Page 49 of The Incubus and the Bodyguard

The maitre d’hotel was efficient, producing the necessary records within the hour.

But it was the security footage from the cameras in and around the restaurant that demanded their attention as night fell. They ended up in Vlad’s penthouse, surrounded by takeout containers and three laptops showing multiple camera feeds.

“This is pointless,” Vlad muttered around midnight, rubbing his eyes. “We’ve been through the video from the night of the attack and the ones from the days preceding it like a dozen times already.”

Cortes had left. He had an early appointment the next day and had promised to catch up with them late morning.

“Sometimes what matters is what happened before,” Delphine murmured, her eyes never leaving the screens. “The setup. The preparation. That’s where perpetrators often leave a clue.”

She was acutely aware of the incubus on the couch beside her, close enough that she could feel his warmth. The attraction that had sparked to life between them that first night still simmered under her skin.

Delphine reminded herself once again that there was a good reason people never mixed business with pleasure.

Vlad’s head started nodding around two a.m.

“Get some sleep,” she told him. “I’ve got this.”

“You should get some rest too.” He blinked and scrubbed a hand down his face.

“I’m a super soldier.” She allowed a faint smile to curve her lips. “I can go days without sleep.”

Vlad was already drifting off. Tarang curled protectively at the incubus’s feet as his breathing evened out. The tiger kept her company as she worked through the night, his gleaming eyes on the monitors she was watching.

Delphine got up to stretch and make herself a coffee at around four a.m., only to find Tarang had followed her into the kitchen.

She looked down. “Aren’t you supposed to be watching over your master?”

The tiger issued a friendly rumble and leaned heavily against her leg.

She gave him a steak as a reward and returned to the monitors, switching between feeds and tracking patterns like she had done for the last seven hours.

The answer has to be in here somewhere.

It was five a.m. when she found it.

Three weeks ago, one of the bartenders finished his shift and headed into the service corridor leading to the back of theOro Divinorather leaving out front, like the rest of the staff. An unmarked SUV with tinted windows pulled up at the loading dock entrance in the rear alley a moment later. The bartender opened the bay door and let two men wearing coats with hoods inside the restaurant.

They made for the back stairs, one of the strangers moving with a pronounced limp.

The security cameras on the third floor caught them as they came through a service door. Delphine froze the shot and expanded it. Her eyes narrowed.

The footage from the internal security cameras had a better resolution than the one in the alley. It had captured part of the profile of one of the men.

The guy appeared to be of Caribbean descent.

Delphine pulled up the bartender’s file.

His name was Andre Estevez. He was a recent hire and his references looked good on the surface.

A search of the databases of several government agencies showed his real name was Delroy Knight and that he was wanted in connection with several drug trafficking offenses in the US, Mexico, and a string of islands in the Caribbean. His last sighting had been at an airport in Jamaica.

Delphine downloaded the file and frowned at the security camera image. It showed the bartender getting into an unmarked vehicle outside the arrivals lounge. She fed the picture into her mercenary corps database.

Twenty minutes later, she found his destination based on a triangulation from the shots other cameras had caught of the vehicle.

Delphine brought up the address on a satellite map and zoomed in.

It was a luxurious estate with an outdoor pool, a tennis court, a marina, and a helicopter pad. An illegal search of the local utility companies’ records showed the property belonged to one Santana Isaacs.

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