Authors: Lyn Gala
“And make sure none of that shows up at my house. I just
need space.” Paige walked out and stood in the middle of the precinct, feeling
like every set of eyes were on her. She’d been nine when she’d learned how much
she hated being the center of attention and she hated it just as much this
time. Life was funny. When she was a kid, her mother had been taken by a drunk
driver, putting Paige in the middle of the limelight as the only witness to the
crime. Now she was an adult and Brady had been taken by a different kind of
serial killer. Of course, Brady was the walking around sort of dead, so Paige
wasn’t sure she deserved the sympathy this time around, but she was getting it
anyway. She was getting it and she fucking hated it.
She turned to the closest cop, a detective who had come in
for the taskforce and whose name slipped her memory. “I’m going home. I just
need some space,” she said.
She didn’t know the man and he didn’t know her, but his
expression turned sympathetic. “No problem. I’ll let the captain know.”
Paige turned and headed out of the station, stopping to just
breathe. After months of muggy heat and bugs, the first cool snap had made leaves
start to turn red and the air turn crisp. If she got up early enough, she could
sometimes see her foggy breath on mornings like this, but the sun was up and
the heat was already starting to gather on the sidewalks today.
Paige considered asking a uniform for a ride back to Brady’s
place where her car was parked or even her place, but she vetoed the plan in
favor of a nice, long walk. She had to clear her head and start making some
sort of plans. Plans. Yeah. How did you make plans when you weren’t sure what
you were dealing with? She rubbed her sore arm. And when you weren’t sure what
you were turning into.
She hadn’t even reached the corner before a gray sedan
pulled up to the curb. “Need a ride?”
Paige sighed and looked inside where the state profiler was
sitting behind the wheel. “I don’t need a psych eval.”
He grinned at her. “That’s the problem with my job—everyone
assumes I’m trying to profile them. I was just offering a ride home.”
“I can walk.”
“Yeah, you can. But I can offer you a ride without saying
anything stupid while trying to make pointless reassurances.”
“Can you promise to not talk at all?” Paige asked.
“Deal.”
Paige studied the man. He was older, someone with a weary
and worn expression who looked like he’d come up through the ranks. And hopefully
he could keep a promise because Paige really didn’t want to walk. She pulled
the car door open and got in. “I left my car at Brady’s place.”
“Do you want to go there? I could just take you home.”
“I’m fine to drive.”
“I never suggested you weren’t,” he said, “I was just giving
you a choice.”
“And I asked to go to Brady’s place.”
“Fair enough.” He pulled away from the curb and headed down
the street. It all looked so normal and Paige wanted to stand in the middle of
the street and scream that vampires were real. Instead she just watched the
streets pass. “Is there any news yet?”
“Nothing.”
True to his word, he nodded without offering any sort of
empty reassurances. Paige stared out and tried to figure out what she should do
now that her first plan had fallen flat. Maybe she shouldn’t put quite so much
faith in the police, but sixty-five percent of murders got solved, and that was
the lowest solve-rate in a decade. Their department was running close to an
eighty percent close rate and she had this fantasy that she’d call and the
detectives would magically find the assholes who had hurt Brady.
And that’s about where the fantasy ended because Paige was
pretty sure she didn’t want the department to find out that Brady had caught a
bad case of death.
“Here we are.” The profiler pulled to the side of the road.
The entrance to Brady’s apartment was still blocked by a black-and-white, and a
large crowd had gathered on the street, including a camera crew that had parked
in the dirt and was set up by the mailboxes. “Can you even get to your car?”
Paige looked at the mess. “Probably not.”
“And that camera crew would love to get film of you.”
“You’re just a glass-half-full kind of guy,” Paige said.
The profiler cracked a smile. “I can be. I can also be the
guy who drives you home.”
“Fine.” Paige knew she wasn’t being very gracious to someone
who was just trying to help, but she wasn’t really in the mood to be grateful
to anyone right now. She was going home to Brady and she didn’t have any
answers for him.
“You might want to tell me where we’re going. I don’t really
know the town that well.”
Maybe Paige was just having a shitty day, but she frowned as
it occurred to her that she didn’t know this guy from Adam. Yeah, he was a cop,
but he was also a stranger and he’d been awfully quick to offer his help.
“Maybe I should just get a ride from a uniform,” she said as
she reached for the handle.
“Fair enough,” he said without even a pause and now Paige
was pretty sure she had imagined everything because he had the same pleasant
expression. “Look, I know what it is to lose a partner. I wouldn’t wish it on
my worst enemy, so whatever you need, I’ll get it for you if I can.”
Paige opened the door and felt better once she had one foot
outside the door. She was just too off-balance here. “I just don’t want to take
more resources away from this rape case. These women deserve justice and Brady
does too, but not at the cost of letting this guy get away,” Paige said.
“Brady’s a cop. He’s going to put civilian lives first. It’s the job, right?”
Paige hated how insecure she suddenly sounded.
The profiler nodded. “For good cops, it is.” He didn’t say
anything else as Paige got out and she closed the door and raised a hand in
gratitude and farewell before turning toward the apartment. Maybe she should
just ask the uniforms to pull out so she could get her car. She really didn’t
want to spend any more time in a small space with another human being. She
wasn’t fit company right now. Rubbing her sore arm, she headed into the
complex.
Chapter Five
“Brady?” Paige stood in her empty bathroom and called the
name out softly. If he was a vampire, he couldn’t have gone wandering very far.
Could he? Paige’s stomach curdled as she remembered her early morning
observation that he was acting like a predator. She might respect certain
predators—like coyotes and wolves—but she sure never trusted one too far. If
she had Brady in front of her where she could keep an eye on him, she’d feel a
lot better.
Her bedroom was silent, the books still on the floor where
she’d knocked them over. The living room stood empty. A few drops of blood were
smeared on the linoleum in the front entry and Paige made a mental note to wipe
it down. She didn’t know if it was her blood or Brady’s, but she didn’t need to
have someone find blood in her place—not when she had a missing partner.
The kitchen and her tiny, neglected dining room were also
empty. That left the attic and the basement. One was cramped, dirty and full of
spiders. The other was spacious, dirty and full of spiders. Assuming Brady
would rather have space, Paige headed for the basement door. She normally kept
a padlock on it since the basement led out to storm cellar doors. Now though,
the screws on the hardware had been ripped out of the wood.
“Great. You’re fixing that, Brady,” Paige complained softly
as she tried very hard to ignore the amount of sheer strength it would take to
do that kind of damage. She’d installed the lock herself and she’d used four
long screws right into the king stud, so nothing human could have pulled the
screws out. Now the hardware dangled from the door, the closed padlock still in
place.
“Brady?” she called softly as she pulled the flashlight off
the shelf just inside the door. Her weapon was in her holster and she had an
urge to pull it. However, it was a stupid urge. He was still Brady. And if he
wasn’t Brady, she had no business going into the basement with a creature
strong enough to do that damage. Ignoring common sense, she went down the first
couple of steps. “Brady, if you don’t answer, I’m setting the fucking house on
fire.”
“It’s your house,” a low voice answered.
“I never said it would be logical for me to set fire to it,
only that I would.”
Brady chuckled. “Embrace your flaws?” he asked, parroting
back one of the phrases she’d used on him when she’d started training him.
“Hey, I was talking about you when I said that. I never said
I had flaws,” Paige’s stomach unclenched as she could feel the more rational
side of Brady taking hold. If he was turning into a predator, he wasn’t doing
it today. He stood at the foot of the stairs and looked up at her, one of her
lavender sheets wrapped around him like a really ugly handkerchief skirt.
Paige’s eyebrows went up and Brady shifted uncomfortably and clutched the
sheet. “Most of your sheets have flowers. I wouldn’t have pegged you as a
flowery sheet kind of woman.”
“Yeah, well I’m full of surprises.” Paige dropped her
messenger bag on the step next to her and pulled out the clothes she’d grabbed
from his apartment. “Crap, I forgot shoes.”
“As long as I don’t have to wear a sheet with little pink
roses, I’m happy. Barefoot isn’t a problem.”
Paige tossed the clothes down to him and Brady caught them
and then retreated into the shadows of the far nook where the washer and dryer
had been before Paige moved them up into the garage. “Why are you in my
basement?” Paige asked.
“People were looking in your windows. I didn’t want them
seeing me,” Brady called from the shadows.
“People were what?”
“I think they were reporters. Either that or one of them has
a camera fetish.” Brady walked back into the main part of the basement,
buttoning his shirt. “I thought a broken door was better than a whole lot of
questions.”
“True,” Paige agreed. She came down several more steps, the
smell of damp earth and mold greeting her. The foundation had cracked and the
basement flooded about three times a year, which was one reason for just
padlocking it and forgetting it. “Do you really want to be down here though?”
“No. No, I really don’t.” Brady grimaced. He turned his back
and headed over to an old metal shop shelving Paige had installed when she
first moved into the house. The top two shelves still had neglected boxes of
Christmas decorations, but the lower shelves were empty and water stained. He
leaned against it. “Either my senses are improving or this basement stinks.”
“The basement stinks,” Paige said. “So, I went over to your
apartment.” She came down to the bottom steps and sat on them as she watched
him. Brady wasn’t meeting her gaze and he flinched away when she mentioned the
apartment.
“Am I going to get a big department funeral?” he asked.
Paige leaned forward and rested her elbows against her
knees. “You know about the blood?”
“I remember bleeding, someone stabbing me low in the back,
and I was thinking that I wasn’t going to make it.”
“Did you scream?”
Brady looked at her. “Why? Does it matter?”
She thought about that for a second. It might help her find
a witness, but then again, the officers who canvassed the area would have asked
the neighbors if they heard any disturbances. “No, I guess not. I guess I’m
just trying to understand this. There was a hell of a mess in there, and so
far, none of your neighbors remembered hearing anything.”
“A couple of them have blown their eardrums out by playing
music loud enough to rattle my dishes in two apartments over, so that’s not
surprising.” Brady made it sound like it wasn’t any big deal, but he was
rubbing his throat, his fingers stroking over the curve where his neck and
chest met.
“Did they hit your throat?” Paige guessed. It would explain
why he hadn’t screamed.
Brady shrugged. “I remember trying to cough and I couldn’t.
I remember someone grabbing me and I tried to fight, and then there was this
sharp pain in my back and I could see the blood.”
“Do you remember his face, the man who attacked you?”
Brady shook his head, mute horror coloring his expression.
“Do you remember where they took you? Were there black gum
trees around?”
He blinked fast and slowly retreated to the cinderblock
wall. When he tilted his head to the side, she held her breath as Brady fought
through some memory. Part of her wanted to go over and rest her hand against
his shoulder in a promise of support and part of her couldn’t forget that he
was a predator. He’d tasted her blood and he’d warned her that he wanted to run
her down.
“Brady?” she called softly.
His gaze found her. “There were hillocks and water and I
thought it should smell bad, but I could only smell my own blood. I was choking
on it.”
“Gravel road or hardtop?”
“Hardtop.”
She kept her voice crisp and official and just hoped that
her tone could protect Brady from the horror of his own memories. She knew what
it was to have emotions that clung to you like cobwebs and Brady didn’t need
her making it worse. “A house or a business?” she asked quickly.
That made him think for a second. “A house. An old one back
from the road, only there was a big sign, like a business sign, only I couldn’t
read it in the dark. And there were people, several of them, grabbing me.” He
stopped suddenly and shook himself before darting across the basement like he
could escape the memories. Turning, he pointed at her. “That’s why I came to
you. You’re good, Silver. I didn’t know I remembered all that. You should be a
detective. Everyone on the force says so.”
“Not everyone wants to work long hours and deal with
victims,” Paige answered. “God knows, I don’t. I’ll do the interview and let
someone else go back week after week to tell the family that we haven’t found
someone or that we did solve the crime, but the DA won’t prosecute. I don’t
need the ulcer.”