When Passion Lies: A Shadow Keepers Novel (21 page)

“She was,” Luke said. He had his own doubts about whether Tiberius was thinking with that brilliantly analytical mind … or with certain other parts of his body. “He assures me he has the situation well in hand.”

Sara smirked. “Does he?” She stood and slipped on her robe before pushing the button to open the electric blinds. They slid open silently, revealing a stunning view of the ocean painted in purple and orange as the sun disappeared beneath the horizon. “So, how can I help?”

“We don’t want PEC involvement. Not yet.”

“I get that. Dead political snitch equals political matter. But this matter is pulling my husband away again. I’d like to speed up the process. Can I?”

He thought about it, then nodded. “You can. Tiberius is sending me a copy of a report the investigator provided to Caris. But it lists only one address in Paris, and identifies neither relatives nor friends.”

“You want me to do a run on the guy.”

“If you wouldn’t mind. Addresses. Family. Marriages or bonds.” Some shadowers followed the tradition of marrying their mate, others merely bonded. But even informal bonds should show up on a background check. “He told Tiberius his wife was human. I doubt there’s anything there, but you can poke around in the human system, too.”

She crawled back onto the bed, her robe falling open as she straddled him. Then she bent down and whispered in his ear, “That all depends. What do I get in return?”

He stroked her bare back, pulling her down to him as
he did. “Don’t worry,” he murmured as he brushed a soft kiss over her lips. “I’m sure we can think of something.”

The intercom light flashed, and Lindy Kruger gratefully removed her headphones. She’d spent the last hour listening to chatter flagged by the computer, going slowly through it to determine if the cellphone conversations about bombs and explosions were kids talking about video games, couples discussing the latest movies, or terrorists planning the next attack.

So far, she’d run across nothing scary. Good for the world, but it made her job significantly less exciting.

She pressed the button to operate the com. “What’s up?”

“Got someone here to see you. Says he’s with Homeland Security.”

“Is he?” That was unusual. Lindy was stationed at the American Embassy in Egypt as a CIA analyst. A lot of Company agents passed through her doors, but the Homeland Security guys tended to stay back home in the States. “What’s his name?”

“Bael Slater.”

Lindy grinned. Maybe her job was about to take a turn toward interesting after all. Because while Lindy might officially work for the CIA, she had an unofficial job, too. One only the director and the president knew about. Lindy Kruger worked with vampires and werewolves and all sorts of freaky creatures that she used to believe didn’t really exist.

They did. She’d met a slew of them. And it was wholly ironic that what had landed her this particularly fabulous side of her job was her bad-girl days as a hacker. The CIA had learned about her antics and recruited her. Rehabilitated her, too. Or so the story went.

“Send him in,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound too eager.

He was through the door in a minute. A hulking vampire with a body big enough to be the star defensive dude on an NFL football team, and eyes that could convince a woman to peel off her clothes, even without using those vampire compulsion tricks.

His grin was dangerous, and the tiniest tilt of his head was her invitation to slide into his arms for a kiss.

She pulled back with a sigh. “Tell me you’re here for fun and not business.”

He flashed an easy grin. “Sorry, kid. Maybe next time.”

“Just my luck. Whatcha need?”

“I’m trying to track someone down.”

She nodded. “Since you’re here, I’m guessing he talked on a cellphone?”

“I answered the call. He didn’t realize, and he started talking. Said Lihter’s into something bad. I need to know who was at the other end of that call.”

“That’s all he said? ‘Bad’?”

“Pretty much.”

“Jesus, Slater. My system doesn’t even flag ‘bad.’ ”

“It flags Lihter.”

He was right about that. She’d inserted a subprogram to pull all chatter relating to the key players in the shadow world.

“Tell me that’s enough to do a search,” he said.

“If you don’t have another keyword, it’ll be slow, but yeah. I can do it.”

“I have the time of the conversation.”

“That’ll help. We can narrow the parameters.”

“And once we find the call, you can search the voice prints?”

“Sure,” she said. “But you’ll only get a match if your caller is already in the system.”

From his expression, it was obvious he’d already thought of that. “The guy had Bovil’s cellphone number. He was highly placed.”

Lindy’s eyes went wide. “You answered Drescher Bovil’s cellphone?”

Slater’s expression was hard. “It seemed unlikely he’d be answering it himself. Lindy, this stays between us.”

“Of course.” She had no illusions about the kind of work Slater did. And although she was technically supposed to be neutral, her position intended to help all the shadowers and not just the vamps, she’d always thought that Bovil was something of a worm.

She glanced at the wall of computers and high-tech recording equipment. “I’m going to need to program the search. Then we let the system do its thing.”

“How long will that take?”

She bobbed her head, thinking. “Since you know the approximate time, we may get lucky. An hour? Maybe two?”

He grinned, slow and wolfish, then ran his finger down her arm. Lindy shivered.

“Is that so?” he asked. “In that case, maybe we should lock the door.”

“Here,” Everil said, pointing out the window of the tiny Volkswagen they’d rented. “That’s the cutoff to the château.”

Gabriel peered down the dusty road, pretty sure no one had taken a car down there in centuries. “You sure?”

“I’ve been here before,” Everil said.

Gabriel shot him a sideways glance. “ ’Cause you’re part weren?”

Everil sniffed. “On a case, actually. Had to interrogate some werens,” he added, then sat up straighter in that smarmy, self-affected way that he had. “Although to answer your broader question, yes. Many local werens come to the château. It’s been used as a gathering hall for centuries and its library is unsurpassed.”

“Is that a fact?” Gabriel made the turn and kept the car slow. The road was rough. Nothing like the concrete and steel infrastructure of Paris and the French highway systems. This was backwoods all the way.

But his whiny little excuse for a partner was right, and in only a few miles they reached the Château du Lupe, a centuries-old mansion behind an overgrown lawn and a thick growth of trees that stretched for four acres in each direction. A rusty iron fence surrounded the property, the barbs that topped each fence post discouraging visitors.

The gloomy atmosphere did its job well, and for years, humans had avoided the château, none even so much as turning into the long cobblestone driveway. In the nearby Parisian suburbs, the humans whispered among themselves that it was haunted. That demons walked
there, and that any person entering would find himself ripped apart, thrust into a hellish nightmare that would make a Clive Barker movie look like the Disney Channel.

Gabriel knew it was a reputation that the werewolves who occupied the château had worked long to foster. The rumors and whispers kept the humans away, giving the creatures within much-needed privacy. On occasion, someone unfamiliar with the château’s reputation would drive too close to the fence and catch a glimpse of one of the weren—in full wolf form—rutting in the forest that surrounded the ancient mansion.

But those incidents never came to anything. If the surprised human reported to a friend or a local bartender that a feral creature was loose outside Paris, he was patted kindly on the head and told that Paris had all sorts of ghosts and goblins. If the human reported the incident to the police, he was assured that an investigation would proceed immediately, and the matter was promptly forgotten once the human moved on.

All of which probably explained why it took so long for anyone to answer the intercom when Gabriel buzzed for entry at the gatehouse.

“This is private property,” a voice finally responded, crackling through the weather-beaten speaker.

“Gabriel Casavetes and Everil Torq. Division 12. We need to talk to Faro Lihter.”

The pause lasted long enough that Gabriel began to think no one was coming at all. Then the gate swung slowly open. Gabriel shot a glance toward Everil, who was sitting stiffly and looking straight ahead.

“All right then,” he said, and tapped the gas.

The driveway wound through trees and landscaped
shrubbery, finally depositing them at a porte cochere extending from the front door over the driveway.

A uniformed weren marched toward them as Gabriel stepped out of the car. “Identification?”

Gabriel flashed his badge and Everil did the same.

The weren squinted at the badges, then looked up at Everil. “Torq?”

Everil bristled, then shifted nervously. Gabriel resisted the urge to nudge him hard in the ribs. A cop never showed nerves. First lesson of investigating. The cop was always in charge.

“I’ve heard that name,” the weren continued.

“I—I’ve been here on a case before.”

That seemed to satisfy the officer. He headed toward the door. “After me.”

They were escorted through the lush mansion to a sitting room straight from the Victorian era, with velvet-upholstered furniture and a cozy fire. A young woman in a traditional maid’s outfit wheeled in a cart of tea. It was all Gabriel could do not to lift his eyebrows and snort.

Behind her, another woman stepped in, this one in a linen pantsuit. “How can I help you?”

“We need to see Lihter,” Everil said. “We were very specific about having questions for him.”

Gabriel shot his partner the kind of look that was designed to kill but never managed to do the job. “My partner’s a little overeager. We’re investigating a murder. The victim is a werewolf. We’re hoping to get some background.”

Of course they were hoping for more than that, but Gabriel never showed his hand to a suspect. And Lihter was most definitely a suspect in this investigation. Better
to concentrate on the victim, gather intel, and come back if necessary.

Gabriel had gone over that plan of attack with Everil when they were first partnered, again on the plane to Paris, and finally in the line to pick up their rental car. Hopefully he’d pounded the plan into the fae’s thick head. And he hoped Everil wouldn’t make some other misstep and fuck up the investigation.

“Of course,” the woman said. She took a seat. “I’m the house mistress here. Delia Schnell. I should be able to help you.”

Everil leaned forward, as if he was trying to memorize her face. “How long have you worked here at the mansion?”

“I came with Mr. Lihter. When he moved in, so did I.”

That seemed to satisfy Everil, and he leaned back, his expression smug. Gabriel didn’t have a clue what that was about, and he wasn’t sure he cared. He just wanted to get to the heart of the matter. “Did you know Cyrus Reinholt?”

“Not well,” she said. “He was a frequent guest at the château, though.”

“If he came often, why didn’t you know him?”

“To be honest, I only recognized him after we were informed of his death. The château is notified of all weren deaths worldwide, of course.”

“Naturally.”

“Part of my responsibility is to forward information regarding weren deaths to Mr. Lihter. As I didn’t recognize the name, I looked him up in our system and learned that he actually spent quite a bit of time here.”

“Were his visits during Lihter’s tenure? Or before, with Gunnolf?”

“Both,” she said. “His visits were never long, and he never socialized. I’m sorry, but I don’t think anyone here would be able to give you much information about the man.”

“Well, I appreciate your time.” He stood as if to go, ignoring the surprised expression on his partner’s face. He took a step toward the door, then paused. “Oh, just one more thing. I heard a vampire used to live here at the château.”