Awakened (22 page)

Definitely worth a look from on the ground.

It was past midnight, but he reached for his smartphone and called Kevin, who had taken over a disused barracks at the edge of the tarmac for himself and the dogs. Nick had obtained the necessary clearances.

“Hey. Let’s go jogging.”

“Ha-ha. Very funny.” Kevin yawned. “Fuck you.”

“Not now. When the sun comes up.” There was a short silence. Nick waited.

Kevin cursed again. “That’s at oh-six-hundred hours, you son of a bitch. It’s oh-one-hundred now.”

“That’s right. We need to do surveillance on the ground. Dress like a jock. Ball cap, sunglasses, track suit, sneakers.”

“I don’t have any of that stuff,” Kevin complained.

“I’ll loan you some of mine. Bring Aura and another dog.”

“So we’re supposed to be ordinary guys exercising our dogs. Where?”

“The Club Red parking lot. It’s huge. We can do laps, stretches, cooldowns, whatever, so we can take pictures on the sly and let the dogs sniff around, see if they pick up any vampire tracks.”

“What if we get run off? Or picked up for trespassing?”

“I don’t think their security is up to speed. They don’t even have a perimeter fence.”

“Okay. See you at dawn.” Kevin ended the call.

Nick set down his smartphone. In another minute, it buzzed, signaling an incoming text.

Barrett.

Sublet a condo in New City
.

His eyes narrowed. Was it just him or did she not want to give him the exact address?

Driving down from DC w. Justine
.

Her colleague from Belladonna.

The one she’d mentioned used to be a stripper.

And everything fell together.

She was going in undercover. Going to get inside Club Red. And she hadn’t wanted to give Nick warning because she’d been afraid he’d stop her.

It was his first instinct, of course, but one he restrained.

He’d learned his lesson.

Barrett loved him. The only way he was ever going to
keep
Barrett was to let her go. To believe that her experiences and her training and her sheer fortitude and courage would guide her out of dangerous situations and back to him. The way the world was shaking down, it was the only way she’d survive. She had to be able to take care of herself.

But he’d always be there to help if at all possible.

He just had to make sure she knew he didn’t want to get in her way, just have her back.

He messaged her:
Kev and I doing ground recon 2mrw. Do not enter club until u review info & exterior photos
.

He hoped he got his point across.

When she texted back a smiley face and the address to the condo, he knew he had.

Then he started putting together a file of material for her to read. If she didn’t have her laptop with her, she could read it little by little on her smartphone. There was plenty to send from the drone archives. And there would be more when he and Kevin got done.

He figured it would go smoothly. There had been no employees in the aerial shots time-tagged before 11 a.m. and not a single car. Just that semi.

The dawn surveillance would provide crucial information that she wouldn’t necessarily be able to get. Barrett in athletic wear in a mostly empty parking lot? Please. She would stand out way too much, with her curves on display and a long blond ponytail bouncing against her back. Might even be followed by some creep.

He and Kevin would look too ordinary to notice. The dogs would get more attention, especially Aura in all her furry glory, with those mesmerizing golden eyes.

When Barrett got into the club and stayed there, he had to have a plan in place to rescue her if things went wrong or their cover was blown. The aerials didn’t show everything. He wanted to memorize every door and window and back alley and service entrance in advance, get it pinpointed on a mental map that couldn’t be taken away by an officious guard or beaten out of him if he infiltrated the club and got caught.

Barrett walked into the condo first, dropping the heavy box of miscellaneous stuff she’d stashed in the trunk onto the floor. Then she texted Nick.

Got anything now?

Yeah. Not that recent but useful. Aerial photos. Sending now
.

She responded.
Okay
.

Then she hesitated, wondering if she should repeat the declaration of love she’d made earlier. Or at least end the conversation with an XOXO. After all, he hadn’t commented on what she’d said, either via phone or text. Granted, he’d been busy, but …

“Grrr!” Barrett blew several strands of hair out of her face and told herself to stop. She was worse than a schoolgirl with a crush on the quarterback. Nick loved her. She loved him. The world wasn’t going to implode now that they’d admitted it. But neither was a happily-ever-after going to drop out of the sky for them or Jane. They had to get to that happy ending on their own, and that meant she needed to stop obsessing about why Nick hadn’t written or texted her a love letter in the past twenty-four hours.

Barrett looked up as the partly open door to the condo banged against an inside wall and Justine came in, dragging two wheeled suitcases. She kicked the door shut and looked around.

There wasn’t much furniture. Just a ratty sofa and a matching armchair in the living room and a dinette set in the narrow kitchen. Through an interior hall, two twin beds, made up with faded coverlets, were visible.

“Kind of a dump,” Justine sighed. “I hope we don’t have to stay here very long.”

“Me, too.” Barrett didn’t want to say her reasons why out loud. If they didn’t find Jane within a week, the odds would be against them ever finding her at all. “Who owns this place again?”

“A friend of Moira’s. At least it’s close to Club Red.”

Moira Finn was a former colleague of Justine’s who now ran a talent agency, Tail Feathers, supplying dancers to clubs from Boston to Miami. According to Justine, she repped most of the girls who would be showing up at the publicized public auditions at Club Red. Whether the agency was on the up-and-up was none of Barrett’s business. She was grateful for a place to stay, no questions asked.

Justine headed for the bedroom, dragging one of the suitcases. “That was a
long
goddamn drive. Ten hours from D.C. to Atlanta. Sheesh, I need a nap.”

“Go ahead and sleep. I’m waiting for visuals from Nick on the club.”

“Okay,” Justine said cheerfully. “Then you won’t care if I snore.”

Barrett kicked her shoes off and sat down on the couch. The phone stayed silent. If he was sending a large file, it could take awhile. She looked around, not seeing a magazine or any other reading material. She got up again and dragged the box she’d brought in next to the couch.

The highlighted papers Nick had brought to her apartment were inside, along with the paper bag Ginny had given her that held Jane’s sleepwear. She realized she hadn’t told Nick everything Ginny had told her.

She picked up Jane’s clothes.

Closed her eyes.

Hell, if vampires existed, why not other things she’d given up hope on?

Resolved, she did something she hadn’t done since Noah died.

She prayed.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

At 5:30 a.m. sharp, Nick reached the barracks and pounded
on the ground-level windows. The frames, not the glass. Made more noise and nothing broke. After a minute, Kevin yanked open the door and peered at him.

“You’re early.”

“Rise and shine, soldier.” Nick handed him a bundle of clothes. “Get your dress-ups on. Time to go play with vampires.”

Kevin swore, but he took the clothes and disappeared, coming back in the same T-shirt he’d slept in, wearing the sweatpants over his boxers. “Too short. My ankles show.”

“That was intentional. I love your ankles, Kevin.”

The taller man flipped him the finger and sat down to put on the sneakers. Aura padded into the sparely furnished room and watched with interest.

“Walkies,” Kevin told her.

She went back to wherever she’d come from and returned with another somewhat smaller dog, a male that resembled her. Son of Aura, Nick thought.

Kevin confirmed his guess. “That’s her pup. Goes by Ray. When he listens.”

Nick rumpled their ears and smoothed their fur as Kevin finished tying the laces and went to grab their leashes from a hook.

Both dogs could be canine geniuses but they still got that look of stupid bliss when they were petted right. “Okay. At ease,” Nick said, straightening and turning to the pile of clothes.

He handed Kevin a ball cap. Then sunglasses. And an athletic jacket. Kevin jammed the cap onto his head and hung the sunglasses from one arm by hooking it into the knit collar of the T-shirt, before slipping on the jacket. Then he got his first good look at Nick, who had turned to open the door.

“Dude, what is the gray thing hanging down your back?”

“That’s my aging-hipster ponytail. It’s a clip-on. I rubbed a little zinc oxide into my stubble to match it.”

Kevin looked disgusted. “This is embarrassing. We look like the Dork Patrol.” He flipped up his collar and pulled the zipper of his jacket to its limit, right under his unshaven chin.

“Doesn’t matter.” Nick smirked. “It’s still dark out. Let’s go.”

Kevin issued a command to the dogs and they heeled instantly.

It took them about fifteen minutes to drive to Club Red. They parked on a side street with no houses, just empty lots with temporary electricity hookups, and got the dogs out.

Canine business completed, they headed to the club’s vast parking lot. Nick noticed right away that the semi was gone. And that there were no cars. The light of dawn turned the expanse of asphalt blackish-pink.

“Let’s just walk them,” Kevin suggested. “If Aura senses anything of interest, she’ll let us know. Ray’s new to the game. Don’t expect much from him.”

Nick took the younger dog’s leash and started jogging around the parking lot. Kevin stuck to the area closest to the building. From a distance, Nick saw Aura stop several times. Kevin nodded to Nick without calling to him.

They lost sight of each other and reunited around the other side of the club.

Kevin had Aura short-leashed. Her eyes were glowing and her back fur was up higher than usual. She gave Nick a brief sniff and moved on to her pup, slapping a maternal tongue across Ray’s greasy snout.

“He found a dead cheeseburger,” Nick explained.

“Aura was all excited,” Kevin said, lengthening the leash. He nodded toward the parking spaces next to the building entrance. “Those VIP spots over there? She just went nuts. That must be where the big vampire puts his wheels.”

“Makes sense. Lots of big black cars in and out of there in the aerial shots. Anything else?”

“Nothing you could take a picture of. But I wish I could read her mind. She was picking up all kinds of information.”

“Speaking of that, let’s walk the perimeter and get some photos of the exits and entrances.”

Kevin held his ground at a yank from Aura. “Maybe we’d better jog. She needs to work off some excess energy.”

The two men and the leashed dogs started off at a slow lope, with Nick pressing the button for the camera hidden in the chest pocket of his fleece jacket. The lens was positioned right through the logo.

They went around twice.

“How ’bout we go get breakfast?” Kevin asked. He was breathing hard. Aura pulled the leash taut, straining toward a town car that had just swung into the parking lot.

It stopped, rocking back on its wheels.

“Check out the tinted windows. I can’t even see the driver clearly. So why’d they stop?” Nick muttered.

“Your scary ponytail,” Kevin said.

“Shut up.”

Without looking at the car, they moved along casually. Kevin stopped to rub his calf, getting one last surreptitious look at the car when it rolled forward slowly again. “Vanity plates. And guess what they say.”

“Keep going.”

“
RED SPELL
.” Kevin straightened up, holding tight to Aura’s leash.

“Clever. Don’t look back.”

But Aura did, disobeying Kevin’s command. He just about had to drag her.

Vladimir rubbed his temple. A flash of pain had hit him hard. Even from a distance, the large dog’s golden gaze had captured his. He had not been able to look away until it had.

“Who were those men?” he demanded.

The driver shook his head. “Dunno, boss. Sometimes people walk their dogs in the lot. You don’t usually get in this early.”

“They could have been undercover cops.”

“Nah. Not with mutts like that. Did you see how the big dog pulled? Obedience class dropout, for damn sure.”

Vladimir let him think so. The driver pulled into the VIP spot and waited for instructions. “You can go ahead and open the door,” he told the man, handing the keys to the building over the back of the front seat.

“Yes sir.”

Vladimir wanted a minute more to calm his racing thoughts. The joggers had no way of knowing that their badly behaved dog had the infamous golden eyes of the giant, six-legged taiga wolves, but resembled them in no other way. Nor did it display the intelligence of the breed. The ancient taigas were extinct, thanks to the old-world vampires they had once preyed upon, who had returned the favor by hunting down and slaughtering every one. A long-ago vampire king had decided that they must be eradicated from the earth.

But that one, by some hideous coincidence, showed a trace of their vanished blood. He was sure of it. There might be others, given the indiscriminate sexual habits of dogs.

Why him? And why now?

There was no telling. But there was no mistaking those eyes, which had bored through his skull, radiating instinctive awareness of what he was. It had not been safe to order the driver to go closer to the men and insist that they leave.

Though the dog was only a dog. Four legs and two ears. Not even much like ordinary taiga wolves, he reminded himself.

He would have been doomed if it was otherwise. Only a true giant taiga could read the minds of vampires. Blessedly, the long-vanished animals had had no way of communicating with humans beyond crude physical signals.