Much like he’d conducted his professional life, but with astronomically higher stakes.
World, slow down, he thought. If he started doubting himself now, he was lost. He and a whole lot of other people.
“Sun’s all the way up,” Freddie said.
Paul burrowed deeper still into his dirt and pine needle nest and glanced at the street a hundred yards away. “Think anyone can see us?”
Freddie shook his head, pine needles falling from his hair. “No, but we’ll know for sure in the next few minutes,” he said, grinning.
“We might be walking into a trap,” Paul admitted reluctantly.
“Yeah, I already thought about that.” Freddie said after half a minute.
It made Paul wonder what the other man was doing with him if his thoughts ran in that direction.
“However,” said Freddie after another long moment, “I remember what you said happened when you and Todd and the others hit the apartment over the saloon.”
“You mean when Jamey Weeks was killed?” Paul asked, bitterly. Yet another victim of his miscalculations.
“Yeah, but not that part. That part about how you took them by surprise. They weren’t exactly laying in wait for you.”
Paul thought for a moment, his heart rate kicking up. “We planned that attack during the day. And according to Todd, his floating consciousness didn’t take off until after sundown.”
“The women made it out okay. It sure would have been easier taking them out while they were still in town. The daylighters didn’t get any help from mind-ghost Drake…whatever you want to call it. The cops got a late start and simply caught up with them on a remote highway.”
Paul smiled. “Daylighters. You’re picking up the language.”
Freddie rolled his eyes. But he was making sense. It seemed likely that the vampires could only train their minds to float like that during their active hours—after nightfall or just before awakening. A narrow window. If they were right about that, it would mean that it was unlikely that they’d fall into a trap in the next hour or so.
Unlikely. Not impossible.
“It’s like my profession,” Freddie was saying. “You learn everything you can about your client and his enemies. You learn to speak the language and even think like those you’re up against.”
“These things, they’re not clients or opposing legal counsel, and this is not a game,” Paul warned his Machiavellian friend. “You lose sight of that and you’re dead.”
Freddie brushed pine needles from his tight scalp. They were both starting to sweat a little now as the temperature rose. The workweek had begun, traffic trickling out of the long driveways up and down the block. Now they were exchanging one set of risks for another. The vampires were all beddy-bye, but everyone else was stirring. Dawn had broken. Paul felt exposed, he and Freddie ridiculously hunkered down under a pine tree like kids playing cowboys and Indians.
Freddie groaned. “Man, these needles are killing me.”
“Me, too.” Paul shifted until he found more loose soil than dry needle-nose needles and used his arms as a pillow.
“There she goes.”
Paul blinked. He knew by the sludgy response time of his thought-processing skills that he’d briefly fallen asleep. For seconds, maybe. Minutes? Adding to his general confusion was the odd buzzing sound he heard in the distance.
“What time…?” he asked groggily. Not sure why it mattered.
“You’ve been out about forty-five minutes,” Freddie said. “Wait for my signal.”
Forty-five minutes?
Paul’s accomplice was on his feet. Freddie slipped from under the trees, half walking, half running in a crouch, following the treeline toward the back of the house.
Paul could only think, What the…?
Time was moving too quickly. His heart hammered like when the phone rings in the middle of the night. He looked for danger everywhere: on the street out front, from the neighbor’s yard and coming at him from the lush lawn out front. Then he saw the garage door inching upward and began to understand.
It was the source of the droning sound he’d heard upon awakening: the automatic garage door opener doing its thing.
Paul eyed the route Freddie had taken toward the garage. He would have stayed in the shadows until he could sidle up to the attached garage on the near wing of the home without being seen.
And there he was.
Paul watched his friend grin and wave as the unwieldy door took its time grinding to its upper extremity. Paul scanned the street out front in the fear that the door was lifting for someone entering rather than leaving, but he saw no one. A moment later, a long gray Buick inched out amid the low rumble of its big, tuned engine.
Freddie stood at a rear corner of the garage, beside a tall, flowering bush on the near side of the driveway as it turned and cut horizontally to the twin overhead doors. Still grinning, he only stepped back, behind the leafy bush, when the car was most of the way out. Still, he was only partially concealed, no more than four feet from the passenger side of the car.
Paul stopped breathing. He silently cursed his friend as he watched the woman back out. Yes, it was Tabitha Drake, her body twisted away from Freddie so she could look over her shoulder as she reversed out.
The Buick took maybe an hour and a half to creep down the drive. Seemed that long. Paul watched, horrified, as Freddie stepped out from behind the flowering bush and took his time sauntering into the garage the land-yacht Buick had barely cleared. If Tabitha Drake had used her rearview mirror rather than turning her whole body, she’d have seen him.
“But she didn’t,” Paul told himself with a quick, tension-draining laugh.
Freddie had disappeared into the garage and safely stowed himself away by the time the door began its slow descent. The Buick backed into the street and nosed out of view.
Paul stared at the lowered overhead door before remembering to breathe again. He came painfully to his feet, his stiffened muscles protesting. He glanced up and down the street before returning his attention to the silent garage.
The Drake property looked well protected from prying eyes, the perimeter evergreens thick and tall on both sides. He took a slow, casual stroll to the garage. Here, he could be spotted at a certain angle from the street and sidewalk out front. Paul could only hope that the hour wasn’t right for curious passersby or that his movement looked so blatant as to be beyond suspicion.
He stared at the garage door. Waited. Knocked softly. The tentative sort of sound when it’s presumed someone might be sleeping.
And someone might be.
He jumped at the sound, a faint hum that built into a low rumble as gear teeth found purchase and began to hoist the door on its track. Paul stepped back, ready for a quick exit if anything unexpected came out.
Behind the rising door, he saw a pair of sneaker-clad feet…creased jean legs…hips…torso…windbreaker…
“Ta dum.” Freddie stood in the center of the garage, arms spread like a victorious magician. “What do you think, man?”
He flicked a wall switch and Paul ducked under as the door started its slow descent.
“Okay, now what?” Paul rasped once they’d locked themselves in.
A mile-long Lincoln occupied the other stall, a John Deere riding mower along one wall. Yard tools hung from wall brackets. The floor was swept and clutter-free.
“You tell me. This is your show.”
“My plan,” Paul said, “was to break a window.”
“That’s one way,” said Freddie. “Mine, it’s in and out and we leave everybody guessing. They think we’re magic, can get in any time we want. Locks can’t hold us, can’t stop us.”
He was right. Paul mumbled an apology, but couldn’t stop himself from adding, “Course, your way goes in the crapper if that door’s locked.”
They stared at the heavy wooden door between the garage and the house.
“Would you lock it if you had an electric garage door in front of it
?” Freddie asked.
“It’s not what I’d do that matters.”
They stared at the door some more. Freddie snickered.
Paul turned. “What the…?”
“You’re about as eager to see what’s waiting for us in there as I am.”
That reminded Paul of the nearly empty backpack he’d lugged around for so long he’d nearly forgotten about it. He shrugged it off, lowered it to the concrete floor and unfastened the zipper. There were two objects in there, both swaddled in towels. He took out the larger object and carefully unwrapped it.
The two wordlessly examined the hatchet, first one and then the other hefting it, testing its one-handed grip.
Freddie said, “Is this the hatchet—?
“From yesterday? No.”
“Can I carry it?”
Paul nodded. “Yeah, sure. Means you have to be the first one in.” He hauled the backpack, even lighter now, back over his shoulder. “Ready?”
Freddie’s face tightened as Paul filed in behind him in front of the door. Freddie turned the knob.
Something on the other side pushed back.
Chapter Forty-Eight
It was turning into a bad morning even before the red and blue light lit up Todd’s rearview, reminding him all over again of that first time. Good ol’ Marty McConlon, he was nothing if not persistent.
Todd had climbed behind the wheel out of habit. He always drove, Joy’s job to keep the kids in back from starting fires or causing internal bleeding. Only this morning there were no kids to corral. Too much silence back there.
“Honey, we did the right thing,” he’d told Joy earlier, at the Highsmith mansion, his head pounding and nerves frayed.
It felt like he was hungover and over-caffeinated at the same time. And that was with the sun barely up. Should be interesting by midday.
He’d found a pair of sunglasses to keep the early morning rays out of his eyes and a fancy dress shirt of Highsmith’s with long sleeves and a collar he could button to the throat. Something, at least.
Joy had halfheartedly agreed that sending the kids away had made sense, as much as it hurt.
“I wish you’d gone with them,” Todd told her as they held hands at the breakfast table while, in the next room, Highsmith and his lawyer pal went over their crazy schemes again.
They’d held hands a lot lately. To Todd, it felt like they were clinging to each other for dear life.
She’d fiddled with a stainless steel napkin dispenser while replying. “I told you, if you stay, I stay.”
He’d never seen her so firm. So hard to deal with—but in a good way.
“Does it make any difference now that you know why I can’t leave?”
She shook her head unhesitatingly, eyes still fixed on a vintage napkin dispenser that probably cost a fortune just to give their million-dollar kitchen the look of a common diner. The sort of place Todd looked for out of desperate necessity when job-hunting with the family—and which Mr. Paul Highlife had never had cause to enter.
“No,” she said. “None.”
Besides, the cure to what ailed him was right here in the town if it was anywhere, he told her, trying to assure himself as much as her. It kept coming back to that. But she kept not making eye contact. He said, “It’s not like we can just waltz into some big-city hospital and say, ‘I’m turning into a vampire. Can you give me a shot or something?’ It’s not like there’s a vaccine, Joy.”
He’d tried to keep it light, but he could hear steel creeping into his voice. Sarcasm, not humor. He squeezed her hand, a gesture as close to an apology as he could muster.
“I’m glad you didn’t go,” he told her then, and meant it.
The Highsmith’s garage had felt so invitingly cool and dark that he’d wanted to just stay there, curl up, get himself forty winks. Instead, he’d grit his teeth—literally—and made himself exchange cool shelter for sinister sunlight.
The Lexus had too many buttons and knobs. Everything was electrical, simple tasks like adjusting the seats and outside mirrors and rolling down the windows turning into comedy routines with the wipers dry-wiping the windshield and a blast of hot air hitting him in the crotch. Not to mention the search for the garage door remote, which he eventually found on the visor. He cursed the car, cursed the town, the Highsmiths and everything else that came to mind while Joy, next to him, wore an expression that was about four seconds from tears.
Todd knew it was the deafening silence from the backseat affecting both of them. Little Todd should be giggling over silly Daddy and the wacky windshield wipers while Melanie and Crissie fight over whose turn it was to sit by the window.
Todd clutched Joy’s hand as they rolled out of the drive and headed down the street. They got as far as Middle View, no traffic in sight and a clear shot to where they had to be, when he said, as calmly as he could, “Maybe I should pull over for a few minutes.” Like they’d been driving half the day.
“You be more comfortable in back, hon?” Joy said, watching his face carefully.
Hell, he’d be more comfortable in the trunk, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. He fiddled with the sun visor. Like trying to stop an elephant with a flyswatter, but it gave his hand something to do.
A second later he said, “I think I’m going to be sick.”
The tires screeched—the rich guy’s tires, so he took a tiny measure of satisfaction in taking off a layer of rubber—as he hung a hard left across two empty lanes and barreled into a parking lot. Pizza Cavern, the sign said.
A cavern. Exactly what he needed.
The restaurant hadn’t opened yet, but a stand of willow trees offered a little life-saving shade in the back of the lot. There were a couple picnic tables back there in a dirt patch island in a field of weeds. Todd briefly wondered about people who’d picnic in a Pizza Cavern parking lot.
The shade cooled him down a little, made his lungs quit pumping fire. He chuckled, keeping the situation as light as possible. “Just let me rest a little. I figure we’ll make the Sundown by Thursday.”
He closed his eyes, let the slight morning breeze chill the film of sweat on his face. He crossed his arms over his chest and slumped low in his seat.
His mind’s eyes saw the way Denver and Jermaine had looked at him just before he’d sneaked his family out of the motel. Taking everyone would have advertised the fact that they were escaping, he told himself. But he punished himself with a mental image of Tonya Whittock, her wide hips, nervous smile and three motherless kids.
Shit.
“Honey?”
Maybe he’d said it out loud. But it wasn’t that, he saw when he caught her looking out the back window and tracked the cop car in the rearview.
“Uh oh,” he breathed.
Marty McConlon stepped out of the cruiser he’d slid up right behind them. He wore a big-ass grin as he approached the car. While reluctantly powering down the window, Todd noticed the cop was a solo act today. Looked like Barry had pulled a no-show.
“Hey, how you folks doing? Everything alright here?”
Todd nodded. “Yeah, fine.” Just as casual.
The soft cop stood behind the driver’s door and about four feet back, evidently not trusting the Dunbars any more than they did him. “You on your way to work and decide a pepperoni and double cheese might hit the spot?”
Todd’s hand in his lap strayed slowly to the kitchen knife stuck into his waistband, under his shirt. “We’re not going to work today. Like we told you before.”
“Oh, that’s right,” said McConlon, sounding genuinely interested.
The Lexus swayed slightly as the cop leaned his weight on the hood.
“Yeah, I remember now. That’s when I asked you and your buddies at the Sundown real nice-like to hand over your guns. You the one telling me to go ahead and try to take yours if I wanted it so bad? All the confusion yesterday morning, I can’t remember.”
Todd kept both hands fixed to the steering wheel and his eyes out the winds
hield. He wasn’t going to give the cop any excuses. Not just yet anyway. Out of the corner of an eye, he could see the soft belly up to his window twisting, shifting.
McConlon said, “Funny you driving this car. I mean, I get you this great job, you only punch in—what, once? Twice?—and make enough money to buy yourself a Lexus. God bless America, right?”
The sun was doing something funny. It had found an opening in the willow tree shroud and now it was making Todd’s skin tingle like before. It felt red and raw, the rivulets of sweat not cooling the flesh in the least.
Joy leaned over and said, “My husband’s not feeling well. That’s why we pulled over.”
Todd could hear the cop’s labored breathing on the back of his neck as he bent in for a better look.
“Hey,” he said cheerfully, “you really do look sick. What, you order bad anchovies on one of those Pizza Cavern pies?”
Todd’s grip on the wheel tightened.
McConlon took a step forward to stand alongside Todd, and then a step away. So he’d drawn even with him, but was more than a knife swipe out of range.
“Maybe I’ll have better luck this time asking you to turn over your weapons. Then I got some questions concerning your whereabouts yesterday afternoon. And while I’m at it, I might as well ask to see your registration for the Lexus.”
Todd still had the shotgun, but he’d stashed it in the trunk. He didn’t know what the state penalty was for driving around with a loaded sawed-off next to him, but he hadn’t wanted to chance it.
He shook his head. “I’m not carrying a weapon.”
From the corner of his eye, he could see one of the cop’s hands resting on the butt of his nine.
Conversationally, McConlon said, “I could take that as a refusal to give it up. Anything could happen if I think you’re going for a gun.”
Todd thought about Duke Gates, caught on a back road by Marty McConlon. With the Santana family and others. He swung his head almost lazily up toward the cop, making eye contact for the first time. Letting the sun burn him raw. “Bet you carry a throw-away for just such emergencies,” he said. Grinning through the fire.
Bloodthirst in Babylon Page 32
