Page 25 of Countdown to Murder
“If I told you I’m better suited to kill this vampire than you are, would you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“That simple?”
“Yes. You’ve given me no reason not to trust you, and I know you’ve had intensive training directly from the vampires. They trained you to kill the strongest of them, which probably means you have some ability they don’t often come up against.” He shrugged. “I’m guessing you have skills I don’t know about, and you probably aren’t at liberty to talk about. So, again — yes.”
“We need more precautions in place to keep the client safe.” Fawn had stressed that keeping the client safe would be more important than catching the bad guy. She’d told me to make certain I understood my directive every time I was placed — was I in charge of catching the bad guy or protecting the client?
I heard Jones approaching, and realized Panda must’ve picked up on it a second or so before me. I hear best when I’m lying down, because my human body picks up vibrations in a similar way to my snake.
Panda looked to Jones when he stepped in, and told him, “During the hours Ember is with the client, Mira will be in the chase-and-kill sector, and everyone needs to give her the lead. When she’s with the client, I’ll take point on that sector, which means we need three of your people where I’d normally be, watching her back.”
Jones nodded and looked to me, appraising me once again, but he didn’t argue, nor did he take offense that it would take three of his men to do the job Panda could do.
“I have a copperhead shifter I thought I could pair with her,” Jones said, his gaze meeting mine for a second before he looked back to Panda, “but he’s asked me to keep him away from her.”
Panda grinned at me and then at Jones. “King cobras eat other snakes. He’s going to need to get a grip, though.”
Jones nodded. “If she’s going to work with us long term, my team will need to drill with her between ops, but I won’t push it on this job. I’ll put the fab-you-losa trinity with her.”
“Fabulosa?” I asked.
“Fabio, Eunice, and Collosa. They work well together. Panther, mongoose, and grizzly bear.”
A mongoose was likely the only animal on the property with a decent chance of killing me in animal form. The panther probably had a fifty-fifty chance, but the grizzly absolutely would not.
“Fabio and Collosa I understand as nicknames, but Eunice?”
“Not a nickname,” Panda told me. “Fucker beats the shit out of anyone who gives him a nickname he doesn’t like. Everyone just uses his name.”
I chuckled. Fitting for a mongoose. One of my main trainers had been one, specifically because he was immuneto my poison. I’d killed several trainers who pissed me off, before I learned to control my temper.
Panda turned his mic on, instructed the techs to install laser motion detectors near the air handlers for the HVAC system and in all intake areas, and turned his mic off again.
We followed him out of the saferoom suite and back to the supply room. The saferoom suite entrance was hidden behind a moving shelf in the back of this room. We followed him out to the hallway, and then turned and looked at the door to the supply room.
“I want a mesh covering over the door to this room, to make sure he doesn’t turn into a bat and fly over our heads once he’s downstairs. I also want the reinforced netting set so we can drop it over the doorway leading downstairs. We’re setting a trap.”
Not everyone knew about the bat thing, and I was happy he did, but I wished he knew what else some of the more powerful vampires could turn into. I couldn’t tell him, and I couldn’t think of a way to clue him into it.
“A trap on the same floor as the client?” Jones asked.
Panda scowled. “I’m open for suggestions if you have another way to trap him. I’m also open to suggestions if you have ways to add onto my plans for keeping the client safe.”
Jones walked away from us, went up the steps, around the entrance to the downstairs area, came back downstairs, and all around the basement.
His scowl was bigger than Panda’s when he returned to us.
“We bring her down here, have her walk to the mechanical room, wrap her up, and carry her to the saferoom suite. Means we have to be set up to trap him in two places, in case he figures out where she really is, but it gives us a better chance of keeping the fight away from her.”
Panda nodded. “Assuming she’ll let us wrap her up and carry her, I’m on board with that.”
Honestly, whatever we did was probably pointless. He was going to go into her head from outside the property, see where she was, and go there. Scent didn’t matter. However, on the off chance he followed her scent, I gave input on their plans.
“Let’s have her change clothes in the mechanical room,” I said, “and then leave them in there. We’ll put her in a full Tyvek suit and let her walk to the saferoom with only the people going inside with her — not a huge contingent, and we need to keep others away from that hallway as well.”
“How will you explain this to her?” Panda asked.
