InsistentHunger (23 page)

Paige nodded. She did need to get out of here fast. “I just
have to ask someone one question.”

“I hope you’re asking for the name of a good therapist,”
Alex muttered, but he shifted back so she could go past him into the station.

“Hell, I have a half-dozen of those already,” Paige pointed
out as she hurried inside. Maybe she looked worse than she thought, because two
of the officers up front came to a full stop and considered her with worried
frowns.

Alex came in behind her, a gust of cool morning air catching
a couple of papers someone had set on the front desk. He moved behind her, his
hand brushing against her shoulder. “Just hurry up. The captain is going to
give you a one-way ride over to County General for a full physical if he sees
you,” he whispered in her ear. Paige nodded and scanned the room.

The profiler was standing over by the map of the town he’d
been using to hand out assignments. Sure enough, the colors had all changed and
new target areas were highlighted. If they used Monagas’ MO for a new search,
they’d find his lairs. The profiler looked as tired as Paige felt. His graying
hair stuck up on one side, so she guessed he’d fallen asleep on a desk at some
point and no one had been kind enough to suggest he find a mirror.

Paige threaded her way through the desk and unfamiliar
detectives borrowed from nearby towns. “Can I talk to you a second?” she asked
the profiler. He was bent over a desk with Adams—one of their own detectives.

“Now?” His eyes were so bloodshot that for a second Paige
had an irrational urge to ask him if he was a vampire. She didn’t.

“Yeah, now,” Paige said. Without waiting for his answer, she
turned and walked over to the quietest corner of the room. The short hall led
back to the interrogation room, but their normal suspects, the drunks and
wife-beaters and shoplifting kids, had all gotten very quiet in the last couple
of weeks. Until they caught Monagas, Paige suspected the rooms wouldn’t get
much use.

The profiler came over with an expression that would have
frightened a lesser woman into backing off. However, after the shitty week she
was having, Paige almost wanted a fight. He’d just started to open his mouth,
probably to tell her off for interrupting him, when she dropped her bomb.

“Where’s Hunter?” she demanded.

He blinked fast, his face turning a subtle shade of white,
and his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. Paige knew that she’d guessed
right. She also guessed this guy was a shitty poker player. “Excuse me?” he
finally managed to get out. His voice was even, but he’d already lost this
round.

Crossing her arms, she glared up at him. “Jim Hunter.
Balding guy, forties, fond of his weapons and his stupid fingerless gloves.”
She raised her hands and wiggled her fingers in the profiler’s face and he reared
back. “Jim. Where is he?”

“I don’t know—”

“No,” she cut him off. “Do not give me that line because
I’ve had a shitty week and I’m really getting ready to vent my anger on
someone. If you want to paint a target on yourself, just keep on lying. If you want
to avoid me making the world’s biggest scene, you’ll tell me where Jim is.” She
poked her finger into the center of his chest, and out of the corner of her
eye, she could see the entire squad room stilling.

This jackass was going to try to bluff though. He put on a
plastic smile and angled his body so that he blocked the others’ view of their
little conversation. “Which is hard for me to do if I don’t know who Jim is.”

“You actually make that sound so logical.”

“It’s not hard to make logic sound logical.”

Paige nodded for a second. This schmuck was really pissing
her off. Either that or her last nerve had finally given way and she simply
wanted to go off on someone. Either was possible.

“Well, try this logic,” she suggested. “Jim had a friend
when he broke into my house one night. From the fact that Jim was willing to
show his face, he trusted that he could talk me out of shooting or arresting
him; however, his partner fled into the night. His partner risked getting shot
by an overly tired and stressed cop when he could have just waited until Jim
cleared things up.”

“Sounds like a stupid partner.” The profiler had buried all
his emotions under a mask now, but it was too little, too late.

“You’d think,” Paige said in an overly friendly tone, “but
then I’m not sure Jim would put up with stupid. So why would the partner run? I
figure the partner had to run or I’d recognize him.”

“Or her.”

“No, it was a him. I got enough of an impression to say
‘him’. So we have a male that I would recognize on sight, but Jim’s partner
isn’t a local. If this particular problem Jim is chasing were local, I would
have heard hints. People gossip. So I figure Jim is from out of town and so is
his partner.” Paige laid out her evidence as neatly as if she was writing a
report for the captain.

“You have some unfounded supposition in there, but as a
theory, it might work.” The profiler was all business now. With a little
warning, he could control his face admirably, but Paige wasn’t walking out of
here without a lead. No fucking way.

“Yes, it might. Now when I first met Jim, he knew who I was
and he knew that I’d lost my partner.” Paige crossed her arms and glared at the
man.

“Common knowledge.”

“The department hadn’t released the name of the victim or
the victim’s partner yet.”

That gave him pause. “Like you said, people gossip.”

Paige leaned closer. “Not to out-of-towners, they don’t.
That means that Jim’s partner is connected to the police department. Now there
are a lot of you strangers wandering around with the big rape case, but I have
to ask myself which of these strangers consistently puts himself near me? Who
offers me a ride, shows a willingness to listen? Eavesdrops? Put all that
together and I do believe I’m safe in concluding that you’re Jim’s partner.”

Paige gave the man a feral smile that dared him to
contradict her. “So, where is he?”

“Officer Silver, while I admire your tenacity, I think
you’re overly tired and clearly—”

“I’m not going to ask again,” Paige cut him off. “The next
thing I’m going to do is to start loudly accusing you and this random Jim guy
of breaking into my house, screaming crazy shit about how Brady is a vampire.”
Paige’s smile grew when the profiler’s face turned bright red. That hit his
buttons. “I’ll tell everyone how you two were trying to convince me he’s still
walking around.”

“You wouldn’t,” he said, but he didn’t sound so sure and he
was back to swallowing nervously.

“With the shitty week I’ve had? Please. I’m not that
mentally well-balanced right now. Sure, some of these fine people will think
I’ve slipped a gear. However, everyone is going to be watching you. Everyone
will be looking for Jim, and I suspect that there are people out there who
listen closely to anything that involves crazy ramblings about vampires. Am I
right? Because I’m willing to test that theory. Push me and you’re going to see
just how willing I am to test that theory.”

Paige looked around the room at all the men and women who
were surreptitiously watching them.

The profiler glanced over his shoulder. Then he looked at
her for a long time, his lips thinning into a straight line. That gesture told
Paige that she’d won the round and she just had to wait for Mr. Profiler-guy to
give up the intel.

Sure enough, his whole body seemed to sag. “Have you ever
considered going into profiling?”

“Nope. Don’t make me ask again—I won’t.”

He moved back until he could sit on the edge of a desk. “Jim
is chasing down a theory about where these new guys went after their last
little adventure.”

“Adventure.” Paige snorted. That’s not what she’d call it.
In fact, when she caught up with him, she figured she was about as likely to
kill Jim Hunter as Brady was. “And he would be chasing this theory where?”

“This really isn’t safe, you know.” He studied Paige, his
worried expression reminding her of her first and third therapists. Maybe her
first and fourth. Two through six sometimes merged into one big faceless gnome.

“Nothing is safe. Falling in love isn’t safe. Having someone
offer to teach you an attack strategy isn’t safe. Sometimes walking out to your
mailbox with your daughter’s hand in yours isn’t safe because some idiot thinks
that a half a case of beer isn’t too much to drink before driving.” Paige made
a face.

“I know a lot about not-safe. I can’t say I really care. So
either cough up an address or I’m going to find a whole new way to be not-safe
and I will drag your sorry ass along with me for the ride.”

“You’re a hard one.”

“Oh you have no idea,” Paige warned him.

He held up his hands as if in surrender. “Fine. One of the
big plantations up on Deadline Road.”

Paige frowned. “The Carter place or the old Bausell
plantation?”

He shrugged. “Jim said it was near the water, that vamps
were using the water to avoid the roads and the locals.”

“The Carter place,” Paige said, her mind already spinning
with ideas about how to approach the property.

“He also said someone big was in town, someone too big to
take on directly. He’s worried,” the profiler warned.

Paige focused on him for a second. “I’ll be careful, and
thank you.”

He shook his head, his expression full of disgust, and Paige
could guess he was disgusted with himself for folding so fast. “Yeah, thank me
after you get back without getting yourself killed.”

“There’s a vote of confidence for you,” she said with more
than a little sarcasm. Too many men had made the mistake of underestimating her
and they’d all been wrong. “Trust me, I’m not that easy to kill.”

He leaned closer and his voice dropped to a whisper. “I
imagine you aren’t. But these guys are rather skilled at it.”

“We’ll see,” Paige said with a smile before she turned her
back on the guy and started heading for the door.

“Silver,” he called out.

She turned and looked at him.

“I meant what I said. If you ever want to go into profiling,
you call me. I’ll get you into the program,” he offered.

Paige frowned. “I don’t even know your name,” she pointed
out.

The profiler seemed startled at that, but then he hadn’t
really been on her radar until she’d put all the pieces together. “Kent. Kent
McAllen,” he offered.

“Well, Kent McAllen, hell will freeze over first,” Paige
said with a smile. Paige turned her back on a room full of cops staring at her
in shock and headed for the door. She had an idiot partner to catch up
with…possibly to kill, but she hadn’t totally made up her mind on that one yet.
She’d catch up to Brady first, and then decide if he was too stupid to keep on
living. Unliving. Whatever.

To get to Deadline Road, Paige had to drive by Brady’s old
place. The street looked so normal without the sea of police outside, but as
she drove past, she remembered a face watching her that morning after she’d
reported the mess in Brady’s apartment.

A woman in a business suit had watched from the carport, her
face devoid of any expression. She’d had the same striking hourglass figure,
the same tilt of her head as the vampire from that house Hunter attacked. And
she’d been at Brady’s apartment. Well shit. Paige figured she had more to worry
about than a vampire rapist. Unless she missed her guess, Brady had himself a
stalker.

Chapter Seventeen

Sixteen hours later, she crouched at the edge of the old
Carter place. Brady’s car hadn’t moved since she’d checked it in the early
hours of the morning, and now that night had fallen, she couldn’t escape the
feeling that she had to do something. She’d found the vamp lair and she just
had to do something.

Paige understood why the vamps had chosen this house. This
part of the county used to be part of a network of old plantation houses, but
some local frog had gotten the roads closed as part of the Endangered Species
Act.

Now the Carter place and the old Bausell plantation were at
the end of a two-mile stretch of road dedicated to the frogs. It made for a lot
of privacy. Hunter’s blue sedan was parked under a chinquapin oak tree halfway
between the house and the turn-off from Old Kentucky Road. The lack of blood or
a dead body suggested that either Hunter had lost Brady along the way or the
two of them had decided to team up against the lair. Both seemed unlikely.

Like the last lair she’d found, Paige could see those same
low-level vamps wandering around. Those were the ones the website had called
vrykolakas
or
jiangshi
. Their touch would drain her life and somehow it felt really
unfair because supposedly vampires had to bite.

It was a lot easier to avoid a bite than a simple touch.
Then again, Hunter had been touched and bitten and he was still up and running.
She’d gotten the feeling that those had been from a type of smarter vamp, like
the one she’d seen at the house where she met Hunter, but she wasn’t sure. She
wasn’t sure about a whole lot and it was pissing her off.

If she got through this alive, she was writing a fucking
manual. A nice easy-to-read manual with cross-referenced entries for each type
of demon. And then some doctor could shove her in a nut house.

Paige checked her Glock again and then fingered the various
supplies she’d brought. If this didn’t work, she was about to be very dead. For
a second, she wondered if a demon would move in if she died this close to a
whole bunch of demons. If it did, how much of her personality would the demon
keep?

As much as Paige didn’t want to think about these things,
her thoughts kept circling right back to the same places. Like she kept
obsessing over the fact that Brady had gone missing for a whole day and she
couldn’t even file a missing person’s report. She couldn’t even call a friend
to ask them to lie and tell her it would be okay.