Page 8 of Tell Me Why (Tell, The Detective #5)

“Relationship,” Tell supplied, cutting in as though to make sure she knew how firmly he believed it. “You are special because I say so. Because Hunter thinks so. Not because you meet some threshold of utility.”

Tina considered that, then pursed her lips.

“As lovely as that sounds,” she said, “and I do appreciate it, you still make me out to be capable and worthwhile . That’s an evaluation of utility.”

He scratched his chin, then smiled.

“You can’t even take a compliment well,” he said, then winked. “Being a vampire doesn’t make you smarter. Makes a lot of us dumber, but it never makes you smarter. You came in with that.”

Tina pursed her lips, then sipped her coffee.

“I’m smart, I’m skeptical, I’m organized, and I never let you or Hunter get away with anything,” she said. “I’m fabulous, and it’s his loss that he doesn’t know how to turn a girl’s head by seeing that.”

Tell grinned broadly.

“Then it sounds like you’re ready to go in. Unless you want to go feed, tonight, first?”

She shook her head.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “We can just go. I don’t want him to think that I’m stalling.”

Tell nodded.

“I can deal with it, if you want. Go to Daryll, tell him just enough of what happened to get Leonard kicked out.”

“He likes you,” Tina said. “It would set you back, getting rid of him. I can figure out how to tell him that I’m happy where I am without making it look like he’s in danger or you would be angry at him.”

Tell nodded.

“All right. You need anything else? Jacket? It’s getting cool out there.”

Tina missed jackets helping.

They did help, but that sense of her own internal heat being reflected back at her… oh, how she missed that.

“I’m ready,” she said.

They went down to the parking lot, finding their escort there - bigger than it had used to be - and rode through the darkening city to the house.

One of the escorts got Tina’s door, and she followed Tell into the house and through to the lab.

The technicians were already at work, and it smelled as though Isabella had been and gone as well, perhaps half an hour or more ago.

The extra hours they got in their days made Tina endlessly jealous.

Tell went to talk to the technicians and Tina got her purse and sunglasses and such settled in a corner where she could find them before she left for the night, then she went to go find Leonard.

She found him on a couch outside of the kitchen, talking to two other men. He lifted his eyes with annoyance as she approached.

“We don’t need anything, right now,” he said, and Tina nodded.

“Okay, then,” she said, turning to go.

Did it hurt her feelings?

Really, not all that much.

He was playing a game that she didn’t care about.

The fact that they were rude to her just made her more disgusted at the entire reality of the game, that none of them thought of her as an equal at all , and it made her less sympathetic when Tell or Isabella or Keon or whoever eventually came blowing through their existence and burnt it to ash.

She would go home, she would appreciate Vince and her bed and she would happily see Hunter when he graced her world with his existence again, and more-or-less she would never think of Leonard or any of the rest of them again.

They would cease to exist as far as she was concerned, as soon as she was gone.

Why should she care whether or not she existed to them, in the meantime?

She went back to the front room, roaming a bit, then was going to go back to the lab when she heard footsteps and caught sight of Leonard going out the front door. He made the briefest of eye contact, and she followed him out.

It was colder, tonight, and overcast with the threat of a storm coming, and the air was wet, but there was no sound of thunder or rain, yet, and Tina followed Leonard out to the fountain.

From the house, it would be nearly impossible to identify who was out here, with just the house coach lights illuminating the front walkway.

That was probably part of his purpose.

He looked up at her as she approached.

“Tonight,” he said. “I can get you out tonight, if you’re ready to go.”

She shook her head.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I believe you, that you would do your best to help me, but… I can’t leave Oscar.” She shrugged. “He’s what I know. No hard feelings?”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“Did he threaten you?” he asked, and she shook her head.

“What he’s doing is important,” she said. “And you’re important. I don’t want to get in the middle of that. I don’t want you two to be angry at each other.”

Leonard snorted.

“So you didn’t tell him at all, because it would be better for him to not know,” he said. “He doesn’t deserve you. You’re too loyal for what he’s doing to you.”

“Be that as it may,” Tina said. “I am that loyal. Thank you for your offer. For… seeing me.”

“What would it take?” he asked. “To convince you that he’s not doing right by you?”

“Nothing you can offer me,” Tina said, dipping her head. He rose and grabbed her wrist.

“How about me?” he asked. “If I were to… personally promise… that I would take care of you…”

“Are you attempting to propose?” Tina asked, looking at how uncomfortable he was.

“No,” he said, quick and sullen. “You reach too high. My personal protection is highly sought after, and more than you deserve. You will languish with Tell, and you will come to regret this decision, but I have no further interest in it or you.”

He turned to start for the house, then jerked funny and stumbled to the side, like he’d been bit by the world’s biggest mosquito.

“Are you okay?” Tina asked, then something bit her in the side and she was scrambling to swat at it and get rid of it.

There was something there.

Something big.

It had bitten her, and her body was reacting viscerally and primordially, wanting to find it crush it, make it stop.

The pain wasn’t that much, but the surprise and the disgust of it was intense, and that her hands found something, she was tearing at it and throwing it away before she’d even registered that it had happened, and the moment it left her hands, she regretted throwing it.

It had been a dart.

And while her first reaction had been to get it away from her, her second reaction was to lay hold of it and use it to stab the person who had shot it at her. Repeatedly stab them.

She was confused where it had gone, though, and then there were hands on her, a rope around her that felt like it wasn’t so strong that she couldn’t tear it apart, but it was spongy and malleable, and no matter how she thrashed against it, she couldn’t find anything to actually grab and tear.

It made her angry.

There were voices around, hands, bodies, force, her feet skidding across the drive, but she couldn’t bring herself to actually engage it.

The net held her, and it made her angrier and angrier. She was using her teeth, trying to rip at it, lashing at everything that bumped into her, unable, unable, unable.

Maybe she should have wondered what had happened to Leonard.

She didn’t.

Maybe she should have wondered where she was going.

She didn’t.

She fought like an animal with no sense of time until the sun found her and finally put her down.

The floor was hard, but the sun was distant.

All day, she’d known that she was held, as the effects of the dart had worn off, but she didn’t know where, or even why , with certainty.

Obviously it was something to do with the vampire-parts network, but was it that she’d been kidnapped as product? was she being taken out of the equation to motivate Tell? was this a reaction from Leonard to her saying no? That last one seemed awfully abrupt, but she couldn’t rule it out.

He’d gotten hit, too, hadn’t he?

There was no light at all, when she’d eased her eyes open from time to time, and no clear or close sound of any utility. Everything was muffled through thick walls, but it sounded solid, almost industrial, rather than of the characteristic motion-noises of people.

When she finally sat up, she knew scant little more than she had when the dart had hit her, the night before.

She hadn’t heard breathing, and she was chained to the floor, she found.

They’d put a cuff on each ankle and short chains were bolted to the floor nearby.

She couldn’t get her fingers down through the cuffs, they were so close-fitted, and the chains had a devastating, heavy feel to them that made her feel very unlikely to be able to break them by feat of strength or wit.

She could find one wall, but couldn’t reach the ceiling or any additional wall on the length of leash she had.

This was all.

The dark was complete enough that she couldn’t make anything else out, either.

“You awake in there?” someone asked from… beyond a wall or a door or something, and Tina put her back against the wall, braced to fight.

The lights came on.

She was in a white box, chained to the floor. The ceiling was perhaps twenty feet over her head, and there were eye-bolts on the floor for another five prisoners, though she was here by herself.

A heavy door opened and a man came in, looking at her with… passive pity. Or evaluation.

He came toward her, and Tina readied herself for whatever attack she had available to her. He shook his head.

“None of that, now,” he said. “You’re caught, fair and square, and that kind of behavior isn’t going to do you any good.”

“Stay away from me,” she said, and he sat a paper cup, like a fast-food drink, down on the floor just at the edge of where her intuition told her her range was. He stepped back and looked at her.

“You’ll drink that,” he said. “When you’re good and hungry.”

“Probably not,” she said, and he smiled.

It was grim, but not cruel.

“They said you’d have fight. Not sure why we’re taking you on, but please be assured, I’m very good at my job. You’ll crack and break just like the rest of them. Best if you learn to go along. It hurts less that way.”

He gave her a curt little nod, then left.

Tina looked at the cup.