Assassins Bite

by Mary Hughes

  Chapter Four

  I slapped my hand around on my nightstand, eventually landing on something phone-shaped, clapped a packet of travel tissues to my ear, found the actual phone and thumbed it live. “’Lo?”

  A powerful, dark-velvet voice a lot like Elena’s husband Bo Strongwell echoed over the line. “You will forget tonight’s attack. You will forget everything about vampires. You will remember the mugging, and that you were successful apprehending the perpetrators.”

  “’Kay.” I hung up, puzzled briefly why the echo voice didn’t work on me, shrugged and went back to sleep.

  The next evening I was getting ready for work, wondering if I had time to drop by Dawn Truck Lines to check out the intriguing…I mean annoying Aiden Blackthorne to see if he had given his statement or at least paid his ticket, when Jonesy phoned. “Ruffles. The chief asked me to call you.”

  “My duty uniform came in?” I’d ordered all my uniforms early, worried that the Ruffles Effect would suck the dress uniform we absolutely had to have for class pictures into the black hole of oops. In true Ruffles form the heavy wool actually arrived early and in my size. Well, size-ish. But the duty clothes were size twenty instead of two. I sent those back and got pants only. Then somehow I got a cross shipment with RedHot Costumes consisting of short-shorts and suspenders with two strategically placed badges. I shipped them all back and was still waiting for something I could actually wear.

  “Not your uniform. He’s putting you on special assignment. You’re being loaned out to another department.”

  “I am?” My voice squeaked and I thought, Hell. Blackthorne’s right. I am a mouse. I consciously pitched my words lower. “What department? Vice? Narc?”

  “Not Redfox Village. I don’t have details, just a place and a name. Meiers Corners. Ask for Elena Strongwell.”

  The exact place I wanted to work with my whole heart? Was it possible things were going spectacularly right for a change? “Okay. Thanks.” I hit call end, my palms already slicking up with excitement and anxiety. I was going to work for my hero. All speculations of sexy trucker/assassin dropped from my head in the wake of one thought—I was going to work my ass off to impress Elena.

  Which meant looking my best. I’d already showered but this called for the heavy-duty clean promised by scouring product ads with eye-splitting sparkles and soul-cringing messes wiped miraculously away.

  I put on an extra swipe of deodorant. While it dried, I sewed buttons on the shirt to replace the ones Blackthorne ripped off last night when he kissed me with his hot mouth, his strong hands gearing up for more… My fingers were trembling and I didn’t sew those buttons on very well. I could’ve asked the LLAMA Kamikaze Needle Champion to do it, but then I’d have to parry awkward motherly questions. Oh well, the jacket covered my botched needlework.

  Dressed again and as spiffy as I could be in the badly cut wool uniform—the pants flossed me in the crotch and the Ike-style jacket rode up my ribs—I exited the familial abode on East Fourth and Roosevelt. At least I’d found my gun and was properly armed.

  I hit pavement, waving to our neighbor, Mrs. Schmeling, out tending her walkway lights. Mrs. Schmeling’s daughter was Nixie Schmeling Emerson, best friend to my hero Elena. A punk rock musician, Nixie was one of the few women actually shorter than me at five feet even.

  Mrs. Schmeling waved back. “Hello, Sun-Hee. Where are your hat and gloves?”

  I’m twenty-two and Nixie is twenty-seven, but to Mrs. Schmeling we’ll forever be eight-year-olds who can’t dress ourselves. Nixie pretends to not hear but I prefer a more straightforward approach. “I left them at school, Mrs. Schmeling.” Hey, who am I to question her version of reality?

  “You should have your mother pin them to your jacket,” she said sagely then laughed. “What am I saying? You’re an adult. You should pin them to your own jacket.”

  I smiled and nodded. Bypassing my car, I hoofed south on Fourth. Everyone walks in the Corners—leftover from the days when you had a choice of your feet or the family mastodon.

  At Adams I turned west. I passed Von Bier’s specialty tap—the specialties were the beers; taps were as common as corners in our fair city—and Settler’s Square with its park benches, Oom-pa-pah band shell and municipal fountain/wading pool. I crossed the Meiers River, and before ten thirty, arrived at the front steps of the cop shop.

  Where I stopped and gazed up at the inspiring stone edifice. I wanted to work here so badly. Suppressing a brief urge to genuflect, I put one foot on the first step.

  With a crash of doors, my brother Dirk barreled out the front, unbuttoned suit coat flapping. Strapped around his middle was a chunky utility belt bearing white surgical tape, tubes of ointment and other medical supplies—like Batnurse. Even his gun holster, which he always wore despite never carrying a handgun, contained scissors.

  Then I saw what he held in his hand.

  He waved a paper cup, splashing dark liquid. “It’s a volcano! Run. Save yourselves!”

  He leaped down the stairs, headed straight for me.

  I dodged left—so of course he swerved to his right. He was like a deer that way; though I loved him to pieces, he didn’t have the smarts God gave a turnip. He bashed into me full-on. The cup smashed between us. Heat spread over my breasts, almost pleasant at first. The eye-opening sting of coffee hit my nose.

  “Dirk, what did we talk about? No running with hot beverages.” I glanced down. The dark blue wool absorbed liquid in a blotch. Wonderful. I’d meet my hero and try to impress her with Lake Splotch on my once-neat uniform. Could it get any worse?

  Never ask that.

  The coffee seeped through to my shirt. Pleasantly warm escalated to burning hot, worse because the wool held it in against my skin. I yowled and leaped back.

  Dirk dropped the crushed cup and grabbed my arms. Somehow the tsunami of coffee had missed his rumpled suit entirely. “It’s an inferno, run!”

  That was the shortest utterance ever made by my brother, but I was more interested in getting the pain off me. His grip made using my hands impossible. I wriggled. “Dirk, let go!”

  “But Sunny, you have to run. There’s spurting black lava everywhere…”

  He’d keep talking until he ran out of breath, and since Rocky Hrbek taught him circular breathing, that meant never. I had to break his hold. I wove one arm over and under his two, fisted my hands together and twisted out of his grip. Breathing fast and shallow and practically dancing with pain, I popped brass buttons with trembling fingers. I flung off my jacket as soon as it was open and plucked my shirt away from my burning skin. Newly sewn buttons broke off and plinked onto the pavement. The shirt gaped, revealing several square inches of red flesh, but at least the screaming pain receded to eye-watering as cool air rushed in. I blinked rapidly, refusing to cry.

  Dirk peered around my shoulder. “You’re burned! But don’t worry—I took first aid. We practiced this exact situation. I’ll save you.” He unholstered his scissors and wielded them on my poor shirt. “Well, not this exact situation, exactly, because it was a restaurant scenario and a burst coffeepot. And not practiced, exactly, because it was a computer-based course and I really only got to click a mouse. But I carry all the things I need like the scissors and tape and bandages and—”

  “Aw, sheissdoodle.” The husky alto came from the station.

  I looked up. At the top of the stairs was five nine of lean, long cop, topped by shoulder-blade length black curls as feisty as she was. Detective Elena Strongwell.

  “Hey, Sun-Hee. Let’s get you inside and cleaned up.” She came down the stairs with a grace borne of strength. “Dirk, go get some ice.”

  “But Detective Ma’am. What about the erupting inferno?”

  “It’s an espresso machine, Dirk. It only does that if you overfill it and then don’t lock the basket in.”

  “Ohhh.” He grinned. “Then it’s no
t a disaster and we don’t have to run?”

  “You have to run, to get some ice for your sister’s burn before pain makes her draw her weapon to shoot you.”

  “Yes sir, Detective Ma’am sir.” He saluted, putting a dent in his forehead, and staggered a moment before holstering his scissors and clumping back inside.

  “Burns suck.” Elena retrieved my jacket, gathered me in one capable arm and ushered me into the cop shop. Her brown eyes on me were sharp yet compassionate. “Let’s get you treated ASAP.”

  “Thanks.” It came out kind of gaspy. Burns do suck.

  She took me past the front desk into a room outfitted as an infirmary. Dirk followed a moment later with the ice. As Elena wrapped it in a towel, I peeled out of my stained shirt, managing to pop off two more buttons besides the ones I’d lost outside.

  Red drips of blood decorated the white cotton. Dirk had sliced my skin a couple times cutting the shirt open.

  I was such a Ruffles. I couldn’t even walk up a set of stairs without sustaining massive injury. I felt about two feet tall in front of Elena.

  Then she pressed the ice-filled towel to my burned skin and there was only bliss. I closed my eyes and sighed.

  “Detective Ma’am.” Dirk’s muddy rasp opened my eyes. “Did you want a report on the explosive power of an espresso machine?”

  “Later, Dirk.”

  “Then did you want an update on the case of the poor kitty who climbed the tree and couldn’t get down until I helped him by climbing up after him and breaking the branch he was on with my weight?”

  Elena’s mouth twitched. “Um…why don’t you go write that up?”

  “I already did.” He sat in a chair, settling in as if he’d be there a good long while. “Maybe I should sing for you?”

  Her eyes closed at that, along with the telltale muscle flinch that meant she was rolling them.

  My brother could be all kinds of persistent, as in, he could try the composure of St. Patience N. Durance. One way to derail that was shout louder, but there were other techniques.

  I stepped in. “Dirk. You know the picture of the Chief of Police in the detectives’ area?”

  “You mean Uncle John?” Dirk’s little mustache twitched.

  Yes, our mother’s brother was Chief of Police in Meiers Corners. But he didn’t treat us any differently from the rest of the cops. Well, except for keeping Dirk’s gun locked in a safe. The way my luck was going, I wondered how long it would be before mine joined it. “His picture is crooked.”

  “Oh!” Dirk shot to his feet. “I should fix that.”

  He raced out the door. Elena locked it behind him. “That was quick thinking.”

  “That was years of practice.”

  “Still, I’m impressed. Better?” She nodded at my bare chest.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “Good. I wanted to speak to you alone. I have a job for you. But first I need to know more about you.” She paused. “Tell me about your family.”

  My cheeks heated. I’m a Ruffles. An accident looking for a spot marked Planet Earth. I tried to cover my embarrassment with words. “You work with my brother. You go to Good Shepherd, so you know Mom. You know about my family.”

  “Yeah, but…” She waved one hand and her face colored. Flustered? Since Elena was deadly with both her gun and her fists and has been known to carry a rocket launcher, she didn’t fluster easily.

  Which meant she was asking a question she didn’t want to ask, like whether I was a Ruffles by adoption or genetics. I sighed. I should have seen this coming.

  “Sorry.” She grimaced. “You’ll think I’m a prejudiced boob.”

  “No, I understand.” Coming from half-Irish, half-Latina Elena, I was certain it wasn’t prejudice that I was half-Korean, half-German. It was fear that I was all Ruffles. “It’s both. Mom adopted me, but I’m also her second cousin.”

  The full story was, Mom’s cousin, Hans Ruffles, had visited the Seoul Olympics in ’88, met a young teacher named Seo-yeon, married her and moved in with her. I came along a couple years later. She died in childbirth. My father brought me home to the States, then with true Ruffles timing, died too. But Elena didn’t need to hear all that.

  Her cheeks went bright red. “None of my business, really.”

  “It’s okay. I’m sure it’s hard enough having Dirk here. Two of us? Man the battle stations.”

  She smiled. “Or at least staple down anything breakable.”

  “Or stainable.” I fingered my shirt before setting it on a countertop. “Mom has stock in Cheapo FabricGuard. So. Let me ask an embarrassing question in return. Since Dirk’s already here, why ask for me?” I tossed it off like nothing, but I was really curious.

  “Honestly, because of last night. Tell me what happened, from the beginning.”

  I began to get a suspicion about why I was really here, but I told her about the attack, making sure to use phrases like “extra-long canines” and “seemed to suck” instead of fangs and vampires. Even so, her expression darkened the longer I talked.

  So when I got to Blackthorne, I hesitated. “I know this sounds impossible, but after those three unnaturally strong guys completely overwhelmed my partner and me, a man came to our rescue.”

  “A man?” She stared at me. “You remember one single guy fighting off the, um, sucky guys?”

  That strange emphasis on remember made no sense, so I said, “Yeah, incredible, right? He didn’t even have a gun. Although he did have a…” I almost said sword but, though I’d blown my credibility or at least my dignity all to hell with the coffee mess and the Ruffles genes and the vampire implications, I was still trying to impress her. “…an extra-long switchblade. Probably illegal.”

  “So you arrested him?”

  I winced. “No. Everything happened so fast. By the time things settled, he’d hidden the blade. I did question him. I got his name and occupation. Aiden Blackthorne, trucker with Dawn Truck Lines here in town.” Sudden panic seized me—I had only his word for that. What if he’d lied about DTL?

  But to my relief, Elena only nodded. “Blackthorne reported it.”

  “To you? Why? It happened in Redfox Village, not here.”

  Her eyes flicked away. “We have a special investigative division here. A regional center for inquiry into these sorts of things.”

  “What sort of ‘things’?”

  She hesitated a fraction of a second before saying smoothly, “Unexplained explosions.”

  But that flick of the eyes, that hesitation told me she was lying. Somehow I knew she really meant the whole fangy bloodsucking mess. “Tell me straight, Elena. After last night I think I deserve to know. Are you talking about vamp—”

  The shattering of wood interrupted me, the door bursting from its hinges. Elena jumped to her feet, gun drawn. Belatedly I fumbled mine out. A man rushed in, all tall dark muscle.

  Aiden Blackthorne.

  He stood, fists clenched, nostrils white as his magnificent chest heaved. “I smelled blood.” His gaze nailed me. “Are you all right?”

  He looked so heroic my heart burst into song, my words dried up and I stood there like a radish. I did manage to nod. Inanely I said, “Hello, Blackthorne.”

  He blinked, his tell for extreme surprise, then relaxed ever so slightly. The corners of his mouth tilted, flirting with a smile so sexy it burned my brain.

  “Hello, Sunny. Shirtless again?”

  Chapter Five

  “Blackthorne?” Elena’s gaze narrowed. “Why are you here?”

  Thank goodness she didn’t pick up on the “shirtless again” comment.

  Blackthorne glided into the small room, filling it with danger and raw masculinity. “Simply passing by. I saw signs of violence outside and came inside to check it out.”

  “As you can see, everything’s handled.” Her implied
dismissal was clear.

  His feet remained planted. His head swiveled toward me. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Mostly. It burned but I’m better now.” I lifted the towel to show him.

  He hissed. I flinched, thinking he was going to swoop down on me jugular-first, but he checked himself. Not easily, because his fists were clenching and that lovely muscle in his jaw worked hard. “Who did that to you? I’ll kill him.”

  My mouth dropped open. He was boiling up vampire because he cared. Touched, I nearly answered my idiot sibling when it occurred to me “kill him”, for an assassin, might not be hyperbole. “It was an accident.”

  “Those cuts aren’t accidental.” His tone promised pain before the killing. “I demand to know—”

  “Blackthorne.” Elena’s tone, cutting in, was cop flat. “Your fly is open.”

  I admit it. I looked. Disappointingly, it wasn’t.

  “I don’t care.” His canines flashed a little long and I realized it was a euphemism for his vampire showing. “I want to know the name of this heinous miscreant. Sunny. Name. Now.”

  “Umm…” I glanced at my chest, then into his eyes, which were shading a distinct red. “Honest, it’s no big deal. He was cutting me out of my shirt to do first aid on the burn.”

  Elena gestured toward the door. “So now that that protector instinct of yours is satisfied, you can leave.” She eyed the splintered jamb. “Wish you’d knocked. Well, what are you waiting for, Blackthorne? Shoo.”

  He raised one black brow but finally glided out of the room.

  She shook her head. “Let’s find another place to talk.”

  I grabbed my jacket and blouse and clutched them over the ice-filled towel to preserve my modesty. “I wish I could do that.”

  “What?” She ushered me through the broken jamb and down the hall.

  “Give an order and make it stick. I haven’t quite mastered the proper gravitas. I hoped the uniform would do it.”

  “It does, for most people. Blackthorne’s not most people.” She led me to a small office filled nearly wall-to-wall with desk, the tombstone-size name plaque reading Capt. Titus.