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My gaze flicked briefly to the inside of his car. He did indeed have a travel mug sitting in the center console, but I seriously doubted the rest of his story. There was too much tension emanating from his body for an innocent man.
"We have two options here," I said, squeezing his hand a little harder. I could smell the sweat on him so I knew it had to be hurting, but there was no sign of fear or pain on his face or in his eyes. A tough man, through and through. "I can beat you to a pulp and then get my answers, or you can simply give me the answers I want and walk away without broken bones."
He considered it for several heartbeats, then said, "How do I know you're a fucking guardian?"
I shifted my grip slightly and pulled out my badge, showed it to him, then put it away again. "Now, why are you following me?"
"Because that's what I'm being paid to do."
"By whom?"
He shrugged. "I'm just a contractor."
Meaning there was some sort an underworld job agency hiring out thugs? I'm not sure why I was surprised, given all that I'd seen over the last few years, but for some reason I was.
"So give me your boss's name and we'll call it quits."
He snorted, spraying fine particles of snot over my hand. Charming. "Get real. He'll kill me if I did that."
"And I'll kill you if you don't."
I wouldn't - and couldn't if he was human, thanks to the law - but it never hurt to make the threat. Both the general public and the criminals we hunted know so little about what guardians can and can't do that making threats was often the easiest way of getting results.
"Fuck." He shifted his stance a little, and I tensed, half expecting him to try and kick me. But he didn't. "Okay. I'm not getting paid enough to mess with the likes of you."
"So he didn't tell you I was a guardian?" I reached out telepathically and lightly connected with his thoughts -
not enough for him to sense me but more than enough to tell truth from lies.
"No." His voice was hostile, indicating he wasn't too happy with his boss right now.
"And the plate number didn't make you realize?" I mean, the Directorate, like all government departments, had their own plates. It would have been a little hard to miss the fact that he wasn't following an ordinary car.
"Well, yeah, but you could have been an office worker for all I knew. I didn't know we had female guardians who weren't vamps."
Few people did - mainly because I was the only one. "So, the name of your boss?"
"Henry. Henry Bottchelli."
"And Bottchelli didn't tell you why he wanted me followed?"
"Nope. Just that I had to follow you for the next couple of days, providing regular updates about your location."
That bit of news sent a chill down my spine. "Did he say why he wanted this information?"
"Nope. I'm paid to do a job, not ask questions."
And I was thinking it was more a case of "the less he knew, the less he could blab." "Is Bottchelli his real name?"
"Yeah." He hesitated. "As far as I know."
"How do I find him?"
He moved again, and the quick desire to lash out ran through his thoughts. He dismissed it, but not easily. I squeezed his hand harder, making him concentrate on me and the pain rather than the escape he was contemplating.
"I've only got a cell number. He contacts me with the job, and I contact him when the job is done."
Meaning whoever the boss was, he was extremely cautious. Which sounded very much like Blake.
