Sleight of Hand (8 page)

An odd little smile flickered over her face as she got her cell out.

Her call connected and she said brightly, “José, hello! It’s Jen.”

I did a double take. Surely, she wasn’t calling Captain Morales?

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said. “I’m so sorry to disturb you at this hour, I know how hard you work, but I just don’t know who else to turn to. You’ve already helped me and I was hoping you could help me some more. I’m so worried.”

It was difficult not to laugh. I happened to know Captain Morales was happily married, but that wasn’t a defense against this kind of attack from Jennifer. And it showed good thinking on her part. If she could persuade Morales to send a squad car here, they would treat it more seriously than if the desk sergeant did.

Another time, I would have to find out how she knew Morales. I waved and let myself out.

Chapter 8

Back at the parking garage, I approached my car cautiously, but there was no one waiting for me. I headed back home to Aurora through the late night traffic.

Even cheap is expensive for me. Aurora is part of Denver and yet is its own whole city, with good parts and bad. I lived in a room on the side of a house in the cheaper part of Aurora. It suited me fine. There was a half kitchen, a tiny bathroom, a bed and a place to keep some of my stuff. The rest was in a storage unit.

The only drawback was that the door to my room was off the porch, and Mrs. Desiarto was reliably found on it at night. She was an old-style Italian mamma transplanted into the suburbs of Denver. In an Italian village, she would have had many people to talk to. Now that her children had fled the nest, she had me. I suspected the rent reflected this and I did try to sit and talk some nights.

However late I came home, she always seemed to be there, sitting in her cane rocking chair. She claimed she was unable to sleep due to the pain in her hips.

As I stepped up, I gave thanks it was dark and she couldn’t see my face.

“Amber, you been working late again.”

“Maybe I’ve been out with a boyfriend, this time,” I replied, leaning against a post.

She laughed, which was a bit unfair. It wasn’t that unlikely, surely. “You have no boyfriends, Amber. You scare them off. Look at you. I couldn’t pinch so much as a tweezer of skin from you. It’s not natural.”

“It is for me, Mrs. Desiarto.” I sighed. “But you’re right, I’ve been working and I’ve still got to finish up.”

“A man would think he was lying on a bed of stones with you. You need to eat decent food, take it easy. Find yourself a man. You need to think about starting a family, you know.”

I made a move to my door. Once she was off on this, I would get her history of how she had met her husband and the clever way she had snared him. Unless I went now, I would be here a long time.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Desiarto, maybe another time. Good night.”

I escaped and slipped into the dark warmth of my room. I stood in the darkness for a few moments before switching on the light, and only then did I take my hand out of the backpack where I had been holding the gun.

I threw everything on the bed, sat down and wrote up the day’s report on the laptop. I emailed Jennifer a brief review about my visit to Troy’s apartment along with my suspicions and recommendations, even though we’d spoken.

I glanced at the clock and winced—another late night. I didn’t care for the idea of looking at accounts at this hour, so instead I did a search through the USB drive for the security footage from Silver Hills.

It was a black and white closed-circuit camera time-lapse movie. The camera and lights had probably been linked to a motion sensor and timer. It started with a couple of frames showing an area with bulldozers and storage containers, in natural light with long shadows. Nothing was happening. The clock timer at the bottom showed early evening. Then there were a couple of frames where the timer had triggered and the lights came on briefly to record that nothing was still happening. The timer showed 9:30.

What showed next made me sit up in a hurry.

Between the directional security lighting and the limitations of a black and white security camera, this wasn’t going to win awards for detail, but the motion sensor triggered and the camera went to full video, capturing what looked like a pack of wolves swarming over the site. I froze the playback, backed up a couple of frames and looked at it for a long time. It was blurred, but I wasn’t looking to see detail.

The work crew had used shipping containers to store equipment during off-hours, a common alternative to securing the whole site. A shipping container is relatively inexpensive and fits on a truck. It’s robust and secure, and it’s about eight feet tall. A wolf stands about three feet at the shoulder. Either the wolf I was looking at standing next to the shipping container was over four feet tall or there was some trick of perspective I couldn’t figure out. The others were as big.

Eventually, I let it play again. It lasted only a few seconds more before the screen went black and the clip ended. The timer was at 9:53.

I went back to just before the end and froze it. There was a hint of something like a stone heading for the camera lens. Neat trick for a wolf, throwing stones.

I went back frame by frame and came to the second startling image. For two frames, in the top right-hand corner, what looked like bare human legs passed at the limit of the illumination of the security lights. It was as if someone had run across the site thinking they were outside of the reach of the camera. Naked. In amongst a pack of huge wolves.

I turned it off. No wonder Jennifer had been having trouble talking about this.

There was no way that was a pack of ordinary wolves with one handy person along to throw stones. Since being bitten by a vampire, the thought of other weird things being out there had seemed a lot more likely. This raised the hair on my neck.

I would have to visit the scene. I needed to talk to Jennifer about it, but it was way too late tonight. I sent her another email saying I wanted to see the site as soon as possible.

Thinking through what else was going on, with the threat from crime bosses and vampires, I realized I would have to avoid sleeping here at Mrs. Desiarto’s. I wouldn’t want any collateral damage if I was attacked. Maybe I could sleep at the office or in my car, but not tonight. I was sore all over and I had been up late last night as well.

I packed away my gear, took another shower and went to bed, making sure the HK was within reach beside me.

The gun wasn’t much use that night.

This one I’d had before.

I’m floating on water, staring up at a bright blue sky. I’m getting heavier, sinking. The water closes over me. The sky ripples, distorted. I’m breathing water, not choking, but not getting oxygen. It’s too late to struggle. I’ve run out of options. I just have to give up and I’ll be at peace. So easy. A couple of minutes and I can rest in the cool dark. No more striving. No more fear. Better this way.

I jerked upright in bed, lungs laboring, drenched in sweat.

Just another night in the Amber zone.

WEDNESDAY

Chapter 9

I woke early to greet the dawn, because someday there might be a morning I can’t. It was especially worth it today to remind myself what I stood to lose. That army isolation cell had no windows. I had to finesse the colonel this afternoon.

I did a quick check in the mirror, and yesterday’s bruises were hiding some of the previous day’s. My lips were a bit fatter on the one side, but half a set of bee-stung lips isn’t quite the same. I sighed.

At least the strains and sprains had healed. Sure, the body looked a little battered at the moment, but it was strong and healthy. All the exercise gave me a lean runner’s build. My Arapaho great-grandmother’s genes showed up in the bronze cast to my skin and a sharper nose than would be considered attractive. The Celtic side came out in the auburn hair and the green eyes. There wasn’t much on the rack, but as Mrs. Desiarto noted in our last conversation, there wasn’t anyone but me to appreciate the view at the moment.

But underneath? I leaned closer to the mirror, staring at the face that looked out at me.

Is this what a vampire looks like?

I pulled on my jeans and chose a man’s shirt for a change. The tall collar would hide some of the neck bruising. I filled a couple of bags with clothes to keep in the back of the car and cleared out the last of the fruit to eat on the way.

At the office, I pulled the Crate & Freight file and noted Windler’s address. According to the news, he hadn’t been arrested yet. I wanted to see if there were any clues as to who the drug boss was and Windler’s house was as good a place to start as any. Exactly how I was going to square this with Morales, I put on hold.

Then I started to go through Jen’s financial files, starting at the top level and checking that everything added up and cross referenced, making notes to come back to.

I heard Tullah come in at nine and she put her head around the door at once.

“Knock, knock.” She was grinning.

“Come in, Tullah.”

She slid a takeout coffee across the table at me. “Wake up and smell the—oh my God! What happened, Amber?” she said.

“Oh no. Did my mascara run?”

“Amber! It’s not funny, you’ve been hit again.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I took a short cut through an alley and got attacked. They regret it more than I do.”

“You got attacked in an alley last evening? Wow, after a few of those, you might start to think that alleys are dangerous places that you should avoid after sunset.”

I snorted. The young rely on sarcasm far too much.

“Anyway,” she reached into a pocket, “a bit late for last night, but Ma said to give you this.”

She dropped a bracelet into my hand. It was beautiful, made with lines of little stone beads of different types and colors and sealed with a gold clasp.

“It’s lovely! Thank you. Or thank your mother. What’s it for?” I looked back up at Tullah.

“It’s a protection charm.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, I know, it’s not as if you need protecting.”

I smiled. “Not what I meant, Tullah. I meant, why is she giving me something so lovely? It’s not my birthday or anything. But okay, let’s talk about the bracelet first. It’s going to protect me from evil or something?”

Tullah answered more seriously than I expected. “Actually, magic isn’t quite like that. It’s kind of difficult to define good and evil in a spell, but it will warn you if someone close by intends you harm. It’ll tingle.”

I believed in vampires, obviously. I was starting to believe in werewolves after last night. But I was having a bit of trouble with a bracelet figuring out people’s intentions.

 “I know your mother is into that. I didn’t know you were.” I raised my eyebrows at her. She was a straightforward Denver kid studying in college. Did she believe in this stuff too?

“Some,” she said neutrally. “Go on, put it on.”

I wrapped it around my wrist and clicked the clasp. I really liked the look of it on my arm.

“The pattern’s a wolf’s eye,” she said. “The wolf is your spirit animal.”

After last night’s security footage, that gave me a peculiar little thrill. “Well, I’ll thank her myself when I see her next. But back to my original question. Why is she giving me this right now?”

“She likes you, okay? And maybe she thinks you need it.” She paused. “Don’t even try to think of paying for it—that would, like, so jinx it.”

My cell bleeped and I checked it. There was a text message from David:
WTF!? Urgent! Coffee shop. 30m
.

Chapter 10

There was only one coffee shop where we met, First Base, a block away from the Civic Center Park. It was quiet, with old-fashioned booths that suited us, and regular clients that made unfamiliar faces stand out. A big mirror ran along the back, giving us a view of people walking in and out. First Base roasted and ground their own beans, so the place smelled and sounded like a coffee shop should.

It was a little after ten when I slid into the booth opposite David. He’d already bought the coffee. Dressed for work at his insurance company, he looked so much more upscale than my running and sparring friend, I had to stop myself from reaching out and mussing his hair.

David looked somberly at my face and lips.

“That wasn’t my punch, was it?” He glanced down. “I think I know how you got that.”

“Yeah.” I tried to keep my tone light. “Four guys in suits tried to kidnap me in LoDo yesterday evening. It got rough. What do you know about it?”

David shook his head. “Almost nothing, but the place went crazy last night when those guys were brought back. What’s going on, Amber?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Dammit, Amber, I don’t know. A couple of days ago, I was motoring. You’d coached me through the hardest physical tests of my life and all you got back was some clues about your condition.” He didn’t like it when I called it an infection. “So what if I spoke to you and it’s against the rules. It didn’t seem like a big deal then.”

A couple of lawyers from the firm across the road walked past our booth with coffee and pastries. David waited till they were out of earshot.

“Now, you’re the main item of news. You took out four guys last night and the security committee is going to be all over you. They’re going to be all over me, too, if they find out I’ve been talking to you. They take secrecy seriously. That was kinda emphasized all over again last night. I may be stopped at the last step because of this.”

I reached out. He didn’t flinch away as my fingers slid over his throat and confirmed to me what had been almost hidden from my nose by the coffee smells. David had been bitten again last night. All that remained were a couple of tiny bumps where the skin was repairing itself, and a subtle rise in the vampire scent. A tremor passed through my arm and I hid it by tucking my arms together and leaning on them.