Chapter One
“DO Abit of private work,” they said. “Easy money,” they said. It turned out “they” were a bunch of liars.
Took went down on one knee in the wet Georgia dirt next to the ranking detective on the case. Deputy Gatlin hadn’t been too pleased when the sheriff ordered him to walk a Charleston PI through his missing persons case, but now he cracked a dazed grin up at Took.
“Feel like I got kicked by a horse,” he said raggedly. Gatlin tried to take a deep breath and huffed out a shaky laugh when he couldn’t. “Can’t catch… my breath. Thank fuck for the vest.”
“Yeah,” Took said as he glanced down at what was left of Gatlin’s lower torso. The explosion set off by the trip wire had caught him from the side and blown the meat off him. From foot to knee his legs were untouched, but above that broken, white bone showed through pulped skin and the stiff patches of charred fabric where his uniform had melted against his skin. “Where’d you be without it?”
Gatlin laughed again. His smile wobbled at the corners, and Took could see the awareness in his glazed blue eyes that something more than a hard knock was wrong with him. His brain just didn’t think it was time to let him in on what had happened. Took had been there.
A flash of sharp, self-scathing humor twitched the corner of Took’s mouth. Admit it, it dared him, most days he was still there.
Took tucked his phone between his ear and his shoulder as he roughly stripped his shirt off and the expensive little buttons popped off into the long grass. The ringtone trilled in time with Gatlin’s blood loss as his life spilled out onto the grass. Took swore through his teeth as three rings seemed to take forever.
He’dtoldGatlin this was a bad goddamned idea. It didn’t matter what Willie Daly had been willing to do back when he was meth-head peeper. He was a Goat now. The local district attorney couldn’t come up with a deal that would tempt him to snitch. As for whatever passed for a conscience, that wasn’t the first thing to go. It didn’t last long, though.
But Gatlin had been determined to show the big-shot detective from Charleston that he didn’t know everything. So he’d pulled the wire-and-nerves man off the streets and leaned on him until Willie spilled what he knew—or claimed he had. When Willie led them up here by a series of backwoods turns that scraped the suspension against the rutted concrete, Took expected to be led around by the nose until it got dark. Enough time to give Willie’s patron a chance to sneak out with the sunset, not for him to walk them into a well-set trap.
Took ripped the shirt in half and tied the strips of fabric as tightly as he could around Gatlin’s ruined thighs. It wasn’t good first aid, but their resources were limited and he couldn’t see that there was anything left below Gatlin’s hips to save. He couldn’t see that there’d be anything of Gatlin to save, but he had to do something, even if it was pointless.
The call finally connected.
“Appl—”
Took interrupted the irrepressibly cheerful chirp of the operator before she could finish her script. “This is VINE Agent Bennet,” he snapped. Not exactly true. His active agent status with the Violent Infections and Nullifications Enforcement department was on hold, but it was an old habit. It would take too long to correct himself, so he let it stand. Besides, it might make things easier. People might yell about breathing rights when VINE cracked down on Hunter activity, but those same people were always the first to call when they had a feral bloodsucker problem. Invoke VINE and people listened, and Gatlin needed them to listen to Took. Despite his makeshift bandages, blood still soaked the ground. “We have an officer down. I’m out at….”
Shit. He didn’t know.
Took sat back on his heels and looked around, his hands still pressed down hard against the raw meat of Gatlin’s leg. The ripe smell of hot blood and wet earth was thick enough to taste, but he did his best to ignore it. He could hear the soft growl of the road behind him, muted by the shield of trees and the distance the four of them had walked along the narrow dirt road after they left the patrol car. It hadn’t been an official road, just a worn-down pull-off on the shoulder. Gatlin knew where it was, but Took had only half listened to the Goat’s directions.
He’d beensureit was a wild goose chase.
“What happened?” the operator demanded, her voice high and worried. In the background of the call, keys clicked and people asked muffled, worried-sounding questions.
“Bend,” Gatlin wheezed out. The mania had faded, and the realization that something was wrong was etched on his solid, heavy face. He picked at Took’s arm with sweat-damp, swollen fingers. “Round the bend.”
He might have just meanthewas, but Took didn’t have anything better to tell the operator.
“Something about a bend?” he said. “Off the expressway, just past three big billboards for McDonalds.”
The operator gave a relieved sigh. “Round the Bend. I know it. It used to be a rehab facility. We’re on the way. Agent, can I speak to Gatlin?”
Took looked down. Dry, quick gasps of air whistled between Gatlin’s lips, so technically he was still alive. But he wasn’t going to give any more information. His eyes were rolled back in his head, just the bloodshot whites and a rim of hazel green to be seen.
“Not right now,” he said. “Gatlin’s injured. Your Goat led us into a trap.”
“What about Deputy Allan?”
Took’s fingers tightened against Gatlin’s stained bandages and made him groan weakly. Blood welled up between Took’s knuckles. He forced himself to let go and lean back.
“Allan was….”Taken.That was the phrase they usually used, spat out with easy familiarity and the understanding that they had to expect the worst. But it caught on Took’s tongue and he edited it. “Willie grabbed Allan. He used her to lure Gatlin into the trap. What’s your ETA?”
The operator made a frustrated sound under her voice. “Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen? We’ll be there as quickly as we can. What are Gatlin’s injuries?”
“Extensive,” Took said.
The shirt had started out white—fresh from the dry cleaner, the creases still in the elbow—but now it was stained a dark, wet red. It obviously wasn’t up to the job. If Gatlin made it, it wouldn’t be down to anything Took had done.
