When Passion Lies: A Shadow Keepers Novel (23 page)

Luke paused outside of the secluded Austrian cottage, nostrils flaring as he tested the scent of the surrounding air. He caught lingering traces of both werewolf and vampire, but there was no one around now. Not shadower, not human.

He’d already checked out Reinholt’s Paris house, only
to find it both empty and sterile. So sterile, in fact, that he’d concluded that it was nothing more than a prop. A local address for the curious.

Fortunately, Sara had been able to ferret this Austrian address out of the PEC’s maze of databases. “It’s not in his actual file,” she said. “I found it in a cross-reference. Some sort of disturbance there once, about eighteen years ago. But that’s it. I can’t even be certain Reinholt ever owned it, much less that he still does.”

She’d added that property tax records were no help, either. For some reason, the cottage wasn’t recorded. For all intents and purposes, it didn’t exist. The only proof that it was real and solid was some vague testimony in the decades-old case and the fact that Luke was standing on the front porch.

That rather dubious history was the very thing that made Luke believe he was exactly where he needed to be.

The door was locked, but that wasn’t much of a barrier. He kicked it down, only to find himself in another spartan living area. He canvased the room, searching for anything that might reveal some clue about who Reinholt was and what he was up to. But there was nothing.

Just rugs and furniture and the scent of abandonment. Reinholt hadn’t been in this cottage for weeks.

Still, Luke moved through the place methodically, checking every drawer, skimming every scrap of paper. He tapped on walls, searching for hidden safes, and pulled back rugs looking for trapdoors.

He didn’t actually expect to find one, though, which was why he was surprised when he opened the pantry door and felt a draft.

The kitchen was in the center of the house, with no walls with outside exposure, so a draft made no sense. He stepped into the pantry and pressed on the shelving, his motions slow and careful. He had a number of secret passages built into his Beverly Hills home, and he knew a bit about how to hide a spring latch. But despite his expertise, it took him a good five minutes to figure out how to make the back wall of shelves swing open. Whoever built the place had been both smart and careful.

The open door let in a wash of cool air, and Luke found himself looking down onto a set of stairs that descended into black. Not an obstacle for his preternatural sight, though, and Luke took the stairs carefully, slowly, watching for traps, senses primed for attack or sabotage.

There was nothing.

He reached the concrete basement floor quickly and found a switch for the lights. He turned it on, and two neat rows of overhead lights illuminated the room, barren except for one thick metal door on the far wall.

He crossed to it, then peered through the small barred window. As in the rest of the house, there was no one in the room beyond. That room, however, wasn’t empty.

Luke tried the door and found that the latch turned easily enough. He pulled the door open and stepped in, then immediately felt his strength begin to fade.
Hematite
. The concrete in the floor was mixed with hematite.

Not only that, but a set of wrist and ankle chains was bolted to the wall. He crossed to them, a quick inspection confirming that the chains and shackles were also hematite.

He knew of vampires who bound themselves in hematite.
His friend Sergius, in fact, would lock himself up when he felt his daemon begin to rage out of control.

But the only reason a weren would need such a room would be to hold a vampire captive.

Luke frowned, thinking of the other interesting tidbit of information that Sara had provided—Reinholt had told Tiberius that his mate was a human. And yet Sara had found a reference to a bonding ceremony between him and a vampire. The ceremony had taken place about twenty-five years ago. Sara had tried to track Reinholt’s other addresses by finding the female vampire’s addresses.

A good idea, and Luke appreciated the effort. But it hadn’t panned out. In fact, as far as Sara could tell, the female vampire had pretty much disappeared. Innocent, maybe. But as Luke looked around the hematite-laden room, he couldn’t help but think that the vampire’s disappearance raised a very interesting question: What the hell had Reinholt been up to?

“Sweet digs,” Peter said, looking around the interior of
Le Bar
in the Four Seasons George V hotel in Paris. “Division 12 must have a better expense account than I do.”

“Ha!” Everil said.

“I’m staying here,” Gabriel admitted. “He’s staying down the road a piece.”

“Is that a fact?”

“One of the perks of a West Texas upbringing,” Gabriel said. “Black gold. Texas tea.” And while he’d been known on occasion to be generous with his overflowing
bank account, that hadn’t kicked in where Everil’s lodging was concerned.

Peter leaned back in the red upholstered chair, then lifted his scotch and took a good, long slug. “I’m glad I caught you. I’ve been meaning to check in. See how you were doing.”

“You heard about all that?”

Peter lifted a shoulder. “Not the deets. Just that something went bad with one of your cases.”

“What went bad?” Everil asked.

“You wanna talk about it?” Peter continued, ignoring Everil.

“Hell, no,” Gabriel said, as Everil’s bulbous eyes narrowed in concentration.

It was one of those homicide-gone-wrong stories that always seemed to be attached to another story about a cop changing the way he worked or giving up the badge altogether. Gabriel hadn’t given up the badge—or maybe he had. He’d sure as hell been trying to skate when he’d requested the transfer to Zermatt.

Homicide gone wrong
. Yeah, that pretty much summed it up.

Not that the homicide part itself had gone wrong. No, the victim—one Arturo Hernandez—had ended up as dead as dead can be, a silver bullet put right through his werecat heart, and his head whacked off with a silver dagger just to be on the safe side. It was the investigation that had gone wrong.

So very wrong … even though by the numbers it went completely right. Killer found. Killer prosecuted. Killer sentenced to death.

Yeah, it looked great on Lieutenant Gabriel Casavetes’s record. Got him the attention of the brass—and
why not? Arturo was a big deal in the local weren community, and around the Mexican border, the Therians—especially the werecats—were king. Arturo’s death had shaken El Paso to the core, and when Gabriel had hauled Jillian Taylor into the interview room he’d been a goddamned fucking hero.

He’d walked out of there with a pile of evidence seven miles high that proved without any reasonable doubt that she killed the motherfucker.

And he’d been so goddamned proud of himself for dotting those i’s and crossing those t’s.

What a crock of shit.

She’d killed him all right. But she’d had damn good reason. A lifetime of reasons. Of abuse. And torture. But Gabriel hadn’t gone down those roads. He’d followed the victim, lined him up with the suspect, and set the merry-go-round turning.

An easy conviction, and Jillian had been beheaded for her crimes. She’d died … and as the abuse and torture started to come to light, part of Gabriel had died, too.

He’d done his job to the letter, and by doing that, he’d fucked up royally.

“Hey, hey, Gabriel,” Peter said. “I didn’t mean to send you traipsing down memory lane.”

Gabriel waved it off. “No. I’m good. How about you? Any war stories?”

Peter took another sip of scotch as he considered. “Hell, I wish. It’s the same old, same old.”

“You here on a case?”

“Skip trace. Nothing worth writing home about.” He finished off the scotch. “Although, now that you’ve got me thinking, I do have one story. Ties into your neck of the woods, that’s what made me think of it.”

“All right,” Gabriel said, finishing his gin and gesturing to the waitress to bring another round. “Entertain me.”

“This crazy chick. Looker, but wants me to do these totally fucked-up background checks.”

“On who?”

“No rhyme or reason as far as I can see. Other than that they’re werewolves. Every last one of them. I must’ve done dozens for her. Most recent one was a hell of a thing. She gives me these parameters—where the guy was in a certain year, if he has a certain type of educational or job experience. And if they’re a go, then I find them for her. Give her an address, the whole nine, right?”

“Sure.” The back of Gabriel’s neck was tingling. He reached back to rub it, but the odd sensation didn’t fade. “So what happened?”

“Turns out the guy’s gone into hiding,” Peter said.

“No way!” That from Everil, who was leaning forward, sipping on his Sprite.

“Makes it hard for me, right? I mean, I don’t get paid until I find the guy. And let me tell you, I must have jumped through more hoops than they got in a circus, but I fricking did it. I found him. He might be in hiding, but I found out where he was going to be. Just a couple of nights ago, too. Zermatt. The fine town of.”

The tingling had turned into a complete prescient sensation. The details were too similar. It had to be Caris.

And if it was, it meant that Gabriel was about the luckiest son of a bitch in the world.

“How long have we been friends, Peter?”

His buddy’s brow furrowed as he mentally calculated. “Dunno. Long time.”

“Have I ever asked you for a favor?”

“Odds are good you have.”

“I haven’t,” Gabriel said. “Trust me on that one. But I’m asking you for one now.”

Peter shifted, getting interested. “All right … What do you need?”

“I need to ask you a question. Off the record. The girl you’re doing the werewolf hunt for—is it Caris?”

“Aw, fucking a, man,” Peter said. “You know I can’t answer that question.”

“It’s no problem,” Gabriel said with the smallest of smiles. “You already did.”

“Sir,” Rico called, the word barely registering with Lihter, who was pacing, frustrated, trying to find a way around the inevitable. A way to fix this goddamned, fucked-up mess.