by Bee Murray
Now I knew why she was angry.
Double shit.
She sat across from Baldwin, just out of frame. Her head was turned just out of frame, but I would have recognized that fall of silvery blonde hair anywhere.
My maker.
15
TUESDAY
My blood boiled in my veins and I was positive that Vinnie could sense how angry I was. When I hired the photographer, I hadn’t quite known what to expect. It’s hard when you don’t know what you’re looking for.
Our go-to guy at Pisces PR was an ex-tabloid hack who lacked a code of ethics, was a crack shot, and had an incredible knack to be in the right place at the right time. He was a complete creep, but we could always count on him to get the most damning (or flattering, depending on the request) angles of his targets, and he was fast. Carlyn had something on him that was powerful enough to lure him away from following starlets around, and now he’s on call for us.
I never doubted that he’d get the shots we needed. A part of me hoped that Baldwin would be stupid enough to allow himself to get photographed doing something out of character. A nice spread of him in the arms of a high-priced call-girl or spending Vinnie’s money on hard drugs? Yeah. That’s the stuff a spin doctor dreams of finding on an opponent.
But no.
Baldwin had to go be strategic and irritatingly by-the-book.
He had to know that he would be under scrutiny. Vinnie Quake was a big fucking deal, not just in Seattle, but globally. There was no way Cainin Records would let an attack on their golden boy be swept under the rug.
Baldwin had to know the police would be all up in that.
I tried to think what I would do.
If it were me, I would have planned to be very visible with the police response. The model of mournful cooperation. I would have volunteered the information that he believed that Vinnie had returned to his house to take shelter from the incident at the bookstore. While the police were gnawing on that, I would have made some choice comments in front of the media to get a head start on the public opinion piece. If you waited until the actual incident happened with this kind of thing, you were already running behind the curve.
I anticipate things. It’s why I’m so good at my job. But every now and again you get thrown a curveball. And this curvy curveball pissed me right off. He was good. Good enough to set us up. But I was better.
Exhaustion hovered on the edge of my anger. Confronting Vinnie had seemed like the logical reaction at the time, but the longer I stood in the room, the more that logic began to slip. Plus, I had never told him that I knew about her. Well, that was about to change.
Goddamnit.
“What does this mean, Vinnie?” I demanded quietly. I just needed answers.
Vinnie shook his head, confusion written all over his handsome face. The same handsome face I wanted to slap for being so stupid.
“I — I don’t know. What does it mean?”
“Don’t you think I recognize her?” My chest burned with the effort of keeping all of my rage inside. “I saw you together, Vinnie! I saw you with her the night you left me! You were busy, or don’t you remember.”
He was silent for a moment, and my hand itched to slap him again.
I’ve carried this burden for years and now that we’re facing it, he’s silent. Asshole.
“What do you want me to say?”
His question was plaintive, but I wasn’t in the mood for any of that bullshit.
“You. Tell. Me.” I exploded, “How should I know? She’s not my problem. Are they working together? Are they lovers? Was she part of the record label? Tell me what you know. Secrets will not help either of us right now. I need to know everything.”
Please God, don’t tell me everything. Knowledge was power, but it’s also pain. I needed the information if I was going to get him out of this mess. But it was equally tempting to just… abandon him in it.
Unfortunately, I was as deep into it as he was. My life was in danger, too. And now? With Baldwin bringing shithead Zach into the mix? Yeah, it was personal for me, too.
“I think I have a right to know everything, too,” Vinnie said as he shoved the phone back into my hands.
I glared at him. “You have what? The right to know things? Like what?”
“Who was that Zach guy? You said you knew him.”
Fuck. Had I said that? Ugh.
“Answer my question first!”
That would give me time to think about what I actually wanted to say. It was complicated — But then again, it really wasn’t.
Vinnie rubbed a hand through his hair and turned away from me. “There’s nothing to tell,” he said sharply. “It was one night. We were celebrating, she was there. She bought me a drink — And that’s all I remember. I woke up alone in a hotel room and I didn’t see her again after that night. When I got home, you had already left… And a few days later I was in the throes of the infection. I didn’t want to believe it—”
“So, you were a one-night stand,” I interrupted cruelly.
I’d struggled with Vinnie’s disappearance for YEARS, and even though it would have been easy to forget all of my anger in favor of guilt for shutting him out so completely, I couldn’t do it. I’d been feeding on my anger for so long that I couldn’t replace it with anything else. He could have done anything that night. He could have just come home to me. He could have answered his phone one of the seventy million times I’d called. Answered one text message. Anything.
But he hadn’t. He’d allowed a strange woman to buy him a drink, and then let her — No. No, I was going to stay mad. Maybe forever.
Vinnie looked at me over his shoulder, but I couldn’t tell if he was angry or just… sad.
“Looks like it,” he said flatly. “I was a suck and chuck, does that make you happy?”
It didn’t, actually.
I sighed heavily.
This wasn’t productive, and it didn’t answer my question. “So, you’ve never seen her with Baldwin, he’s never mentioned her… nothing.”
Vinnie shook his head. “The only thing I remember about her was a name.”
“A name?” I stared at him.
“Apogee.”
“That’s not a name,” I scoffed.
“Says the girl named Tuesday.”
“Hey, we’ve been over this.”
Vinnie chuckled, grabbed the styrofoam cup of blood off the bedside table and sucked angrily on the straw. He still loved pushing my buttons, and I hated that I kind of loved it when he did.
It was exhausting to flip back and forth between hating him and still having feelings for him. I hated it. I hated him. I hated myself for being so… “Ugh!”
“Ugh yourself,” Vinnie mumbled around the straw. “You got my answer, so what’s your deal with the other guy? Zach? Who the hell was he?”
I pressed my palms against my cheeks and took a deep breath. Vinnie was possessive. Telling him about Zach would definitely provoke a reaction. At least this way, we’d both be upset.
“Zach was a hookup,” I said through gritted teeth. “My own suck and chuck.”
Vinnie’s mouth dropped open. “Wait — That guy? You slept with him?”
I threw my hands up in protest. “What do you want, Vinnie? You want me to say he was nothing like you? That no one could ever measure up? Sure. Fine. That’s what it is. He was boring. Deadass boring. He’s a mortgage broker—”
“Who murders vampires on the weekends?” Vinnie interjected snidely.
“We didn’t get that far into the conversation,” I snapped back.
I knew I deserved a little pain for all the shit I’d said to him, but the low blows were a surprise.
Vinnie leaned against the wall casually, his eyebrow raised. “So… was he any good?”
“No,” I laughed shortly, “Actually he was a colossal disappointment and a complete dickhead who stole my whiskey and wouldn’t shut up. I kicked him out before I’d even gotten my bra off.”
> Vinnie blinked at me, speechless, and I burst out laughing.
“So… let me get this straight. You brought him home for sex and then kicked him out… and now he’s in a murderous rage and out to get revenge. Is that about right?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s a coincidence,” I said with a frown. It would have been arrogant to think that Zach had gone on some rampage because I’d blown him off—or, rather, not blown him at all.
Vinnie looked thoughtful for a moment. “Coincidences don’t exist,” he said. “It’s just… supposed to happen. You thought the night we met was a coincidence.”
I took a deep breath and looked down at the worn carpet. “If you’re going to tell me some ‘romantic’ story about how you stalked me for weeks before getting up the courage to talk to me at that club you can forget it.”
The night we’d met had been a mess, and we both knew it. I wasn’t about to stand there and listen to him put chrome on a beat-up pickup truck bumper.
Vinnie started out as a one night thing… but then he never left. Before I knew it, he turned out to be a fiance and joint-accounts thing.
“Tuesday—”
“I said forget it. I don’t have time to go stumbling down memory lane with you right now. There had to be another reason Zach was there. Period.”
Vinnie looked down at the styrofoam cup in his hands and smiled briefly. “There was, actually. Baldwin brought him in.”
I stared at Vinnie in disbelief. “What now?”
“You were passed out,” he explained. “Baldwin told me he brought Zach in. He — He’s Patricia’s brother. He was Patricia’s brother.”
“Your assistant? The one who got all of that blood for you and...”
Vinnie nodded. “She was the one who suggested we call in a PR company.”
With her dying text...
“Bloody hell, Vin…” I groaned and leaned against the doorframe. “Did you know she had a brother?”
He shrugged. “I knew she had a cat. Should I watch my back for a vengeful cat, too? How the hell was I supposed to know? It’s not like I was planning for all this to happen.”
“Trust you not to think any farther ahead than your own needs,” I snapped before I could stop myself. My fingers tightened on my phone. If I’d been any angrier, I would have shattered the damn thing. “This isn’t helping anything.”
Vinnie snorted and took a sip from his straw. If I hadn’t known he was drinking pigs’ blood, I would have laughed at him. It was impossible to take him seriously when he was sucking on a straw.
I took a breath to focus my thoughts. “I have to talk to Baldwin… well, not me. But someone at Pisces will have to talk to him. But after the press conference. I want to see how he reacts. I also want to find out about his connection to that—”
To that undead bitch in the red dress.
“— to that woman.”
“Nice save.”
“Shut up. I need to think.”
All at once, he was right in front of me. I hadn’t even seen him move. His hand was on my jaw and his fingers dug into my skin in a painful, yet maddeningly comforting and possessive way.
“You spend too much time thinking,” he murmured.
“That’s the only reason we’re alive,” I said through gritted teeth.
He smiled, and I could see the gleam of his teeth. A shiver ran down my spine at the thought of those teeth grazing over my skin. “I seem to remember it was me who hauled you out of that chimney.”
“Details.”
“But you’ve always been all about the details, Tues,” he whispered.
My eyes drifted closed. I hated him. I still loved him. I was a conflicted mess. I could have kicked him in the face and left him writhing on the floor and felt justified… Complete shitshow.
“Things have changed.”
I choked on the words.
“Have they?”
He bent forward and brushed his lips over the sensitive skin of my throat, and I bit my lip to keep from moaning. Fangy bastard. All I could think about was what it would feel like if he bit down —
My hands came up to touch his chest. Fingers that had always searched for a steady heartbeat now found nothing… just a solid wall of muscle with nothing underneath. We used to lay there after sex reveling in the way our hearts beat in synch. But now — Now there was nothing.
Just my heart hammering against my ribs. Nothing else.
“They have,” I said bitterly as I pushed him away. “I have work to do. You said a name — what was it again?”
Vinnie froze, but then he released his hold on my jaw and stepped back.
Good. I didn’t need any more… complications.
“Apogee.”
Oh, my god. Now that I was thinking more clearly, I was just irritated.
“That is definitely not a name. Dear god, I didn’t think you were that dumb.”
Vinnie shook his head. “How the hell am I supposed to know?”
“I dunno… Google? It’s not fucking hard, Vin.”
He shrugged, and I rolled my eyes. Just like always.
“You and your S.A.T. words.”
“Good to know you’re still jealous.”
“I’m jealous of a lot of things, Tues.”
I laughed, but it sounded more awkward than it should have. This was my worst nightmare. Literally the worst.
I tapped on my phone to bring up my boss’ number and glanced at Vinnie. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. It made me feel like I was a meal he was waiting to devour. Not happening. Not now. Not ever.
Well… maybe. No. Bad Tuesday. Back away.
“I have to make a call. It’s almost dawn—”
“And I should go to sleep, I know,” Vinnie said. He turned toward the covered windows. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I’ve been okay for the last five years. I think I’ll last a few more hours.”
I couldn’t resist getting in another shot, and I smiled when he winced. This was going to have legs, and he would have to get used to the fact that he couldn’t charm his way out of it.
I didn’t know what I needed from him. But penance like this was a start.
It was easier to walk out of the room that time. The door slammed shut behind me, and it galvanized my will. I needed to call my boss. Carlyn would know what to do.
She picked up the call on the second ring. In my five years at Pisces, she’d never done that.
“Tuesday — what do you have for me?”
“A lead,” I said firmly. “Baldwin was meeting with a person of interest right after the explosion. I have photos. We’re going to need a meeting with him to find out where his head’s at.”
Carlyn was silent for a moment. But it was just a moment. “Are you going to provide a script?”
“Oh, hell yeah. That bastard has some explaining to do.”
Carlyn chuckled. “So, you’re telling me this is going to be interesting?”
“Maybe don’t assign an intern to it, that’s all I’m going to say right now,” I said with a smile I knew Carlyn could hear.
“I’ll do it myself. Sounds like fun.”
“I’ll have something for you in a few hours.”
“Do you ever sleep, Matson?”
I glanced back at the closed door behind me. “Not lately.”
“That’s what I thought. Check in with those scripts in a few hours and we’ll talk about coordinating a supply pick up.”
“You got it.”
I ended the call with a fresh surge of determination. I had scripts to write, and a grocery list to plan. This could actually work…
Now I just needed Vinnie to keep his shit together.
That might prove more difficult to manage.
16
VINNIE
I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do with myself, or with anything Tuesday had said.
Whatever human part of me remained throbbed with need for her. And a frustrated need to pun
ch a hole through a wall.
But that was different.
I pulled back the curtain and frowned at the stubbornly pale silver light of the crescent moon that peeped out from behind a cloud bank. Dawn was coming with steady determination, and it wouldn’t go to bed… just like me. Strangling every last second from the sunlight.
We were defiant to the end, the moon and I.
Lit by both the night and the approaching day, a broken picnic table just outside my window leaned drunkenly on the dark lawn. I knew three photographers who would have done nefarious things to get access to this place for a photoshoot.
The thought brought a smirk to my lips.
Maybe I did that too much.
If Tuesday’s primary goal had been to find some place truly off the grid for us to hide, she had definitely been successful. Dead leaves rustled along the rough-hewn planks of the porch and gave the whole place an eerily unnecessary horror-movie vibe.
Unlike Seattle, the light pollution was non-existent out here in the woods. Dawn battled with the darkness in dramatic tones and I could have wasted countless hours watching it if it didn’t put me at risk of a nasty sunburn...
There was no more comforting buzz of city traffic, or the sound of gentle waves lapping at the shore just outside my boathouse… There was nothing out here. It was just trees, wind, trees, and more trees.
There was no mystery to what I was feeling at that moment.
I hated it here.
Tuesday said that she found it peaceful, but I sure as hell didn’t.
There was something menacing about being this far away from civilization. I had never thought that I needed the reassurance of a nosy neighbor within shouting distance, or the easy accessibility of a 7-11 for a ‘just in case’ ketchup emergency… but I did.
I really, really, did.
The tension between Tuesday and me had risen to almost nuclear levels, but neither one of us had the balls to address it or do anything about it.
If it was possible to drown in confusing, emotional turmoil, we’d both be dead. Well. I was already technically dead, but I’d definitely be dead all over again.
