CHAPTER 8
As he had Monday and Tuesday, Derek continued to call and fill her in at the end of every work/school day. Usually, he phoned from the gym office. His voice was always low. Kate didn’t have to ask why—he took a risk calling her from the school. Part of her hated that he took the chance; another part knew she’d go mad with worry if he didn’t.
Worry for the boys at Fenton, with a monster on the loose.
Worry for Derek at Fenton, with a psychopath to catch.
The fact that he didn’t call her from his real office at night made her suspect he was staying at the school, prowling the grounds, alone, in the dark. While she wouldn’t want to experience that nightmare again, she would have done it to prevent him from being by himself.
Aside from arousing her concern for his safety, the quickness of the calls had prevented her from even telling him she had printouts of Taylor and Isaac’s emails. Knowing he might find something useful in them, and wanting to know if he was still at it, in that dank swamp, on Friday night, she bit the bullet and reached out first. She texted him, asking if they could meet so she could give him some important information.
He texted back: Doing some research. Nine too late?
It wasn’t. Midnight wouldn’t have been, if it gave her more answers. She only hoped their meeting wouldn’t be in the company of alligators and snakes.
When she told him that was fine, he responded: Meeting someone at a bar called Son of Sammy’s. Can you come there?
Sure. As long as it’s not a serial killer hangout.
I think the dude’s father really is named Sam.
Maybe the serial killer’s was too.
Nope. Berkowitz’s father was named Tony.
Should I be worried you know that?
More worried than you are about everything else I know?
Good point.
9pm.
Relieved, she arrived at the bar a few minutes early, surprised he would choose to meet her in this part of town. Knowing Derek preferred to avoid areas where he might run into his, er, ghost imprints, she would have expected him to choose a McDonald’s by the interstate.
Or…maybe not. Car accidents, dummy. God, was anyplace safe for that man?
Still, a bar in the historic distract seemed to be inviting unwelcome encounters. It was, after all, the oldest part of town. Savannah was beautiful and genteel, but could still be dangerous, like any big city. The crime rate was statistically high. It had a long history of dark deeds. He was likely to stumble across one of them here.
Figuring he knew what he was doing, she parked on one of the city’s pretty squares. She walked across the bricked sidewalk and around a corner toward the address she’d located for Son of Sammy’s. Although the place was less than two blocks down the side street, the mood changed as soon as she left the charming square. No tour buses or Girl Scouts would roam this area. Liquor stores replaced gift shops as the sidewalk segued from aged brick to cracked cement. The buildings became dark and shuttered, one with plywood over a few windows.
Hearing a low thrum of music and a quiet murmur of voices emerging from an open door, she spotted a small sign and breathed a sigh of relief. When she entered the dark, shadowy place, she paused to look around, realizing the truth immediately. She was in a vampire bar. Awesome.
The walls were paneled in dark wood, with swaths of red satin draping doorways and corners. The music was eerie—foreign words with a woman chanting, He’s coming. Beyond creepy. Customers dressed all in black, with pale faces and darkly-outlined eyes, turned their heads. She couldn’t have felt more out of place than a sheep at a wolf convention.
“Okay, so maybe it is owned by a serial killer,” a soft voice murmured in her ear.
Relief flooding through her, Kate looked to her right and saw Derek standing beside her, wearing his typical frown, not to mention his cloak-thick tension.
“I was about to go outside to watch for you. You’re early.”
“Sorry.” She looked around. “I wonder if I should have worn my garlic bulb necklace.”
“One guy is. I think he’s walking on the wild side and daring somebody to bite him.”
He looked down at her, his eyes flaring slightly in appreciation of her blue dress. It was long-sleeved, but tight, and cut low in the back, which he hadn’t even seen yet. Maybe he’d thought her dress was “nice” on Monday. Tonight, she looked sexy as sin, and she knew it.
Deliberate? Oh hell yes.
Other than a low, audible exhalation, Derek didn’t make a sound.
“So, do you come here often?” she asked.
“No. The guy I’m meeting chose the location.”
“Let me guess…he has filed teeth and orders drinks with names like Blood of a Virgin or Satan’s Crimson Orgy?”
“You’ve been here before.”
His light tone relaxed her. “I once had a patient with Renfield Syndrome.”
He looked around. “Maybe you should troll for new customers.”
“I’m not lacking in patients.”
“That makes us opposites because I’m often accused of lacking patience.”
“Oh my God, Mr. Dark-and-Angry makes a joke.” She rolled her eyes at the pun. “Unfortunately a bad one. I think I like you better when you’re all growly.”
“You like me, huh?”
“We’ve established that already,” she admitted. “Jerk.”
Liking was probably too mild a word for it, growly or not. She also really liked the glimpses she’d seen of a more relaxed Derek Monahan. Though Son of Sammy’s didn’t seem like his kind of place, he wasn’t wired with tension like he’d been when they met. So maybe this dark, secretive, shadow-filled bar relaxed him more than his own office did.
“I’ll make that up to you,” he said, moving closer to her, their legs brushing.
Knowing exactly what he was talking about, she gave thanks the interior of this place was lit in red so he couldn’t see the heat that had to be rising in her cheeks. “What makes you think I want you to?”
Feeling a warm stroke down the small bones of her back, she gasped. She hadn’t even noticed him slip his arm around her. That simple touch—fingertips on her naked skin—started a volcano burning deep inside her.
“You want me to.”
“Well, why do you want to? I mean, you certainly didn’t the other night…”
“For a doctor, you can be awfully obtuse.” Ignoring her dropped jaw, he continued. “I told you before, I don’t mess with clients. You’re a client.”
Another stroke of his fingers, lower this time, against the small of her back. The volcano burned, lava bubbling.
“You’re messing with me now, Derek,” she whispered, surprised she could make a sound that didn’t end in ohmygodpleasekeepdoingthatonlymoreandlowernadhigherandeverywhere.
The hand fell. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. Christ, how do you women know a dress like that makes a man want to fall to his knees and lick every tiny indentation up your spine?”
This time when she wobbled, it took both his hands to steady her. One on her back, the other landing on her stomach. She moaned. For someone who didn’t want to mess with her, he was doing a fine job anyway. Closing her eyes, she counted to five, a typical calming technique.
“You are the most confusing man I’ve ever met,” she whispered.
“Don’t try to figure me out, okay? We’re past the shrinking, I hope.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry if I was too pushy Monday night. The things I said….”
Maybe that was the real reason he’d kissed her and then turned to stone. Perhaps he’d been punishing her.
“No. I’m sorry I didn’t make you understand I had to put some distance between us before I stripped you naked and put you on top of that table.”
Deep breath. Another count to five. “You saying stuff like that isn’t helping me keep the client-P.I. relationship in mind.”
He tried to swipe a hand through his hair,
apparently forgetting it was shorter and there wasn’t quite as much to swipe anymore. “Okay, no more, except to again say thanks for what you were trying to do the other night. Before, uh…”
Before he rocked her world and then set it spinning? Uh huh. “I was just trying to help you get past some things.”
“Do I need to remind you that you really don’t wanna be inside my head?”
Actually, she did, though not in a clinical way. She wanted to know him better—really know him. She wanted to see if there was anything she could do to help relieve him of some of the obvious burdens he carried. Because she worried about his ability—and the way he’d found out about it? Because she feared for him that he used that ability in his everyday job? Because she had pictures in her mind of what he’d experienced during his time in the military? Or because of something else…like the fact that she was developing feelings for him?
All of that. And so much more.
“I need a few minutes with my source. I’m holding a table in the corner.” He pointed to a shadowy two-top with more of that red satin drawn in a swooped-back curtain that, when closed, would completely conceal the interior.
“Do you want me to wait here?”
“You can go sit down.” He nodded toward the bar, and the young man standing behind it. “He’s the one I’m going to talk to, as soon as he’s got a minute.”
The guy looked like the clientele. He was black-leathered, pierced, studded, dyed, and made up to the n’th degree. The fact that the goth movement was passé meant nothing here.
“Are you working another case as well as mine?” she asked, curious.
“No.”
“Then why come here?”
“He is part of your case.”
They stood on the edge of a small dance floor. The throbbing, strange music had brought a few people onto it to sway, and Derek moved close to her, putting his hands on his hips. They weren’t dancing, and Kate knew he was trying to remain unobtrusive and blend in. That would be impossible even if they were as pale and black-clothed as the other customers, given his height, his power, his sheer magnetism.
His closeness distracted her all over again, making her forget what he’d said about keeping a professional distance, even though he’d said it about ninety seconds ago. His tall, hard body was pressed against hers in all the most interesting places, and those places were definitely interested. She was reacting to Derek in a way that had nothing to do with client and detective, and everything to do with man and woman.
“When you lean into me like that, you make me forget all my resolutions,” he mumbled against her hair.
She felt the warmth of his breaths against her neck. For the first time, she began to understand the allure of a hot mouth biting into soft skin at the nape.
The eroticism of the place was working on her. Maybe on both of them. So she backed away a little, allowing a whisper of air to separate their bodies.
He sighed, but he didn’t try to pull her back again. Instead, he went back to the point. “The bartender’s name is Robby Morganstern. He was a student at Fenton a few years back.”
She tried to turn and look.
“Don’t. He’s skittish. He doesn’t like to remember his days there and is trying to live his life like he’d never heard of that school.”
“I don’t blame him. Has he told you anything so far?”
“Not yet. It took a while for him to even agree to see me.”
He glanced at the bar, and she snuck a quick peek too. The bartender had finished making drinks that were plucked up by a server, and was watching Derek. He slowly nodded, indicating he had time to talk.
“Go ahead to the table. I’ll tell you everything he tells me.”
Stepping out of his arms, she said, “Good luck.”
“Want a drink?”
“Does it have to be red?”
“Only if you don’t want to stand out.”
She didn’t want anything gooey, thick, or in any way reminiscent of blood. “Merlot.”
Feeling him watching her, she wove around the room, toward the back corner. His stare burned into her back. Kate didn’t know if he was worried some guy would ask her to dance, would bite her neck, or he just wanted to be sure she went to the right place. But she had to admit, his protectiveness was nice. She wasn’t used to it and didn’t think she needed it—unless she fell face-first into a bog. Still, she didn’t mind seeing yet again that strong, protective facet of his character.
He might play the unemotional badass, but Derek Monahan obviously cared. A lot. Which made his dark ability even worse, as far as she was concerned.
Reaching the tiny table, she pushed the drape back further and slid into the seat against the wall. Then she pulled the material all the way across until the rest of the bar was completely out of view. Considering everyone in the place had been staring at her, and she’d started to feel a little like a blood bank—catalogued by A, B, AB or O instead of red-haired, green-eyed, and tall—she couldn’t say she minded.
Maybe it was the spooky, otherworldly atmosphere, the dead-looking clientele, or her own tension, but Kate suddenly found herself doing something she hadn’t done in weeks. She called out to her brother. Isaac.
Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply, letting the low murmur of voices and the tinkling of glasses fade away, until she was in that strange space, that mass of void, where she and her brother had always connected. It wasn’t a real place, more like one they’d invented, filled with shadows and echoes. When she’d first started talking to Isaac telepathically, she’d started envisioning them being together in that world-beyond-this-one.
Where are you? What happened to you?
She waited. The resounding silence that answered instead of Isaac’s usually-happy response was louder than it had been in months. Louder than anything she’d ever heard. There were mountains of it, worlds of it, nothing but emptiness out there in the mental plane where she had once shared entire lifetimes with her baby brother.
Please don’t be gone forever. Please come back, at least long enough so I can say goodbye. So I can say I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me.
She’d never talked to a ghost, hadn’t even believed in them until recently. Now, her mind having been blasted open like a dark tunnel opened to the light with sticks of dynamite, she let herself believe it was possible. Let herself wish and pray that she and her brother could still have a final conversation in the fantasy world their minds had created and shared. She wouldn’t have him, she knew that, but perhaps she might share one last moment with his spirit.
“You are taking a most dangerous risk being here, madam,” a low voice intruded, smooth, with a faint hint of an eastern European accent.
Startled out of her reverie, Kate realized the curtain had been pulled back. A strange man moved the other chair around so he could sit directly beside her. Uncomfortably close, in fact.
He was pale, and wore an old-fashioned looking suit with what she thought was an ascot tied around his neck. Although he was sitting, she could tell he was tall and lean. His hair was jet black, cut and gelled into a stark widow’s peak. With startlingly dark brows and equally startling red lips against that white skin, he certainly drew attention, even in this crowd. When he offered her an intimate smile and she saw his pearly teeth, complete with canines sharpened to tiny points, she had to admire his efforts.
“Nice outfit. Count, isn’t it? Or Lestat?”
“One of those was a fictional character.”
“Want to clue me in on which?”
“You’re a disbeliever?” One of his brows went up, the other eye narrowing, and he stared hard into her eyes. His were dark, nearly black, the pupils pinpoints. Piercing.
Some women might get into the whole sexy vampire look. She wasn’t one of them. Kate rarely even dressed up for Halloween, and cosplay was definitely out of her wheelhouse.
“Let’s say I’m a skeptic.”
“I could make yo
u believe.”
“I don’t think so. Now, if you don’t mind, I am waiting for someone.”
“I assure you, you were waiting for me.” He leaned closer and stared harder. It was as if he really thought he could hypnotize her with his eyes. Or wanted to make her think he could. “Come with me, beautiful woman, and I’ll show you the world.”
Torn between laughing and offering him her card so he could seek professional help, she was saved from doing either as a tall, broad shadow fell over the table.
“No,” a deep voice ordered. “Why don’t you come with me?”
Derek didn’t wait for an answer. He simply reached down, grabbed the other man by the lapels of his old-fashioned suit-coat, and lifted him out of his seat. Kate swallowed hard, watching the flex of thick arms that bulged against the sleeves of Derek’s snug T-shirt. Not even breathing hard, he easily hoisted the man up high enough so he dangled inches off the floor, and then set him aside.
“Go away, Drac.” He sounded bored. “Now.”
“Dude, sorry, I didn’t know she was with anyone.”
That sounded far more Florida surfer than Transylvania royalty, and Kate smiled as the other man rushed off. Reaching to the next table, Derek retrieved a full glass of red wine and a beer he’d apparently set down before he’d sent Dracula scurrying. Nodding toward the goggle-eyed trio who’d watched the entire exchange, he then slid into the seat he’d just emptied.
“I could have handled him,” she said, torn between appreciating his interference and annoyance that he thought she’d needed it. Of course, watching the play of Derek’s thick muscles and the ease with which he handled the other man made her glad she hadn’t had to.
“I know. But I thought I’d save us a little time.”
She liked that response. Every time she forgot he was not like any other man she ever met, he reminded her.
He nodded at the glass of wine he’d put on the table. “You can probably guess the brand. I can’t guarantee it’s any good.”
She went along, pretending nothing had happened, and lifted her glass. One sip justified the warning, and she tried hard not to grimace.
Cold Image (Extrasensory Agents Book 4) Page 17