Page 93 of Tested
“You are?”
“Hell yes. Come home. We’ve got you.”
He hangs up without answering. “Well, fuck.” I have no idea if he’ll show up or not, and if he does show up, I don’t know who he’s bringing with him. Uncertain when or if I’ll get more sleep, I stretch out on the couch. The city lights blink off as the sky turns brighter and an early wind is speckling the water with whitecaps.
I shut my eyes and doze, but part of my brain is lining up who I’m going to call when it’s not such an indecent hour. Sheena, for sure. Lydia and her girls. Stone’ll show up too. My gut’s telling me that things are coming to a head and I want an effing army around us when it does.
And yeah, part of my motivation has to do with fucking Jacques and his fucking command. If Connor does show up, I want bodies between him and Trajan.
I wake up shortly after noon and start making calls. I’m the only one conscious – technically the only living person in the house, if you buy the idea that vampires die during the day. Although I’ve joined Trajan during his day sleep, and he’s definitely not a corpse. A little cold and impossible to wake, but he doesn’t do that rigor mortis thing, so.
Sheena gets here in less than an hour, and Lydia’s on her heels. Lydia’s got about half a dozen pack members.Yeah baby. Now we just need Connor and his sidekick.
“What time did you talk to him?” Sheena asks. She’s dressed in black, with her blonde hair a braided rope between her shoulder blades. She’s at our dining table with the biker weres.
“Early, like before seven.” I’ve got a mug of coffee – not my first – which makes me twitchier than normal.
Lydia’s in the living room with her girls. “Someone’s coming,” she calls and I hold up my hand to mute the family reunion.
A car door slams, close to the house. I head for the foyer and peer through the window by the door – the one that’s not covered with a sheet of plywood. My breath catches under my sternum.
Connor’s frog-stepping some dark-haired guy up the front walkway. It takes me a minute but I recognize him before he gets to the door. It’s Joey DelMarco, the twenty-thousand-dollar man.
I open the door slowly so Connor’ll see it’s me. Our gazes click and I fight the urge to smile. He looks fried. Done in. I want to drag him off to the shower and soap him up and make him come till he collapses. “Which’ll probably take around three minutes,” I murmur.
“What?” He’s close enough to have heard me.
I shake my head, relaxed enough to grin. “Get in here. I’ve rallied the troops.”
He tugs Joey to a stop in the foyer. The biscione’s hands are locked in a pair of silver cuffs and his human eyes are shooting sparks. Sheena and the other Amazons stare at him from the dining room, and Lydia’s leaning on the doorframe between us and the living room.
“Wow.” Connor’s expression blanks out.
“Maybe I’m crazy, but I have a feeling…” I say, coming closer to him. His pal Joey does that weird little tongue thing and I kinda wish he’d turn into a snake so we could put him in a box.
“You wanna tell us what’s going on?” Lydia asks. She and Connor have met before, but they’re not like bosom buddies or anything.
“This is Joey DelMarco.” I point to the newcomer.
“The idiot who promised to name the murderer for cash money?”
Joey twitches like he wants to break free of Connor’s grasp. “You all know about that?”
Lydia’s expression doesn’t change. She’s dressed for battle, too, in black leather with a heavy chain belt. “You all but took an ad in the LA Times, dumbass. What did you think would happen?”
“Yeah,” I echo, “what did you think would happen?”
“I thought one of the kitsune brethren would find me, or maybe a bad ass fairy; anybody with enough strength to take Smith out before he kills anyone else.”
The house goes silent.
“Smith?” one of Lydia’s weres asks. “You mean Adam Smith?”
“The LAPD supernatural liaison, that Adam Smith?” I can’t even believe it but one look at Connor’s face tells me it’s true. I close my eyes and think back over the events of the last couple weeks. I can’t come up with a smoking gun, but on the other hand, I can’t think of a reason hecouldn’thave killed all those women, either.
Wait. Smoke. “I picked up his scent at each of the murder scenes, but just figured it was because he’d been doing his job.”
Connor clears his throat. “Yeah, so Smith told me he’d interviewed Janet Edmond’s boyfriend the night before last. Unfortunately, the man was already dead. Whoever killed Janet killed him, too.”
