been talking about? «How do you know I won't run for it?»
«You won't bail on someone who requires medical attention. It's not in your nature, true?»
Well… shit. He knew her pretty well.
«Yeah, I do,» he said.
«Cut that out.»
Red Sox looked around Jane at the patient. «Your mind reading coming back?»
«With her? Sometimes.»
«Huh. You getting anything from anyone else?»
«Nope.»
Red Sox repositioned his hat. «Well, ah… let me know if you pick up shit from me, k? There are
some things that I'd prefer to keep private, feel me?»
«Roger that. Although I can't help it sometimes.»
«Which is why I'm going to take up thinking about baseball when you're around.»
«Thank fuck you're not a Yankees fan.»
«Don't use the Y-word. We're in mixed company.»
Nothing else was said as they continued through the tunnel, and Jane had to wonder whether she
was losing her mind. She should have been terrified in this dark, subterranean place with two
huge escorts of a vampire nature. But she wasn't. Oddly, she felt safe… as if the patient would
protect her because of the vow he'd given her, and Red Sox would do the same because of his
bond with the patient.
Where the hell was the logic in that, she wondered.
Gimme an S! A T! An O! A C! Followed by a K-H-O-L-M! What's it spell? HEAD FUCK.
The patient leaned down to her ear. «I can't see you as the cheerleader type. But you're right, we
both would slaughter anything that so much as startled you.» The patient straightened again, one
giant testosterone surge plugged into shitkickers.
Jane tapped him on the forearm and crocked her forefinger so he'd lean back down. When he did,
she whispered, «I'm scared of mice and spiders. But you don't need to use that gun on your hip to
blow a hole in a wall if I ran into one, okay? Havaheart traps and rolled newspapers work just as
well. Plus, you don't need a Sheetrock patch and plaster job afterward. I'm just saying.»
She patted his arm, dismissing him, and refocused on the tunnel ahead.
V started to laugh, awkwardly at first, then more deeply, and she felt Red Sox staring at her. She
met his eyes with hesitation, expecting to find some kind of disapproval thing going on. Instead,
there was only relief. Relief and approval as the man… male… Christ, whatever… looked at her
and then his friend.
Jane flushed and glanced away. The fact that they guy was obviously not pulling a best-friend
pissing contest with her over V should not have been a bonus. Not at all.
A hundred yards later they came up to a set of shallow stairs that led to a door with a bolt-based
locking mechanism the size of her head on it. As the patient stepped up and put in a code, she
imagined they were going to walk into a 007 kind of deal-
Well, not hardly. It was a closet with shelves of yellow-lined legal pads and printer cartridges
and boxes of document clips. Maybe on the other side…
Nope. It was just an office. A regular middle-management kind of office with a desk and a
swivel chair and file cabinets and a computer.
Okay, no Jerry Bruckheimer/Die Hard here. Try a commercial for Allstate insurance. Or a
mortgage company.
«This way,» V said.
They went out through a glass door and down an unmarked white corridor to some stainless-steel
double doors. Beyond them was a professional-quality gym, one big enough to host a pro
basketball game, a wrestling match, and a volleyball exhibition at the same time. Blue mats were
laid out across the glossy honey-colored floor, and there were punching bags hanging from under
a stacked row of elevated bleachers.
Big money. Huge. And how had they constructed all this without someone on the human side of
things catching on? There must be a lot of vampires. Had to be.
Workmen and architects and craftsmen… all able to pass among humans if they wanted to.
The geneticist in her got a serious case of brain strain. If chimpanzees shared ninety-eight
percent of the DNA of humans, how close were vampires? And evolutionarily speaking, when
did this other species branch off from apes and Homo sapiens? Yeah… wow… she'd give
anything to get a crack at their double helix. If they were indeed going to clean her mind before
they let her go, medical science was missing out on so much. Especially as they didn't get cancer
and healed so fast.
What an opportunity.
At the far side of the gym they stopped in front of a steel door marked EQUIPMENT/PT
ROOM. Inside there were racks and stacks of weapons: An arsenal of marital arts swords and
nunchakus. Daggers that were locked in closets. Guns. Throwing
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