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I glanced left as a black Ford turned into the street. Rhoan. Given the Directorate plates, it couldn’t be anyone else.
The car slid to a halt in front of us. There were two men inside, but only Rhoan climbed out. He didn’t look happy.
The trepidation that had been up until now little more than a muted background buzz suddenly sharpened. I straightened. “What’s up?”
“This whole setup. He’s deviating from his previous MO and I’m not liking the possible reason.”
“You think it’s some sort of trap?”
“It can’t be anything else,” he growled. “We’ve done a quick background check on Vonda. She turned vamp about one hundred years ago, and has been leading a relatively low-profile life ever since. She works the night shift at the Ford vehicle factory in Broadmeadows and doesn’t socialize much.”
I frowned. “What about feeding? How does she cope with that if she doesn’t socialize much?”
He shrugged. “She probably uses synth blood. They’ve gotten better at manufacturing it in recent years.”
A fact he knew because his vampire half sometimes demanded blood, even if he didn’t have the teeth to go with the hunger. “So Vonda has nothing in common with the other victims?”
“Other than that she seems the least likely target for a serial killer, no.” He spun around and studied the houses on the opposite side of the road. “She lives with her sister, who also works at Ford. We had an infrared-equipped helicopter sweep the area a few moments ago. There’s three people in the first house, but no one is at home in our target house.”
He was half vampire and had infrared vision himself, so he didn’t really need the helicopter to tell him that. Maybe he just didn’t want to get too close to the house and spook our quarry—not that he was inside from the sound of it.
“It’s not much of a trap if there’s no one inside.”
Rhoan glanced at me. “Just because we can’t detect any form of body heat doesn’t mean there’s nothing waiting.”
Like a spell of some kind. I shivered and rubbed my arms. “What did he say when he rang?”
“He gave us the name, and said for you to be in the house—alone—by two p.m. if we wish to save his next victim.”
I glanced at my watch again. “Then I’d better get moving. We’ve only got a few minutes left.”
“I know.” He studied me, expression worried. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”
I touched his arm. “I’m fine. Azriel will be with me, and he can’t afford to let anything happen to me.”
Rhoan’s gaze went past me briefly. “Okay. But you’re wearing these, so I know what is going on.”
He pulled two blue stones out of his pocket, and I studied them with interest. “I’m gathering they’re not just earrings.”
“One is a camera, the other is a mic. Until this case is over, I want you to wear them.”
My gaze jumped to his. “Um, you know I love you and all, but there’s certain parts of my life I have no desire for you to see or hear.”
“And I’m sure I wouldn’t want to know about them, either.” Amusement briefly crinkled the corners of his gray eyes. “You can turn them off easily enough—you just press the left stone once. Two presses activates them again.”
“What about when I shower? Do I have to take them off?”
“No.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He pressed the two stones onto my earlobes. They had to be some form of nanotechnology, because the stones warmed the instant they touched my skin, and they clung to my earlobes without anything to actually secure them. He lightly squeezed the right stone, then stepped back. “Karl, you getting the picture?”
“Yeah,” the man inside the car said. “Sound, too.”
“Good.” His gaze came back to me. “At the first sign of trouble, I’ll be in there.”
“I’ll be fine. Really.”
