Page 27 of Tooth and Nail

“Why was he incarcerated to begin with?” Ari asked.

“Methamphetamine,” Night said, typing again. “This says he was charged with trafficking large quantities…wait…oh, he’s listed as a member of the Phoenix Pagans.”

“The violent motorcycle gang?” Ari asked.

“Yeah,” Eoghan said. “If I remember correctly, the Pagans are known traffickers of meth throughout the Southwestern U.S.”

“Okay, but if he’s a newly made vampire, does that mean he’s weak and easy to kill? How could he kill Townsend’s mate, and his progeny?” Ari asked.

“John told us his Pretorian guards were bribed, remember?” Eoghan said. “Imagine a gladiator from ancient Rome and the guards who were tasked with protecting Caesar and that’s the equivalent of a vampire Pretorian guard.”

Ari’s eyes widened. “Shit…okay, so how do we stop them?”

“Do we stop them?” the chief asked. She straightened and looked at both of them. “Just because we verified that John Townsend was the former king, doesn’t mean that anything else he says is true.”

“Are you saying you don’t believe him, Chief?” Eoghan said. He swallowed, hoping he was right about the woman he admired so much.

“I do believe him to a degree but who knows how much he’s embellished what’s happened in Flagstaff. And you’re forgetting we can’t change anything about our orders without being called traitors. I, for one, would not like to spend the restof my life behind bars in a Federal prison if I can avoid it,” she said. “The way I see it, there is no time to figure out who at the Agency is in bed with Bradshaw which means we have to turn John over to the escorts sent by him.”

Eoghan sighed, noting how Night’s eyes had widened behind her glasses as she stared at the chief, clearly piecing together what was happening and the ramifications of their actions here today.

“So, we have to turn him over,” Ari mused.

“Right.”

“Well, we have to turn him over if we have him,” he said.

She cocked her head as she looked at him, then rolled her eyes. “They know we have him. Remember? Before we interviewed him, we called them to let them know we’d captured him. They’d had him listed as a fugitive when he first got loose two weeks ago but we were told he was a dangerous, rogue vampire who’d been killing human donors on their reservation. They’re supposed to meet us in an hour to collect their captured fugitive.”

“Where?” Ari asked.

“We don’t use this as a meeting place as I told you,” Eoghan said. “We trade fugitives at a mutually agreed upon site. With vampires, the trades are done at night at various locations.”

“He’s being handed over at Union Station. They’re coming in on the six o’clock Southwest Chief. It’s a long-distance Amtrak with stops all over the Southwest. That’s why we have to start driving him in a few minutes. It takes time to get there, allowing for rush hour traffic,” the chief said.

“The train?” Ari asked.

“That’s right, Brown,” she said.

“Charlie told us they were driving.”

“No, he got that wrong,” she said. “They’ve got a human traveling with them which allows them to ride along in coffins, packed in the luggage compartment.”

“Creepy, but okay,” Eoghan said.

“Okay, what if someone here was stupid enough to put him in human restraints instead of vampire strength restraints?” Ari asked.

Eoghan slowly nodded. “Yeah…what if someone was stupid enough to put him in human restraints and didn’t know it until they got to Union Station where he broke free, jumped on a train to anywhere other than Flagstaff, and stayed wherever that was until he knew it was safe to go home? What if that happened, Chief?”

Night snorted, and they all looked at her. She threw up her hands. “The I.S.R. has been known to make stupid mistakes before.”

“Or put a fugitive in the hands of a marshal who’s so new to the I.S.R., he started just that morning,” she said, looking pointedly at Ari.

Ari chuckled when his partner grinned widely as he shrugged. “That would be a terrible mistake.”

“The kind of mistake any rookie could make, though,” Eoghan said.

“I’d have to strongly reprimand that marshal and the Agency would probably insist I issue a rip and have the incident recorded permanently in his personnel file,” the chief said, lifting an eyebrow as she stared at Ari.

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