Page 3 of Sinner's Secret

Baz cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, he’s a good tipper.”

Sam, his head lolling on Baz’s shoulder, let out a snore that could’ve woke the dead.

“And if I roll down the windows, I don’t have to lean on the horn to get traffic moving.”

Joe chuckled as he shoved Sam’s feet across the floorboards while Baz rolled the rest of him onto the seat.

Joe took some bills out of his pocket and handed them to Baz. “Cab fare.”

He tried to give them back. “I’m good.”

A slow grin spread across Joe’s face as he walked away. “You got that right.” Joe stopped on the curb and glanced over his shoulder. “The wives talk to me you know. Tell me how nice and polite you are as you drag in their dead-to-the-world husbands into their homes. How you often refuse to take a dime. How much more money their honey seems to be bringing home since you started driving these drunk idiots home.”

Baz just stood there with his hand out.

“It isn’t hard to do the math and figure out you add a little extra cash to certain people’s pockets on a regular basis.” The bartender moved away, but stopped momentarily in the doorway of his pub. “See you later.”

Shit, this was going to result in the kind of reputation he wanted to avoid. Decent guy, generous, helpful.

Gag me.

Baz let his arm drop, crumpling the money into his fist, and nodded. “Later.” Sighing, he closed the cab door on his snoring passenger and went around the vehicle to get in the driver’s side. He opened his fist. The money lay limp, tattered, and stained in his hand. Just like the rest of him. He stuffed it all in his glove box and slammed it shut, wiping his hand on his pants.

He wasn’t the most hygiene conscious guy, but handling cash always made him feel dirty. Too bad it wasn’t the kind of dirt a shower could wash off.

Sam lived only a few blocks away in a rundown bungalow on a street full of houses in need of a facelift, but Baz didn’t take the direct route to get there. He stopped on a street where most of the homes here were abandoned. He picked a particularly ugly place and stopped under a burned-out streetlamp. He turned off his on-duty light.

Baz needed a drink, now, or he wouldn’t get Sam home at all.

It had been five days since his last swallow of the hard stuff. A fine, sickly sweet-smelling sweat coated his body. Soon the shakes would be hard to hide. Joe hadn’t noticed, and by the time someone did it would be too late. Yet the thought of downing even a single drop made his stomach clench.

Withdrawal was a bitch.

He hated the toxic mistress that was alcohol, yet he always came back to her.

Because he hated himself more.

He got out of the car, opened the backseat door, and moved Sam over a little. Baz wrinkled his nose at the smell of old sweat mixed with smoke and alcohol. How could a man this big of a slob keep a wife happy anyway? Okay, so Jolene was no prize. She was loud, swore better than any sailor anywhere, and had more wrinkles than the money in Baz’s glovebox. Still, she always met Baz at the door and never said a word until after he put her dead drunk husband on the bed, then it was the offer of a cup of coffee and a piece of cake.

She was known far and wide for her cake.

Baz always nodded respectfully, eyes on the floor. He couldn’t meet her gaze. She wasn’t hitting on him, he knew that. It was the gratitude that made his throat close shut. He brought her wayward husband home night after night, with cash still in his pocket, which made Jolene think Baz was the greatest friend her husband could ever have.

But that was a lie.

He wasn’t Sam’s friend or Joe’s or anyone else’s for that matter.

Baz breathed through his mouth and leaned over Sam’s neck. He could hear the rush of blood through Sam’s arteries, the glug-glug of his heartbeat, and see the healthy blush on his skin. Opening his mouth, Baz sank his filed-sharp canines into Sam’s neck. And tried not to gag.

Sam tasted even worse than he smelled.

Not that Baz had any right to complain. Every few nights, he fed from one drunk or another. They were his very own personal herd of sheep, siphoning the alcohol out of their blood streams to feed his unnatural addiction to a poison that could never actually kill him.

It was tough to damage a liver that had been functioning a thousand times more efficiently than a normal human’s for several hundred years.

But, damn it, he was going to try.

Baz drew out a mouthful of blood, letting the alcohol in Sam’s system slide over his tongue.

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