Skin Trade

“No.”

Shaw frowned at him. “What then? What is she that good at? And if you say fucking, I’m going to be pissed.”

“Killing,” Edward said.

“What?” Shaw said.

“You asked what she’s good at. I answered the question.”

Shaw looked at me up and down, not in a sexual way but like he was trying to see what Edward was talking about. “You really that good at killing?”

“I try to be a good cop. I try to be a good little soldier and follow orders up to a point. But in the end I’m not really a cop, or a soldier. I am a legally sanctioned murderer. I am the Executioner.”

“I’ve never heard another marshal admit that they were a murderer.”

“Technically, it’s legal, but I hunt citizens of these United States with the intent of killing them. I have decapitated and torn the hearts out of more people than most serial killers. You want to pretty it up, give me a warrant, great, but I know what I do for a living, Sheriff. I know what I am, and I’m really, really good at it.”

“Anyone better?” he asked.

I glanced at Edward. “Only one.”

Shaw glanced at Edward and back to me. “I guess I’m lucky to have you both, then,” though his voice made sure he was thick on the sarcasm.

“You are lucky to have us,” I said, and I went for the door. Edward trailed me and held keys out. “I got us a car, so we’ll have some privacy.”

“Good,” I said.

“Oh, and I didn’t mention Olaf just for kicks.”

I stopped in the hallway and looked at him. “You don’t mean…”

“Marshal Otto Jeffries is one of the western state marshals. He was on the ground when I got here.”

Olaf was a real serial killer. But he, like the BTK killer, could control his urges to a point. He’d never done his worst in this country, to my or Edward’s knowledge. We couldn’t prove anything, but I knew what he was, and he knew I knew it, and he liked that I knew it.

It was hunting vampires with me that had given Olaf the idea that he could become a marshal and do his little serial killer routine legally. There’s no set way to take the heart and head of a vampire. You’re just supposed to do it. Once the killing starts, there are no rules to protect the vampire. None. They are at the mercy of their executioner. One of my goals in life was never, ever, to be at Olaf’s mercy.

11

EDWARD HAD MANAGED to get us a big SUV. It was black and looked vaguely menacing. I knew he hadn’t asked for the color, but it was perfectly appropriate. I approved of the car, because if we had to go out into the desert or even off road, it would still do.

“When did you have time to rent a car?” I asked.

“I was the first one they interrogated. I knew it would take them a while to interrogate three other U.S. Marshals. I knew I had time.”

I stopped in midstep. “Did you say three other U.S. Marshals?”

He turned and nodded at me. “I did.” He almost smiled, which meant he was hiding something from me. Edward loved being mysterious. My having seen his family and knowing most of his secret identity hadn’t cured him of the habit. It just made it harder for him to find opportunities to surprise me.

“Who’s number four?” I asked.

He raised his hand. It was a gesture I’d seen him use in the field when he was dealing with people with enough training to know the hand signals. It was the come-ahead gesture.

There was a small cluster of police near the back of the pinkish-tan building. I’d noticed them, in that cursory way you begin to notice everything in our business: people, palm trees, heat, sunshine. Olaf stood up, and he was just suddenly there. He was half a head taller than all but one of them. Had he been slumping? But it was more than that; he was also wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans tucked into black boots. He had a black leather jacket thrown over one arm, revealing bare muscular arms. He had more color to his skin than the last time I’d seen him, as if he’d been out in the sun more, but Olaf, like me, just didn’t tan. Most people with a lot of German in their background have trouble tanning.

His head was still completely shaved, so that his black eyebrows stood out on his face in stark contrast. He had a shadow of a beard along his jawline, because he was one of those men who needed to shave twice a day to be truly clean shaven. Made me wonder if he shaved his head or was bald. It had never occurred to me before.

The head, the clothes, the height; it all made him stand out in the group of cops like a wolf among sheep, or a Goth among uniforms. But I’d missed him completely.

Edward could do that, too. That invisible-in-plain-sight shit. I watched Olaf walk toward us, and admitted that for such a large man he moved gracefully, but it was the grace of muscle and violence contained.

The violence was helped along with the shoulder holster, with its H amp;K P2000 and extra magazines on the other side of the straps. Last time he’d carried his backup gun at the small of his back; I’d check later. There was a knife bigger than my forearm at his side, tied down to his thigh. Most vampire hunters carried blades.

He walked toward me all dark and menacing, then he smiled. It wasn’t a friend smile. It was a boyfriend smile. No, more than that. It was the smile a man gives to a woman he’s had sex with, good sex, and he’s hoping to have it again. Olaf had not earned that smile.

“Anita,” he said, and again there was too much emotion when he said my name.

I had to pause and say his fake name: “Otto.”

He kept coming until he loomed over both Edward and me. Of course, Olaf was enough over six feet that seven was his next stop, so he loomed over damn near anyone.

He offered me his hand. In the two times I’d met him, had he ever offered to shake hands with me? I had to think, but no, he didn’t shake hands with women. But there he was offering his hand, with that too-familiar smile fading a little around the edges, but still there.

The smile made me not want to touch him. But Olaf’s pathological hatred toward women made the offer of a handshake a big deal. It meant he thought I was worth it. Besides, we were going to have to work together where police could see us. I did not want to start the hunt with him mad at me.

I took his hand.

He wrapped his big hand around mine, then put his other hand higher up my arm. Some men do that, I’ve never been sure why, but this time I knew why.

I pulled to move away. I couldn’t help it. He tightened his grip, let me know he had me, or that it would be a fight to get away. Just an instant of it, a moment, but it was enough to remind me of the last time we’d met.

Olaf and I had been the ones to take the hearts out of the vampires last time we hunted. They were old and powerful, so you don’t just stake the heart. You cut it out of the chest cavity and destroy it with fire later.

I’d gotten the heart tangled somehow on some bit of viscera in the body. He’d offered to help, and I’d accepted. I’d forgotten what he was.

He slid his hand inside the hole I’d made, so that his arm slid up alongside mine in the chest cavity. It wasn’t until his hand cupped mine, pressing both our hands into the still-warm heart, that I looked at him. We were both leaning over the body, our faces inches apart, with our arms up the much longer torso of the male. He looked at me over the body, our hands around the heart, blood everywhere. He looked at me as if it were a candlelit dinner and I was wearing nice lingerie.

He’d kept his free hand on my arm, controlling how slowly we eased out of the chest cavity. He made it last, and he stared at my face while we did it. For the last few inches of arm he looked down at the wound and not at my face. He watched our arms emerge from the bloody hole just under the sternum. He kept his hand on my arm and forced our hands upward, so that for a moment we held the heart together, and he looked at me over the