“No problem.” Myra pulled a camera out of the bag on her shoulder and got busy with that.
There probably wouldn’t be any chance of finding actual footprints in the dirt. Dan and everyone else who had been out here before I showed up would have tromped right over them. Still, Myra had a hell of an eye with that camera. If there was something that could be seen, she’d see it.
It didn’t take long to interview Pearl and the other neighbors. None of them had seen or heard anyone coming or going. They heard the blast, saw the light, and even the quickest to respond—Pearl—had only seen Dan out by the burn pile, spitting mad.
Ben and Jame both waved to me as they packed it up. They stopped at the back of the truck and argued over who got to drive. Ben flashed fang, Jame snarled and then they just stood there staring into each other’s eyes, neither willing to back down.
I held my breath and watched them, wondering if I was going to have to break up what could be a very messy, very bloody fight, or a very hot make-out session.
The sexual tension rolling off those two could have scorched thin air.
At some unseen signal, they leaned away from each other just enough to make room for their clenched fists.
Rock, paper, scissors.
Ben threw paper, Jame rock. Ben jeered. Jame tossed his hands up in utter frustration and then growled and pointed at Ben like he was going to kick his ass, before he stomped to the passenger side.
Ben’s head lifted and his gaze crossed the distance from the road to me. I could see a fire burning in him under that intense stare. Something more than lust.
Love, I thought. And a hollow need stretched out in me. Not a need for Ben or for a vampire like him. Just the very human need to see that light, that passion that he had for Jame, in someone’s eyes for me alone.
Then he blinked, breaking our contact, and his cocky grin was back.
Jerk.He’d known I was looking at them, had probably felt my attraction to their fight, to their connection, and couldn’t help but tease the new police chief. So he’d given me a little peek of my own desire, just for kicks.
Vampires had a strange sense of fun.
He swung up into the driver’s seat, fluid and fast. I thought I saw a scuffle in the cab, then Ben ducked down and there was a moment of intense stillness. When he popped back into view he ran one thumb over his lower lip, wiping away a smile and maybe a drop of blood before he started the engine and sent the truck rumbling down the road.
Chapter 2
I LEFT Myra to finish up and deal with Dan, who wouldn’t run out of righteous steam for a couple hours at least, and headed to Jump Off Jack Brewery. It was four a.m. straight up when I got there, but I knew Chris wouldn’t mind me dropping in.
The brewery crouched on the edge of the working bay just south of city limits in what used to be a crab-packing plant. Chris had taken over the property fifty years ago. Half of it was still a packing plant, though it catered to tourists and locals now instead of international shipping.
What had started as a hobby—microbrewing—had landed Jump Off Jack’s smack dab in the top-ten-rated beers in the Pacific Northwest, something that still seemed to surprise and amuse Chris.
I crossed the parking lot and knocked on the big red metal door of the warehouse. Waited. I knew Chris would hear that, even if he was in the far side of the building or upstairs. He had excellent hearing.
Sure enough, the latch turned and Chris pulled open the door.
“Chief Reed,” he said in that lilt that always brought to mind New Orleans. His paperwork, filed back when my grandfather was in charge of such things, said he was from Louisiana but that his family originated from the Amazon. “What brings you out tonight?”
Chris was a creature. The polite term was gill-man, and if he had a few beers in him, he went to great lengths to explain the difference between his type and the other aquatics, such as mers and selkies.
Dark skin and hair, long, muscular build under jeans and tank top. When he was out of the water, the main physical difference between him and a human was his deeply set, heavily lidded brown eyes, which gave him a lazy smolder.
The scaling along his neck and back of his hands had been enhanced by a tattoo artist who knew how to keep his mouth shut. The scales looked like they were tattooed on, and Chris just looked like he was a man who was really into ink.
That Hollywood movie with the guy in the rubber creature suit had really sold Chris short in the looks department.
“There was an explosion,” I said.
He nodded and stepped aside, letting me walk into the building. It was a working brewery and I inhaled the nutty yeast fragrance as I followed him down the roped-off pathway between huge metal tanks. “I heard. Up north of here?”
“Dan Perkin’s place.”
He chuckled. “Idiot. Always thought high blood pressure would be how he went out.”
