“Michael?”
“I need to double-check the details. I should have some answers for you by the time you get to the office.”
Vincent frowned. He suspected Michael had all the information he needed, but didn’t want to discuss it on the phone. Enrique’s spies were always listening, and cell phone signals were way too easy to intercept. He glanced at the digital clock by his bedside. It was nearly eight. Spring was upon them, which meant the days were slowly getting longer. It wasn’t the best time of year for vampires.
“All right. I’ll see you in the office then,” he told Michael.
“Yeah, about that. You have an appointment tonight.”
Vincent trolled through the files in his brain, but came up with nothing. “No, I don’t.”
“Yeah, you do, jefe. Some bounty hunter. He comes with a referral from Raphael himself.”
Vincent frowned. What the fuck was Raphael up to? First a battle on Enrique’s territory and now this?
“A bounty hunter with a referral from Raphael? Why?” he asked.
“Don’t know. The guy called from the road today, spoke to Lou in the front office. Lou made the appointment and left a message for me.”
“What time’s the appointment?”
“Ten.”
“Well, fuck. There goes my evening. I gotta get dressed. See you in thirty,” he said and hung up. But he couldn’t help wondering what it meant that Raphael was referring people directly to Vincent instead of going through Enrique. Especially since Vincent didn’t think he’d exchanged ten words with the powerful vampire lord in the entire time he’d known him.
He started pulling clothes out of the closet for the evening. A pair of jeans—black since he had a business appointment—and a long-sleeved T-shirt, also black. Sitting on a bench inside the walk-in closet, he pulled on socks and his favorite cowboy boots, ditto on the black. It wasn’t that he was giving in to the stereotype of how people thought a vampire dressed—all in black—but clothes just didn’t matter to him. Going with one color made it easy. Besides, he wore blue jeans as often as he did black. That was enough variety for him.
He glanced in the mirror before heading out, doing a quick fingercomb through his longish black hair and a more detailed check of his beard and mustache, which was his one true vanity. He had his hair cut once a month, but his beard he trimmed every night. He knew he was considered handsome, and God knew he used his looks when it came to attracting women—because if there was one thing on this earth that he loved, it was a soft, willing woman—but other than the beard, he didn’t worry overmuch about his appearance. He showered, he shaved, and he kept in shape because it was a matter of survival. And that was it.
There were more important uses for his time and energy, including, it seemed, doing a favor for Raphael. He didn’t know if he should be wary or exhilarated by that development.
The compound where Vincent and the other Hermosillo vamps lived was a square that covered the equivalent of two city blocks. Vincent’s office was in a building on the opposite side of the property from where he lived. It sat outside the main perimeter wall and was the only structure, other than the adjacent night club, with a public entrance. Since nothing of value was kept there, apart from a few pieces of office equipment, its only real security was video surveillance of both the parking lot and the lobby entrance. However, it was still locked down at sunrise, along with the rest of the compound. If a human wanted to pay a visit, they came after sunset, or not at all.
Lou—whose name was actually Louisa—was Vincent’s human secretary. She arrived around noon and worked in a small office inside the main compound until Vincent rose for the night. Then she took up her position at the reception desk outside his office.
As usual, there was a lot of activity in the area as Vincent made his way through the gardens to his office building. Hermosillo had a substantial vampire population attracted by the more than 700,000 humans who lived there. And, since vampires tended to live in groups, many of them lived right here in this sprawling compound. Vincent could hear voices from elsewhere in the compound as he walked, but he didn’t see anyone. This part of the estate was heavily landscaped, as if to deny the encroaching desert outside the walls. It was thick with palms and other tropical plants, fragrant with the scent of their flowers. It took an army of gardeners to maintain the landscaping, and a water well that had been dug solely for that purpose. It wasn’t very ecologically sound, but Vincent enjoyed the results too much to protest.
He nodded at the two vamps guarding the exit gate as he passed through the perimeter wall and into the public part of the compound. No palms graced the concrete walks here. The grounds were well maintained, but, in keeping with the desert environment, they were landscaped with low-lying cacti and stone. Twenty strides took Vincent to the building that was his office. It was an unassuming structure, with nothing to indicate that it was occupied by one of the most powerful vampires in the territory. He took the three stairs to the heavy, iron-banded back door, entered the appropriate code on a locking keypad, and pushed inside, immediately feeling the temperature drop several degrees. Even in summer, the building’s thick stone walls blocked the burning Sonoran desert temps. Vincent’s boots clomped loudly on the tiled floor and he could hear voices coming from his office. But none belonged to his visitor, though. Not yet.
He entered his private office from the rear, walking past his desk and out a second door to the small lobby where Michael and Lou were waiting for him.
“Good evening, Louisa,” he crooned, smiling when his greeting elicited a blush and a duck of her head, even though she’d been working for him for more than ten years, and was old enough to be his mother, if one judged solely by appearances, that was.
“Good evening, Vincent,” she responded briskly. It had taken him years to get her to call him by his first name. “You have an appointment,” she informed him.
“So I understand. Ten o’clock?”
“Yes, sir. Your other messages are on your desk.”
“Got it. Michael, join me. Louisa, mi amor, hold my calls, would you?”
She blushed again at the endearment, but nodded sharply and said, “Yes, sir.”
Vincent grinned, then threw a come along gesture at Michael to follow as he ducked back into his office. He strolled over and sat behind his desk, a beautiful monstrosity of black walnut, waiting until the door was closed before giving his lieutenant a questioning look.
Michael didn’t waste any time. “I’m getting a lot of reports, both human and vampire, that just over a week ago, a pair of vamps were spotted driving hellbent from the North, stopping only long enough to sleep and drain a few unwilling donors on their way to Mexico City.”
Vincent had made Michael a vampire for a variety of reasons, but he’d proven to be an inspired choice. As a vampire, his power was second only to Vincent’s, and as a lieutenant, he was a positive genius at cultivating sources and gathering data. He’d embraced the information age with a vengeance and knew everything there was to know about computer networks and, frankly, how to pry into places that tried to keep him out.