Hope and Vengeance: Saa Thalarr, book 1

by Connie Suttle

  "You have an exact science?" Joey leaned forward, intensely curious again.

  "As exact as you can get," she sighed. "Adam, I'm ready to go home, now."

  "But you haven't finished your salad," Joey tried to convince her to stay and answer more questions. He'd made her uncomfortable, somehow, and her appetite had fled.

  "Joey, no more questions. Miss Madden is tired, it's late and you and I have work to do," I cautioned.

  Adam, she knew my middle name. I know you didn't tell her, Joey sent mindspeech. He'd noticed after all, just as I had. I should know better. Joey was a bit of a genius, when all was said and done. He and I had discovered (by accident) that we could mindspeak one another. That talent was a secret we both kept from my sire and the Council. I could only imagine what they might do to both of us if they learned we had the gift and deliberately kept it from them.

  According to Council records, Joey's sire, whose original name was Timerius before he changed it, had walked into the sun a year after Joey was made. Joey was now fourteen years old as a vampire and had been under the Council's thumb since Timerius' death. The first time he'd been sent to assist me, I'd grumbled about it, only to learn that Joey wasn't a burden. And we'd stumbled onto the fact we could mindspeak—I'd picked up his broadcasted thoughts quickly. We'd decided to keep the information to ourselves and seldom employed mindspeech.

  Anna slid out of the booth with Joey close behind. I followed swiftly as Anna walked toward the door, before recalling I hadn't paid for the meal and drinks. Joey and I had only ordered wine, claiming we weren't hungry. We weren't; both of us had fed earlier. I shouldn't have worried, Anna handed cash to our waitress on the way out. I realized she hadn't let me pay either time we'd gone to a restaurant. Somehow, that bothered me.

  "I didn't mean to upset you," Joey apologized when Anna exited the SUV the moment I stopped outside her condo. She hadn't said a word on the drive to Port Aransas.

  "I know," Anna hesitated with a sigh. "I have to go." I watched as she walked away from us. Joey and I waited until she'd gone inside the ground-floor entrance.

  "I didn't mean to do that," Joey rubbed his forehead as I jerked the SUV into gear and drove away.

  * * *

  "I'll create a diversion while you slip in and unlock the door." Joey and I were both dressed in dark clothing for our trip to Hartshorne Oil. Roy Cheek, CEO, was our target. Actually, his office and computer were our targets for the evening. Joey could hack into almost anything, and we were going to Hartshorne Oil after a brief stop at the safe house for a change of clothing. Joey was good at providing a slight disturbance while I misted beneath doors or through keyholes. It was easy enough to let him in afterward, to gather needed information.

  It didn't take long and the diversion wasn't much—Joey set off a car alarm right outside our targeted building and slipped inside once the security guard left the building to investigate. I'd misted beneath the CEO's office door before coming back to myself and unlocking the door from the inside. Joey was there quickly; I locked the door behind him.

  "How unimaginative." Joey found Roy Cheek's passwords on a slip of paper taped to the underside of a desk drawer. "And here I thought it might be a challenge." He was already tapping away on Cheek's desktop computer. I waited patiently as Joey copied files onto a flash drive. "Adam, look at this." He'd found something.

  Names, all of them Hispanic in origin, were listed, with a date beside them. "Joey, these dates correspond to those on a list Anna showed me." I knelt beside Joey's chair and examined names that coincided with dates employees had gone missing.

  "Here," Joey pulled up another list—this one showing that each date was a date that particular employee was scheduled to be paid.

  "They're going missing right before they're scheduled to be paid, probably in cash," I muttered.

  "And this is probably why." Joey pointed me to a third file—a personal one, belonging to Roy Cheek. It listed gambling debts, totaling in the hundreds of thousands.

  "He's hiring undocumented workers, offering to pay them in cash, getting the work out of them and then conveniently disposing of them, somehow, so he can keep the cash for gambling or paying gambling debts," I pieced it together. "But why would he kill three local residents in the middle of all this? And it still doesn't explain the bite marks or drained blood."

  "Do you think the three locals found out about it, somehow?" Joey asked.

  "Possibly, but Kirby Lee Gordon swears her husband went night fishing with the other two. Something about this bothers me," I rose from my kneeling position. "Copy all those files, Joey, and we'll look at them when we get to the safe house."

  "You got it." Joey finished his work and pulled the flash drive out before shutting down the computer. "There. He'll never know we were here."

  Joey and I wore gloves—that was standard in any investigation. Leave no trace behind—we'd been taught that early on. I allowed Joey to leave first, then locked the door from the inside and concentrated on turning to mist. Neither Cheek nor the security guard would ever know we'd been there.

  * * *

  "This doesn't explain the bite marks on the bodies," Xavier pointed out when I phoned him and explained what we'd found. Dawn was approaching in England and Xavier would be forced to end the conversation quickly.

  "I know," I said between clenched teeth. Nearly two hundred twenty years after my turning, Xavier still treated me like an ignorant dolt.

  "Then find an answer," Xavier's voice was clipped as he rang off. I cursed softly as I tossed my cell onto the kitchen counter.

  "Thanks for updating the bathroom. It's less ugly now," Joey said from his chair at the tiny kitchen table. He continued to wade through records filched from Roy Cheek's computer on his laptop.

  Much of Joey's luggage had been equipment. There were no bag limits on the Council's jet and the back of the SUV had been filled with Joey's things when I picked him up. A portable printer was connected to his laptop and he'd printed several lists, correlating names and dates of disappearances. I now had a more comprehensive list than the one Anna had shown me.

  "You're welcome," I muttered to Joey. Xavier's words still rankled, and this wasn't the first time Joey had overheard Xavier dressing me down. I was Chief of Enforcers but in Xavier's eyes, I would always be his inept child. Joey was politely telling me, in a backhanded way, that anything Xavier said was worth ignoring.

  "I know you love me," Joey teased, keeping his eyes on the laptop screen. I laughed.

  * * *

  Joey and I stared at the huge black man who stood inside Anna's condo when we arrived the following evening. Anna introduced him as Lion Kleander. Taller than I was by three inches and built of solid muscle, Lion handed me a look that might have made me quail if I hadn't been vampire.

  "Lion is helping with the investigation," Anna informed me after inviting us to sit at her small table. "He's been asking Kirby Lee's neighbors what they saw." Joey and I sat and listened as Lion explained that a teen boy had seen someone backing Bill Gordon's boat out of the garage the night before Bill's disappearance.

  "It wasn't Bill Gordon," Lion's voice was deep and even. He didn't have an accent; nevertheless, I felt (and I couldn't explain why) that English wasn't Lion's first language. "And then something changed hands between the stranger and Kirby Lee," Lion added.

  "Why don't the police have this information?" I asked. It hadn't been in the report I'd been given.

  "The kid who saw the transaction sneaked out to meet with friends, and he smelled of marijuana." Lion flashed a wide grin. "I got the idea he'd be in trouble with the law and his parents if he volunteered that information."

  "Then how did you convince him?" Joey asked. He and I were wondering how (without compulsion) Lion had gotten the information.

  "You'd be amazed what a gift card to the local electronics store will accomplish," Lion's deep chuckle rumbled in his chest.

  "So, Kirby Lee may have sold her husband's boat," I worked t
hrough the information we'd been given.

  "And we know, just by looking at the garage, how much he loved his boat," Anna's hazel eyes locked with mine.

  "You think she sold the boat to put a down payment on her new car, because she didn't have a job. How did she get approval for the loan?" I asked. "They wouldn't have approved the loan without collateral of some kind. And when did she get the car?"

  "She purchased the car two days after her husband was reported missing, so she didn't use his information to secure the loan," Lion said. "But we don't have an answer as to how she managed to buy the car."

  "That may be the question we answer next," Anna sighed. "In the meantime, there's this." She shoved a newspaper in my direction.

  "What's this?" I asked, lifting the paper. An article was circled in red on the front page of a Corpus Christi newspaper.

  "The EPA is investigating Hartshorne Oil, that's what," Lion replied. "Seems they're oh, how do you put this—polluting everything in sight."

  "They're cutting corners on keeping that shit from leaking into the air and soil," Anna muttered. I was shocked to hear profanity from her. "To save money," she added grimly.

  I read the article, which stated that the Hartshorne refinery in Corpus Christi could be shut down if demands for a cleanup weren't met. Hartshorne's corporate officials were puzzled over the whole investigation and Roy Cheek, in an interview, claimed the refinery was doing everything it could to keep pollution at a minimum. At the end of the interview, Cheek accused the EPA of launching a witch-hunt and threatened to sue them.

  "Cheek's trying to keep them away from the refinery," Joey muttered, reading over my shoulder. Should we tell them what we found? He asked mentally.

  Not yet, I cautioned. Let's see what else they have first. I had an idea that Anna hadn't told me everything.

  "I want to drive down Padre Island tonight; I caught something on the police scanner—somebody reported bits of fiberglass washing ashore. I want to make sure it isn't Bill Gordon's boat," Anna stood and stretched. As she'd been sitting next to me, I almost reached out a hand to rub her back. The urge was automatic—almost reflex. I forced my hand to stay where it was.

  "I plan to go to the auto dealership and ask questions," Lion said.

  "Joey, go with Lion," I ordered, making decisions quickly. "I'll go with Miss Madden to search for debris." I wanted to make sure we would receive all the information collected by these two. And I would be forced to inform Xavier that another investigator was now muddying the waters.

  "May I tag along?" Joey asked Lion. I hadn't bothered to ask; I'd become used to handing orders to those who served with me.

  "Sure, kid," Lion grinned. Even with Joey's vampire strength, I imagined that Lion could sweep him off his feet with a single swipe of a very large and powerful hand. I blinked away the image and turned to Anna.

  "May I come with you?" I asked.

  "I was hoping someone would," she offered dryly.

  * * *

  Padre Island National Seashore is a national park, and we paid to drive onto the beach. Past a certain point, however, you are discouraged from driving on the beach unless you have a four-wheel-drive vehicle. The sand is too loose and the environment too wild for anything else. Anna and I drove onto the loose sand of the beach, traveled down its length for nearly four miles and still had another mile to go to reach our destination when Anna finally spoke.

  "Stop the car, stop the car," she shouted. I hit the brakes while the SUV slid to a stop in loose sand. Not waiting to provide an explanation, Anna unbuckled her seat belt in a blink and straddled my lap in almost as much time. Slapping my seat belt when it didn't open immediately, she jerked my door open and pulled me from the driver's seat. "Run, you overgrown oaf!" she shouted and grasping my hand, proceeded to pull me away from the vehicle. When I was reluctant to break into a trot behind her, she shouted again. "Run!" She jerked on my hand urgently. I ran, without really knowing why. We'd gotten perhaps a hundred yards from the SUV when it exploded behind us, knocking us to the sand and sending bits of metal and debris raining down around us.

  Chapter 3

  Lifting myself off Anna, I groaned and sat up, the explosion still ringing in my ears. Anna was slower to rise; her face was smudged with dirt and sand clung to her clothing as she brushed hair away from her face.

  "How did you know," I rasped before shaking my head and turning away. The gulf waters continued to sweep the sand behind us, oblivious to the near-loss of two lives.

  I sighed. Bombs will kill vampires if the explosion is near enough. Whoever had set the explosives in my SUV intended for us to die. Somehow, Anna Madden had known of it beforehand and gotten us to safety before the explosion occurred.

  "I'm sorry, my ears are still not right," Anna shook her head at me.

  "Give them a moment," I leaned closer to say. She nodded. I struggled to my feet, then offered her a hand. Her fingers trembled slightly as she accepted my assistance.

  After a brief disagreement over what to do first, we walked the last mile (in the dark) to find bits of fiberglass washing ashore. I called Xavier while we walked; surprisingly enough, he didn't ask many questions and agreed to arrange for another rental. I knew he'd demand an accounting later, when I was alone. I didn't look forward to it.

  "See this," Anna pointed to a broken piece of fiberglass that had washed ashore. "The last three numbers match those on Bill Gordon's boat."

  "Why would someone destroy it after going to so much trouble to buy it?" I asked as we began our trek back to the bombed SUV.

  "Because everybody is looking for it, now," Anna shrugged. We left the piece on the sand where we'd found it; the local authorities would find it in the morning. My current worry was what to do with the remains of the SUV.

  "I'll take care of it," Anna sighed as we approached the wreckage. The axle was a twisted pile of metal but still intact. It was the only thing that remained in one piece. Pulling a cell from the pocket of her jeans, Anna dialed a number.

  Half an hour later, the local sheriff, a park ranger and two deputies climbed from an SUV marked with Corpus Christi PD decals on each side. The sheriff was young, perhaps in his mid-thirties, and he and Anna knew one another. She hadn't wanted to contact him, I could tell, as he touched her shoulder. She carefully stepped away. Just as well; I wanted to toss him into the gulf for putting a hand on her.

  "What have you done this time to piss someone off, Anna?" he asked as he and his deputies surveyed my bombed rental. The park ranger ignored us and began photographing the scene.

  "Only the usual," she shrugged.

  "And who is this?" The sheriff now looked in my direction.

  "Someone who is helping with my current caseload," she replied. "Adam, this is Sheriff Paul Anderson," Anna made introductions. I was obligated to shake hands with him. I wanted to growl as I did so. Schooling my face, I muttered pleasantries instead.

  "Plates registered to a rental company," one of the deputies held up the remains of the SUV's license plate.

  "Adam rented a four-wheel-drive to drive down the beach. One might assume that whoever is targeting me has seen us together. Therefore," Anna didn't finish her sentence.

  "Therefore they made sure to cover all their bases," Sheriff Anderson supplied. "Where is your car, Anna?"

  "In the parking lot where it normally sits, outside my condo," she replied.

  "I'll send someone out to look at it," the sheriff offered. Anna nodded a reply. Eventually, after answering numerous questions for the official report, another vehicle arrived to take us away.

  "So, Anna," Sheriff Anderson said as he prepared to close Anna's door. "Were those pieces washing up on the beach parts of Bill Gordon's boat?"

  "Yes," she replied and pulled the door shut herself, leaving Sheriff Anderson standing there, wearing a puzzled frown.

  "Where are you going?" I demanded later, after we cleaned up inside her condo. Our officer had dropped us off there and driven away. My suit was ru
ined—it bore stains from seaweed and anything else littering the beach. Anna changed clothes and looked much better than I did as she collected her car keys from a bowl on the kitchen island.

  "Adam, I'm going for a drink. I don't normally do that, but tonight, I need one," she snapped, hazel eyes flashing a challenge in my direction. "If you want to come, then leave that jacket behind, roll up your shirt sleeves and let's go."

  "The bars are only open for another hour," I pointed out as I dumped my ruined suit coat onto a barstool.

  "Then I'll have to work fast to get drunk, won't I?" she offered a tight, false smile. I left a message on Joey's cell as we walked out the door.

  * * *

  The Beach Bum Bar hummed with late-night business. Shoes and shirts for men were optional, and many had taken advantage. Women wore bikini tops in many instances, and most of the patrons were in various stages of inebriation when Anna and I walked in. Country music thumped from an old-fashioned jukebox in a corner and few paid attention as we made our way to the bar and slid onto barstools.

  "Anna, what brings you here? I haven't seen you in a year," the bartender said, setting napkins down in front of us.

  "A close call," she admitted with a sigh. "I'll have a bloody Mary. Heavy on the vodka, Lonnie."

  "Got it. And you?" He turned green eyes in my direction. Lonnie had sun-bleached, short brown hair, laugh lines and was in his early forties. He'd smiled too much at Anna, in my opinion.

  "I'll have the same, with only a splash of vodka. Lonnie."

  "Right-O, mate." Lonnie mimicked an Australian accent—badly. It wasn't the first time an American mistook my British accent for Australian. Truly, they had no ear for such. After my second century, I'd learned to ignore it. Before, it made me angry and often resulted in unnecessary compulsion and gleeful thoughts of the offender's death.

  "You were serious, weren't you?" I stared as Anna drank half her bloody Mary in seconds.