Lucas (17 page)

“I notice you’ve recently taken down a collection, Francoise.”

“Yes, a series of photographs by Daniel Hunter,” she said, her expression suddenly animated.
“A talented photographer and very popular with our clients.
Not to mention a handsome and charming man.”

“You know him well, then?”

“Oh, yes. Not as well as Alex knows him, of course, but we’re very friendly.”

“Alex?” Kathryn repeated, trying to keep her voice from giving away the fact that the name meant anything special to her, that this was the name of the vampire who Daniel had been seen leaving with.

“I meant Mister Carmichael, of course. Alex Carmichael.”

Kathryn froze. Her research had listed the owner as George A. Carmichael, but both
Magda
and Lucas had been careful to call him only by his last name. Lucas had known she was looking for an Alex, and he wasn’t stupid. He had to know Alex Carmichael would immediately jump to the top of her list. So, why hadn’t he mentioned it?

And here she’d begun to think of him as a friend, maybe more.
That lying bastard.

Francoise was staring at her worriedly, and Kathryn immediately banished all thoughts of Lucas. She’d deal with him later. She forced herself back to the present.

“Will Alex be around tomorrow morning, by any chance?” she asked Francoise, wondering if the woman knew her boss was a vampire.

Francoise dropped her eyes and looked away before answering. “I don’t expect him back before tomorrow evening at the earliest. Evening is our busiest time. That’s when Alex likes to be here.”

“Of course.
Do you happen to have a photograph of Alex?”

“The brochure,” Francoise said brightly, and hurried over to a narrow table of blond wood against one of the floating walls. Kathryn followed, taking one step for every two of Francoise’s in her tight skirt. The gallery assistant picked up what looked more like a booklet than a brochure and flipped it open to an inside page.

“That’s Alex,” she said with some pride and pointed at a color photograph of a handsome middle-aged man with silvery blond hair. The title under the photo identified him as G. Alexander Carmichael.

“What’s the G stand for?” Kathryn asked.

“Oh,” Francoise murmured, leaning in conspiratorially. “It’s George, but he hates that name. It’s on all the legal sorts of documents, but he never uses it. It’s always Alex.”

Kathryn’s heart skipped a beat. The witness had described “Alex” as blond and older, but to a twenty-year-old Marine corporal, middle-aged probably
was
older. And Alex Carmichael was definitely blond. There were too many coincidences here to ignore.

“Do you have Alex’s cell number handy?” she asked.

Francoise looked as if she wanted to say
no
, but that would have been foolish. She’d just admitted having the number not five minutes earlier. So she nodded sharply and minced away on her skinny heels, walking over to a minimalist glass desk and retrieving a business card from an elegant mother-of-pearl box.

She held the card out to Kathryn, who’d followed her to the desk. Kathryn studied the card before tucking it into her pocket.

“Thank you, Francoise. If Mister Carmichael calls, don’t tell him, or anyone else, that I was looking for him.”

Francoise appeared surprised by the request. She nodded, but Kathryn saw the rebellion in her eyes and knew she was lying. The minute Kathryn walked out the
door,
Francoise would be on the phone leaving a message for her vampire boss.

And speaking of vampires, Lucas had a few lies to answer for. Maybe he knew far more than he was saying about other things, too. Like what had happened to her brother and where Daniel was right now.

* * * *

Kathryn threw her bags down on the bed when she returned to the motel, still debating whether or not to go to the club without Lucas. Her flight had been delayed on the ground in
Minneapolis
longer than it took to fly back to
Rapid City
. She’d raged privately, but there was no sense in yelling at the gate attendant as she’d seen a couple of businessmen doing. After all, the poor woman had nothing to do with the delay, nor could she magically conjure up a new plane just to be sure those two assholes got home in time for dinner.

The plane had finally taken off, but it was nearly ten p.m. by the time she walked back into the small town motel room she shared with Daniel’s clothes and equipment. She’d left several messages for Lucas, both before leaving
Minneapolis
and once she was back on the ground, but he hadn’t returned any of her calls. She checked her phone one more time, half-expecting to find a message from him canceling their appointment. She had no doubt that the ever helpful Francoise, or her boss Alex, had made sure Lucas knew Kathryn had visited the gallery and now knew about Alex Carmichael.

She’d hoped he wouldn’t cancel, though.
Hoped that he was arrogant enough to bluff his way through.
Because while she intended to have it out with him about
Carmichael
, she still needed him to make sure that she not only got into the club tonight, but that his people answered her questions. Once that was done, she could confront him about what he knew. Two could play at lies and half-truths.

But since Lucas hadn’t bothered to call, she now had to decide whether to try the club without him. She had no guarantee he would still hold to their agreement, even if he showed up. And now that she knew about
Carmichael
, he might decide to send her off on a wild goose chase while he covered his vampire buddy’s ass.

That decided it for her. She wasn’t waiting for Lucas or anyone else. This was
America
, and she was, by God, a sworn federal officer. She was going to that club tonight, and she was going to get the answers she needed, or she’d arrest everyone and shut the whole damn thing down.

“Damn right!” she shouted, pumping her arm once in an act of defiance. She caught sight of herself in the mirror and started laughing. Okay, so maybe she couldn’t shut the club down, but she could and would go there and ask some questions. And she definitely wouldn’t be waiting for that snake Lucas to do it.

* * * *

Lucas stormed into his office, still wearing the bloody leathers from last night’s battle. He’d been forced to sleep through the day at the
Minneapolis
house, along with the survivors from
Minnetonka
. The enclave had been too badly damaged for the vampires’ safety, and the humans had been too shattered by the violence to stay there anyway. The enclave would be rebuilt, maybe even in that location. But it would take time, and Thad and his people would need that time to heal
themselves
. Lives had been lost last night. Granted the enemy had lost far more, but that was little comfort to the dead or those who’d loved them.

The attack had taught Lucas a hard lesson. No one was safe in this war, not when
Klemens
was willing to reduce himself to the brutality of human warfare, not when innocent civilians were targets, and rape was an acceptable weapon.

Lucas hadn’t wanted to remain in
Minneapolis
after the battle, but it had taken several hours to clean up the scene in
Minnetonka
sufficiently to avoid scrutiny by the human authorities. The compound hadn’t had any close neighbors, but it had been necessary to repair the worst of the damage to the wall and, especially, to remove the human bodies. The vampire bodies had taken care of themselves, but there was no concealing the destruction of the buildings.
Klemens’s
people had done Lucas a favor by torching everything. It made the damage easier to explain and provided an excuse for the sudden absence of people living there. But the fire had also drawn a crowd. Fortunately, the relatively remote location meant it was a small crowd, but Lucas had been forced to manipulate their memories to support his preferred version of the events.

Between that and getting everyone to safety in Minneapolis, then meeting with Thad and several of Lucas’s people, there’d been no time to return to the ranch before dawn. His only other choice would have been flying home with a human pilot at the controls, traveling through the daylight hours and sleeping at the airport until sunset. He hated that idea on two fronts. One was his personal paranoia, inherited from his Sire, Raphael, about putting a human solely in charge of his safety. And the other was his aversion to sleeping on the plane at all.

He had a penthouse in
St. Paul
where he usually stayed when visiting the Twin Cities, but time had been so short this morning that he hadn’t bothered with that, either. He’d ended up spending the daylight hours in one of the bedrooms of the Minneapolis HQ vault, and flown back to the ranch this evening. It hadn’t been that simple, of course. He’d had to meet with Thad again before leaving, and he’d made a series of phone calls to the leaders of his other regional nests, advising them of
Klemens’s
new and dangerous tactic. He’d ordered them to get the word out to the civilians in their areas.

On any other night, Lucas would have lingered in
Minneapolis
even longer, but he had a nagging feeling that his favorite FBI agent wouldn’t hang around waiting for him to escort her to the club. After his abrupt departure the previous night, she’d probably spent all day today chomping at the bit, cursing vampires in general and him specifically. But despite all of that, he still had one more call to make before he called Kathryn.

He circled his desk and lifted the receiver of an ordinary-looking phone sitting on the elegant credenza behind his desk. It was a landline, and in lighter moments, Lucas jokingly referred to it as the bat phone. It had only seven numbers stored in its memory, the numbers of his seven fellow vampire lords, and it was rarely used. Vampire lords tended to be hostile toward one another, which meant there were no chatty catch-up phone calls on this line. On the occasions when Lucas wanted to catch up with Raphael or Duncan, he used their personal cell phones. The landline was for emergencies and warnings. Like the one he was about to give
Klemens
.

Lucas waited until he heard
Klemens’s
hated voice, then snarled, “Rape, you son of a bitch? That’s what you’ve come to?”

Klemens
laughed. “War is war, my dear Lucas, no matter the venue. But then you
micks
always worry too much about protecting the ladies.”

Lucas ground his teeth. “Those women were mated to vampires,” he snarled.
“
My
vampires.”

“Really?
I thought they were simply whores brought in to amuse,”
Klemens
drawled, not even pretending he hadn’t ordered the atrocity.

“Well, know this, asshole. There is no mercy for rapists. You’re officially thirteen vampires shorter tonight. Your army is shrinking,
Klemens
, and that means I’m one step closer to you. It’s time to start saying your farewells to anyone foolish enough to care for you.”

Lucas slammed the phone down so hard it cracked the base. “Fuck!” he spat and swept the damn thing to the floor in frustrated rage, spinning with a snarl when his office door opened.

Nicholas took one look and froze in place.

“I want a fucking target,” Lucas ordered. “
Klemens
is staging his people somewhere along the border. I want it found, damn it. No civilians, but it has to hurt. I’m tired of reacting and letting that bastard set the pace.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Nick was still in the doorway, eyeing Lucas as if waiting for the other foot to come crashing down on
him.
Lucas rubbed a weary hand over his face and waved him inside. Nick looked even worse than Lucas felt. Like Lucas, he’d changed his shirt, but still wore the torn and bloody leathers from the previous night. Unlike Lucas, he’d also been severely wounded. One of
Klemens’s
vamps had gotten lucky and ripped Nick’s jaw open to his teeth. The deep, raw-looking laceration traveled from the outside corner of his eye down to the curve of his jaw bone. The fact that it wasn’t healed more than twelve hours after the injury spoke to how serious it had been. Still, one more day, and it would be a healing pink scar. A day or so after that, and Nick’s cheek would once again be without blemish. The healing would have gone even faster, if Lucas had been able to give Nick some of his blood to drink. But in times like this, when an attack could come from anywhere at any time, it wasn’t wise to weaken himself even the slightest bit unless the need was critical.

“Fucking
Klemens
doesn’t even pretend to apologize for his rapists,” Lucas said quietly.