Retribution

CHAPTER 19

THE SLIDER HAS BEEN UNLATCHED AND LEFT OPEN. I slip inside, so quietly she doesn’t realize I’m there in the room with her.

She’s bleeding from a dozen shallow cuts on her arms and legs. It drips from the rope binding her, pools under her on the bed.

The call of it beckons. I take a step toward her.

She’s naked, hands tied above her head, face pointed away from me, toward the bedroom door. She either detects movement, or some instinct sounds the alarm. She turns her head. The gag covers her mouth and chin. I don ’t recognize her. When she sees me, her eyes widen. Her breath comes in gasps, the thudding of her heart turns thunderous, sending the blood rushing through her veins. The cuts weep more freely.

I have to fight an overwhelming urge to lick at those bloody cuts. I fed from a human two weeks ago but still, I ’m hungry. Now. And here’s a feast of blood.

The vampire starts to rationalize. Why shouldn’t I? She’s in my house, in my bed for god’s sake. I won’t kill her. Just take what I need. I can make it pleasurable for her. It would be so easy.

The human Anna inserts herself.

You’re not going to feed from this woman. She’s been dumped here. She’s not a host. She’s scared. Take fucking hold of yourself and untie her.

It’s like a dash of ice water. The head clears, the lust recedes from raging need to dull ache. My features must lose the animal fierceness because the woman’s body relaxes a little, her pulse slows. But the eyes still hold terror.

I approach the bed with hands outstretched. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you. This is my house.”

She tries to wriggle away but one ankle is tied to the foot of the bed. She kicks toward me with her free leg. My words may be soothing now, but she has the memory of the vampire’s face. It will take more than words to overcome that image.

I stand still and wait until she stops thrashing. “Will you let me take the gag out of your mouth?”

A moment’s hesitation, then a jerky nod.

Slowly, carefully, I lean down and untie the ends of a scarf. When I pull it free, there ’s an instant when she looks up at me and I think she’s going to be all right. I smile at her, reach to untie the ropes binding her hands.

She starts to scream. A loud, high-pitched, penetrating scream.

Startled, I jerk back.

My first thought is not for her welfare. It’s for mine. I have neighbors on both sides.

I’ve got to quiet her.

Once more I reach out, making what I hope is a reassuring shushing noise, trying to calm her.

She screams louder.

Jesus.

I slam the slider shut behind me.

She’s going to wake the entire block if I don’t do something.

There’s a crash of splintering wood. Somebody is breaking in my front door.

Too late.

At the sound, the woman turns up the volume.

Feet thunder up the stairs. Cops appear at the door, one shoves me away from the woman and one pushes me down onto the floor.

The instinct to fight is squelched because of a voice in my head.

Anna, it’s me. Relax. Don’t say anything.

It’s Ortiz, back in uniform, with two of San Diego’s finest.

Ortiz takes over. He gets the cop off my back and allows me to stand up. He tells him that he knows me.

The second cop is untying the woman. He throws a sheet over her and when she sits up, she starts to babble. She tells the cops how I appeared in the room from the deck and not the inside door and how I looked at her with an animal’s face and yellow eyes.

They look at each other and at me. I put on as normal a face as I can and shrug.

Ortiz tells one of the cops to take me downstairs while he questions her. It’s not until they’ve taken her away in an ambulance and the CSI team has come and gone (with a set of my best Egyptian cotton sheets) that he joins me at the kitchen table. He sends my cop custodian away, too.

“It was Burke,” he says.

I hand him a cup of coffee. Dawn is breaking outside and it’s obvious I’m not going to get any sleep. Neither is he.

“Burke.” Not really surprising. Another part of her little game?

He takes a long pull at the coffee. “The woman says she was picked up leaving a downtown bar about midnight. Two men grabbed her.

The last thing she remembers before getting stuck with a needle is a voice saying the name Belinda Burke.”

“Not very subtle, is she? But what does dumping her here accomplish?”

“Maybe she thought you’d lose it when you smelled the blood. We got an anonymous call that someone saw you carrying a bound and gagged woman into your house. Came in ten minutes before we got here. Before you got here, evidently.”

“How’d you catch the call? When I left you, you were still with Williams.”

Ortiz smiles. “Police scanner. When your address was broadcast, I beat it over here. Changed in the car. The uniforms assumed I was on duty.”

I sip at my coffee, processing what Burke could hope to accomplish with such a stunt. I let Ortiz accompany me as I sort possibilities.

Did she hope I’d land in jail to be off her trail? Give her a clear shot at Culebra? Was it simply a way to harass me? Let me know she can fuck with me whenever she wants?

Ortiz shakes his head. “Any or all of the above. Maybe she hoped you’d kill that woman. That would be one way to get you off her trail.”

Now I shield my thoughts. The woman was never in danger from me—not of being killed. She did come close to becoming a late night snack, though.

I need to feed.

I look at Ortiz. “How much trouble am I in?”

He shrugs. “She admits you weren’t in on the abduction. She gave us good descriptions of the men who were and the van she was hauled off in. Unless we find hard evidence that you arranged it, you’ll be listed as a person of interest.” He laughs. “You didn’t arrange it, did you?”

“Very funny.”

He tips his cup toward me. “And you have the best alibi you could possibly have. At the time of her abduction you were hanging out with a cop and the former police chief.”

I rub my eyes. The hunger is beginning to cloud my head. It shouldn ’t be this strong. Too much blood tonight. First the woman at the pier, then the woman in my bed. It has awakened the hunger. The vampire is close to the surface, demanding sustenance.

If Lance were here—

But he’s not.

And I can’t go to Culebra, either.

Ortiz is watching me. My thoughts are closed to him, but he ’s vampire, too. He may recognize the signs. He doesn’t impose himself, though; he sits quietly and waits.

Maybe he can help. He’s got a live-in girlfriend to provide nourishment. Maybe he knows of others? If I’m going to be of any use to Culebra, I’ve got to have a clear head.

“Ortiz?”

He looks at me over the rim of the coffee cup.

“I need to ask you a favor.”

He nods at me to go on.

I still haven’t opened my thoughts to him. It might be easier but for some reason, I don’t want it to be.

“I need a host.”

He puts the cup on the table, his eyebrows rising in surprise. “I thought you had this deal in Mexico.”

“I did. I do.” Obviously Williams hasn’t filled him in on everything. I let him pick the story out of my head.

“Wow,” he says. “I had no idea.” He’s quiet for a minute. Then he says, “I’ll call my girlfriend. There’s a friend of hers that I’ve used.

Before I hooked up with Brooke, naturally. She might be available.”

I feel embarrassed. I sit there while he calls his girlfriend and explains the situation. It ’s like asking your little brother to get you a date.

Humiliating.

This is the uncool part.