Cynthia waited patiently. This was a little dance they went through every time, but Linville always came through for her, so she didn't mind.
"Had a call this morning east of Paradise Cove. Right before dawn, woman claimed she heard automatic weapons fire ... machine guns she called it. Said it sounded like a shoot out. A shoot out.” Linville chuckled and shook his head. “A unit drove out, but didn't find nothin'. Figured the guy next door was pulling an all-nighter, watching too many of his own movies and playing ‘em too loud. You know how sound carries down the beach."
"No one else reported anything?"
"Not a peep. Oh, and your wife beater's back. Got out on parole and what's the first thing he does? Pays a visit to the ex. Stupid. He didn't even get to the front door before she'd called us."
"You picked him up?” Cynthia had worked for the wife in the divorce case, documenting the husband's many infidelities. Turned out he beat up his girlfriends too.
"Oh, yeah. Right back in the slammer, parole violation. What an idiot."
"No accounting. Okay, I gotta run, Linville. You share those pastries now. Don't want you dropping dead with a heart attack before you meet the girl of your dreams."
Linville laughed and Cynthia saw him take his first gooey bite as she went back through the glass doors to the parking lot.
* * * *
By the time she rolled into the private space behind her Santa Monica office, it was nearly six and the sun was a blinding haze of gold on the western horizon. The days were already growing shorter. Another six weeks or so and it would be full dark by now. She turned off the ignition and took a cautious look around the lot before opening her door. It never hurt to be careful in her business. She'd had a few threats in the past, mostly disgruntled spouses like the wife beater, or those she'd caught on film in flagrante delicto. Did people still say “caught on film” anymore? Digital cameras were far more convenient; zip off an e-mail to the client, photos attached. Caught on bytes, maybe? Whatever you called it, it was all the same. If Linville wanted to know why she was so cynical about marriage, he had only to take a look at her case files. One failed marriage after another, each chronicled in living color. Slinging the strap of her backpack over her shoulder, she climbed out and slammed the truck door.
Her security system beeped a welcome as she punched in the code and entered the small office she kept for herself. The whole building was hers—a long, low bungalow of four offices on busy Montana Avenue in the heart of Santa Monica's conspicuous consumption district. Not the touristy part, but the part where residents went to hang out and sip seven dollar lattes while waiting for their next big deal, or at least pretending to. She only used one of the offices, renting out the other three to a couple of lawyers and a therapist. Most of her clients never came to her office after their first visit, and when they did, it was usually after dark. Her late hours were perhaps a bit unusual, but it worked well enough for her human clients, and it opened possibilities to her other clientele. Vampires.
Cynthia had never planned on being the investigator of choice for the west coast vampire community. When she left the LAPD, she'd had something more like “investigator to the stars” in mind. Family connections gave her access to a world of privilege and entitlement, where spending a few thousand to have someone follow your cheating husband ... or wife ... was not only chump change, but almost a social dictate, like the latest fashions. Instead, by pure chance, Cyn had found herself in the right place to save a vampire's life and changed her own in the process. Vampires called her from as far away as Colorado and Montana. She didn't mind finding their long lost relatives or digging up forgotten bank accounts or family heirlooms. Half her business was for one vampire or another, and they paid very well. But she never accepted the personal invitations that sometimes followed. She had no desire to delve any further into a society where blood was the beverage of choice, and hers was on tap.
Her office phone was ringing when she walked in. She dropped everything on her desk and grabbed it before voice mail kicked in.
"Leighton,” she said.
It was the lawyer next door. “I heard you pull into the parking lot,” he explained. “And I wondered if maybe you had time to meet with a client of mine. She's here now. The usual cheating husband."
Cyn hoped the wife wasn't listening to the lawyer's blithe dismissal of her broken heart. She was tempted to decline the job. She might joke with Linville, but it really got to her sometimes. She sighed. On the other hand, she had no other cases on the horizon, and while she wouldn't exactly starve without the income, she did try to make the agency pay for itself. She told the lawyer to send his client on over.
Nearly an hour and a full box of Kleenex later, Cyn was regretting the impulse and thinking it was too bad the therapist wasn't in today, because this woman really needed someone to talk to far more than she needed a PI. But Cynthia was not going to be that someone. She'd learned the hard way not to get personally involved with her clients’ marital problems. Some jilted spouses cried, some stared vacantly in a sort of bleak acceptance, and still others were mad as hell and determined to make the offending spouse suffer as much as possible. But they all had one thing in common. They were looking for someone to blame for their current predicament. And too often that blame fell on Cynthia for providing evidence of the very infidelity she'd been hired to uncover in the first place.
After ushering the distraught woman out the back door with assurances of sympathy and a speedy indictment of the wandering husband, Cyn sank down into her chair with a relieved breath and thought about taking the rest of the night off. On the one hand, with the information the wife had already provided, she could probably get the evidence she needed and close the case by morning; on the other—Her phone rang and she answered, hoping for a reprieve.
"Don't break my heart and tell me you have plans for tonight.” It was a man's voice, filled with laughter beneath the smooth bourbon of a Southern accent.
"Breaking hearts is your specialty, not mine, Nicky. You in town?"
"I don't break hearts, darlin', I heal them with sweet love. Meet me."
Cynthia laughed. She couldn't help it. Nick was an unrepentant rogue, charming, handsome ... and an animal in bed. She thought about the latest cheating husband and shrugged. “When and where?"
Chapter Two
Buffalo, New York
Raphael let his gaze roam the sparsely populated conference room, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses against the garishly bright lights. He and his fellow vampire lords were arrayed around a huge oval slab of marble that served as a table. The table was large enough, and the vampires unsociable enough, that they sat far apart, making private conversation among them impossible. Several had aides or bodyguards standing in attendance behind them. Some had even brought their human servants into the room, leaving them to huddle against the walls, hoping not to be noticed. Of them all, only Raphael sat alone. Only Raphael, it seemed, had no need for the reassurance of his minions.
He gave his watch a careful glance, wondering how much longer courtesy would force him to sit and listen to the ramblings of their host for this meeting. The vampire lord was ancient ... and as doddering as an old human. Despite the physical appearance of youth, his voice quavered and his mind wandered, clinging to the glories of his past, cloistered in his fluorescent-lit tower. Raphael's gaze traveled to the powerful and much younger vampire standing at the old lord's back. They measured each other for the space of a few seconds, each exquisitely aware of the other's regard behind their darkened lenses. That one wouldn't wait much longer, Raphael thought to himself. The old lord's nights were numbered.
He stifled a sigh and stared out the window. The real business of this meeting had been concluded in previous nights. Tonight's gathering was little more than a formality, serving only to delay his departure. But courtesy was the hallmark of vampire society. When one lived and mingled with others for hundreds of years, such niceties mattered.
The door at the back of the room opened softly, and Raphael heard the bare whisper of footsteps on the deep carpeting. His nostrils flared as he scented the air; it was one of his own, his lieutenant, Duncan. Duncan had been with Raphael for over two hundred years, had been his foremost liegeman for more than half of that. Whatever news he was bringing, it would not be good if it could not wait until they were alone. Duncan reached the space behind Raphael and leaned forward, his breath feather-light against Raphael's skin as he spoke words for his master's ears only.
"Sire, Alexandra has been kidnapped."
A lazy blink of his eyes behind the dark glasses was Raphael's only outward reaction. He nodded slightly, gesturing with one finger for Duncan to remain. There was a faint movement of air as his lieutenant straightened and stepped back the requisite two paces. A thousand questions raced through Raphael's head as the speaker droned on, babbling about bonds of honor that tied them all, and on and on. It was in essence the same speech given by every host at every annual gathering for the past three hundred years on this continent, and probably long before that around the world.