He looked at her sideways, then nodded.
She led him to the car. Taking the keys out of her jacket, she unlocked the driver’s door and the trunk with the remote. “I’ll just put this in the car and we can be off.”
Olena went around back, dropped her kit in, slammed the trunk closed, then opened her door. She slid into the driver’s seat and put the key into the ignition. Cale stood on the curb waiting for her to unlock the passenger door, fiddling with what looked like a BlackBerry.
Time to change the rules.
She opened the passenger window. He glanced down at her through the open window, one eyebrow raised in question.
“Hey, Braxton.” She smiled sweetly at him. “I’ll see you at the lab. If you can find your way there.”
With that, she put the car in drive and sped away from the curb. Cale didn’t even have a chance to reach for the door.
It was a juvenile thing to do, but as she watched his stunned reaction, then his slow, sexy grin in the rearview mirror, she knew it was worth it. Smiling to herself, she slid in a Paramour CD and put on her black-tinted sunglasses. It was turning out to be a perfectly beautiful, sunny day.
Chapter 4
It took Cale forty extra minutes to secure a ride to NMPD headquarters after the vampiress left him stranded on the curb. She’d taken him by surprise when she’d driven off like that. He wasn’t usually surprised by people, having trained extensively in human behavior. But Olena Petrovich wasn’t in any way human. Again, he had to remind himself to be ready for anything around the vampiress. She was, to say the least, unpredictable.
And he had to admit that intrigued him about her. Probably more than it should have. He’d known vampires before, interacted with them, worked with them, and he’d found most to be very ingrained in their ways, not open to change. He found that to be a contradiction, since many of them had seen centuries of change over their long lives. On the other hand, maybe that was why most held on to their old ways so tightly.
He didn’t sense that with Olena.
When he arrived at the NMPD headquarters, he was impressed with the facility. It was a bright, open building, aesthetically pleasing, and by the looks of the equipment he’d seen in some of the rooms as he walked down the hallway to the lab, very well-equipped with up-to-date technology.
He was pleased about that, since he’d had some concerns about working this case outside of Interpol offices.
But add in one distracting vampiress and he still had some doubts.
Another few strides down the hall and he found what he’d been looking for. He gave a few quick raps on the door, then entered Inspector Gabriel Bellmonte’s office.
The man, a lycan, Cale had heard, was behind his desk. He glanced up as Cale walked into the room, seemingly not surprised at all by his appearance.
“Agent Braxton, I presume.”
Cale nodded. “Yes. How did you know?”
Gabriel tapped his nose. “I could smell you coming down the hall.” Leaning forward, he placed his elbows on his desk and motioned Cale toward a chair. “Plus I saw Olena earlier, and she informed me that you’d be on your way here.”
“Yes. It seems your investigator has forgotten the meaning of cooperation,” Cale said as he slid into the offered seat.
The inspector smiled. “Oh, she knows what it means, Agent Braxton.”
Cale kept the lycan’s gaze. It was fierce, and a lesser man might have bent to the predator’s will.
But Cale wasn’t a lesser man. He’d dealt with lycans on several occasions. He liked most that he met. He considered them a stout and loyal species, and Gabriel was no different. Cale suspected he’d fight to the death for one of his own—and for the investigators on his team, regardless of whether they were lycan. That obviously included Olena. Cale would get no help from him in dealing with the vampiress.
After a few more seconds, letting the inspector know that he wasn’t afraid of him, Cale lowered his gaze. He gave the encounter up to Gabriel. He was in his territory, so it was only wise that Cale show deference to the man in charge.
“Do you have a room I could use to set up a base for this investigation?”
“Of course.” Gabriel stood and came around the desk.
Cale followed the lycan out of the office and down the hallway. When they reached another closed door, the inspector opened it and gestured for Cale to go through.
“I was wondering when you’d get here.” Olena sat in a chair behind one of the three computers in the room, never taking her eyes off the screen as she spoke.
“I’ll let you two get reacquainted,” Gabriel said. “I’ll go see if Kellen and Sophie are back with the evidence from the scene.” He shut the door behind him.