“Who do you work for?”
The warm, open lines of his body tightened. His eyes that had seemed glassy, soft, narrowed down to slits. His mouth hardened into a frown.
“Is that all this is? All you care about?” His voice was deep, angry.
“Why shouldn’t I care about that? You won’t tell me, and we can’t build anything...”
...between us...
“...on this case until you do.”
He wiped his hand over his jaw, and when he pulled it away, there was a sardonic grin where his frown had been. I knew him well enough to know that grin covered anger.
“The case. That’s your priority. Your only priority. Fine. You shouldn’t care who I work for because I’m not going to tell you. If you want answers out of me, then you’re going to have to play by my rules, Delaney, not yours. You can’t use...whatever this is between us to make me do what you want.”
Hold on there. What? He thought I was what—throwing myself at him to get information? I didn’t know if I should laugh or punch him.
My unreasonable heart didn’t care about a case, a murder, or anyone’s innocence. It wailed at me to argue with him, to tell him that I loved him, even though he was being a total idiot. Maybe I was too, but that was exactly the reason I was fighting so hard for him, whether he knew it or not.
But my heart didn’t get to run my mouth. That was all brain territory, and right now my brain was one-hundred percent cop.
“Then we have a problem. You won’t get your answers unless you tell me who you’ll be sharing them with. I, however, have ways to find out what I need to know without you. I will find out who cuts your checks, Ryder. If you want any kind of damage control in your life, in your job, in your innocence or guilt, you’ll talk to me now.”
Silence stretched under the weight of words neither of us could speak. Our secrets locked away all sound, smothered trust. That attraction between us wasn’t gone, but two tons of stubbornness had buried it deep.
“I’ll see you at the station,” he said like I had just asked him to have a nice day. As if this entire conversation had never happened.
“Fine.”
Ryder made it a point to walk around the couch and around me, so we weren’t even within each other’s reach. I didn’t know if that was to keep him or me from reaching out.
But just in case, I crossed my arms over my chest and hugged my ribs tight to keep from doing anything else I’d regret. The door opened, and I waited, back turned, until I heard it click closed again.
Chapter 10
I am not ashamed to admit I spent the next hour under the blanket on my couch trying to sleep while the conversation with Ryder played on endless loop through my brain.
What I had gained from our talk had to be separated into two distinct piles in my head. The case-related stuff, and everything else.
Ryder insisted he was innocent. Told me he was working for an agency that suspected, and now knew, there were vampires in Ordinary. An agency that apparently could take that revelation not only in stride, but also had a plan in place for how they wanted to contact vampires. That suggested to me that they were already in contact with vampires outside of Ordinary.
I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. What did he mean they wanted oversight? was that just a code word for nefarious experiments? Blackmail? Something worse? For all I knew that agency could be building an army of vampires, or be making sure that no one else could do so.
While I might trust Ryder, I was not dumb enough to blindly trust some secret agency.
Ryder all but told me those men he’d met in the bar were behind Sven’s death. Maybe one of them had been the hand in the security camera. He’d told me those men were hunting vampires but weren’t part of whoever he was working for.
So we possibly had two groups in town, at the same time, looking for fangers.
Why?
Rossi had said it was an invitation. That Sven’s death was a calling card from his past. Someone who he or Lavius had taught the ichor techne.
Someone who wanted Ryder blamed for the death.
Which could be someone in the opposing group of hunters. Or some other vampire. Or, hell, Old Rossi himself if he had decided the double-double cross was in his best interest.
There simply wasn’t enough hard information to go on at this point.
