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Doyle waited until the door shut behind them, then he turned to Tucker. “Let’s go. And the gods help that bastard if he tries anything. Because I will hammer that stake myself.”
ChapterFifteen
Sara sat cross-legged on her bed in yoga pants and a tee, eyes closed, taking one deep breath after another. She’d been going a hundred miles an hour since six that morning, and now she felt ripped apart from the inside. Excited, yes. But completely exhausted as well.
She wanted sleep, but Leviathan had insisted that the security system in her condo be updated immediately, so she had to wait up for the installation team. Considering what she now knew was out there in the world, she didn’t really have a serious objection.
Without thinking about what she was doing, she scooted to the side of the bed, then bent to open the bedside table’s drawer. She hesitated only briefly, then reached in and pulled out the Glock 9mm that she’d bought the day her concealed carry permit had been issued. In truth, she hadn’t wanted the thing, but she’d been a green prosecutor working a high-profile drug trafficking case, and Porter had insisted that everyone on the team license up and carry a weapon whenever they were away from the criminal justice center.
Sara had dutifully followed instructions, but the moment the case had wrapped, she’d transferred the gun from her purse to the drawer, and it hadn’t emerged since.
Now, she studied it, wondering if it would offer any protection in this new world. A world of different dangers, and one she still didn’t understand.
The doorbell buzzed, and she shut the drawer, leaving the gun where it had been for years. At the door, she peered through the peephole and found herself facing a man with a sagging basset-hound face and eerie yellow eyes.
“Security Officer Roland, night shift leader and domicile protection specialist,” he said, flashing his Division identification. She led him and the team inside, showed them around, then parked herself on the sofa with a stack of files. She turned first to her copy of the initial report, once again skimming Ryan Doyle’s summary. Though he was thorough, she wanted to go over the details with him in person at their next meeting.
According to the report, Braddock had been a shapeshifter, on the bench for two decades, an advocate before that. He’d been born in the late thirties, but Sara didn’t know if that meant he’d died young, or if a shapeshifter’s life span tended to be about that of a human’s. Several years before he’d retired, he’d been sanctioned for accepting bribes, and there’d been murmurs that he’d engaged in blackmail. He’d made restitution, appeared before a review board, and had been allowed to keep his seat on the bench. She made a note. The crime was old and apparently resolved, but she knew damn well that bribery and blackmail could be a solid motive for murder. More than that, those crimes were often only part of the story, and she intended to have Doyle and Tucker dig, and dig deep.
She was about to move on to the medical examiner’s report when she caught Roland’s eye. “How’s it going? This place is tiny, it can’t be much longer, right?”
“Like wine and aged cheese, fine security work takes time.”
“Oh. How much time?” Sleep was beginning to look like a far-away fantasy.
“Can’t rush perfection,” he said, leaning against the wall as he hooked his thumbs in the loops of his jeans. For the first time, she noticed the long tufts of hair that grew on the back of his wrists and poked out from underneath the cuffs of his sleeves. “But we’re in the final stretch.”
“Fair enough.” She started to turn back to her papers, then paused, peering at him. “How long have you worked at Division?”
She watched his face run through the calculations. “Eh, three decades? Four?”
“You know Judge Braddock?”
“Sure. Retired what, three years ago?”
“Impressions?”
The hangdog face went flat.
“I’m new, Roland. I’m just trying to get a feel for the victim.”
“Yeah, well, the victim was pretty much an asshole.”
She shifted, interested. “How so?”
“Oh, he was good with the law and all that. But wouldn’t give what he called a lesser being the time of day. Snapped at support staff. Had himself one supreme holier-than-thou attitude. Heard he got into some trouble awhile back. Bribes, I think. Wouldn’t wish him dead though.”
“Somebody did.”
“Dragos, wasn’t it?”
“So it seems,” she said, working to keep her voice flat, even though the thought that the man who’d touched her so intimately could have done that horrible thing was still twisting her up inside. “Any ideas why Lucius Dragos would want Braddock dead?”
“Well, I…” He paused, as if truly considering the question. “Actually, I can’t think why Braddock would even be on a vamp like Dragos’s radar. Kinda makes you think, doesn’t it? All sorts of stuff going on under the surface all the time. May not see it,” he added, “but it’s there.”
Yeah, she thought. But what exactly was “it”?
“Thanks,” she said to him, then looked around the room. “What exactly are you doing here?”
