Page 12 of Hell Bites

I blink a few times as I look up at him. “What?”

“Fucking hell, Felix, where are you right now? You’re not normally this hard to talk to when I stop by.” He takes a long drag of his smoke as I stare blankly at his face. He needs to shave. “The person trying to break in?”

“Right, yeah, sorry. I guess I skimmed over that. You saw someone?”

Silas rolls his eyes. “Since I’ve brought it up twice now, yes. When I was walking up to the building, I saw someone at the back entrance trying to break in.”

I frown. “Why would anyone want to break in here?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Good point. “What’d they look like?”

He shrugs one shoulder as he says, “On the shorter side, dressed in all black, and they had a crowbar.”

“That is not helpful at all. You don’t have any more details?”

Silas shakes his head as he puts his cigarette out on the heel of his boot.

“You couldn’t tell anything else about them?”

“Not really. I was coming up through the woods, so I was getting nailed with a lot of other scents, and I’m pretty sure they heard me.”

I glance at the clock, noting it’s close to when my shift ends, which also means both of us have a very small window to get out back and see if the would-be intruder left anything behind before sunrise. “Don’t really give a shit anymore, do you?”

“Nope.”

“Well, go see if you can find anything. Mandy will be here in a few minutes and not only does she not need to find you here, I have to finish getting everything taken care of before I leave. And you’re a distraction.”

Carefully, since it’s starting to thaw, I slide the frozen pouch of blood into my messenger bag before shoving the rest of my shit in there. Then I pack up all of Roger’s stuff, close up the room I was using, and head down the hall toward the tiny break room.

I hit the button to start the coffee brewing, and then coax my sleeping cat into his carrier—he refused to walk tonight and I was already running late—thankful I have it right now.

Arguing with my cat over what to do or how to move while I go look at the potential vandalism to the back door is not high on my list of things I’d like to do tonight.

Roger finally gives in the moment Mandy drags ass into the break room, settling into his carrier with an annoyed huff.

I exchange pleasantries with Mandy, she thanks me for the coffee, and a few minutes later I’ve clocked out for the day and am joining Silas in the back lot.

“Crowbar was kind of a stupid choice,” he grunts as I stop next to him.

My eyes follow his and land on the crowbar, bent awkwardly at the flat side so both ends now have a bit of hook. There are scratches along the edge of the doorframe, a few smaller dents, and there’s a larger one on the bottom of the metal door itself. One that looks like someone very strong kicked it in frustration.

But the weirdest part of all of this?

The brick along the edge of the frame, where the door sits inside the wall, is crumbling.

It’s falling apart like whoever was here was using the crowbar like a pick in order to chisel away at the brick and mortar that’s been here since the sixties.

Before it was a recording studio, this place was a small local armory where a few soldiers and a tank stayed during the Vietnam war, but shortly after it ended, they relocated both and that’s why it’s built the way it is.

The door is purely an emergency exit so there’s no handle on it, and it’s set deeply into the wall so it can’t be pried open. And there aren’t any windows save a couple in the front and one on the side where the office is, so why this is where someone decided to break in is beyond me.

Just like the why.

Unless they wanted to steal all the radio and recording equipment, there’s no other reason to be here. And most of it is so old that it wouldn’t be worth anything anyway, so that reason is out too.

I slowly shake my head as I lift my gaze to look along the back wall, first to the right, then the left, then I take a few steps back and look up at the roof.

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