Drained (Edgars Family #6) - Suzanne Ferrell Page 0,75

know. I can’t help it. I miss him already.” She gave him a reassuring little smile. “But taking care of Paula is helping.”

“Has she told you anything more about Art?” he asked, slowly rubbing his hand up and down her arm.

“Nothing personal. She doesn’t have much family to count on. And other than Brianna, I doubt she has any friends, either.” She paused and a little shiver went through her. “Reminds me of myself when I was in the Witness Protection program. I had one person to count on.”

“Castello.” When he’d first met Katie and saw her dependence on the big Marshall, he’d been a little jealous that she loved him. That was before he realized that their love was more like big brother and little sister. Now the guy was part of their family.

“Yes,” Katie said with a grin. “Art was kind of Paula’s Castello. Or maybe she was his?”

“Now she’s got us. And you know the Edgars—”

“Once the Edgars take you in, you’re family, whether you like it or not,” she laughed.

22

“You think there will be another body tonight?” Brianna asked as she, Aaron and Stanley turned the corner into the next alley. They’d been to a shelter in the area two blocks up but no one they talked with knew anything about a journalist interviewing homeless people.

“We don’t know what his pattern is for a fresh kill or how many he’s frozen like Mia.” Aaron slid his hand over hers and linked their fingers as they walked, Stanley’s leash in his other hand. “But he’s too perfect in his killing and his staging, so we know there’s more bodies out there somewhere. Will he leave us another tonight? I don’t know.”

“Is it wrong for me to hope he does?” she asked, peeking up at him as they passed under a streetlight.

He shook his head, resignation tightening his facial muscles. “I feel the same way. Because if we do find a body tonight, that gives us another clue about who he is and maybe gets us closer to stopping him. Also, the faster he moves, the more likely he is to make a mistake.”

“And when he makes a mistake, that’s how we’ll catch him, right?”

“Right.”

Stanley gave a little yip and started pulling on his leash, his tail wagging, as they neared a trio of people seated on a low cement wall.

“Looks like he’s found someone he knows,” Aaron said, speeding their pace a little to let the pup have the lead. Brianna matched him stride for stride.

“Hey, Stan, my man,” the older of the two men said, dropping down to pet Stanley who happily licked his hand.

With the white and grey blending into his dark beard, he looked to be about fifty, if Brianna had to guess, but in the few days of walking among the homeless she’d learned that life on the streets had a way of aging people. She’d also gotten used to the mixture of musky body odor, bad breath and the lingering scent of pot use that seemed to cling to everyone she met.

“Looks like you got some people looking after you, pup,” the man said, sitting back to size up Aaron and then her. “You folks the cops that found old Art?”

“Stanley found him,” Aaron said stepping forward to offer his hand to the man. “We just happened to be with him at the time. Name’s Aaron, this is Brianna.”

“Name’s John, but I go by Hondo,” he said, shaking hands. He nodded at the white woman bundled inside the coat three sizes too big for her, who pulled out a piece of something from her coat pocket and offered it to Stanley. “That’s Carmen and he’s Yancy,” he said indicating the twitchy African American man sitting beside her.

Aaron and Brianna nodded at them.

“So, you knew Art?” Aaron asked.

Hondo nodded. “Been on the streets ’bout twenty years now. Art was on ’em even longer than me. A good man to spend time talkin’ with. Sad to hear ’bout him.”

“They say he had no blood,” Yancy said, his legs bouncing in a syncopated rhythm. “That a vampire got him.”

“Is that true?” Carmen asked, her eyes shifting to the left and then the right as if she expected Vlad the Impaler to swoop in out of the dark.

Brianna glanced at Aaron, who focused all his attention on the homeless woman. “There wasn’t a lot of blood at the scene where we found Art, but it wasn’t a vampire like in the movies. We’re pretty sure this