"This is enough to feed three ordinary people," he sighed happily, cutting into his steak. "It's really good," he mumbled around his second mouthful.
"I knew you'd like it," I said. I almost added that it had been my husband's favorite but caught myself in time.
Winkler had eyed the pie display on the way in and saved room for a generous wedge of coconut cream. "Man, it was worth coming here just for this," he said. The whole piece was reduced to a few crumbs and the edge of the crust when he declared himself too full to move.
"You want I should carry you?" I teased him a little when he lightly rubbed his flat stomach. Maybe all that typing or programming that he did kept him in shape.
"No, but I do feel like working some of this off. Is there a bar around here?" Winkler was grinning hugely now.
The closest bar that I felt he'd be comfortable in and wouldn't need a leather jacket and a tattoo to get inside was the one I'd gone to the day Ed and Serge had done me in. "Can you follow directions without getting grumpy?" I asked Gavin, handing the car keys over. He looked as if he might have a stroke if he weren't allowed to sit up front.
"I can follow directions. No guarantee on the grumpy part of it," he informed me, snatching the car keys so fast I almost didn't see them leave my hand. The man could crack a joke without even a hint of a smile. I found myself wishing I had control like that.
"I'll settle for what I can get," I said, pointing him toward the southwest part of Oklahoma City.
"You can barely see this from the street," Winkler was looking out the passenger side window as we bounced our way into the parking lot of Tipzy's Bar. They definitely needed to resurface.
"It's not bad inside," I said. "The first time I ever got drunk was inside this bar."
"No kidding. When was that?" Winkler was laughing.
"About a month and a half ago," I said. "And I've sworn off drinking. To that degree, anyway—ever since."
Gavin turned to watch me when I'd said that but didn't comment. We walked inside and I saw that Warren was still there, tending bar. Of course, he wouldn't recognize me now but he'd been nice to me when I was probably looking as bad as I'd ever looked and feeling worse than that, even. He had shoulder-length dark hair, nice green eyes and a beautiful smile, even if it was overshadowed by a larger than necessary nose. It really didn't detract from his looks at all. The first time I'd seen him his hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He wore it loose now and a couple of women at the bar were batting their eyelashes at him.
Winkler picked a table in a corner and we sat down. A waitress was on duty and she walked over to take our order. I asked for club soda with lime, Gavin ordered a bloody Mary and Winkler wanted scotch and soda. Winkler walked over to the bar after a bit and struck up a conversation with the two women, who were laughing and talking with him and Warren in no time. Gavin and I were busy watching him, making sure he stayed out of trouble when the door opened and someone else stepped in.
I scented him the moment he walked inside. His smell was similar but not quite as exotic as Gavin's. He zoned in on us right away, walking right over to our table. Unsure of what he wanted, I just stared up at him. He was handsome, though Gavin was more so, and he didn't have an edge about him like Gavin did. Gavin felt dangerous—fairly vibrated with it, in my opinion. If such a thing were possible, that is.
"Little queen, may I buy you a drink?" The man was speaking to me but I had no idea what he meant. I must have frowned up at him, uncertain how to respond when Gavin said a word, and if that word wasn't wrapped in power then I was dreaming. And like I said before, vampires don't dream.
"Leave," Gavin commanded, forcing the man to turn as quickly as he could and walk right out of the bar.
"Gavin, you scared the bejeezus out of him," I admonished as I watched the door slam shut. Gavin's eyes, including what should have been white, were quite dark. It must have been a trick of the light because they cleared when he turned to me and blinked.
"He should not be approaching you," Gavin declared imperiously, sipping his drink.
"I'm driving home," I said, watching him consume the bloody Mary in a matter of seconds.
"Gavin, Lissa, this is Jeri," Winkler brought his date du jour over to the table. They both had fresh drinks in their hands and Winkler pulled an extra chair over so Jeri could sit with us. I wanted to bang my forehead against the table and wondered if Winkler would ever consider trying for a steady girlfriend before deciding it wasn't any of my business. Or, as Don would have said, "None o' your bidness." I missed him. Gavin insisted on driving home after Winkler and Jeri finished their drinks, and since he'd only had two drinks, I didn't argue. Jeri was duly impressed with the house in Nichols Hills as we drove through the gate.
"You live here?" she whispered to Winkler, her eyes wide.
"Temporarily. I have a larger home in the Dallas area," Winkler couldn't help himself. If it got him a better deal in bed, who was I to argue? Jeri was still sober enough to know what she was doing and I hoped they were both mature enough to use protection. Winkler had an arm around Jeri as he led her toward the front door, making me wonder who would get the pleasure of taking her home in the morning.
"I'm glad to see you more yourself," Gavin came up beside me.
"Talking, you mean," I said, crossing my arms over my chest and watching Winkler grope Jeri's ass as they walked inside the house. "Why do men want sex with women they don't even know?" I searched Gavin's face, watching his jaw work for a few seconds. "Never mind," I said. "Forget I asked."
We returned to our normal job of patrolling the grounds, but we had help now and only took small sections. With my newly acquired senses, I didn't even have to walk anymore if I didn't want to. I could hear everything inside and outside the wall. We had two female security guards who'd come along with the others and that night I heard one of them having sex with a male guard while both were supposed to be working.
I sent a text (the longest one I'd ever sent), telling Gavin what was happening as discreetly as I could. He must have double-checked because ten minutes later Davis was in the yard, chewing out both offenders before firing them. Another guard drove the offenders and their belongings straight back to Dallas. I'd heard what Davis was telling the two when he'd fired them. "I don't give a damn what you do when you're off duty, but when you're working, you're protecting a client. This isn't protecting your client!" Yeah, I got them in trouble. My underlying reason was this: even though Winkler was a hooker-licking sleaze at times, I liked him better.
"You did the right thing," Gavin told me later as I walked into our guesthouse apartment.
"I know, but it still makes me feel like crap. So don't try to cheer me up," I held up a hand to stop him from saying anything else.
"I wasn't going to attempt it," he said.
"Good, because I might have to smack ya."
"You have such interesting phrases," Gavin said. "Smack me? You wish to smack me?"
"Keep talking like that and I'll do it instead of thinking about it," I grumbled. "Leave me alone. I have a headache." I didn't really; vampires apparently don't get headaches. Or any other kind of ache, for that matter. Not normally, anyway. Gavin leapt at the opportunity to refute my statement.
"You do not. Take yourself from my sight," He made a little shooing motion with his hand.
"Now who has the interesting phrases?" I asked. "You sound like King Henry the Eighth, sending one of his queens off for beheading."
"He only beheaded two of them, you know," Gavin grinned wickedly.
"And he didn't divorce anybody, those marriages were annulled," I said. "So there." I flounced away, wanting a shower before I went to bed. The sun was creeping up on me; I could feel it already.
My next day off came three days later and since I was running out of shampoo, I borrowed one of Winkler's ugly vans and went to Target. When Davis found out where I was going, he handed off a list of things to pick up for Winkler and some of the others. Dummy me—I thought the hou
sekeeping staff ran the errands. Now, I had a full page of things to buy. I spent more than an hour trying to find the right kind of deodorant or the specified type of disposable razors for Phil, Glen, Davis, Winkler and some of the add-on security. Davis had given me an envelope full of cash to pay for everything but it was my day off, for cripes sake. He'd also asked me to make a run by the grocery store, handing me another list of things to get there, most of it snacks and junk food plus soft drinks. The van was nearly full by the time I finished and headed toward the house.
An angry anthill best described what I found when I parked in the driveway. Phil, Glen and Davis were just about to tear their hair out, a dozen security guards were on cell phones having a breakdown and Gavin was watching everything from the sidelines. He was standing on the wide porch, leaning against the stucco wall of the house with his eyes half-closed and an unreadable expression in his eyes. Since nobody seemed to notice that I'd gotten back, I went about unloading everything into the kitchen, even placing the perishables inside the fridge. Finding Gavin afterward, (he hadn't moved from his spot on the porch) I asked him what all the fuss was.
"Winkler took off about two hours ago, by himself," Gavin said. "Nobody can find him now."
"What was he driving?" I asked, a bit of fear creeping into my voice.
"The Jag. We only found out a few minutes ago that he had the tracking system disabled."
"Did he do it or did somebody else do it?"
"That's a good question, now isn't it?"
"Your concern is overwhelming," I said sarcastically, pacing in front of him. He was still leaning against the wall, not particularly oblivious to the uproar but certainly indifferent to all of it.
"He's only been gone two hours. Even the police won't start looking for someone unless they've been gone for twenty-four."
"Is that when you plan to look?" I stared at him in disbelief. Gavin just shrugged. This whole thing worried me. After all, Winkler was the man who wouldn't pick up a hooker or an easy lay in a bar without security. I went to find Davis.
"Did we get any response from Winkler?" I asked. Davis looked to be on the verge of an aneurysm.
"We tried his main cell first, but got no answer. Then we tried the back-up—he carries an extra phone with him, usually tucked into the top of one of his socks if he's wearing any, and it's set on vibrate. We got a momentary hit on that, but all we heard was the word Con— as near as we can make it out, anyway." Davis' hair was wild and he looked to be at his wits' end.
"Con? That's it?" Now I wanted to have an aneurysm. "And no answer on the second try?"
"Or the third or the sixty-third." Davis was truly about to experience some sort of mental event, I could tell.
"Davis, you won't do him any good if we have to take you to the hospital. Calm down, okay?" I patted his arm. "I have to think about this," I said, moving away from him. The tension in the house and the yard was so thick it might have taken a machete to cut it, so I went to the guesthouse and sat down on the sofa in the small living room. Gavin might not be concerned, but I certainly was. What did I know about Winkler that might help? And what did his cryptic message mean? Gavin walked in about that time.
"Did Winkler get any calls or messages before he took off?" I asked.
"Davis said he got two, but he didn't think anything about them at the time and Winkler wasn't upset that he could tell. Nothing to make him run out of here like a frightened hare." Gavin headed toward his bedroom.
"Around here we say scared rabbit," I said distractedly. "Con. Con. Con." I was beating my forehead with a fist.
"Keep that up and you'll have a nice bruise tomorrow," Gavin said, turning toward me.
"Go fuck yourself," I muttered, but somehow he heard.
"I prefer to perform that act with someone else," he retorted, walking into his bedroom and closing the door.
"You would," I grumbled, standing up to pace a little. I did have one thing I knew about Winkler that none of the others did. I had his scent. I could have picked him out of a crowd anytime. Just like I could find Davis, or Phil, or Glen, or Gavin. Especially Gavin. He had a scent that didn't come close to anyone else. The guy in the bar? That was similar but about a hundred miles behind what Gavin had. I put that out of my mind.
"Con," I said again, out loud. "Con. Fuck." I paced a little more. It took me ten more minutes, pacing and muttering to myself before something hit me. "Fuck!" I said one last time and ran out the door.
Yanking the door to the van open and nearly unhinging it in the process, I pulled the keys from my pocket and started the thing before I was completely in the seat. I was fastening the seatbelt with one hand while steering the van through the gate with the other in seconds. Precious time was wasted winding my way out of the Nichols Hills neighborhood but I finally made it, driving straight toward Hefner Parkway. That hooked into I-240 and then I-40; I was making my way westward as fast as I could, holding my speed back enough so I wouldn't risk getting stopped by the Highway Patrol. All I needed now was for somebody to pull me over and then arrest me for carrying a phony driver's license.
Yukon, Oklahoma, is nearly due west from Oklahoma City. I left the interstate and turned north on the exit for Garth Brooks Boulevard. The Flaming Lips had an Alley; Garth Brooks had a Boulevard. Hell, Will Rogers had an airport and Gene Autry had an entire town. Yukon has a population of around twenty-two thousand and it's scattered. First, I drove slowly through the town and the nearby neighborhoods with the windows rolled down on the van—looking for the Jaguar and sniffing the air as I went. I smelled plenty of people but didn't catch even a whiff of Winkler. Then I started widening my search, heading east toward Oklahoma City. Time was ticking for me just as much as I figured it was ticking for Winkler, if he wasn't dead already. I drove past house after house, yard after yard, before getting into isolated farmhouses surrounded by wheat fields. Five o'clock came and went and I was still driving—only I was traveling mostly through wheat fields. I was just about to give up and head toward the house, hoping I had enough time to get there before sunrise when I caught a small glint with my headlights. Backing up in the middle of the narrow road between planted fields, I drove forward more slowly this time until I caught the glint again.
Shoving the van into park, I flung myself out the door to investigate. As bad as my luck had been for the past month, somebody decided to smile on me that night. It was the tail light of the Jaguar I'd seen. The car was buried in a deep ditch filled with brush and saplings, which nearly covered the car completely. Only a tiny bit of red plastic had been caught by my headlights. Winkler wasn't in the car but he'd been inside it, and there wasn't any scent of blood or anything else that might indicate he'd been killed. I did smell others around the car; I got a good whiff of them. There was also another scent there and it surprised me a little—Mexican food.
I followed the scents. They hung in the air as I crossed the road, walking into the wheat field. There was no fence around the field and the spring wheat was about a foot high and green, rustling around me in the early spring breeze. I found the footprints then—I could see them clearly. The ground was wet from rain the day before, the soil sucking at my shoes as I walked through it. When I caught the scent where the footprints ended, I nearly gave up hope right then and there. I smelled death and decay and almost sat down to cry. No time for that. I started digging. Something was buried there and I was pretty sure it was Winkler.
Chapter 6
If I remember correctly, it took ten years or more to dig the Panama Canal in the early 1900's. Had they hired vampires to do the digging, they might have gotten it done in a lot less time and the mosquitoes wouldn't have been a problem. My nails were blackened with soft, wet earth and the sides of my trench had caved in on me twice but I was moving so fast my hands were blurring before my face. That's when I heard the noise. I was even more grateful that I heard it before reaching the body lying atop the metal box Winkler's kidnappers had used as a coffin.
I recogn
ized the body the minute I jerked it up, my hand twisting the collar of the shirt he wore. The head of the body lolled back as I examined it. It was a male security guard—the one that had been fired after having sex with his female co-worker. He flew out of his makeshift grave so high and so fast it was a good thing he was already dead—the ensuing fall to earth would have killed him anyway. The banging became louder inside the metal box; somebody was kicking the end, now. There was a heavy steel lid on it, locked with a padlock. I ripped the lock off easily, taking the hasp with it. The hinged lid was up and off next. I found Winkler folded up inside the cramped space with duct tape over his mouth and his hands and feet tied with heavy nylon cord.
Getting him out of that hellhole came first—I pulled the tape off his mouth once I had him upright in the wheat field. Cutting through the nylon cords was the next item on the agenda. I was thankful he was only half-conscious when I ripped those ropes apart like they were spider silk.
I wanted to weep as I saw the horizon pinken, but Winkler was beginning to show signs of lucidity, although he was still wobbling drunkenly. I was forced to hold him upright for a few seconds while I attempted to explain things. "Winkler, I need to find somebody who can take you back to the house," I peered into his dark eyes, hoping for swift understanding. Desperation almost made me hysterical and it was coming out in my voice. I'd never had much religion before that morning but I found a little bit of it, somehow, when I saw a farm tractor coming down the road. "Thank God," I muttered, hauling Winkler toward the middle of the paved, narrow lane.
I flagged the farmer down and ordered him, as strongly as I could, to drive the van and take Winkler to the address I gave him in Oklahoma City. I also commanded him to forget he ever saw me afterward. Winkler, still confused, blinked at me as I settled him into the passenger seat of the van before sending the farmer on his way.
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