Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

Heather hesitated. “You get into this with me, you’ll be in the crosshairs, Dante. More than you are now.”

“Doesn’t matter. You were there for me, Heather. I’m here for you.”

Heather held Dante’s gaze. “It was my job.”

“Nuh-uh. You’d been called back. Case closed. You stayed, alone, and without backup, to help me.”

And she’d failed him. More than once. “I didn’t do a very good job of it either.”

“Yeah, you did,” Dante said. He crossed the floor in quick strides and joined her at the table. He cupped her face between his hands, fevered hands, and she looked into his dark eyes, drawn into their unguarded depths. “You risked everything for me. You never gave up.”

“Neither did you.” Heather grasped his right hand and pressed it against her chest over her healed heart. Something chimed within her, triggered by his touch, and resonated from the palm of his hand to her heart and back, ringing between them like struck crystal, pure and clear and true.

Her breath caught in her throat, and for a moment, she thought she saw black wings arching up from Dante’s back and sweeping around her.

Wonder lit Dante’s eyes. “Listen,” he said, lowering his face to hers.

Pulse racing, Heather tilted her face up and he kissed her, his lips as fevered as his hands, his kiss hungry and a little rough. As the kiss deepened, Heather thought she heard a song—wild and dark—its complicated melody weaving in and around the crystalline hand-to-heart refrain dancing between them. The song arced electricity through her heart, her mind, and sparked fire in her blood.

She hears a rush of wings .

All too soon, Dante ended the kiss and took a step back, his hands sliding away from her breast, from her face, and curling into fists. The song vanished. His jaw tightened.

“What’s wrong?” Heather asked.

He shook his head, then trailed a hand through his hair. “How’s Annie?”

Bewildered by his abrupt physical and conversational shift, Heather shrugged. “She’s okay for the moment. She walked up to the market to get a pack of smokes.”

“C’est bon.” Dante nodded at the table. “So what’d you find?”

“Pull up a chair,” Heather said. “I’ll show you.”

Dante shrugged off his leather jacket, then the hoodie beneath it, and hung both over the back of a chair. He wore a long-sleeved mesh shirt under his black tee. White letters on the chest read BLOW ME. In his usual manner, he swung the chair around, and then straddled it. He folded his arms along the chair’s back.

Heather pulled her chair around so she could sit beside him. She awakened the laptop with a quick tap to the keypad. A file appeared on the monitor and she clicked it open. A photo flashed onto the screen.

“SAC Alexander Lyons,” Heather said. “Portland office. He’s the one who accompanied me to my mom’s death site. Spotless record, amazing test scores, exemplary field work. He transferred to Portland from D.C. about five years ago.”

“Why?”

“An illness in the family. His mother had cancer, I believe.”

“So how come he was asked to keep an eye on you, instead of someone lower in the food chain?”

“Good question,” Heather said. “Near as I can find out, Rodriguez in Seattle gave him the assignment…oh, excuse me, the request to ensure my safety. And that’s another interesting thing.”

“Interesting how?”

Heather minimized Lyons’s file and clicked open another. She scrolled through text for a few moments until she found the section she was looking for and highlighted it. “Read it,” she said softly.

“‘William Ricardo Rodriguez, whose reign of terror as the Boxcar Strangler ended ten years ago when he was captured by federal authorities, died in prison while serving out multiple life sentences. He was killed by another inmate during a dispute. Rodriguez’s father, FBI agent Alberto Rodriguez, had been instrumental in his capture.’” Dante quit reading and gave a long, low whistle. “Holy fucking hell.”

Heather nodded. “Can you imagine? Not only is your son a serial killer, but you bring him in. Yet as amazing and tragic as that is, it’s not the interesting part.”

“Yeah?”

Heather held Dante’s gaze for a long silent moment, then she said. “The next part might be hard, maybe impossible, for you to read. I’ll—”

Sudden understanding lit Dante’s eyes. “No, I’ll read it,” he said, voice low. “You take over if I…” He twirled a hand in the air.

“Okay.”

Dante returned his attention to the monitor. “‘Years earlier, SA Rodriguez filed a malpractice lawsuit against Dr. Robert…’” Dante’s voice trailed off. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Hold on. Let me try again.”

Heather reached over and squeezed Dante’s arm. “You don’t have to.”

“Yeah, I kinda do.” Dante opened his eyes and looked at the monitor again. “‘Filed a malpractice lawsuit against Dr. Robert…’” His voice trailed off again and he blinked several times. He glanced at Heather, his pupils dilated. “What was I saying?”

Heather stared at him, her fingers tightening on his arm. Cold panic crackled through her veins. “You were reading, do you remember?”

Sweat glistened at Dante’s hairline, at his temples. “An FBI agent…”

“Look at me , Dante, not the monitor.”

“Yeah, d’accord .” Dante’s dark eyes fixed on Heather, focused.

“An FBI agent, Rodriguez,” she said. “He filed a malpractice lawsuit against the man you can’t remember because that man had treated Rodriguez’s son for an antisocial disorder.”

“And the son became the Boxcar Strangler,” Dante said. He pushed his hair back with both hands. His pale face was thoughtful, but pain glimmered in his eyes. “You wanna bet Rodriguez’s son was part of Bad Seed?”

“It’s a sure bet,” Heather said. “Which would explain why Rodriguez asked an SAC like Lyons to accompany me. Anything or anyone connected to Bad Seed, like me and like you, Rodriguez would want to keep tabs on. And he’d want people he trusted to keep him informed, people with skill. He must trust Lyons.”

She shifted in her chair and cupped her palm against Dante’s face. “You okay? I shouldn’t have let you read—”

“Nuh-uh, don’t even go there. My choice.”

“I’m going to make some coffee,” Heather said, sliding her hand from his face and standing. “I’d offer you something stronger, but with Annie around, I’d rather not.”

“Je comprend, catin.”

Eerie bunted Dante’s chair with his head, mewed. Dante picked him up and placed him in his lap.

“He’s really taken to you,” Heather said, walking into the kitchen. “I expected animals to be wary of nightkind, predator to predator, but so far, Eerie’s proved me wrong on that account.”

“Nah, I’ve never had problems with animals,” Dante said. “Some nightkind do, but only the dickheads, y’know? I think it’s because we’re a part of the natural world.”

Interesting thought. Vampires a part of the natural order . Heather spooned coffee into the filter, poured water into the coffee maker, and switched it on. Returning to the table, she sat down again.

Eerie was curled in Dante’s lap, purring, eyes closed while Dante scratched under his chin with his left hand. He held a photo in his other hand. Heather took a quick glance—it was a photo of Shannon and James sitting on a floral-patterned sofa just before they married, before she’d been born.