“But it shot you in the leg,” Morley said, his voice measured. “Why?”
Nick shrugged, throwing up a hand.
“No idea. For all I know, it was an accident. A stray ricochet.” Thinking about that, he frowned. “I need to call Farlucci. I was supposed to fight tomorrow—”
“Later, Tanaka,” Morley said, his voice warning.
He glanced at Straven then, and the private-sec people, who were standing behind Straven and Jordan in a silent row.
“Can we have the room for a minute? I need to talk to my guy alone.” He nodded towards Straven. “That means you, too, Straven.” He looked at Jordan. “Damon, you can stay.”
Straven’s eyes flinched, their mouth pursing in obvious displeasure.
They didn’t say anything out loud, though.
Rising from where they’d been leaning on an antique wooden credenza with stainless-steel legs, Straven motioned to the woman who seemed to be in charge of the private-sec employees. Upon Straven’s signal, and then hers, all five of them turned, and began to file soundlessly out of the room, rifles slung over their backs.
Straven shut the door behind them, but not without giving Nick a wink and a sideways smile.
Once they were gone, Nick turned to Morley.
“He’s likely got surveillance in here,” he said.
“We swept for it,” Morley said. “We had him turn it off.”
When Nick opened his mouth to speak again, Morley headed him off, raising a hand to silence him before he could form words.
“We checked for drones too, Tanaka. This isn’t my first rodeo.”
“I couldn’t see it,” Nick said. “Whatever was in that elevator shaft. I couldn’t see it, not with my headset, and not with my eyes. If I can’t see it, it’s possible your tech can’t see it, either. Unless they’re using bandwidths I don’t.”
Morley frowned, exchanging looks with Jordan.
He focused back on Nick, that frown still on his lips.
“I’m willing to risk it,” Morley said, his voice flat. “Is that why you kept looking at Straven? The vampire-proof drones? You think they’re behind this in some way?”
“I think a vampire would know how to conceal a drone from another vamp,” Nick said, stating the obvious. “Also… Straven knew when I came into the building. It’s kind of funny how you guys were here for hours and hours, and nothing happened until a few minutes after I showed up.”
Thinking about that, Nick grimaced.
“If we’d had to wait at all for the elevator… or if Case hadn’t seen me right away, and I’d stopped at registration to call ahead… I’d be dead.”
“Unless they were waiting until you were safe before they set off the bomb,” Morley pointed out.
Nick nodded. “Yeah. Unless that.” Pausing on the thought, he frowned. “What about the building? What happened, exactly? I still don’t know. And what happened to the other building? The one in Manhattan?”
Jordan sighed, stopping his pacing long enough to sit in the open chair next to Morley.
Leaning forward and resting his arms on his thighs, he sighed again.
“The southwest side of this building, the Anubis, including the southwest entrance, where you walked in, is pretty much gone,” Jordan admitted. He looked meaningfully around at the walls and ceiling. “Obviously, the overall structure is intact… or we wouldn’t be having this conversation up here. But it took out the main lobby, three of the elevators, not including yours, the building’s main offices, and—”
“The safes,” Nick muttered. “The security boxes.”
Hesitating for a bare breath, Jordan nodded.
“Yes.”
Nick frowned, thinking. “And the Osiris?”
“The damage was more extensive there,” Jordan said, exhaling. “They had a partial structural collapse that affected most of the floors. A few hundred dead, where here there were a few dozen. The forensics guys haven’t had much time to look into causes yet, but they think the bomb at the Osiris was attached to the central structure… the ‘spine’ of the building, so to speak… given the way the floors fell.”
“So they were less worried about deaths there,” Nick muttered. “Presumably because Straven was here.”
“Possibly,” Jordan said, exchanging grim looks with Morley. “I’d be lying if I said that thought hadn’t crossed our minds.”
Nick frowned, nodding as he continued to think. “Did you two get anything off him? Straven? Before I got here, I mean?”
Jordan exhaled, glancing at Morley before he leaned back, folding his arms.
“Not much,” he admitted. “Straven gave us files on a few of the projects they were working on with Silverton. Some personal correspondence. Call logs from the week before his death. We watched a number of videos of parties the two attended together, and when we pushed him, he gave us a list of acquaintances who could verify the basics of their relationship… along with some of their business dealings over the years. We also got access to Straven’s accountant, who happened to be the accountant for Abe Silverton, too.”
“He dragged his feet and ass through all of that,” Morley grumbled.
Jordan nodded to Morley’s words.
“The whole time, Straven seemed anxious to get you here,” he said, looking at Nick. “He really didn’t want to talk to us without you—”
“At all,” Morley chimed in. “So thanks for that, Midnight. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon playing footsie with him, waiting for you. We tried to make it productive, interviewing his staff, including in vampire interrogations, to try and get something out of our time here… since Straven also didn’t want us to leave before you got here.”
“Vampire interrogations?” Nick said. “With who? Straven’s people, or—”
“No,” Morley said, grimacing. “And hell, no. The NYPD doesn’t use private-sec employed by actual suspects to interview the other employees of those same suspects. We called in another Midnight. Nuñez came here around three o’clock and stayed for over two hours.”
Nick gave him a second questioning look.
“Nuñez? Do I know him?”
“Her,” Jordan corrected. “Ana Nuñez. And no. Or, at least, she wouldn’t admit to knowing you.” He gave Nick a sideways smile. “What’s the matter, Tanaka? Worried about being replaced? Thinking we might take a shine to her, since she actually showed up when we called her?”
“She doesn’t normally work out of our precinct,” Morley explained. “So you might not have met. She’s like you. New to the city. I think she came here from the Northwest Protected Area… Vancouver, maybe, or maybe Seattle. Anyway, when you didn’t come in, we thought we’d try bringing in another vampire. We hoped maybe Straven would relax, cooperate a bit more, with one of their own kind here.”
Grunting, he glanced at Jordan, copying his pose by leaning back in his chair and folding his arms over the gray coat he wore.
“It didn’t work, of course. He’s totally fixated on you for some reason… and your friend, Ms. James.”
Nick frowned, staring past the two of them at the door to the suite.
He almost got Straven’s obsession with Wynter. It was annoying, but if Straven knew what Wynter was, it made sense; vampires got weird around seer blood.
But what was Straven’s trip with him, exactly?
Was it the celebrity thing? Did Straven feel more comfortable with another vampire who was semi-famous? Somehow, as an explanation, that rang hollow.
No, it was something else.
“You really think he did this?” Jordan said, breaking into Nick’s thoughts. “Straven. You really think he’d blow up his own buildings like this?”
Nick shook his head, combing a hand through his hair.
“Honestly? No. I think they might have killed Case, though.”
Morley flinched, sitting up straighter. “What? Why?”
Nick frowned, then tilted his head sideways, a not-so-subtle admission of guilt.
<
br /> “I’d venom-ed the guy up a bit… you know, to calm him down, keep him from killing both of us. I might have used that. To ask him questions, I mean.”
Nick watched Morley’s eyebrows go up.
“…I kept it to questions about Straven,” Nick added. “About what Straven knew. Who Straven thought might be behind this. What kind of projects Straven had going with Silverton. It had the added benefit of distracting him on the climb up the cable.”
When the two of human detectives exchanged looks, Nick exhaled again.
Without waiting to be asked, he launched into a detailed recounting of the conversation he’d had with Straven’s employee in the minutes before he died.
He didn’t mention Wynter, of course.
He didn’t mention anything about Wynter.
“You could have called Gertrude,” Morley reminded him mildly. “Gotten approval. It would have saved our asses a bit… if any of this was needed for subpoenas or whatnot. Or, god forbid, we needed to call you to the stand to testify.”
Nick frowned. “Since when have they ever taken a vampire’s testimony for subpoenas? Much less as evidence in a court hearing?”
“You recorded the conversation, right?” Morley said.
Nick frowned. He hadn’t turned his headset off.
“It must have been,” he said after a beat.
“Jesus,” Jordan scowled. “Just how screwed up in the head are you today? If you were human, I’d swear you were drunk—”
Morley waved him off, though, clearly not wanting to be distracted.
“So that’s all you got off him?” he said. “Before Case got shot, I mean? Some kind of tech involving vampire venom?”
At Nick’s nod, Morley frowned, his forehead bunching up.
“What in the hell kind of tech would that be?” he said. “And… no offense… but why would it be worth anything? Vampires aren’t that unusual. Vampire venom ain’t much of a novelty these days, either… considering the black market is flooded with it.”
Nick hesitated, then shrugged again.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But there was definitely something strange about the kid’s mind. Something I’d never seen before.”
Something Wynter had never seen before, either… his mind added silently.
“Kid?” Morley grunted. “You mean Case? The thirty-eight-year-old human you were carrying around on your back?”
Ignoring the other’s sarcasm, Nick nodded.
“Yeah. Parts of his mind… his memories… were just…” He looked at Jordan. “Missing. Gone. And not in what I’d call a ‘normal’ way.”
“Define a ‘normal’ way memories would be gone, Midnight,” Morley said.
Nick had to fight not to roll his eyes.
Morley had a tendency to play dumb when he was probing for information.
Sometimes, it bordered on insulting.
“You already know this.” Nick grunted, wincing a little when he tried to straighten his hurt leg, which was falling asleep from being in the same position for too long. “Vampires can massage memories. If Case was being fed on regularly… say by a vampire lover, or even by Straven, as a condition of employment… then it’s possible some of his memories might be fuzzy, even absent.”
Nick glanced at Jordan, who was being unusually quiet all of a sudden.
“This was different,” he added, looking back at Morley. “It was more like there were just these… well, dead zones, I guess you could call them… in the guy’s head. He got really agitated when I tried to probe him anywhere near one of those areas.”
“What were those areas about?” Morley said, sharper. “Far as you can tell?”
Nick looked at him, his voice patient.
“The tech. The vampire venom tech, or whatever it is. Case got really weird and cagey when I asked what that tech did. He practically got hysterical when I asked him who Straven was afraid of, who wanted that tech… and who might be threatening Straven to get it.”
“And then he got shot?” Jordan clarified. “Case?”
Nick shifted his gaze to the other detective, then nodded.
“And then he got shot.”
“Before he gave you a name?”
“I didn’t get a name,” Nick affirmed. He hesitated, then added, “I did get out of him that they might not be human. He made a cryptic comment about the contact being ‘not one of us.’ I didn’t manage to get out of him what that meant.”
“So a vampire, then?” Morley that time.
“Possibly.” At the older human’s quirked eyebrow, Nick amended, “Probably. But I can’t say for certain. I really don’t know.”
“And none of that answers who hit the buildings,” Jordan said, pulling Morley and Nick’s eyes back to him. “You’re saying you think someone hit both buildings, and Straven knows… or suspects… who that is. You’re saying Straven may have killed his own employee to keep those suspicions from getting to you, and the NYPD. And you’re saying that all of this was to protect some kind of vampire ‘tech’ that has potential military-grade applications. Correct?”
Nick thought through the other male’s words.
Then he nodded, once.
“Correct,” Nick said. “Yes.”
“Well, that’s a whole lot of complicated nothing,” Morley said, his voice openly irritated. “You get anything else off him? While you had him high on your venom, carrying him up a damned elevator cable?”
Thinking about this, Nick shrugged.
“Apparently, I have a nice ass,” he said, deadpan.
There was a silence.
Then Jordan grunted, leaning back in his seat before he shook his head at Nick.
“Keep pushing it, Hawaii Five-Oh,” he grunted, half-smiling in spite of himself. “Maybe I’ll arrange to get you shot again.”
“Our guns sometimes ricochet in crazy ways, too,” Morley added, pointing to his sidearm inside his jacket. “It’s a crazy world, Midnight. Bullets can go anywhere… even into asses as fine as yours.”
Looking between the two of them, Nick couldn’t help it.
He broke out in a grin.
The med-evac helicopter arrived for Nick a few minutes later.
Straven followed the paramedics up to the roof, after they had Nick strapped to a foldable gurney, a semi-organic splint around his thigh to hold the bone in place.
Straven’s people had already scanned his whole leg and the gunshot wound in the suite where Morley and Jordan interrogated him, using some kind of fancy, next-gen, hand-held device. They shared those scans with the EMTs when they arrived.
After noting a number of fractures in the bone around the wound, they opted for the splint to keep his leg from breaking and/or misaligning on the way to the vamp hospital.
“How long will they need with him?” Straven asked the first EMT, who happened to be a vampire. “They’ll release him tonight?”
She gave Straven a flat look, obviously having no idea who they were.
“He’s a vampire,” she said, her voice matching her look. “Of course he’ll be out tonight. They’ll check the bone alignment with a better X-ray than we have out in the field, make sure everything is aligned, and give him a cast so he can walk without fucking up his leg any more than it already is. He’ll be out in an hour… two at most.”
Straven broke out in a grin.
“Excellent,” they said, smiling at Nick.
Ignoring the annoyed look Jordan aimed at them, Straven focused only on Nick.
“Then I insist we have our dinner date after all, Detective.” Straven glanced at Jordan. “…You and Detective Morley are invited too, of course.”
Nick glanced at Jordan.
His own reaction pretty much mirrored the reaction he saw on the human detective’s face.
“No,” Nick said. “Thanks. But I think I’ve had enough fun for one day—”
Jordan covered a laugh with a cough, raising his hand to his mouth and averting his face.
�
�Nonsense!” Straven said, oblivious to both of their reactions. “I already have someone going to fetch your clothes… and the lovely Wynter, who will of course be joining us.”
That time, Nick didn’t hide his displeasure.
“What? No. I told you no on that, Straven—”
“I’m afraid I didn’t listen. And now it’s far too late. Some of my people are waiting for her in the garage of your building as we speak,” Straven said, smiling wider. “Others in my employ are in the process of selecting clothes for her to wear at dinner, of course, from one of my absolute favorite boutiques. They already obtained her measurements first-hand… including for footwear. All complimentary, of course.”
At Nick’s disbelieving, and increasingly enraged look, Straven laughed.
“Oh, don’t worry Detective… they were extremely respectful, I assure you. And all of the employees I sent were human. Furthermore, we called ahead. They’re willing to wait for her as long as she needs. She informed them she preferred to shower while they arranged to have clothes brought for her. She has already picked out clothing for you to wear this evening, by the way. They will be waiting for you at the hospital when you arrive.”
Wynter? Nick sent, reaching out with his mind. WYNTER! Can you hear me?
He waited a beat.
ANSWER ME, DAMN IT—
“I really hope you don’t mind, Detective,” Straven said smoothly, patting Nick’s shoulder from where they strolled alongside the gurney as the EMTs wheeled it out of the elevator and onto the wind-buffeted roof. “She seemed most amenable to the idea of dinner. I figured you could not possibly mind, when she so obviously didn’t want to be left behind—”
WYNTER! Nick yelled it into the space. WYNTER! WHERE ARE YOU? YOU’D BETTER NOT BE BLOCKING ME, DAMN IT!
Silence greeted him.
He wondered if the blood connection between them was fading, now that it had been four or five hours since he last fed on her.
He doubted it, though.
No, something told him she knew exactly why he was calling for her… and she was keeping him out for that very reason.
He was about to try to reach her with his headset, when Jordan’s voice rose in his ear via the same device.
The Prescient: A Science Fiction Vampire Detective Novel (Vampire Detective Midnight Book 3) Page 22