Mercy Blade (24 page)

Rinaldo pulled up beside me shortly and idled his cab, keeping up with my pace as he looked me over. “You
look
a million bucks, yes? Janie-girl all
dolled
up,
walking
from direction of the bloodsucker’s biiiig pa’tay last night?” I ignored him and got in the front seat, closing the door after me. “You
look
good with knife in one hand, gun in the other.
Sexy
.” I looked at him, deadpan, and he said, “I
work
graveyard shift. We keep TV on all night.
Saw
you on the TV, I did. Some patay girl you are.”

I’d been outted to Rinaldo. If he didn’t know I was the vamp hunter before, he did now. I laid my head back on the seat and closed my eyes. “Yeah. I was there. Take me home, Rinaldo.”

“No trip to the nearest fast food place?”

“No. Thanks.” I kept my eyes closed for the rest of the drive and Rinaldo didn’t pester me, even when we drew up in front of my house. I paid my usual fee, got out, and went inside. The house was silent, chill, with the AC on full blast. I stripped, placed my weapons where I could reach them quickly, showered, and fell into bed. The last thing I did before I fell asleep was check my cell phone.

No call from Rick. No text. No nothing.

 

I half woke to three quick taps on the front door, rolled over, and pulled the covers over my head. But whoever it was didn’t go away; he kept knocking in three-burst rounds like a machine gun on the wood door. It was 2:22 Friday afternoon when I came awake, with a rush, thinking,
Rick
! I rolled out of bed and picked up my robe in a single motion, flung my hair out of the way and raced to the door, shoving my arms into the sleeves. I looked out through a clear pane in the stained-glass door window. And saw Bruiser, still knocking.

All the eagerness went out of me and I closed my eyes, leaned my head against the wall beside the door, and blew out a breath. Anger started to build in a quiet, still part of my soul, anger at Rick.
He could have called. Even deep undercover, he could have found a way to call. One lousy freaking phone call.

I finished tying the robe’s belt with a yank and opened the door. “You’re lucky the house wards weren’t up, or you’d have singed your knuckles.”

Bruiser met my eyes, his dark with exhaustion, black rings under them. The skin on his face and jaw looked worn and slack, as if he’d aged in the last few hours. His clothes showed the fine wrinkles and relaxed hand of high humidity. I looked at the street. There was no car in sight. And there was a large suitcase at his feet. “May I come in?” he asked, his voice weary.

I stared at the suitcase as myriad thoughts and possibilities fluttered through me like ravens’ wings, none of them happy ones. On their heels came a workable answer. “The cops found a reason to get prints from you. It was your prints on the shell casing in the office and on the cold case brass.” My eyes narrowed. “Leo kicked you out.”

“Yes,” he said, his fatigue more pronounced. “My lawyer and I spent two hours with them, fending off thinly veiled accusations and allegations posed as questions. When they let me go, a police acquaintance slipped me word that the press is staking out my residence.” He seemed to slump as he stood in the muggy heat, and put a hand on the door jamb as if to support himself. “I went to the clan home to find my suitcase packed and waiting for me at the front door. Tyler suggested that I come here. It seemed like a good idea. At the time.”

I stared at the suitcase. It was a big one, the kind on wheels with a handle. It would hold a lot of clothes. “You want to stay
here
?” My voice didn’t squeak, but it was a near thing. And I was suddenly aware that I was naked under my robe. I pulled my lapels together. “You can’t stay at a hotel?”

“They’ll find me. No one will look here for a day or so.” He closed his eyes as he said the next word. “Please.”

It was the “please” that did it. It was one of those forlorn words that a man asks when he’s down and out and been kicked around a bit. “Did you kill Safia?”

He met my eyes, so I could read the truth in them. “No. But I may not be able to prove it. The tapes indicate that I was away from the ballroom when Safia first disappeared. There isn’t enough evidence just now to charge me.”

“Did you kill the people in the cold case files?”

“I don’t know. There was a time ...” He stopped and swallowed, wavering slightly. I could smell his sweat and his fatigue. Beast was awake and watching through my eyes. “There was a time, decades really, after my mother died, when my anger was so great that I killed anyone Leo wanted dead.” His voice was flat, and he closed his eyes again, hiding the bleak darkness in them. “Some of the locations in the photographs they showed me looked familiar. I would need access to more in the police files to know if I was ... responsible.” He opened his eyes and held mine, a wry honesty in them. “However, even at my most angry, I have never been stupid enough to leave my spent brass beside a body.”

Which sounded like the truth. Not knowing why, I pushed the door open and stood to the side. A grudging tone in my voice, I said, “Guest rooms are upstairs. Evangelina is in one. If you take a room across the hall, you can have your own bath. Sheets are in the linen closet.”

A faint smile tugged his lips as he stepped over the threshold and pulled his suitcase after with two bass wheel-thumps. “I can’t share your bed?”

Unexpected heat ignited in my belly and began to grow. Beast wrinkled her lips, showing teeth, interested. I gripped my lapels tighter, shoving her away. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I have a boyfriend.”

Beast sent me a mental picture of her claw raking the rump of a mate who displeased her. I knew she meant Rick, for not calling.
Big-cats do not mate for life
, she thought at me. I drew in a slow breath.

“A
boy friend
,” Bruiser said, making it two words. His smile widened and his eyes warmed slightly with amusement. “A
child
in the art of lovemaking.”

I breathed past the warmth and crushed down a laugh that was burbling in my chest, let my eyebrows rise, and managed an unsympathetic, half-bored expression. “Upstairs, Romeo. And if you try to move in to my bed, I’ll toss you to the curb.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be the soul of propriety. But you’ll regret that decision.”

Deliberately misunderstanding him I said, “I agree that you’ll be a pain in the butt. But go on up anyway. You look like you’re about to fall asleep on your feet.”

“Thank you, Jane. A nap would be appreciated.”

“Yeah, well, you ruined mine,” I said ungraciously, closing the door behind him. “You do your own laundry, your own sheets, and clean your own bathroom. Food is by our resident three-star chef. Dinner is at seven, usually, breakfast between seven and eight on the days she has time to fix any. Cold cereal whenever you want it on the days she doesn’t. Lunch is whatever you want to fix. I don’t cook for you.”

“Right now, just a bed,” he said, climbing the stairs, the suitcase bumping along after him. He was halfway up the stairs when I went back to my bed, threw myself on top of the sheets and lay there, looking up at the ceiling. For a gal who didn’t have a family and liked her privacy, I had an awful lot of people in my life and depending on me, lately.

I checked my cell again and found a voice mail from Deon wanting to know all the gossip from the party. I called him back and got his voice mail. Communications, twenty-first-century style. I tried to find sleep but it eluded me, energy racing under my skin like ants on the prowl, seeing again the teasing look in Bruiser’s tired eyes. He
had
been teasing. I was sure of it. Sorta sure of it. But then there was that heat that stirred between us, like electric sparks melded with taffy, heating and stinging, a tugging, pulling sweetness. And Rick still hadn’t called.

When I couldn’t keep my eyes closed, I rose and dressed, braided my hair and pulled out my notes. I came across Girrard DiMercy’s calling card. Not a business card, but a heavy linen, embossed, gilt-edged calling card. I held it to my nose and caught his scent, jasmine and pine. And realized that I had smelled it today already. At vamp HQ. I drew in the scent, remembering it mixed with the bouquets. Gee had been the guy who served me tea. He had been around a few other times too, a glamour hiding him, or making him seem unimportant, socially invisible.

I cursed once and pulled my cell, dialing the number under his name. I was shunted directly to voice mail and greeted by a mechanical voice. When the beep sounded, I said, “You spelled me again, spelled us all, and hung around for the police investigation. Call me, you little creep.” I hung up, checked again for a call from Rick and snapped the cell down with more force than the action warranted.
Men
...

Anger scoring the sides of my mind, I dialed Rick’s number. I was shunted directly to voice mail and hung up without leaving a message. He knew my number. He’d call if he wanted to. Madder than I’d been in a long time, I left the house, hopped on Bitsa, tearing out of the Quarter and to the firing range where I blew off a head of steam, shooting my way through three boxes of shells and shredding four man-shaped targets before I quit, one target for each man I was mad at: Bruiser, Leo, Gee, and Rick. I put most of the bullets into the target called Rick, thinking,
call me, call me
, with every shot.

When I was done I stripped and cleaned my weapons at the counter, a nice pile of discarded brass at my feet, bright on the dark-painted floor; solvents, lubricants, and spent gunpowder stung my nose, my eyes unfocused, hands moving through the necessary procedures by memory and feel. One spent cartridge near my boot rocked slightly, catching my attention. I studied the shiny brass as I cleaned, my mind empty and quiet in the aftermath of preparatory and nonlethal violence. My casings were the only ones, the floor having been thoroughly cleaned since any previous shooters.

If someone wanted to frame me, all he would need was my spent brass, with my fingerprints all over them, and my gun. Gather the brass, steal the gun, shoot a few people, police the brass used to make the kill, and toss down the ones with my prints on them. And in Bruiser’s case, any blood-servant or blood-slave who had been around for fifty years or more could have set the thing up. Bruiser had to know this. And like he’d said, he wasn’t stupid enough to leave his spent brass at a crime scene.

I was packing up my weapons when my cell rang. Once again, hope shot through me like wildfire and died just as quickly. Not Rick. Gee’s number. I didn’t bother to say hello. “Did you kill Safia?”

“No. I did not.”

“Then why were you hanging around the party and the investigation?”

“I followed the werewolves when they entered the compound. I saw the envoy and his small entourage arrive, with the little grindylow. I have not seen one here in ... quite some time. And never so far from Britain. And never, ever, away from a cold lake, stream, or river. They like cool temperatures. I was curious.” He chuckled, the sound as musical as flute notes. “So I invited myself to the party.”

“Where you hung around in the ceiling.” I propped on the counter at the back of the shooting gallery, my gear beside me, thinking.
There was no scaffolding. Nothing to hold on to in the ceiling
. “Glamoured, right? So we wouldn’t see you if we looked up.”

“I am clever.”

I remembered Bruiser’s eyes on my front porch, haunted. Yeah. That was the word. He’d looked haunted. It was a look that made me want to help, to prove him innocent, and that was not part of my job, not part of my contract, not something that would earn me one red cent. But I was going to do it anyway. “Did you see where Bruiser went when he left the ballroom?” I asked. “Can you prove he didn’t kill the girl? Were-cat. Whatever. Did you see who killed Safia?”

“I saw many things last night but little that will help you.”

That stopped me. “Why are you here, Gee? What do you want?”

“Good-bye, little goddess.” He ended the call with a faint click, and when I called him back, it went directly to voice mail again.

I hung up, irritated and confused; stuck the cell into an ammo pouch in my gear. There were too many things going on to get a handle on it, to see any kind of big picture. “Goddess, my vamp-kicking butt. Give me a straight-out hunt with fanged prey and blood anytime,” I grumbled.

“Me too, sister,” a voice said. It came from a guy coming in the door of the indoor range, a mean looking little guy with a gun case big enough to hold a cannon. Penis envy? I was nearly mad enough to say it aloud but managed to hold it in. I grabbed the broom and swept up my brass, dumping it into the half-full brass barrel in the corner. Then I stirred my casings into the mix, losing them in the discards of others, very aware of the little guy’s eyes on me. Paranoid? Me? Starting to be.

Outside, I kicked Bitsa on and eased into traffic, the air like a hot wet blanket against me.

I made a stop by the main offices of NOPD, telling myself that it wasn’t to see Rick, but to look at some files in the woo-woo room. And I believed it, sorta. The guard at the desk was one I had seen before and he slid the sign-in pad to me, tossed me a temp ID badge, and waved me on through. It was shoddy security, but I wasn’t about to complain. I made my way up the stairs, Rick’s desk drawing me like a magnet. It was vacant. No papers on the surface, no old coffee cup, even the computer was off. There was a layer of dust on top of everything. The layer of dust told me clearer than words that he was, indeed, undercover. Again.

Relief warred with anger. He could have told me. I swerved away and made my way through the room, ignored by everyone and returning the favor, to Jodi’s office. I knew where it was, though I’d never been invited in. Which might be a good thing. Jodi and her right-hand man, Sloan Rosen, were bent over reports, Jodi sounding tired, angry, and slightly hoarse. And she was still wearing the same clothes she had worn the night before. I tapped on the door and she looked up, irritation creasing the skin beside her eyes. “What do you want?”