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“You’re going to sleep? Now?” he asked, frowning.
“Yes, unless you want to miss your deadline because I fell asleep at the wheel and crashed the car. You can stay up long enough to make your calls, leave my phone on the nightstand, then sleep through the day. Just make sure you crawl into the car cubby before sunset.”
“You make a surprisingly reasonable argument,” he grumbled. “I assume you’re going to call Miss Scanlon to report this?”
“Mm-hmm,” I said, in the least committal tone one could use without being struck down by lightning for lying. “Good night.”
I closed the door and bumped my forehead against the cold, unyielding metal. There was no way in hell I was calling Iris. Not only had I allowed a client to get assaulted, but now he’d been mugged, too? This was not how one repaid a favor from an old friend.
I snatched up my own bag and found that my wallet was intact. Beeline employees weren’t allowed to use our company “fleet” cards for anything except gas. A digital lock on the cards allowed use only at service stations. Iris said it kept clients from bulldozing us into covering our own meals and hotel fees with company funds. She’d been stiffed too many times by clients who welched once the receipts were submitted for reimbursement. Vampires hated receipts.
Mr. Sutherland and I would just have to survive on my meager plastic until we reached the Hollow. I had just enough room on my MasterCard to make it work. I could only hope that Iris would be so impressed with my creatively overcoming the obstacle that she didn’t offer me up to the vampires as a party snack.
I flopped down on the lumpy motel mattress and buried my face in the flat, flaccid pillow. “Why couldn’t he have just taken the train?”
Six A.M. came far too quickly. And I woke to find that any commiserating camaraderie I might have built with Mr. Sutherland the night before had evaporated with the sunrise. A note, neatly folded under my phone on the nightstand, managed to insult me in an impressively elegant script.
Dear Miss Puckett,
When you manage to rouse yourself, you will find that I am safely tucked away in the car.
I spoke to the police last night to file an incident report. There was no problem with the credibility of my statement, as the blundering duo we encountered have perpetrated this scheme before on couples undead and living—pretending to protect the female from assault while picking the male’s pocket.
“I knew it,” I muttered to myself.
Security video shows the rogues following you from what can loosely be termed a restaurant, so the police know whom they must take into custody. The officers need affidavits from both of us to prosecute the charges after we leave town. I gave mine last night. I took the liberty of writing a statement from your perspective, which will reflect the information given in my own. You will find that the handwriting matches the rather unique penmanship I found on a grocery list in your purse.
“What the—boundaries!” I gasped, hopping out of bed to retrieve my shoulder bag. The list in question was tucked under the purse strap. Apparently, I’d needed “tampons, Fiber One bars, and depilatory cream.”
“Kill me now.”
I glanced at the bottom of my bag and saw that my photo journal had been disturbed. The white ribbon I usually kept around it, a castoff from one of my mother’s Tiffany gift boxes, was tied into a pristine square knot that I couldn’t manage if my life depended on it.
“You asshole!” I hissed at the offending piece of paper. “You presumptuous, invasive vampire asshole!”
Sutherland had rifled through my stuff. He’d looked through the album of photos that I kept just for me, remembrances of moments in my life that I wanted to keep with me forever. He’d touched my things, touched my memories, without asking, because he thought being undead or being the client gave him the right.
I was going to be hitting the brakes without warning a lot today.
I gritted my teeth and continued to read, all the while muttering curses under my breath.
The officers asked that you sign the statement and bring it by the department offices before we leave town. Please make this a priority before any other errands.>I kept waiting for him to release his grip on the wayward do-gooder, but he continued to hold him. “Language, Miss Puckett.”
“Mr. Sutherland,” I said, clearing my throat, “I think it would be better if we just sent these men on their way. They didn’t mean any harm … to me.”
“I didn’t see them coming,” Mr. Sutherland seethed.
That … was an odd response.
“Well, it’s been a while since you’ve been out of the house, right?” I told him. “Maybe your instincts are just a little off. I’m sure in a day or so, you’ll be back to your hyperaware, completely paranoid self.”
He growled, squeezing Heavy-Set’s throat until he turned a disturbing shade of puce.
“If you kill him, it’s going to mean calling the police, filing a bunch of paperwork, and missing your deadline with the Council,” I reminded him.
With a hiss, Mr. Sutherland dropped Heavy-Set to his feet. Heavy-Set sank to his knees, coughing and sputtering. He saw his friend crumpled on the pavement like a battered rag doll. “Damn it, you killed Mel!”
I stepped between Heavy-Set and Mr. Sutherland. “Your friend should be fine in a few minutes. Just make him sit up slowly, and help him get up on his feet. He’s going to be sort of wobbly. And please tell him I’m really sorry about the headache.”
