“Excellent tucking,” he agreed. “You should sleep.”
“No,” she insisted. “I need to get back to the homestead before there’s nothing left to find.” She yawned again,
then
groaned. “Jesus, I hope there’s coffee on this ranch somewhere.”
Raphael hugged her. “Lucas has the usual daytime staff, so I’m certain there’s coffee and breakfast, too. You need to replenish.”
“I need to drink water, you mean. That’s what I get for loving a bloodsucker.”
He slapped her ass.
“Hey! There’s no need to beat me.”
Raphael scoffed wordlessly, and she laughed.
“What’s your plan for the day, then?” he asked.
“Depends on what we find at the homestead. If there’s anything to follow, we’ll do that, but I’ll be back before dark.”
“Promise.”
“Yeah, yeah, I promise.”
“I love you, my
Cyn
,” he murmured.
She rose up enough to press her lips against his. “I love you back, my Raphael.”
Raphael closed his eyes against the searing heat of the rising sun that was blazing inside his skull. He fought it as long as he could,
straining
to remain awake, to give voice to the alarm bells clanging in the back of his mind. But this was one foe he could never defeat, and sleep claimed him before he could warn her that among
vampires
even friends could be enemies.
Chapter Nine
“Fuck,” Robbie muttered, as he climbed from the SUV and stood staring at the debris scattered in front of Lucas’s homestead house.
Cyn
ignored him as two of Lucas’s daytime security guards walked over to join them. She recognized both of them from the previous morning, and smiled a greeting.
“Okay with you if we look around a little?” she asked, although the request was mostly for form, because the visit had been arranged in advance.
“Help
yourself
,” one of the guards said. “Lord Donlon cleared it already.”
“Thanks. You all haven’t seen anyone snooping around, have you? Maybe a vehicle headed this way in the distance that turned around suddenly?”
The guard shook his head. “See for yourself. Line of sight goes on forever here. We’d definitely notice.”
“Okay. We’ll poke around a bit, and get out of your hair.”
“Holler if you need anything.”
Robbie didn’t look up when she rejoined him.
Eyes on the ground, he grumbled, “Whose idea was it to search through this stuff anyway?
Oh, wait,” he continued, slanting a look at
Cyn
. “It was yours.” He leaned over to push aside a piece of tire,
then
grunted in disgust.
Cyn
glanced over at what appeared to be a piece of human rib bone with bits of meat still attached.
“I’m surprised there are any body parts left,” she said absently, returning to her own search. “I thought the animals would have dragged it away or eaten it by now.”
“A visual I could live without,” Robbie groused. “You know,
Cyn
, when you called this morning, you said we were going hunting, not picking through some guy’s barely dead remains.”
“We’re not picking through remains, we’re looking for clues. And
then
we’ll go hunting.”
“You sure the big guy knows you’re doing this?”
“Absolutely, and he agreed it was necessary.”
Robbie sighed. “All right, what the hell are we looking for again?”
“I think our best bet is finding something from the truck. It looked like a personal vehicle to me. I had other stuff on my mind at the time, but I remember it as being fully loaded. Shiny paint, lots of chrome, big tires.
Somebody’s baby.”
“Nothing from the plate?”
Cyn
closed her eyes briefly, trying to replay what she’d seen in those few minutes of panic. “What’s the South Dakota plate look like?”
Robbie frowned. “Mount Rushmore, I think.”
Cyn
stared at him without seeing. “Yeah, that could be it.
Blue sky, with something gray.
It might have been Rushmore.”
“Great. That narrows it down to only a few hundred thousand vehicles.”
“Don’t be snarky. It was dark, and he turned his lights on when he got closer. Not to mention the
bomb
he was carrying.”
“Excuses,” he
tsked
, shaking his head.
Cyn
grinned despite herself. “Okay,” she said, scouring the scattered debris. “Our best bet—and I know it’s a long shot, so no smart ass remarks—would be even a small piece of the plate. The back end was loaded with explosives, not to mention the gas tank, so that probably blew all to hell, but the front plate might have been thrown out of the immediate blast range.”
“No problem,” Robbie said absently, reaching into his pocket and pulling on a latex glove. “I’ll get right on that for you.”
Cyn’s
laugh trailed off as he held up a bloody piece of something.
“Unless you’d rather have this,” he said, grinning. “I do believe it’s a thumb.”
She hurried over. “I think you’re right,” she said. She retrieved a bottle of water from the SUV, and poured it over the gruesome appendage, washing away the dirt and grime.
“Could be someone else’s, I guess,” Robbie said.
“Nah, it’s too fresh. Let’s see if our guy’s in the
system,
shall we?”
She whipped out her cell phone, took the thumb in her own gloved hand, and pressed it to the screen, scanning it quickly before handing it back to Robbie. The image was automatically sent to her laptop, which would then query every fingerprint database she had access to, and that was most of them.
“
Ain’t
technology great?” Robbie commented. “Should we save this thing?”
Cyn
dug a plastic baggie out of her pocket.
“Just in case.”
“Speaking of cases,” he said, dropping the thumb into the baggie, “how come the local cops aren’t all over this? That explosion was visible for miles. We saw it from the ranch.”
“Kathryn says Lucas is friends with the mayor. He made a few calls, and voila, no police were dispatched.
Your tax dollars at work.”
“More likely it’s Lucas’s political contributions at work. Corruption is everywhere.”
“Yeah, well, get over it and help me decide what to do next, because we have a winner, boys and girls.”
They both peered down at the ID displayed on
Cyn’s
cell phone. “Matthias Hoover,” she read. “He has an old DUI conviction. No surprise that one would hit first. There’s an address, but this record is old. Let me see …” She tapped the screen rapidly, accessing the local white pages, and found a listing under the same name, same address.
“I love people who stay in one place. Incoming,” she murmured and sent the address to Robbie’s phone, which pinged almost immediately.
“Got it,” he said. “What now?”
“We check out the house.”
“
Cyn
,” Robbie said in clear warning.
“If it looks like Magda or any other vampire is using the place, we won’t go inside,” she promised. “We’ll wait until sunset, and let the big guns handle it.”
“Promise?”
She scowled. What was it with everyone demanding promises from her? It’s not like she did crazy stuff all the time. Well, not anymore.
“Scout’s honor,”’ she told Robbie.
“You were never a scout,” he snickered as they climbed into the SUV and drove away from the wreckage.
“It’s a saying, Robbie.
Sheesh.
You know where you’re going?”
“No, but the
Nav
system does. Sit back and enjoy the ride.”
* * * *
Enjoy the ride,
Cyn
thought to
herself
. What was there to enjoy? She’d never been a fan of the kind of dry, barren country she was seeing outside the truck window. She could admire the spires and pinnacles in the distance, but the view was mostly hills covered with dry grass with blotches of snow. In the spring, it was probably lovely and green.
In a few weeks, pretty and snow-covered white.
Today?
Splotchy brown and boring.
She caught Robbie checking his rearview mirrors and frowned, thinking she’d seen him do that one too many times.
“Problem?” she asked, cutting a glance at her own side mirror.
“That blue sedan three vehicles back. I’m sure it was behind us earlier.”
Cyn
studied the car in question, angling her head for a better view. There weren’t a lot of vehicles on the road, but enough that someone could tail them if they were smart about it.
“What do you think? You want to drive around a little?”
“Our exit’s coming up. Let’s see if they follow us.”
Robbie slowed, exiting to the right, and making an immediate right hand turn.
Cyn
didn’t even look where they were going, too intent on watching their potential ghost.
“He kept going,” she said, twisting around to look out the back window. “Hold up a minute.”
Robbie pulled to one side, and they waited, until she couldn’t see the blue sedan anymore.
“Looks like we’re clear.”
He did his own quick scan,
then
nodded. “I’m going to drive around a bit before going to Hoover’s house just to be safe, but I think you’re right.” He put the truck in gear and pulled back onto the road.
By the time they reached Matthias Hoover’s address, they were confident they’d lost their tail, assuming they’d ever had one. They parked about a quarter mile away on the opposite side of the street, and under the stark cover of a bare-limbed black walnut tree.
Cyn
raised a pair of binoculars to her eyes and scanned the house. It was small and old, and stood alone, separated from its nearest neighbor by several hundred yards of scrub. It was in desperate need of a paint job, and if it hadn’t been for the light dusting of snow on the ground,
Cyn
was pretty sure the front yard would have been nothing but dirt and a few scraggly bushes.
Well, that and the two human guards lurking around the perimeter, which told her this wasn’t exactly an ordinary human dwelling.
After watching the guards silently for a few minutes,
Cyn
lowered her binoculars. “What does that look like to you?” she asked quietly.
“Looks like a big comedown for someone who used to live on Lucas’s ranch,” Robbie said, studying the house through his own binocs.
Cyn
swallowed a chuckle. “Tell me about it. But I’m talking about the guards.” She lifted the binoculars again.
“Is that what they’re supposed to be?”
Cyn
eyed the two human guards who were standing at opposite corners of the house, not even trying to look alert.
“Point taken.”
“Probably a vamp house, though,” Robbie agreed. “Shades are all down, and why else have guards at all? Unless it’s drugs, but that sort tend to have a more effective watch than those two.”
“Assuming it’s vamps, and I think it is, it doesn’t have to be Magda. There’s no reason for her to hang around. She could have sent Hoover off on his suicide mission, and moved on to Chicago. Whoever’s in there might just be some flunkies she left behind to keep an eye on things.”
“Or maybe she wanted to be close to the action. If the bomb had succeeded in taking Lucas out, the territory would be up for grabs, right? Maybe Magda figured she could swoop in while everyone was still reeling.”
Cyn
pursed her lips thoughtfully.
“Maybe.
Or maybe this house is all she can afford. After all, it was Lucas’s money that subsidized her lifestyle before. Maybe she’s a shopaholic and spent all of her salary on clothes.”
“Bummer.”
“Doesn’t matter why, or even if, she’s here, I guess. Doesn’t matter how many are in there either, because Raphael doesn’t approve of killing vamps while they sleep, not even the assholes.” She stared at the house thoughtfully. “Although …”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” he said worriedly.
“…
it
might be useful to know how many vampires are in there. You know, so Raphael will know what he’s dealing with.”