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“Oh, you don’t have to—”
Lucan stretched his arm out again. And when she took what he offered, he realized he’d just screwed himself.
Her scent was going to be on the sweatshirt, and he couldn’t afford to have that smell in anyone else’s nose. To vampires, humans were easy to pick up on—and the other species was most definitely unwelcome in the prison camp.
Plus the Executioner liked fresh meat for his trophy wall.
“Let’s get you back in bed,” he heard himself say. “Quickly.”
José went back to the trap house as soon as he’d logged enough sleep to be competent to drive without endangering public safety. As his unmarked rolled to a stop, he looked through the foggy car window at the facade of the walk-up. It was so cold that his breath and his hot coffee had sweated everything up, but he couldn’t say that he needed a big visual refresher course on what the place looked like.
He’d been staring at it in his mind all night while he hadn’t been sleeping.
Opening his door, he got out. The air was straight-up November, about thirty-five degrees, with a bite of humidity that in a month would mean snow was coming. As it was, there was a drizzle hovering just below the cloud cover. He didn’t think it was going to turn into a full-on rain, but what the hell did he know.
As he walked across the road, he stopped in the middle and looked down. A compelling sense of loss made it impossible to keep going, and as that headache from the night before came back with a vengeance, he decided it was a good goddamn thing he was retiring.
He was wearing out, the chassis of focus and determination that he’d built his professional life on top of now rickety and unreliable from mental fatigue.
Cursing, he started up with the footwork again, and as he came to the walk-up’s door, he slipped a Rolaids into his mouth. Maybe if he could take some time off and eat better, he’d be able to quit the chalky savior stuff.
Although to be fair, he had sucked back a lot of leftovers at two a.m. last night because he’d had so much to think about. That undercover cop had still not shown up, checked in, or been found, alive or dead. But at least his buddy in CSI had done a great job at Officer Hernandez-Guerrero’s place and documented everything like it was a crime scene.
Because he knew in his gut it was one.
Nothing much to go on, yet. The bloodstains were likely the missing officer’s, and the fingerprints had been hers and hers alone. Although maybe something would turn up. All downtown patrols last night had been on the lookout. They still were. And they would be until they found . . . whatever they did.
With a yank, he pulled things open—
“What the fuck.”
As his eyes focused on the trail of blood down the stairs, his nose got filled with a crap ton of not-right. The smell was sickeningly sweet and totally overpowering, to the point where he recoiled.
Recovering fast—like he wasn’t used to bad stenches?—he took some booties out of the pocket of his sports coat and slipped them over his shoes. Then he snapped on two gloves. Stepping up to the blood, he looked down the hallway to the back entrance. He guessed whoever had been leaking badly had headed out that way—because why would you come to a place like this if you needed medical help?
José got his phone and put in a call to dispatch as he walked down the corridor, making sure he didn’t step in anything.
Dispatch answered as he opened the back door and leaned out. “This is de la Cruz.” He gave his badge number. “I need backup.”
Nothing unusual in the shallow parking lot other than a couch that had seen way better days, a broken TV, and some typical city litter. No body. No severely wounded person down on their face on the pavement.
As he gave the address, he walked out a little. The blood trail continued off to the left so he followed it to an abrupt end point off to the side of the alley. Like whoever had been leaking plasma had gotten into a car and driven away.
Ending the call with dispatch, he went back to the rear entry and retraced his path to the base of the stairs. Taking out his pocket light, he shined it on the steps and followed the trail up to the second floor. The third floor. When he came to the fourth—
Over to the left, the door that he’d knocked on the night before was open . . . and the blood went inside the apartment. Or came out of it, was more likely.
Palming up his service weapon, he closed in, and sure enough, his business card had fallen to the floor. Someone had stepped on it and left a partial bloody shoe print—
