again, given Syn’s hard stare, maybe there were other kinds of “stupid” to be worried about.
“Well, that was unexpected,” Butch said to the Bastard in a relaxed tone. “You want to talk about what just went down?”
“Not in the slightest,” Syn drawled. “You need to speak to her. Not me.”
“I’m not sure I agree with that.” Butch closed the distance between them and met those eyes square-on. “I just had a positive ID on you being with a female who was killed, on the night she was killed, in the club she was killed in. And given the way your buddy here is looking so exasperated, I have a feeling this is not the first time you’ve been in this kind of trouble. Am I right?”
Syn shrugged. “I got nothing to say.”
“At all?”
“Are you going to play human world now? Read me some rights before you handcuff me and throw me in a cell?”
Butch didn’t think it was helpful to go into the fact that there were no jails for vampires, at least not in Caldwell. Now, out West, they had options, but the Nevada desert was a long, long way away. Then again . . . maybe they could squeeze the sonofabitch into a FedEx box, poke some holes in it, and ship his ass out to the penal colony.
After Butch figured out what the fuck was going on, of course. Balthazar glared at his comrade. “Either you start talking or I do.”
“I told the guy, I got nothing to say.”
There was a long silence. And then Balthazar focused on Butch.
“My friend here has a little problem with dead bodies. They seem to happen a lot around him, and they’re not always the ones we want.”
“That human man in the alley had it coming to him,” Syn muttered.
“But you didn’t have to do it the way you did.” Balthazar shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “If something happened at Pyre, you need to come clean.”
Syn cocked an eyebrow and then shrugged. “Fine. I was with a female at the club, but I don’t know whether or not she was the one who was killed.”
Butch frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me before now? I asked everyone to let me know if they’d been down there.”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
Butch raised his chin. “I’ve got a dead female on a slab getting cut up right now by Havers for her autopsy. And you didn’t think it matters.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, see, here’s my problem. If you’d told me beforehand, I wouldn’t be thinking right now that you’re hiding something.”
Syn rolled his eyes and made like he was going to turn around. “This is boring me—”
Butch moved fast, grabbing the other male and shoving him back against the concrete wall. Pinning Syn at the throat with his forearm, he dropped his pad and put the muzzle of his gun at the Bastard’s temple.
“You think this is a fucking joke?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Butch saw Boone and Helania watching down by the door to the interrogation room, but he couldn’t worry about that. If he had to shoot the Bastard to get some answers, he would pull the trigger in a heartbeat. Losing an ear, for example, could be painful. So was getting a lead slug in the upper arm. The knee. There were plenty of nonlethal places to shoot, and pain tended to be a great opener of proverbial doors.
Syn, however, did not seem to be impressed by the show of gunmetal. His black eyes gleamed with intelligence, but absolutely no emotion at all.
“A female is dead,” Butch gritted out, “and you’ve just been accused of killing her. And you’re staying silent?”
“I have no comment, but I will do something.” Syn smiled in an evil way, that black stare suddenly glowing red as a blood moon. “How about making it a two-for-one on the dead bodies?”
The male was too fast for Butch to catch him. Syn grabbed the gun and shoved its loaded muzzle into his own mouth.
In his eyes, in his red, glowing eyes, there was one and only one message: Do it.
Down by the interrogation room, Boone just wanted to make sure that he protected Helania from any stray lead that got to flying.
But of course, that imperative became a moot fucking issue when Syn put Butch’s goddamn gun in his mouth.
The two males were both shaking as they stood locked on the verge of a trigger pull, the naked upper torso of the