“Stand over here,” Louis said quietly, and Emma realized there was a fight going on out on the mats. Four other vampires stood against the wall on the sidelines. They studied her distrustfully until Louis did some sort of intricate sign language thing, and they all turned their attention back to the center of the room. Emma followed suit and blinked at what she found there. Two males, stripped down to nothing but loosely tied gi pants, their feet and chests bare, were engaged in a blazing martial arts battle that moved back and forth across the room so fast they were almost a blur. One had short dark hair, she could see that much, and the other . . . Emma caught her breath.
It was Duncan. And the other fighter was his lieutenant, Miguel. And to call what they were doing a fight didn’t do it justice. It was more of a dance, although no doubt it would have been deadly if they’d wanted it to be. The two of them were pure, lethal grace, as they snapped out kick after kick, seeming to defy gravity as they twisted in midair, then changed tactics to meet in a whirlwind of fists and grunts, each blocking as many hits as he took. Emma winced as the sound of flesh hitting flesh echoed off the bare walls, some of the hits so powerful she knew a human would have been down and screaming long ago. She stifled a gasp, hand over her mouth, when Miguel connected with a hard fist to Duncan’s jaw, his head twisting with the force of it. But it didn’t stop him. Duncan flowed with the hit, ducking low and spinning around and up into the air, one leg flying out like a battering ram, striking the side of Miguel’s neck. Miguel hunched under the blow and staggered briefly, then came up again as the two of them fought face-to-face once more, moving back and forth across the floor, neither of them appearing to be superior to the other.
Suddenly, Duncan went low, digging his shoulder into Miguel’s gut and plowing over and under. He tossed Miguel over his back and sent him at least ten feet into the air. Miguel landed with a hard crack of wood, despite the heavy mats. Impossibly, he was on his feet in an instant, charging back as the two of them went toe-to-toe like two heavyweight boxers with no survival instincts. Fists clenched, they exchanged blow after blow until they were both bloody, until Miguel suddenly grabbed Duncan’s arm, dipped and spun, tossing him over his shoulder.
Duncan came up grinning, mouth dripping blood, fangs gleaming as he took several running steps and flew into the air, his feet hitting Miguel’s chest in a one, two, three pattern that sent the dark-haired vamp flying backwards to land flat on the mat with another backbreaking thud. Or maybe not backbreaking for a vampire, because Miguel came to his feet again, laughing like a lunatic.
“You’ve been practicing, old man” he said, assuming a defensive posture once again.
“That’s lord old man to you, youngling. And maybe you’re getting lazy,” Duncan taunted.
“Words are cheap, my lord,” Miguel growled. And it was Duncan’s turn to laugh.
He was still laughing when he happened to glance over and caught sight of Emma. He lifted a hand, palm out, to stop Miguel, then tilted his head slightly as he took in the unlikely sight of Emma standing in his gym wearing her somber gray suit and high heels. He grinned at her, his hard muscled chest heaving, gleaming with sweat, drawstring gi pants hanging low on narrow hips to reveal a hard, flat abdomen and just a glimpse of that sweet narrowing of muscle into a man’s groin.
Emma stared, her mouth dry and her heart twisting oddly in her chest. She wanted. And if the hunger on Duncan’s face was anything to go by, he wanted her right back.
Or maybe he was just hungry. As in blood. She watched warily as Duncan prowled over to her, his hips rolling bonelessly like a big cat’s, his gaze raking up and down her form before settling on her face with a lazy, slow blink of his eyes.
“Emma.” His voice was a seductive purr that turned her name into a caress.
She wet her lips nervously, and then caught herself, refusing to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d rattled her. “Hey,” she said, pleased by how normal her voice sounded. “You wanted me here an hour after sunset. Here I am.”
“Here you are,” he repeated, his eyes dipping to scan her figure once more. “You look very lovely this evening.”
“Oh. Well, thanks.” It was such a Southern gentlemanly thing to say, the kind of thing young men of breeding learned in cotillion class. Emma didn’t know if he really meant it, or if he was only being polite. Although, polite wasn’t the word she’d have used to describe the way he was looking at her. No, nothing polite about that at all.
“I brought clothes to change into,” she told him, determined to take control of the conversation again . . . if she’d ever had it in the first place. “I wore these to the burial this morning and—”
A look of genuine dismay crossed Duncan’s face, and he took a sudden step closer, brushing the backs of his fingers down her cheek. “Forgive me,” he murmured. “I was thoughtless. How are you?”
Emma blinked up at him, feeling the heat of his big body, inhaling the clean, masculine scent of his sweat. He was so close and her heels were so high that if she raised up the tiniest bit, their lips would touch. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “Mister Pettry was very kind.”
“If you need more time, this can wait. You needn’t—”
“No,” she said immediately, cutting off the rest of his words. “I want to do this. I need to do this.”
His full lips curved slightly, and she thought she saw something like respect in his eyes. “Very well,” he said. “Louis will show you to a room where you can change.”
He looked beyond her to where the other vampire waited. “One of the guests rooms, Louis, with a bath. You know better than I do what’s available. And then get Ms. Duquet set up in the security center with the headshots and a computer. Phoebe will be by later to work with her.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Duncan stepped back, turning away from her to catch a towel that Miguel tossed at him. He rubbed it over his face and neck, and she noticed a very slight pink tinge to his sweat.
“I’ve got to shower and change myself,” he said, then lifted her hand, barely touching the back of it with his lips. “We’ll see each other again soon.”
Emma tucked her hand in the pocket of her jacket to keep it from trembling as she watched Duncan stroll from the room, followed by Miguel. The other vampires had moved out onto the gym floor and were engaged in more rapid fire bouts of fighting. She couldn’t have said what the particular discipline was. She didn’t know enough about any of them. Her only experience with martial arts had been two weeks of a disastrous class she’d taken in college. Every inch of her body had ached—no, ached was too kind a word for how she’d felt. Her body had hurt, and she’d finally decided there had to be a better way of staying fit.
“You ready, Ms. Duquet?”
Emma jerked her head around to stare at Louis. Apparently, she’d been daydreaming. Gosh, she thought. I wonder why?
“Thanks, Louis,” she said out loud. “And please, call me Emma,” she added as she followed him back down the hallway. After about ten steps, she thought to ask, “Who’s Phoebe?”
“A friend. She works with the FBI. Duncan called her out to Leesburg the other night. I isolated some video composites, and Phoebe’s running them through some identification software she has access to.
Emma didn’t remember seeing a woman among Duncan’s vampires, but there was a lot about that night that was a blur. “I didn’t meet her, did I?”
Louis stopped long enough to give her a weirdly intense look. “No,” he said finally. “She arrived after you were gone.”
He started walking again, and Emma frowned at his back. Was there something she’d missed? Maybe Duncan and Phoebe were more than just friends. And maybe Louis was close to Phoebe and resented the obvious sexual tension between Duncan and Emma. Or maybe Emma was letting her imagination run around in her head like a schizophrenic yappy dog.
Yeah, that was probably it.
After going back to the waiting room to retrieve her things, Emma picked up
her purse and laptop, while Louis carried the gym bag upstairs for her. It wasn’t all that heavy, and Emma could have done it herself. She’d learned long ago, however, to let guys carry things if they wanted to. Truth was, she kind of liked men who were still gallant, who opened doors and who offered their seats to women. She drew the line at car doors, because she felt too silly sitting there like a lump while the guy ran around the car. But she didn’t mind the other stuff. It was nice. So, she let Louis carry the gym bag to a bedroom on the second floor. He dropped it at the foot of the bed and backed quickly out of the room.
“We’re working right down there,” he said, pointing. “Join us whenever you’re ready. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks,” Emma said. “I won’t take long.”
“No rush.” He gave her a toothy grin. “We’ll be here all night.”
Emma chuckled dutifully, waiting until he had disappeared down the hall before closing the door. She looked around. It was a nice room. Sort of dated and frilly, and not really to her taste, but the furniture was beautiful and everything was clean. And there was an en suite bathroom. She hurried in that direction, having been in such a rush to make it out of the Capitol building before anyone stopped her, that she’d ignored that particular necessity.
Washing her hands afterward, she stared at her reflection in the mirror over the sink and wondered why any man, much less one with Duncan’s looks and sheer masculine charisma, would give her a second glance. She looked awful. Too many nights with too little sleep had put circles like dark, purple bruises under her eyes. And they were all the more obvious because her skin was pale and drawn. She hadn’t bothered with mascara this morning. She’d known it would just be cried off, but she had naturally thick eyelashes, so that part wasn’t too bad. Even her lipstick was gone, probably chewed off on the way over here. Her face was one big, pale blotch with tired eyes, and it was topped off by a dark tangle of messy hair. Lovely.
She sighed and turned away. She had a hair brush in her bag, and a bit of lip gloss couldn’t hurt either.
It was only a matter of minutes before the Jimmy Choo pumps had switched places with her Nikes in the gym bag, along with her neatly folded office clothes. She finished tying her shoes and crossed to the bathroom to study her reflection once again. She looked better. Not great, but definitely better. She wore a faded pair of denims, loose enough to be comfortable, but tight enough that she knew they looked good on her. Emma worked hard to keep in shape and didn’t mind letting it show. What was the point otherwise? Along with the denims, she wore a white, long-sleeved, cotton t-shirt, and a zippered hoodie to keep her warm just in case. She tucked the tube of lip gloss in the side pocket of her hoodie and left the rest of her stuff where it was.
She opened the door and turned in the direction Louis had indicated. She could already hear a steady buzz of conversation and clicking computer keys, occasionally punctuated by vicious swearing in a variety of languages. She followed the noise about halfway down the hall to another bare-walled room, this one much smaller than the gym downstairs. It was probably intended as a bedroom, but it now held a mishmash of tables and desks set at haphazard angles with no obvious pattern. Computers and other equipment sat everywhere, and the various kinds of cables slinking between them were a disaster waiting to happen as they snaked and twisted from desk to desk and all over the floor. Although, maybe vampires didn’t have to worry about falling on their asses like she did.
She frowned. If this was their security center, she wasn’t that impressed. She’d expected something more professional from Duncan’s team, or at least more orderly.
Louis came up to her and must have seen the doubt in her expression, because he said, “It’s temporary until we get the new room outfitted downstairs.”
Emma forced herself to smile. “As long as it all works, that’s what matters,” she said.
“Oh, it works,” Louis assured her. “They may not look like much, but—” A chorus of growls greeted this assessment and he laughed. “But they’re some of the best operators in the world. Between us, there isn’t a code we can’t crack, or a system we can’t hack.”
Emma chuckled at both his lame rhyme and his enthusiasm. It was contagious, and she found her own eagerness growing. Finally, she was doing something positive. Taking care of Lacey, arranging her funeral and laying her body to rest . . . that had been absolutely necessary, and it was a duty Emma had lovingly fulfilled. But it had done nothing to see that justice was served on those who’d killed her. Tonight, at last, Emma would begin the most solemn duty of all, and that was finding whoever was responsible and making them pay.
Of course, the first steps down that road involved sitting at a computer and doing some basic research. Emma took the photos Louis had grabbed from the videos and cropped them onto a single page, with the idea of deleting them one by one until there were none left. An hour later, she’d managed to identify only two of the women, and those were only because she’d met them at a birthday party for Lacey last year. Even then, she had only their first names and no idea where they worked or lived. But the rest of them . . . She shook her head. There had to be a better way to do this.
She pushed back from the computer and took a long drink of water from the bottle Louis had dropped on her desk sometime ago. She squinted thoughtfully at the pictures. There were tens of thousands of young, professional women living or working in Washington, D.C. Too many. So she had to narrow it down somehow. First question, how did Victor meet these women? From what Duncan and the others had said about the dead vampire lord and his habits, she deduced he’d had limited social interaction with humans. He’d gone to the occasional fundraiser, but he’d attended only those social gatherings where scoring an invitation was a coup of sorts. He had given parties of his own, but it appeared he’d only invited legislators and lobbyists. None of the usual society doyennes were ever invited, no Hollywood stars, or even the big name media types.
Emma frowned. So maybe most of the women were drawn from that same pool. Not legislators themselves, and not lobbyists, either. But their secretaries and assistants, young women eager for a chance to mingle with power. Women like Lacey.
Emma sat up straight. That was it! And she had a much better way of identifying them if she was right.
“I’ll be right back,” she said to no one in particular, and rushed down the hall to the room where she’d left her things, including her purse and laptop. Hurrying into the frilly bedroom, she dropped to her knees and dragged her enormous purse from under the chair where she’d shoved it earlier. She pulled out her computer and opened the lid, waiting impatiently while it woke up and searched for the house’s Wi-Fi connection. It asked for a password, and she swore in frustration. She should have thought of that.
She shoved her purse out of the way again and had gathered her legs beneath her to stand when someone tapped lightly on the door and pushed it open.
“Emma?”
She looked up at the sound of Duncan’s voice, her smile freezing as he stepped into view. She could only stare. Sweaty, bare-chested Duncan was gone, and in his place . . . she sighed with pleasure. Emma loved a man in a tux, but Duncan in a tux took her breath away. Lacey would have known which designer was responsible; Emma only knew that Duncan should have graced the pages of the most exclusive fashion magazine. He had a body made for formalwear, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, and the tux was tailored to emphasize that perfection. It was simple and black, with narrow, notched lapels and a hint of white cuff. His long, blond hair had been pulled tightly away from his face, so that his hair looked almost short from the front.
“Emma?” he repeated, holding a hand down to her.
She sighed and tucked the computer under her arm, holding her other hand up so he could pull her to her feet. This was really too much. It was as if the Fates had figured out the perfect man and said, “Here, Emma, he’s all yours.” Except he wasn’t. He was a powerful vampire and probably had all sorts of beautiful women
vying for his attention. She stifled the irrational surge of jealousy that thought evoked, and managed to meet his gaze with a mischievous grin.
“You look very lovely this evening, Duncan,” she said, emphasizing her own accent and letting him know he wasn’t the only one who knew proper cotillion-speak.
His brown eyes crinkled in amusement. “Why, thank you, Miz Duquet. You’re very kind.”
She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “But, obviously, you’re not helping out in the research department tonight.”
“No, I’m afraid not. Although honestly, I’d rather be doing that. Unfortunately, I’ve a fundraiser to attend. Black tie,” he added, gesturing dismissively at his tux. “It was on Victor’s calendar, but they’ll be getting me instead. I confess I’m hoping to meet someone useful to our current investigation.”
Emma sobered immediately. “You need to be careful, then. Is Miguel going with you?”
His eyes warmed briefly with humor. “Miguel and Ari both. I’ll be quite safe. I’m more worried about you. By now, the men who killed Lacey will know her body was found. The story you put out, that she died in an auto accident has most likely put them off until now. But after tonight, they’ll know for certain that Victor is gone, and they’ll get nervous again. Especially if there’s any hint that you’re checking into Lacey’s activities before her death.”
“No one knows I’m even here, much less what I’m doing. I told them at the office that I had some things to take care of. They’ll assume it has to do with Lacey’s death, but nothing unusual.”
Duncan tipped his head in acknowledgment, but said, “Still, I’d feel better if you weren’t all alone in your house. We’ve plenty of room here, you know, and no one would bother you.”
Emma hoped Duncan truly couldn’t read her thoughts right about then, because she wouldn’t mind at all if he bothered her. His expression changed, becoming suddenly more intent, and Emma blushed, convinced that, once again, he did know what she was thinking. He touched his fingers to the heat of her flushed cheek and leaned a little bit closer.
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