“
“I’m afraid I can,” she said, feeling genuinely bad. If he really was Johnny, this was a huge inconvenience. However, the rules were the rules. As she had told him.
He tore the list out of her clipboard, ripping the top-left corner and startling her. “I don’t have a lot of stuff. I don’t even have my Elvis cookie jar anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, crossing her legs and wishing she had ordered herself a drink after all, though she never drank when she was working. “You do realize, of course, that you will not be able to enter your apartment while the investigation is ongoing.”
He stopped scanning the list to stare at her. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“No.” Lizette strongly believed in the preservation of their secrecy, or she wouldn’t be able to do this job. But after watching her very first lover being captured and tortured in the late nineteenth century, she had vowed to do whatever was necessary to keep vampires out of the reach of dangerous mortals. It might not make her a favorite person among her vampire peers, but she could live with that consequence if it might mean saving a vampire life.
“Where the hell am I supposed to stay?”
“I believe you have a sister?” That was whom the VA had authorized her to contact. “Stella Malone.”
“I know who my sister is! But you can’t keep me out of my apartment. I need to change my clothes. I have to work. I play in a band on Bourbon. My drum kit is in my apartment.”
She gave her best look of apology. “I will try to be as quick as possible. Today is Thursday. Perhaps by next Thursday we will have our answers.”
“Next Thursday? Are you insane? I can’t lose a whole weekend of work, especially since you’re telling me my bank account is frozen.” Johnny swore, shoving his empty drink across the dull and scraped bar.
Lizette wasn’t afraid, but she was disarmed. Johnny Malone, was, for lack of a better word, arresting. He was not the best-looking man she had ever seen, as his jaw was too square, his nose perhaps too short, but there was something compelling about him. He shifted from annoyed to charmed and back again with very little effort, his emotions clearly displayed on his face for all to see. There were some people who had that special something, that joie de vivre, and he was one of them. It was making it more difficult than Lizette would admit to stay on task.
“I can take a blood sample to start the analysis tonight, then tomorrow I can begin the interviews. If you’ll just provide me a list of your confidants, I will be happy to make appointments with them. In the meantime, I will contact headquarters in Paris and await instruction. Can we meet tomorrow at say nine, so I may retrieve the list, and ask you some questions?”
Johnny didn’t look at her, but stared morosely at his drink. “I have a wedding to go to tomorrow night. My friend Saxon is getting hitched. It will have to be earlier. Let’s say seven.”
“I can accommodate that.”
“Well, thank you,” he said sarcastically.
Lizette frowned, suddenly unsure of what to say. She was used to a belligerent response to her job, and normally she was sympathetic, but she could distance herself from taking it personally. Johnny Malone had her shifting uncomfortably on her barstool. He had a casual nonchalance that roused her ire, yet at the same time intrigued her, as did the unmistakable fact that she found him physically attractive, in spite of the fact that he wasn’t traditionally handsome.
Despite what certain vampires may think, like her assistant Dieter, she did notice men. She just chose not to do anything with that acknowledgement. Johnny, if that’s who he was, was a man she couldn’t help but notice. He had short black hair, the front sticking up slightly with some form of hair product. His skin was cool and alabaster smooth, his eyes an arresting blue, with eyelashes that women would kill for. He was wearing a T-shirt that fit him, instead of the huge shirts a lot of men wore, and his jeans had a tear in one knee, exposing soft dark hair on his thigh. He was the kind of man who gave sly, sexy smiles and kept a woman awake long after the sun rose. And that made Lizette want to clear her throat and be done with this case, because she was not the kind of woman who had casual sexual dalliances.
Unfortunately.
“So we are all set then? Where shall we meet tomorrow?” she asked him. Her cell phone dinged on her clipboard as she spoke, and she murmured, “
“So how do you know what stuff I have? Because you know, there is a whole creepy-stalker Big Brother factor to this list,” Johnny said, running his finger down the itemization of the contents of his apartment.
“We have our ways,” she said vaguely. Ways that usually involved someone on the Retrieval team breaking and entering. Dieter had accomplished that the day before. But in these modern times, there was an element of technology to the process. “It’s amazing how much of a paper trail we create without being aware of it. I was surprised that you only have a bank card, but it did allow us to trace your purchases for the last several years.” He seemed to spend a large amount of his income on drumsticks and downloaded movies.
“That’s invasive. Illegal. Unethical.”
Lizette was not intimidated by his irritation. “It’s also perhaps the only way you can prove that you are in fact Johnny Malone.”
He gave her a long stare. “You’re one of those logical chicks, aren’t you?”
“I would say so.”
His eyes moved past her to the door, and he frowned. “Who is this douchebag?”
Lizette turned. “Oh, that’s Dieter, my assistant.” She raised her hand in greeting.
Johnny snorted. “Dieter? Perfect name for a tool. What do you need an assistant for anyway?”
Mildly insulted by his assumption that her job was easy, Lizette felt herself frown. “He has his useful qualities. Plus it is less noteworthy for me to be traveling with a man, than as a single woman. Especially in a city full of tourists, like New Orleans. People will simply assume we are a couple.”
“The two of you do not look like a couple.”
Dieter reached her and immediately placed his hand on her back, something he didn’t normally do, and Lizette realized the men were glaring at each other. There was some sort of alpha-male standoff going on. Dieter was larger than Johnny, his German roots giving him broad shoulders and eyes so light they sometimes appeared opaque. There was nothing personal between her and her assistant, nor had he ever indicated interest in such an arena, but at the moment it appeared the men would lock antlers in competition, if they’d had them.
It was rather bizarre, and unnerving. And yet, it was also a teeny bit arousing.
Alarmed at the thought, Lizette leapt to her feet and shifted out of Dieter’s touch and away from Johnny, swiping her list out of his hand. “Excellent. I will see you tomorrow at seven then, at your apartment. It’s been a pleasure. Have a good evening.”
He just gave her an amused smile and a nod. “You, too.”
As she walked out of the bar faster than was strictly normal or appropriate, Dieter ambled along beside her, glancing down at her from his substantial height. “How did it go?”
“Fine,” she said, in a clipped tone.
“That guy was a pig, by the way. His apartment was a disaster.”
“Is that so?” Lizette stared at the sidewalk as she walked, concerned her Louboutin might land in a hole again. It was none of her business really if Johnny Malone was a poor housekeeper. Yet it didn’t surprise her.
“Want to go out dancing on Bourbon Street?” Dieter asked.
Lizette shot him a glance. Dieter was grinning, because he already knew her answer.
“Absolutely not. I would like to do an architectural tour of the area, then perhaps see a film.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow night. I’m going to hit the bar scene.”
“Do not be conspicuous.”
“Do not insult me. I know.”
He did. It was their job to blend. Lizette gave him a distracted smile of apology. Dieter went off down the street, and Lizette stood for a second, getting her bearings. If she walked to Bourbon Street, she anticipated she could easily get a cab, but the distance of only two blocks seemed daunting. She would have to reconsider her footwear while on this trip. Even Paris wasn’t as crumbling as New Orleans, though she would never recommend
