gathered the medical supplies in a pile on the table and stood, but before he could pick them up and escape the room, I pushed up from the couch and provided a human blockade. He seemed surprised…and yet, not. If he was thinking about leaving the room, he didn’t so much as twitch.
“So why did you bring me here, Jake?”
“I knew you would be safe here.”
“My place is safe.”
“But judging by last night, we might not be alone at your place.”
Seconds ticked by as we stared at each other. I had that feeling again, as if he were inside me, trying to re
ad me. Try as I might, I couldn’t deny the connection. It felt familiar…and not. Like my connection with Silke, only different.
I remembered feeling that I might do anything he wanted. That he had some kind of mind control over me. Impossible. And yet…
My breath went shallow and my sense of expectancy—of something about to happen—increased. The rush of the night and heightened adrenaline continued, swept over me until my body went taut on the outside, soft on the inside.
I don’t know who did what first, but the next thing I knew, we were locked together, body and lips. I felt I was drowning in his kiss, a kiss like no other I’d ever experienced. My head buzzed with it. And my body…well, my body seemed to unfurl and open to him.
We stayed in lip lock for I don’t know how long. Somehow in that time and space, we managed to eliminate the barrier to getting closer. I worked on him and he worked on me—hands touching, exploring, exciting—and the next thing I knew our clothing and my holstered weapon were scattered around us on the floor.
And still we were kissing.
Suddenly, he gripped my hips and pushed me away and took a long, lingering look at my body that made me blush from the toes up. His expression was intense. And he was looking at me, for heaven’s sake, like I was beautiful or something.
Then it was my turn to look at him. No avoiding it. The lights might be dim, but they were still on.
The first thing I noticed was that he was erect. Wetness pooled between my thighs as I considered straddling him and sliding down him until my flesh covered his.
My body overheated and my face felt flushed as I raised my eyes to his. Our gazes locked. My imagination was playing with me again. I swore his eyes glowed in the semidark. I saw him reaching into the table where the medical supplies were and pick up a condom wrapped in gold foil.
He held out his hand. I took it. Something live and electric beat through me. He tugged and I stepped closer. And he placed my hand where my eyes had feasted. I spread the condom from his tip around and down him. Then I pushed him back until his legs hit the sofa.