House Rules - Chloe Neill Page 0,51
she was highly empathic, I didn’t feel a need to inform her.
“Sentinel,” Luc greeted me. “Glad to see you’re here without your panties in an obvious twist.”
“They’re getting there,” I said ominously. “Any word from the Ombud’s office?”
“Not a lick. We thought we’d wait for you and give Jeff a call.”
I sat down at the conference table. “Thanks. Let’s do it.”
Luc nodded and leaned over the table to the conference phone, where he hit the second speed-dial option.
“Who’s number one?” I wondered.
“Saul’s Pizza,” Lindsey said. “You’ve ruined us for all other deep-dish.”
Damn straight, I thought. Saul’s was my favorite deep-dish joint in Chicago, a little hole-in-the-wall in Wicker Park, near Mallory’s brownstone. I’d introduced it to the House.
“This is Jeff,” Jeff answered appropriately.
I linked my fingers together as Lindsey moved the whiteboard closer. “Hey, Jeff. It’s Merit in the Ops Room, on speakerphone as per usual.”
“I’ve got an update. Which do you want first? Good news or bad news?”
“Bad news.”
“The glass from the alley is a dead end. It’s safety glass from the side window of a passenger vehicle. Could have been dozens of models, so it doesn’t really tell us anything.”
Bummer, but not entirely surprising. Lindsey erased GLASS from the whiteboard, and I suddenly felt I was playing a game show in which the prizes were disappearing with each wrong answer.
“What else did you find?” I asked.
“We checked out Oliver’s and Eve’s backgrounds. Nothing pops there. No arguments with neighbors, no personal feuds, no money problems. If the killer picked them for a reason, it’s not obvious to us. But I’ll send you the documents in case you want to review them.”
Luc leaned forward. “That would be great, Jeff. Thanks. We’ve got a security consult in for the transition. Maybe we’ll have him take a look.”
“They’re on their way. And now for the good news,” Jeff said. “I was checking out satellite images of the registration center. Turns out there’s a bank across the street. And banks have lots of security.”
I crossed my fingers. “Tell me there’s video, Jeff.”
“There’s video,” he confirmed. “But not much of it. I’ll send it to you.”
By the time Luc had dabbled with his touch screen, it was already registering receipt of a new file. He hit the “play” button.
The video was grainy and dark, and it stuttered along more like time-lapse photography than film, but the setting was right. The shot was focused on the spot directly in front of the bank’s ATM machine, but it caught the edge of the registration center across the street and the alley next to it.
“What’s the timing?” Luc asked.
“This starts eight minutes before Oliver and Eve show up. Now, ignore the guy at the ATM, and watch the alley.”
The guy at the ATM was broad shouldered and dark skinned, and he wore green scrubs as he cheerfully pulled cash from the ATM. He was easy on the eyes, but Jeff was right; the action was behind him.
Traffic rolled past the registration center across the street. Some of the cars pulled to the curb, where vampires spilled out to get into the line gathered outside the door.
“There they are,” Luc said, pointing as Oliver and Eve hopped out of a car not far from the ATM and walked across the street, hand in hand. The car took off again.
My heart clutched. I wanted to urge them back into the car, and felt utterly powerless watching them walk into danger . . . and that much more determined to find their killer.
Oliver and Eve joined the line with the rest of the vampires. The focus at that distance was pretty awful, the queue looking more like a snake of pixels than a distinguishable line of vampires.
“Keep an eye on the next car up,” Jeff said.
“Watching,” Luc absently said, eyes glued to the screen. And he wasn’t the only one. Every vampire in the Ops Room stared at the screen as a large, dark SUV drove past the registration center.
No—not drove. It cruised past the registration center, barely moving, as if scoping out the center and the line in front.
“That could be the same vehicle that followed us this evening.”
“You were followed?” Jeff asked.
I nodded. “Yeah. Ethan and I went for a run. A black SUV followed us, then drove away in a hurry when we moved closer.”
The SUV in the video moved out of view before backing up into the alley, its headlights shining out from the darkness just as the doorman had explained.
“And we have a car