“Ma’am.” He bobbed his head at her.
“Agent,” Lawrence corrected him with a hint of tart disapproval. The man’s face fell as he nodded.
“Of course. Ma’am,” he said. “Sorry. Ah, I’m afraid that Sheriff Anderson is still at the hospital. We weren’t expecting you to make such good time.”
“The dead ride fast,” Madoc said.
The deputy nodded sagely like the old quote explained anything beyond Madoc’s fondness for the ballads of his youth. That made things easier. It had taken the privilege of rank to fast-track clearance and a flight plan for the VINE jet, and a very old favor cashed in to make people turn a blind eye to a section chief’s inappropriate involvement. Madoc didn’t want to justify that to himself, never mind a jug-eared deputy who looked as though his balls hadn’t dropped yet.
“We’ve booked rooms for you in Old Pelican Farm,” the deputy said. He turned and scrambled over to his desk. A quick search among the scattered sheets of paper and dog-eared folders came up with a glossy trifold leaflet that he thrust toward Madoc. “It’s a B and B. If you want to drop your bags off, I can call you when the sheriff gets back.”
Madoc ignored the leaflet. “What I want,” he said, “is to see my agent.”
The deputy blinked twice and nervously folded the Pelican Farm leaflet between his fingers. “I think the sheriff would rather you wait until—”
Madoc plucked his sunglasses off, folded the legs, and tucked them back into his pocket. His smile was cold. The deputy’s eyes flicked from Madoc’s pale eyes to his mouth and then flinched away and down to one well-tailored shoulder.
“I understand that disappointment has never killed anyone,” Madoc told him. “My agent. Now.”
The deputy folded as easily as the bit of paper he’d just mangled.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Right away.”
WITH THICKwalls and oversized, reinforced windows to flood the small, square space with the sun, the cell had been designed to hold vampires. It was implemented cruelty, but Madoc couldn’t help the flash of appreciation as he saw Took sprawled out on the narrow cot. The sun picked out threads of gold in the cropped, sandy hair and gilded the sprawl of lean muscle with the memory of a golden tan.
At least it did between the scars.
There was something about Took Bennett that even now, after two years as a vampire, belonged to the daytime. Madoc didn’t know if he should resent that or be glad that he wasn’t the only one who’d tried and failed to claim the man.
An off note of guilt was added to the familiar tincture of hunger and frustration that Madoc associated with Took. It was a dark thought, even for Madoc, to imagine himself in lustful harness with the monster who’d nearly killed his old partner.
Not unprecedented—Madoc had never been able to boast about the purity of his thoughts—but still dark.
“Bennett,” he said.
Took lifted his elbow and squinted out from under it. There was a scabbed burn on his cheekbone and the faded remnants of a bruise around one of his pale gray eyes. When he saw Madoc, something shifted behind his face, quick and sharp, but it was locked back before Madoc could pin down what it was.
“Get me out of here,” Took told him.
Irritation flicked at the back of Madoc’s throat, salty as blood. Took had always been too familiar—not disrespectful but not impressed either. But that had been before, when he had Madoc’s back and still called himself Luke, not when it had been a year since they’d seen each other—more than that, some embarrassing tally-keeper fragment of Madoc’s brain reminded him, since they’d actually spoken—and Madoc had traveled through the day to get Took’s ass out of the fire.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Madoc said. He rapped his knuckle against one of the bars. It rang solid and he could feel the faint itch of the silver core against his skin. “At least if you’re in here, it will be easy to keep track of you. I thought you weren’t fit for active duty, Bennett, so you can imagine my surprise when I was notified one of my agents had stormed a trap house on his own.”
Took dropped his elbow so his eyes were hidden again. The corner of his mouth twisted up in a bitter smile as he added a dry postscript to Madoc’s statement. “Unsuccessfully.”
“Maybe you’ve lost your edge,” Madoc said. The snort of disagreement he expected from Took didn’t come. “The sheriff thinks you were involved, Bennett. Were you?”
There was a pause, and then Took finally moved his arm. He rolled off the bed in one loose, easy movement. The sheets under him were stained black with blood, and Madoc felt something in his chest crack as though he’d taken a blow. Took stalked over to the bars and glared at him.
“Do you really need me to answer that?” Took asked. The tension in his voice was drawn tight between the old, affronted anger and a new, brittle fear that maybe people did need to ask.
“For the record, yes,” Madoc said with cold precision. Then he let the edge soften on his voice. “Personally? I know you better than that.”
A bitter smile curved Took’s mouth, and he braced his hands against the bars. Muscle bunched and tightened under his pale skin, the faded scatter of freckles pale as nutmeg. “No,” he said. “Not anymore, you don’t. Look, I’ll tell you what happened. Just get me out of here first, okay?”
The urge to be cruel was familiar, almost as instinctive as the need to blink. Madoc didn’t want to fight it. The reduction of their relationship to tit-for-tat favors offended him, and he wanted to return that weight and measure.
Before he could let out the aged poison under his tongue, Took closed his eyes. He rasped one word through clenched teeth. “Please.”
