be in the position he’s in. He’s hurting.” That was me being compassionate. The next bit was me being me. “And he also has an in with the enemy.”
Derek thought about that. “You want me to use my friend to get to the enemy vamp.”
“If he’s willing.”
“And if he’s not?”
“Then he gets put on ice until this is over with,” I said. “And his sister’s fancy new lawyer drops her case for nonpayment. He’ll deal. He has amends to make and trust to rebuild.”
“You think I’ll keep him around after this?”
I smiled, but it wasn’t a pretty smile. “I hope you kick his ass and turn him over to the cops. People died on your watch, because of him. But I’ll agree that it’s your call.”
Derek dropped his head, then looked up at me under his brows. “I was hoping you’d say something stupid so I could hit you.”
I chuckled. “Sorry to disoblige. But I need you healthy and not laid up in the hospital.”
An unwilling smiled pulled at his mouth. “Someday we’re gonna fight, Princess. For real.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big words from the tough guy. So, how do you want to play this?”
“Straight up,” Derek said. “Him and me. We’ll talk. Then I’ll kick the crap outta him. And then we’ll use his contacts to draw out our fanghead.”
“Works for me. Do all the talking where there isn’t any electronic surveillance that could be compromised. Let me know when you want me.”
Later that afternoon, Derek called. “We’re coming over, Injun Princess.”
I was waiting in the kitchen when their car pulled up and they knocked on the front door. “Come in,” I called. Angel and Derek walked in, Angel in front. He had a puffy lip and the beginnings of a black eye. Angel stood in front of me, not meeting my eyes. “Teeth?” I asked.
Angel touched his lip. “A few a little loose.”
“You deserve that and more. People died because of you. But now you’ve got something we want. A connection. If you work with us, I’m happy to tell no one, even Leo, even your buddies, about your little indiscretion. You want to start on the road to recovery or be locked up?”
Angel glanced back at Derek, who looked none the worse for wear. Apparently Angel hadn’t put up much of a fight. “Recovery.” He shook his head, but not in disagreement, more like resignation, and drew to attention. “Hi. I’m Joran Stevens and I’m a fuckup.”
Kid yelled from upstairs, “Watch your language. There’s a lady present.” Derek and Angel both laughed, whether at the timing or idea that I might be called a lady, I didn’t know.
Alex and Angel were working out the basics of a scheme to draw out the unknown subject who had turned him. The condition of his face was the ace in the hole of the plan. Angel typed in a text on his phone, showed the text to us, and hit SEND. I took his cell back to my bedroom. There was no way to detect if someone was listening in through the phones, so we had to keep the cells we were known to use in one room together. Derek had purchased a dozen throwaways and some other low-tech electronics for us to use until this was all over. Luckily, I had five thousand in cash on hand—my runaway money, I hadn’t used, so if someone was keeping tabs on credit usage, they couldn’t see what we had bought or done.
“Now what?” Angel asked.
“Now we wait,” Alex said.
“And eat,” I said. “I’ve ordered pizza.” Alex grinned like the teenaged boy he was.
Halfway through the pizza, we heard the tone Angel had assigned for the mystery man. The tone came over the baby monitor we had set up on the phones in my bedroom.
Derek raced in and grabbed the cell, showing Angel’s text to the small group. The text said “Moonwalk bench 2pm.”
Which made no sense to me whatsoever, but the others seemed to understand.
When he came back to the kitchen, after putting the phone back in my room, Derek said, “We’re on.” At my obvious confusion, he said, “The Moonwalk is the scenic boardwalk along the Mississippi.” When my confusion didn’t abate, he said, “It’s called that after Moon Landrieu, a former mayor.”
It was perhaps telling that my first thought was the Moonwalk was the place where I’d taken Rick down on our first sort-of date. “Ducky,” I said. I hadn’t been in New Orleans long, but it already had its share of painful memories. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Landed on a Limo Floor
Angel asked his handler to meet him to pass along some hard copies of the location of the New Orleans vamps’ lairs that Angel claimed he had stolen from me. He asked for five thousand dollars for the pages, not such a high number that the anonymous person might have to go to a higher-up for approval, and not so low that the handler would think the pages could wait. The handler took the bait, which told us something about him. He had some autonomy, he had ready access to funds, and, because it was still daylight, he wasn’t a vamp, which made our plan much less dangerous and much more feasible. If he showed.
Minutes before we left the house, I dialed a number I hadn’t called recently. “NOPD, Jodi Richoux,” she answered.
Jodi was my contact with the New Orleans Police Department’s supernatural crimes unit, in charge of all things paranormal and woo-woo. We were friends of a sort, but like most of my pals, we were going through a tough patch. My job was hard on friends. Or I was. “I might have a package for you soon.”
“Jane Yellowrock. Why should I accept anything you throw my way?”
“Because you want to avert a vamp war in your town and I don’t have a place to store a high-ranking enemy blood-sucker.”
“Yeah.”
I filled her in, and when I was done, Jodi said, “I wish I’d never laid eyes on you, Yellowrock,” and hung up the phone.
We left the house at different times, took three separate vehicles, and arrived at the rendezvous site from different directions. I was the most conspicuous of us—six-foot-tall Cherokee women are not common even in a city where racial and ethnic markers were all over the place—so I stayed in the van that Derek and his crew used for security gigs. I didn’t like being out of the action, but I knew the others could handle a human.
Only, the handler didn’t show. A woman did. And Angel didn’t know her. As she approached, his spine straightened and his fingers curled under, the telltale actions of a trained fighter facing the unknown. I watched through the smoked windows as she approached Angel Tit, who was sitting on a bench, away from the tourists, on the Moonwalk. She was tiny, efficient, and brisk: all of five feet, business suit, rapid walk, and when Derek and Eli —both wearing ball caps with the brims pulled down low—raced in to take her, she put up a serviceable fight, though her defensive measures were no match for two guys trained by Uncle Sam. They picked her up, whisked her to the van, dumped her inside, secured her limbs with zip strips, taped her mouth shut with clear surgical tape, and flipped her over, all in the seconds it took us to pull sedately away from the curb. The woman, who was maybe forty-five and matronly, inspected the blade held under her nose, which was sucking breath so hard it whistled.
“Any lookouts, any witnesses?” I asked into the mic.
The three lookouts responded, “Clear Alpha.” “Clear Beta.” “Clear Delta.”
I opened the woman’s pocketbook to find a .22 with an illegal suppressor. The end of the barrel was attached to the end of the purse with a swiveling coupler like nothing I’d ever seen before. I maneuvered the gun. It didn’t come lose. The .22 was hooked in, but attached in such a way that she couldn’t have gotten her hand around the grip. Which was just plain weird. The only other things in the bottom of the purse were an extra magazine, a pair of
