Page 50 of Soulmates
Judging by the sun, it’s late afternoon, which means we have an hour or so before we see Trajan. The coffee pot is steaming, so I make that my first agenda item.
“Did you get any rest?” Sheena’s in black running shorts and a ragged white hoodie, and she’s clutching a mug in both hands.
“Enough.” Not really, but I don’t want to get into it. Faced with Connor, I’m suddenly a little ashamed of my early morning caterwauling. I can only hope he was too far gone to hold having sex with his ex against me.
He’s sitting at a small wooden table under the window. There’s a second chair. I could join him. I lean against the counter instead. “We didn’t find anything useful last night.”
Sheena takes a thoughtful sip of her coffee. “I didn’t think you would.” She’s kind of a blank slate, but I read tension and maybe some anger in the set of her shoulders.
Connor pulls a smart phone out of his pocket. He drags a finger across the top and starts fiddling with it. “No hits yet,” he says softly.
“What are you looking for?” I kind of want to take the second chair, but I hold off. Despite having spent the night with my hands full of vampire, there’s something about Connor. He’s got that whole fresh-from-the-shower-hipster vibe going on, a scruffy masculinity that’s hard to resist.
He picks up the phone, taps it with two fingers, then slides them apart to enlarge the image on the screen. Holding it up, he shows me the burned-out hulk of a building. “That’s what’s left of the safe house where I found you. Unless Trajan’s emergency blast was a whole lot stronger than it used to be, someone went in behind you guys and torched the place.”
“What was up with that anyway?” I ask. His scent is doing strange things to my belly. “Who carries around an emergency blast?”
Connor and Sheena share a glance. Her lips curl, like she’d smile if things didn’t hurt so bad. “A paranoid vampire,” she says.
“He used to say he might need the distraction sometime.”
He used to say… I get his point. Connor knew Tony first. I try not to pout. “Well, it worked for him, I guess.”
“True.” Connor goes back to messing with his phone. “I also posted a query on an encrypted page, poking at connections between Jacques and your family.”
The coffee turns in my gullet. I don’t know whether to laugh because the Securitas apparently have a LISTSERV of their own or freak out at his suggestion. “I’m not sure I want to know.” But he’s right. Some of the bullshit directed at me has vampire fingerprints, and some is coming from the pack. Though it makes me queasy to admit, it’s unlikely I’d be lucky enough to have two separate schemes working against me.
“I hope you don’t mind. Trajan mentioned that there had been incidents in addition to those I witnessed.”
“You might say.”
“Maybe nothing will come of it.”He shrugs. “I do wonder, though, whether you might be better served to address the issue with your father directly.”
“What? How? Dad’s in DC. I can’t just call him with something like this.”
Sheena shifts in her chair. “Why not?”
“If I only had to tell him about those guys outside the Fubar or the cabin, that would be one thing, but I can’t tell him about the scene with my uncle and cousins downtown over the phone.” I pause, warming up to the idea. “We need to be in the same room when I tell Dad that his brother, my uncle, tried to force me to sign a severance contract. That way, he’ll catch the scent of truth. If I’m on the phone, he’ll have to choose whether to believe me or his brother.”
“Severance contract?” Connor asks.
“That night when he asked you to meet him downtown?” Sheena says.
“He tried to make me a lone wolf.” That’s the first time I’ve said the words out loud. They leave a disgusting aftertaste.
Connor’s gaze narrows, and he nods decisively. “Then we’ll brave the wolf in his den.”
“I don’t know, Davey.” Sheena’s uncertainty makes me nervous. “Your dad could be involved with this somehow.”
“True.” It hurts, but I have to be honest. “But if he is, or if this is some kind oflet’s give David a testthing, he’ll respect me more if I confront him directly.”
“Or it could get you killed.”
Connor’s bald statement brings me up short. “No.”
“Just want to make sure you understand the risk involved. Look,” he says, “we can hang around and wait to see what your uncle does next, or we can address this directly.” He pauses,foot tapping on the floor. “If there is a link between the weres and the vampires, it would be useful for me to interview your father, to identify how far the rot goes.”
I’m still trying to fit the concepts of family and rot together when Trajan’s voice from the dining room makes me jump five feet in the air. He comes to the edge of where the light from the kitchen windows can reach. “I agree with him. Confronting your father makes sense, and we’re coming with you.”
