Page 9

8

THE JOB

“ S omeone’s dead?” I frowned, feeling strangely let down. “So this is a murder case.” Still thinking, I looked over at Black, unable to hide my disappointment. “Who’s the victim?”

“Lucian Rucker,” Black said.

My ears did prick at that.

I didn’t keep up much with news around tech billionaires and their heavily-documented lives, but of course I knew the name. How had I missed the inevitable feeding frenzy over his death in my cursory scan of headlines over coffee?

“It’s not in the news,” Black said, obviously hearing me.

Okay. Maybe this wasn’t an ordinary murder case.

Black glanced over his shoulder as he pulled out onto California Street. We were leaving his building’s garage in one of the company SUVs.

“They’re sure it’s murder?” I asked, as he merged into traffic.

“He was shot in the head while leaving one of his buildings last night.” Black gave me a tight smile as he glanced at me. “So yeah, they’re pretty sure it’s murder.”

From the back seat, Nick grunted.

I scanned my mind for what I knew about Lucian Rucker.

Most of it wasn’t very flattering.

Like most of his type, he’d inherited his start-up money. I was pretty sure he’d then stockpiled even more capital by buying up a bunch of distressed companies with his father, liquidating all but a few for the cash. He’d also played on the crypto markets for a while; I was pretty sure he’d owned a large exchange before it got shut down by one regulatory agency or another. Somehow he’d come out of that legally clean, but he’d gone bankrupt at least three times that I remembered.

Family money allowed him to bounce back.

I also suspected he had cash squirreled away, likely hidden under shell companies or possibly something even more legally sketchy. He’d been focused mostly on biotech lately, hadn’t he? Or had he switched to robotics and A.I., where most of the Valley seemed to be obsessed these days?

“Does that mean we’re under contract with the S.F.P.D.?” I asked.

Black and Nick exchanged looks in the rearview mirror.

When I turned around in my seat to look at Nick, he gave me a slight shrug, then shifted his gaze in the other direction. His eyes, distorted through the muddy-brown contact lenses he wore, returned their motionless stare to the nearest side window. He blinked in a way that told me the lenses were already bothering him.

He needed them to avoid awkward questions about his eyes, though.

Humans couldn’t help but react to his cracked-crystal, nearly colorless vampire irises. Those irises, clear when he was emotionally neutral, calm, and relaxed, had a habit of turning blood red when Nick felt angry or threatened, or when he had a strong emotional reaction of any kind. They also changed color when he was hungry.

Or when he was turned on.

Or when he was in pain.

Nick cleared his throat.

I waited, thinking he might speak, but he didn’t.

I turned to stare pointedly at Black. “If it’s a murder, why isn’t Angel with us?” I knew Angel wouldn’t be meeting us there because she’d offered to take Panther for the day. She said she’d take him to Golden Gate Park over lunch. “I would’ve thought she’d be coming along for this first interview. Won’t you need your liaison to the S.F.P.D.?”

Black gave me a sideways look eerily similar to the one Nick just gave me.

“We decided it would be better if she sat this part out,” he said cagily.

“Why?” I asked. When neither of them answered, I frowned, now feeling a bit put out. “What part is Angel sitting out? Why am I not sitting that part out?”

Nick grunted a laugh from the back seat.

“Angel’s sitting out the illegal part,” the vampire offered dryly. “As S.F.P.D. liaison, she’s getting a pass on the part that could get us all in a fuck-ton of trouble. The part Black is shielding her from, but apparently not you and me.”

I blinked, and turned to Black. “What is Nick talking about? Isn’t this Angel’s case? She’s the one who brought you onto this, isn’t she?”

Nick snorted again.

It was closer to a scoff that time.

I glared at him, opened my mouth, but Black spoke before I could.

“No,” he said, from where he’d maneuvered the armored SUV around a pick up truck and into the turning lane. He gave me a faintly worried look, like he worried I might be second-guessing my decision to come back to work for him already. “Angel isn’t the source for this. She doesn’t know anything about it yet. I figured it was better for our company as a whole if we kept the circle small for now.”

“So basically you and me got hit with the shit stick,” Nick muttered.

Black glared at the vampire in the rearview mirror. “Do you mind?”

Nick raised his hands in semi-apology, but didn’t speak.

I turned to face Black, my arm still on my seat’s backrest.

“Who hired us?” I asked, when he didn’t return my gaze. “A relative of Rucker’s? A spouse?” I noticed what road he’d just turned onto, and did a double-take. “Wait. Aren’t we going to the morgue? Why did you––”

“We’re not going to the morgue,” Black cut in. “We’re going to the crime scene.” Thinking, he added belatedly, “Well. And the morgue. Sort of.”

I blinked again. “Sort of?”

How had I forgotten he would do this kind of thing? Regularly?

“Doc.” Black gave me a pained look. “Don’t go there. Not yet. Give this a little time. I warned you it was a complicated case. That’s why I need you.”

I exhaled a breath, fingering my hair out of my eyes where it had fallen down from my loose bun. “You also said you’d explain it once we were physically together,” I reminded him. “Instead you wolfed down a burrito and ordered me into the car.”

“I will explain it,” he promised. “I absolutely will. But I want to know more about the situation myself, first. We’ll debrief after we check out the murder site.”

I thought about that, then nodded reluctantly.

I slid back around and into my seat, and looked out the windshield.

We’d probably been driving for twenty minutes when Nick let out an exasperated sound, and gave Black a frustrated look in the rearview mirror. Despite the contact lenses, there was still something otherworldly about those eyes. I hated the lenses; they looked nothing like his previous, human eyes. I didn’t mind that he looked different now, as a vampire, not really, not anymore, but it still bothered me he had to pretend to be human.

“Can you at least explain why those fuckers didn’t call the police?” Nick asked, exasperation clear in his voice.

Black exhaled, sounding annoyed himself. “I would if I knew.”

I turned around in my seat to stare at Nick. “They didn’t call the police?”

“No,” Nick said sourly, folding his arms. “Rucker’s security people found the body last night, somewhere on the property, but they didn’t call it in. They didn’t report the crime, or the death, or the presence of a sniper on their property. They decided to handle it all in-house. Illegally,” Nick emphasized. “So the company’s presumably got him on ice somewhere. Which is what your nitwit husband means by us going to a ‘sort of’ morgue.”

Nick’s voice vibrated with that deeper and more melodious tone he’d had since he became a vampire. It pulled at something in my gut, or just pulled my attention maybe, but it was subtle, just enough that I noticed it, but not enough for it to really affect the way I saw him, or to forget who he was.

I knew it irritated the shit out of Black.

He thought I reacted to it because Nick fed on me when he was a newborn.

“Who made the decision not to call the police?” I asked. “Was it the company? His family? Both? Does his family even know he’s dead?”

“Unknown,” Black said flatly.

I looked between them.

Was Rucker married? I couldn’t remember. I had some memory of him marrying someone, a model or an actress, but hadn’t they gotten divorced?

“So we’re en route to investigate a murder scene and prod at a dead body without the police?” I clarified. “We’re going to just traipse all over what should be an active crime scene, help contaminate that scene, and involve ourselves in an illegal investigation that has illegally gone unreported… and make ourselves vulnerable to loss of license, fines, arrest, and possible prison terms for knowingly concealing a crime, tampering with a dead body, and obstruction of justice? Have I got that right?”

Nick snorted.

He clearly didn’t disagree with any part of what I’d said.

Black shrugged, eyes on the road. He steered the SUV with its blacked-out windows down the 101 freeway going south.

“According to the company representatives who hired us, they plan to report the murder,” Black said, as if this was the most normal thing in the world. “Just not yet. As a condition of our employment, we’re not to tell anyone about it, either. In fact, neither of you know anything about this. I was told, but I didn’t tell either of you––”

“Why the hell would you agree to that?” I cut in, bewildered.

“It was a lot of money, doc.”

I scoffed openly. I barely refrained from spitting out something a lot ruder.

“Money?” I fell deeper into my seat, arms crossed. “Ah, I see. Because we so desperately need the money, Black, and money is so very, very important to you.” When he didn’t react, I clenched my fists under my folded arms. “What’s the real reason? And if you’re going to just lie to me again, at least pretend you don’t think I’m an idiot and make it a good lie.”

Black’s gold eyes swiveled towards mine.

“I’m not lying, doc. Everything I’ve told you is the truth… well, except the money part,” he conceded. “They assured me our involvement would not be reported to the authorities. They just would rather not involve the police, not until they have everything looked at by outside experts, including us––”

“Why on earth not?” I demanded.

“Because they don’t trust the cops, obviously,” Nick grumbled from the back. “They think the investigation will be sabotaged by the ‘shadow state’ filled with ‘powerful, malign forces’ aligned against them and the victim.” The way Nick said it, I could practically hear his eyes roll. “Their two main suspects are some bizarre, quasi-mythical, ‘man-hunting’ club that’s supposedly seven hundred years old… and Archangel.”

“Archangel?” I looked between them, dumbfounded. “Is that possible?”

“You’re just going to blow by the seven-hundred-year-old, serial killer death cult?” Nick smirked at me in the mirror. “You go right to the shadow organization we know actually exists? Boring,” he pronounced. “I vote for the society of rich psychopaths hunting humans. At least it’s new and interesting.”

My mind and ears rewound what he’d told me.

“A man-hunting club?” I asked, bewildered. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.” Nick had clearly been waiting for a chance to scoff about this with someone. “According to your husband, they claim quite the illustrious membership. Jack the Ripper. Rasputin. Lady Bathory. BTK. The Nightstalker. Oh, and Hitler was supposedly a card-carrying member. They claim to have produced hundreds of other, undiscovered killers over the years who had enough money to partake in murder as holiday sport, and enough connections and sanity to never get caught.”

“You don’t believe it?” I looked at Black. “It’s not true, is it?”

Nick scoffed louder. “Of course I don’t believe it. You’re not saying you think something like that is even remotely possible?”

I looked at Black.

I couldn’t help noticing how quiet he’d gotten.

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat. My eyes were still on Black as he gunned the engine to slide the SUV around a green Jetta. “If such a thing did exist, I highly doubt they’d be offering membership cards to me or you, Nick.”

Hearing the meaning behind my words, Nick did a double-take, then followed the direction of my gaze until he stared at Black. He scowled after a few seconds, clearly recognizing something in Black’s expression that he guessed the meaning of.

“Jesus.” Nick scowled. “You’re joking.”

Black gave him a bare glance in the mirror. He lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug, but I saw his jaw harden perceptibly.

“I never got an actual invite,” Black clarified. “More what I’d characterize as a ‘feeling out’ on the bare bones of the idea. And it only happened after I’d started making appearances on the big media channels, acting like an egomaniacal sociopath.”

“So… a regular Tuesday,” Nick grunted.

“They never approached me again,” Black added, his voice a touch warning. “So apparently, I didn’t say the right things. That, or someone told them what I did in Thailand to stop Ian’s killing spree.”

I flinched at the mention of my ex-fiancé, but didn’t speak.

“Either way,” Black added to Nick. “I didn’t pass their little test.”

“Nice to know they have some standards,” Nick muttered.

I was staring at Black, though.

“Was this while we were in New York?” I guessed. “When you did all those interviews, and we went to all of those fucked up, rich-person parties? When you were hunting for Brick after you got out of that prison in Louisiana, and––”

“Yes,” he said, cutting me off. He gave me a faintly warning look. “Yes, doc. Then.”

“You didn’t say anything,” I said, a touch accusingly.

Black brought the black SUV to the middle lane of Highway 101 South, turning the wheel right before I saw the police cruiser pass on our left. Luckily, it was nearly midday, so traffic was a sane level of busy, moving at roughly sixty miles an hour.

“At the time, I didn’t take it all that seriously,” Black said, his eyes still following the cop. “I read the guy, so I knew he wanted a reaction out of me, but there’s a lot that rich pricks get up to that no one really wants to know about, frankly. I was mostly relieved he wasn’t alluding to some fucked up pedophile ring, because then I would have felt the need to kill him, and that would have been… inconvenient.” He gave me a hard smile. “At the time, that is. I had a pretty full plate already.”

My mouth twisted into something between a smile and a frown. “But you were okay with murder?” I now wondered if I was on Nick’s side when it came to Black’s bizarre moral code. “That didn’t ring any alarm bells? Rich people hunting other humans wasn’t enough to derail your obsession with hunting vampires?”

“I wasn’t okay with it,” Black said, now sounding annoyed at both of us. “I just wasn’t sure how seriously to take it. He was trying to find an ‘in’ with me. Based on what he knew, with my carefully-curated media image, he obviously thought power-mad, murderous, dark, fetish shit was something he could dangle like a carrot. Possibly even use for blackmail. Like I said, I was heavily distracted at the time. I didn’t get a chance to read him thoroughly… and I haven’t run into him in the time since. The only thing I felt for certain was that he floated the idea mostly to see how I would react.”

He gave me another hard smile.

“You may not remember, doc, but in addition to being heavily distracted, I wasn’t exactly in my right mind while that was going on. Dealing with rich pricks and their mind games wasn’t exactly on my to-do list. I was fighting off massive doses of vampire venom while running a two-tiered infiltration op, and trying to keep my wife from leaving me, among other things.”

I frowned and looked away.

I usually willfully fought not to remember that trip to New York, specifically what Black had been doing, and who he’d been doing it with. When I found out at the time, I’d broken every breakable thing I could find in our New York penthouse suite, told him I never wanted to see him again, and left the city alone.

I hadn’t been back to New York since.

“Who was it?” I asked, my voice colder. “Who floated the idea to you in New York?”

“Ben Frasier.”

I frowned, then blinked as a face swam forward from my memories. “The guy who threw that penthouse party? Gray hair? With that obnoxious ‘companion’ of his, Rory Ungerman?”

“The same.”

I frowned as I turned that over.

I’d met Ben. I’d even talked to him.

Compared to most of Black’s obscenely rich New York “friends,” and especially Frasier’s significantly more out-there companion, Rory, Ben seemed like one of the more grounded members of the Wall Street crowd I met that night. He had a smug, witty, urbane quality to him that both repelled me and strangely entertained me. He’d been smarter than anyone else I’d met that night, and definitely one of the wealthier members of that club.

“Is it something you could broach with him again?” I asked.

Black snorted. He gave me a nearly offended look.

“The thought never occurred to me,” he said dryly, gold eyes flashing. He gave Nick a bare glance in the mirror, then looked back at me. “I certainly never considered sending Jem to New York this morning, to see if he could go about finding out more from Frasier in person. While I doubt it would take much for Jem to get an invite up to Ben’s penthouse… really, just putting them in the same bar together would likely do it, especially with Jem wearing even remotely human clothing… it never would occur to me to suggest it, doc. Although, really, with how Jem looks, I doubt he’d even have to smile, much less try very hard to make conversation––”

“Fuck off,” Nick growled.

He was glaring at Black furiously, not hiding his hostility, or his disbelief.

Black shrugged. “I’m not actually kidding.”

“I know you’re not kidding, you prick … and again… Fuck. Off. You’re not sending my boyfriend into some rich murderer’s penthouse. Alone, as some kind of honeytrap––”

Black burst out in a laugh, like he couldn’t help himself.

“I didn’t have to send him,” he retorted. “I told him about the job, asked his advice on whether we could do it from here, and he volunteered to go. I was just going to have him do a jump from your house, with Yarli and Mika in support.”

“Like hell he did––”

But Black barely took a breath.

“And you think it’s Jem who’ll be in danger in this scenario?” He gave Nick an openly contemptuous look. “Jem could kill Frasier and his entire security team without breaking a sweat. He could do it without even using his sight. I never would’ve agreed to use him for this if I didn’t know that without a shadow of doubt.”

There was a more loaded silence after Black finished.

“You already sent him,” Nick said, his voice deathly cold.

“No,” Black said, now openly annoyed. “Weren’t you listening? I didn’t have to send Jem anywhere. I told him what I was thinking, asked his opinion, and he left on my plane…” Black looked at his watch. “…a little more than an hour ago.”

“Bullshit.”

Black snorted. “Really? Call him. Right now. I’d love to hear this.”

Nick didn’t take out his phone, but he was breathing harder.

Looking at him, I couldn’t help but be a little concerned.

“Nick,” I began, soft.

He didn’t so much as look at me. “I’m going to fucking kill you, Quentin.”

Black scoffed. “No, you’re not.”

“The fuck I’m not.”

Black stared at him in the rearview mirror as he gripped the steering wheel in both hands. His light still felt annoyed, but he now looked faintly wary, as well.

“Infiltration is Jem’s job, Nick.” Black’s annoyance won out. “Hate to tell you, brother, but your boyfriend likes field work, and he’d damned good at it. He’s also a workaholic. Which is a long way of saying… take it up with him. The approach was his idea. Jax wanted to go with him, incidentally, but I gave it to Jem alone, because Jem can handle it alone. Easily. You being an over-protective git about it isn’t going to change any of that, by the way.”

Black glanced over his shoulder and switched lanes, aiming the SUV toward an approaching offramp leading into South San Francisco.

I’d been so absorbed in their conversation, I’d forgotten to pay attention to where we were going. Now I looked around as I saw Black taking the exit leading up to Oyster Point Boulevard. I didn’t know much about the area, but I’d had a friend, what felt like a hundred years ago now, who’d worked for a biotech firm located on Oyster Point.

Maybe for the same reason, I was under the impression that’s all that was out there.

Now, as Black slowed the car as we reached the light, hung a left and drove us out in the direction of the ocean, I saw buildings on all sides of us. The area had definitely grown since I’d last been out here. A number of the buildings did have very biotech-sounding names, but a lot I couldn’t identify and most I’d never heard of.

After we’d driven for a few minutes, Black hung another left. A much larger complex of buildings, visible in the distance, began to grow closer every second. It was pretty clear that was our destination.

I recognized the large, animated logo on the roof.

“Is that…” I stared at the glowing, hyper-stylized “LR,” written in neon blood-red and black calligraphy with a circle around it. The design managed to evoke spaceships with its rotating light. It also evoked fire, and something like cowboys. It was a bizarre, futuristic mark that looked vaguely like a cattle brand.

“That’s Lucian Rucker’s company?” I asked. “One of them?”

“Prometharis,” Black confirmed.

“Is this where he died?” I asked.

Black gave me a brief look. “Yes.”

“Prometharis?” Nick snorted. “Like Prometheus? Do they play with fire? Or kidneys?”

Black smirked in the rearview mirror but didn’t answer.

“Pretentious,” I commented.

Nick grunted in clear agreement from the back seat.

“And douchey,” he added.

I snorted a low laugh. I could tell from Nick’s tone he still hadn’t forgiven Black for sending his live-in boyfriend to New York to try and glean information from a billionaire and possible murdering psychopath. I had strong suspicions Jem was going to get an earful, too.

I felt bad for Nick, and sympathized.

But I also agreed with Black.

Frasier wouldn’t be able to resist Jem.

Even apart from Jem’s ability to manipulate the billionaire’s mind into seeing him a certain way, Jem was a stunningly beautiful person, and not only on the inside. Frasier would be utterly enthralled; he’d undoubtedly lower his guard as a result. Jem was also charming, funny, intelligent, and probably the best infiltrator Black had on his team.

Jem knew exactly how to use his looks to disarm people.

It was eerie how good he was at it.

Black hung a final left at the end of the road, and began following signs to the gate leading into the parking lot. I looked up at the tall, black-tinted building that loomed over us, and the lit “L.R.” at the top. Now that we were closer, the red in those letters appeared to be cycling upwards, rippling and sparking like an open flame.

“It really is douchey,” I muttered.

As if against his will, Nick snorted another laugh.