Then something he’d seen came back to him, and he rushed into the kitchen. “Peas.”
Mike followed closely behind him. “What about peas?”
“Justin hates them.” Joe pulled a bag of frozen green peas out of the freezer, as his stomach twisted. “Hated. He hated peas. Past tense.”
“I’m sorry.” Mike gripped his shoulder for a moment.
Joe closed his eyes and leaned against the counter until the pain lessened. Then he forced his attention back to the bag in front of him. Justin would sometimes split the seam on one side of some frozen food, then slide in whatever he wanted to hide. A little water along the seam and it was invisible.
Because the freezer door had been left open when the apartment was searched, it wasn’t until the peas had partially melted that he found the sealed plastic bag that contained a piece of folded paper.
“Brilliant,” Mike whispered.
“My brother was no slouch.” Joe unfolded the sheet, and found names and phone numbers listed neatly down the page. Beside each name were dates and letters that had Joe smiling. Memories of cool autumn afternoons spent laughing with friends on their big back deck settled comfortably in his mind.
“What are the squiggles?” Mike asked, pointing at the writing beside the dates.
“Hebrew letters.”
“Justin knew Hebrew?”
“A little.” Joe’s mind went down memory lane again. It was nice remembering good times with his brother. “Do you remember Aaron Jacobson?”
“Of course I do. He was the funniest kid in school. He lived next to you for a while, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did. Just so happened it was the year he turned thirteen.”
Comprehension crossed Mike’s face. “He taught Justin Hebrew.”
“Actually he taught both of us. He was studying for his bar mitzvah, and figured out pretty quick that he learned faster if he taught us. We ate it up. It was different than our school lessons and that made it interesting.”
“Sounds like fun. How come I never knew about any of this?”
“That was the year you and Nate played football, remember?”
Mike gave an exaggerated shudder. “I wish I could forget. Not my proudest hour.”
Joe laughed. “Not so much.”
“So while I made a fool of myself, you and Justin were having a great time?”
“Sorry.” Joe grinned. “Aaron hated the work he had to do for Hebrew school, meanwhile, Justin and I wished we could have bar mitzvahs.”
Mike snorted. “I can see it now, the Sullivan twins with yarmulkes on their heads and prayer shawls around their shoulders. Wow, those Irish Catholic grandparents of yours would have been so proud.”
“Ha-ha, you’re funny.”
“I try.”
By this time, Joe had fumbled through the dusty, cobweb-covered corners of his mind and remembered a couple of things. He pointed to one letter beside a name. “That’s a shin.”
“A what?”
“A letter. It sounds like either ‘sh’ or ‘s’.”
“Maybe s for source?”
Joe nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. Most have that letter, so it makes sense.”
“This one has two letters.” Mike pointed. “What’s that?”
Joe looked at the second letter. “A mem. For ‘M’.”
“Look at the date beside it, Joe.”
He did, and his breath sucked in like he’d been sucker punched. “That’s the day Justin was killed.”
“M for meet?”
“That’s a logical conclusion.”
“So now we give this guy’s name to the cops?”
Joe gave the idea serious consideration. He went over the pros and cons in his head. But there was only one way this could go. “If we had this much trouble figuring out where the information was and what he meant by it, people who don’t know Justin are not going to take us seriously. We find this Kennedy guy ourselves.”
“Damn.” Mike sighed. “I was afraid you would say that.”
****
The basement was always cold and dark. It was a little better now, though, because the heat of the men sitting in the four rows of chairs raised the temperature. The lights were all on too, including some installed just for the occasion. One light in particular aimed right at the front where Vince spoke. Kevin stood off to one side in the back of the room and listened.
“These things are not human, they are our enemy. If we don’t stop them, they will destroy us and our way of life. They take our blood. They take our humanity. They are animals who consider us prey.”
A picture flashed through Kevin’s head. A woman with long, blonde hair. The woman with that blanket thing over her head. The crazy one who ran to help the brother guy. She had to be crazy to come running toward a fight between men. But she was freaky in more ways than that. That same blonde who’d tried to help that brother dude had tried to help him. Yeah, maybe it was silly telling him to stop stealing and go back to school. As if. She’d tried, though, which was more than most people did for him. But she’d sucked his blood. How weird was that?
“We cannot allow the human race to be lowered to the level of cattle for the benefit of hell-spawned creatures!” Vince slammed his hand down on the table in front of him.
Kevin ran for the bathroom and barely made it before he lost his dinner.
Chapter 8
Veronica reached for her tea, only to find it had long since gone cold. Sighing, she got to her feet and took the cup to the microwave. While her tea reheated, she wondered if what she was doing wasn’t a quick trip off the frying pan straight into the fire. Accessing the Guardian’s data once was dangerous; to go back in and spend hours poking around was plain stupid. Was the remote possibility of finding a lead worth her career or even her freedom? Images of a dark, remote, scary Guardian prison teased her mind.
So why was she doing it? Why was something inside her so determined to poke into the hundreds of nooks and crannies of the database in an effort to find an elusive clue that might, or might not, help her make sense of the DNA profiles she’d found? Why put herself at risk when the odds of finding anything were miniscule? Even if she found out the name that went with the profile the chances of that making a difference were about one in a billion.
The microwave dinged, and she took her re-warmed tea back to the table. The truth was, she knew why, and it had a lot to do with her attraction to a human.
Rubbing her aching neck, she mentally argued with herself. She didn’t like the idea that humans didn’t matter. She wanted to see justice done, and only vampires could make that happen. If the killer was punished, it would have to be because somebody did something unsanctioned. And she seemed to be the only candidate.
Cons and pros, black and white, bad and good. She tried to make the decision logically. Tried to consider the consequences.
In the end, it was her heart that sent her back to the search.
****
Joe woke to loud snoring. He tried to sit up, only to have his neck protest moving from the cramped position he’d somehow fallen asleep in. Groaning, he forced his body to untangle from the corner of the couch and poked at the source of the snoring. “Wake up, sleeping beauty.”
Mike snorted and pulled himself into a sitting position. “Damn, you snore like a bullhorn.”
Joe eyed his friend. “And you don’t?”
“Hell no.” Mike yawned. “Damn, it’s daylight. I’ll make the coffee.”
Joe laughed as he watched his buddy go toward the kitchen. Morning. Time to once again try to locate one T. Kennedy.
****
Veronica was on the verge of giving up and going to bed. The Guardian database was massive; with files labeled with random numbers and odd letters she thought came from a very old alphabet of the all but lost vampire language. These letters and numbers led to files within files. She might never find what she was looking for. Especially since she didn’t even know what that was.
<
br /> Clicking a link to yet another numbered folder, she found at least a hundred files linked inside. “Well, they don’t have to worry about hackers. If somebody got inside here, they’d never find anything useful.”
Hackers like her, for instance?
“I have permission to access this site.” She shrugged. “Just not this section.”
Her cell phone vibrating on the table startled her enough she almost fell off the chair. For a moment, she was sure she was caught. Then she looked at the display and let out a relieved breath. “Hello, Charlene. What’s up?”
“Hey, Veronica. Mom’s driving me nuts. Would you mind if I came over for a bit?”
The sound of her sister’s voice seemed to lessen the tension in her head. “Sure, come on over. If you’re willing to brave sunlight, it must be really bad.”
They said their goodbyes, and she looked at her computer screen. She really didn’t have time to do anymore now. Maybe after Charlene left she’d be more inclined to return to her headache-inducing search. She moved the mouse up to logout, but somehow wound up clicking on one of the links instead. A profile popped up. Picture, name, height, weight, all kinds of basic information—and of course more numbers.
Okay, now what? She closed that file and clicked open another. Another profile, but no indication as to why these files were where they were, or why they were labeled the way they were. She clicked again. This time the face in the picture looked familiar. Leaning closer to the computer she realized she knew the man. Sort of. He was a Guardian she’d met not long after she’d agreed to work with them. At least some of these were profiles of Guardians, but knowing that didn’t help her much. Were all these files the profiles of Guardians, or was this guy in their database for some other reason?
The knock on her door called an end to her session. She logged out of the system, closed her laptop, and went to visit with her sister.
The mystery would just have to wait a little longer.
****
Joe dialed the number on Justin’s secret list again, anticipating yet another direct link to voicemail. They’d spent half the day trying to speak to this Kennedy dude.
“The guy probably left the country,” Mike said.
“Hello.”
Joe almost dropped the phone when he realized he had an actual answer. “Hello, I’m calling for Mr. Kennedy.”
“This is he.”
“My name is Joe Sullivan. I believe you may have met my brother Justin.”
A click signaled the abrupt end of the connection. Joe dropped his cell phone on the coffee table. “The bastard just hung up on me.”
“Now what?” Mike asked.
“Damn if I know.”
****
Kevin sat on a hill just outside the town and looked down at Lobster Cove. The place was almost like a scene out of a movie. Quiet. People mostly nice. And there was always that sound of the ocean. He wouldn’t admit to it, but that sound comforted him.
All in all, Lobster Cove seemed like a nice place to live. If you had a real family, that is. That was something he’d never known. Sure he’d lived with his real dad for a while, but the man never cared whether there was food in the house, or the electric bill was paid, or if Kevin went to school in shoes that were too small and had more holes than leather. Nope, all his dad had cared about was the next bet, the next big payoff. Not that there ever was a payoff. Even if he won, his dad always put the money on another bet since he was “on a roll.” If he didn’t drink the winnings.
He took a bite of the burger he’d bought with the cash he’d stolen from that woman with the two screaming kids. It had been so easy. Those kids had her so distracted all he had to do was reach in the purse she’d left in her grocery cart and pull out the twenty he could see from a mile away. Dumb bitch.
That thought led to thoughts of another woman: The crazy blonde he’d tried to rip off. She had to be one of those creatures Vince called dangerous.
He had to admit, it was way beyond creepy, the way she’d sucked his blood. She didn’t seem like a creature, though. Just a seriously weird woman. She seemed to honestly want to help him. Not that he was gonna do what she’d said, but just the fact she’d tried made her seem less like a creature. To be honest, in some ways she seemed more human than a lot of the humans he knew.
Except for that drinking blood thing.
He picked up his burger to take another bite, then hesitated. That blood thing still tangled his stomach up. He waited a minute for the feeling to pass, then went back to his good old, plain American food. None of that lobster crap for him, no sir. He wasn’t about to eat something that looked like a big bug. In fact, he was about tired of this place altogether. Big bugs, icy ocean, cold air on the last day of September. Not just chilly, freaking cold. What kind of messed up was that? He wanted to go home to the South. Tennessee, Georgia, Florida even. That was more his speed. In fact, the warm ocean on the Florida coast would be the place to be this coming winter. Not here where it would be like the North Pole any day now.
He shoved the rest of the burger in his mouth and tossed the bag behind him before he headed down the well-worn trail through the woods toward the town. A lot of people were out about this time of day, coming in from sightseeing for lunch. Maybe he could pick a pocket or two. Or just enjoy feeling like he was part of the town, even if he never would be accepted anywhere as normal as this place. Fitting in had been a big attraction of the Alliance. Vince had made it sound so good, being a member of a group that was doing something important.
Damn Vince to hell. He was always saying people needed to take the initiative. Well, he had, and still he got treated like he was an idiot kid. This Alliance of True Humanity stuff wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Why was Vince so mad because he’d beat up on that damn twin brother dude? What if the guy did have information about the Alliance? Didn’t it make sense to show him what he was dealing with?
In fact, what difference did it make that he knew about them? If these bloodsucking people were really so dangerous, why wasn’t the Alliance warning the public? Vince had been so worried about a reporter snooping around, but wouldn’t that have been the perfect opportunity to get the word out? When he’d searched for information about the reporter dude, Kevin had realized the man was not just some nothing guy looking for a story to make his career. This Justin Sullivan already had a career. He was a successful journalist who had the credibility to get people to accept a crazy story about blood-sucking inhuman things. Now he was dead and the opportunity was lost.
Now Vince had his panties in a wad about this other Sullivan brother. Kevin’s research said that Joe Sullivan was a college professor. A biology professor. Wasn’t this another opportunity to be believed? What was Vince so worried about?
He was contemplating those questions when he glanced toward Main Street. The reporter’s brother and his buddy walked along like they were big shots or something. Figuring he should take advantage of the opportunity, he strolled toward the men. Maybe he could get some good intel. Whether he shared the intel with Vince was still up in the air.
He was just about to catch up with the targets when he saw Vince coming from the other direction. Crap, he was about to get in trouble again. Great. Just freaking great.
He pulled his ball cap down and lowered his head. Maybe Vince wouldn’t see him. He was about to head in the other direction when he realized Vince had stopped. Edging closer, Kevin tried to see without being seen. When he realized what was happening, he stopped worrying so much and moved close enough to hear.
“Dr. Silver, fancy seeing you in Maine.” Vince was shaking the brother’s friend’s hand.
“Vincent Bolton, how are you?”
“I’m good,” Vince said. “Isn’t this place amazing?”
Dr. Silver looked around. “It’s nice. Are you living here now?”
“For the time being. Haven’t decided whether to stay long term or not. Depends on how business goes. You still savi
ng lives back in Tennessee?”
“I’m still working as a surgeon,” Silver said.
This was very interesting, but Kevin decided he’d better go before he was spotted. As he headed back to his favorite hiding place on the hill, where he could watch without being seen, he wondered at this new development. So the leader of the Alliance of True Humanity knew a friend of the brother of the dead reporter. What was it they said on TV? Oh yeah, the plot thickens.
****
“It was great spending time with you,” Charlene said.
Veronica gave her little sister a hug. “I am the only person who understands about Mom.”
“I can’t believe she moved up here. I thought it was such a great idea telling her I was following you up here because I thought if there were opportunities for you, there would be for me.” Charlene cringed. “When she said that was a great idea, and that she’d come too, I thought I would die.”
“You like Lobster Cove, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. I love meeting new people from all over the world. I know Mom thinks I took the job at Sea Crest Inn just until I find something better, but I love working at that place.”
“I’m glad you found something you enjoy.”
“I saw a ghost.”
“You saw what?”
Charlene laughed. “A ghost. I’ve seen her more than once, actually. She’s a beautiful young woman who stands on the beach just below the Inn. She stares toward the sea like she’s watching for a ship to arrive.”
“That sounds sad.”
“Maybe. I think it might be a sailor’s wife waiting for her husband to come home. I guess he never did, or she wouldn’t be haunting the beach. If that’s true then yeah, it is sad.”
Veronica shoved an unruly curl off her sister’s face. “How do you deal with the no-sun problem?”
“Just told them I was allergic.” She shrugged. “I put some of Mom’s special facial stuff, that I really am allergic to, on my arm one day, then when I was nice and broken out, I told them I’d accidently exposed my arm to the sun. Took care of any lingering questions.”
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