Anderson writhed in his chair, and pain pinched the high color out of his face, but it hadn’t touched his arrogance yet. The scent of him, hot and bitter as adrenaline sweated out of his pores, was sharp and aggressive.
“You can’t touch me,” Anderson spat through clenched teeth. “This isn’t the old country. You can’t just do what you want. You can’ttakewhat you want.”
Madoc leaned in, his weight braced on Anderson’s arm, and murmured the correction in his ear. “Shouldn’t, Sheriff Anderson. I shouldn’t do those things. For four hundred years, I served the Hazadirectly. There is very little Icannotdo. Remember that.”
Madoc let go and stepped back in one smooth, slightly too-fast movement. Anderson sucked in a startled breath as his hand spasmed uncomfortably where the blood rushed back into it. His fingers stuttered against the use-scarred wood until he clenched them into a fist.
“You think you can threaten me into cutting your agent loose?” he asked as he rubbed roughly at the red mark that oozed out from under his ink. “Maybe I can’t put you on your heels, but your Hazawill if you cross the line. If they don’t administer the Accord, even the vampires in the Senate will have to call for censure.”
That was true. The cry today was usually that the Accord gave VINE, orSkazanieas they’d previously been known, too long a leash. What they didn’t understand was that before the Accord—that unprecedented constitutional agreement between the Living and the DEAD—there hadn’t even been a collar. Like trusted dogs, the Hazahad let them range free over their blood-parishes… which then had run from the East Coast and around the mud-thick Mississippi until it faltered at the Rocky Mountains.
Now there were checks and balances to VINE’s remit—oversight and external authority. But Anderson’s problem wasn’t his understanding of constitutional law. It was the idea that Madoc would care about the consequences if Anderson’s hateful mouth caught his temper again.
“You mistake me,” he said. Anderson looked smug as he thought he saw Madoc backpedal his threat. “I expect you to let my agent go because you have no evidence he was involved, other than his fangs. If you continue to hold him, I will pursue every legal avenue to extract satisfaction, even if I have to move here.”
Anderson scowled as he realized that, not only had he not won, but that Madoc had a threat up his sleeve that couldn’t be countered with the Accord. Pettiness, for an immortal, could be an art form. Some vampires had methodically ruined whole families over decades, generations even. Anderson absently rubbed his arm as he considered Madoc’s point. It was hard to tell if it was the bruise that preoccupied him or the tattoo.
“Fine,” Anderson said finally. “Agent Bennett is still a person of interest, but I’ll release him to your recognizance… on the proviso that he stays in town but doesn’t interfere in my case. Last thing I need is some interested bystander in the way of my deputies, especially after he put two of them in the hospital.”
“He’ll stay in the state,” Madoc countered. The last time he’d checked—obsessively and protectively—Took had still been resident in Charleston. It was only an hour on the freeway.
Anderson accepted that with a shrug. “As long as I can reel him back in if any evidence turns up,” he said. “In that case, he’s all yours. Do what you like to him.”
Madoc waited while Anderson signed the forms and made the call to the cell. He picked at a burr in his mirror-polish-manicured thumbnail as Anderson growled instructions to the deputy.
“See?” Anderson said with mock solicitousness. “You get more flies with honey than vinegar, Agent Madoc.”
Madoc looked up from his nail and gave a humorless smile. “I never said I wouldn’t kill you, Sheriff Anderson,” he said, “just that I didn’t need to, to get Bennett out of jail. If you want to know what will inspire me to rip your tongue out at the root, flap it some more.”
Anderson lifted his chin, a muscle tight under his jaw, and curled his lip into a sneer. “I don’t like your kind, Agent Madoc. I’m a fair man, so that won’t influence my investigation, but I want to make sure we’re clear. I don’t like you, and if your agent was involved in this or you get in my way, I’ll put you both down like you were rabid dogs.”
“There we go,” Madoc said pleasantly as he opened the office door. “On the same page at last.”
Chapter Three
THE DEPUTIEShadn’t been particularly careful when they tossed Took’s room at the B and B. His bed had been roughly stripped, the mattress tipped off the bed, and his clothes dumped out of his overnight case in the corner of the room. Nothing had been destroyed, just turned inside out and tossed aside.
Took had done it often enough himself—latex gloves dry against his knuckles as he stripped a Goat’s bed and checked in the mattress for syringes of hidden blood—so turnabout was fair play, he supposed. He still wanted to gather up everything they’d pawed over and torch it. It felt like hands on his skin, not on his old jeans.
“Did they take anything?” Madoc asked as he looked over Took’s shoulder. “Laptop? The rest of your clothes?”
Took waited for a second. It was the sort of question that usually left him off balance, unsure how to justify his pared-down life without any real explanation. Old habits kicked in with Madoc and he snorted instead. “We don’t all travel with an eighteenth-century dandy’s wardrobe.”
“To be fair,” Madoc drawled. “I was an eighteenth-century dandy, and I own a plane, so I do what I like.”
Took laughed and stepped into the ruined room. “I didn’t plan to stay this long,” he said. “All I wanted to do was look over the files, see if I was right about the links to my case.”
“Uh-huh,” Madoc drawled. “We still need to talk about that.”
A white plastic pill bottle lay on the floor at the end of the bed. Took tapped it with one booted toe. It was empty. He hoped whatever cop pocketed them had taken down the brand name. Otherwise the poor bastard would have a bad day.
They had not found anything else. There was nothing to find. Took hadn’t set up the ambush at the trap house, so there was nothing to incriminate him. As for embarrassing… well, anyone who wanted to know anything about his life—his pay scale, his scars, the size of his fucking fangs—just had to look it up online. If one of the reputable papers hadn’t posted it, then you could bet a gossip rag had. They had his pills until he could get the script refilled, and they had his collar size.
He hoped Anderson thought the man hours were worth it.
“I walked into a trap house and spent the day in that hot box,” Took said to Madoc over his shoulder. “What I need is a shower and a change of clothes. I can smell myself.”
“But you can’t look at me?” Madoc asked.
