“But your choices didn’t get you killed.”
The bartender glanced at her. “They got me here.”
“You’re alive.”
The bartender held her gaze before looking at the photo again. Her features softened, and Cassidy held her breath as the woman pushed the picture back to Dante. Then her no-nonsense attitude returned.
“This is a place of anonymity,” she said in a clipped tone. “Our patrons come here because they expect their identities to remain secret.”
“I understand,” Dante said.
Maybe he did, but Cassidy didn’t. How could someone be unwilling to help the girl? “She could die,” Cassidy said.
The woman collected Dante’s money and walked away. Cassidy gazed after her in disbelief. She knew people and vamps could be cruel, but this indifference was somehow worse. At least they could fight against cruelty; there was no way to fight someone who didn’t care.
“She’s not going to tell us,” Cassidy murmured.
“She has to protect her customers,” Dante said.
Dante stroked Cassidy’s waist when her sorrow-filled eyes met his. Forget being concerned about her safety; now he wished he hadn’t brought her because he didn’t want her exposed to these patrons. Years of being a police officer and hunting for the missing had brought him into contact with some of the worst forms of human and vampire life; Cassidy shouldn’t be exposed to that.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go?” he asked.
“I’m sure,” she murmured.
“We’re going to run into a lot of walls in here. It’s the nature of the beast.”
“Hmm,” Cassidy muttered, and lifting his glass, she sipped his whiskey.
The liquid burned down her throat, but she somehow managed to refrain from making a face or choking before she set the drink on the bar again. At the end of the twenty-foot bar, the bartender waved at someone standing in the shadows before returning with Dante’s change.
She set his money on the bar and walked away. Dante left the money where it was as a tall vampire rose from one of the booths and walked over to meet the bartender at the end of the bar. The bartender said a few words to him and jerked her head in their direction before walking away to pour more drinks.
“Now what?” Cassidy asked.
Dante studied the occupants of the bar as he waited for the vamp to approach them. No one in this place was going to tell him if they’d seen Julie.
Lifting his glass of whiskey, he finished off the contents and pushed it back toward the bartender as he prepared himself for a possible fight with the vamp approaching them. No matter what happened, he would get Cassidy safely out of here.
When the vamp who spoke with the bartender sidled up to the bar and stopped a foot away, Dante nudged Cassidy back a little and lowered his hand from her waist. It would take less than a second to get his stake out, but unfortunately, he only saw one way out of this place, and that was back through the crowd and employees. He doubted they would take kindly to him staking someone in here.
The vamp, a tall man with ebony skin and glasses shadowing his eyes, nodded at Dante as he rested his elbow on the bar. Dante nodded back, and Cassidy smiled.
“I hear you’re looking for someone,” the vamp said.
“I am,” Dante replied.
“Trouble isn’t welcome in this place, and we take care of it fast.”
“I’m not looking for trouble. I’m just searching for a sixteen-year-old girl whose mother wants her home.”
The man removed his glasses to reveal one brown eye and one white eye. Dante suspected the white eye was dead, probably from an injury sustained while the vamp was still human.
“Some kids have a good reason to run away from home,” the man said.
“Not this one,” Dante assured him. “This is a little girl who got lost after her dad died in a car accident.”
The man’s jaw clenched, and a muscle jumped in his cheek as he shifted his attention to the blood on the back wall. He clasped his hands on the bar and rested his forearms on the surface.
