Aden (Vampires in America) (22 page)

“Ms. Reid?”

“Yes?” she responded, wondering if she’d triggered some sort of alarm by coming down in the elevator when she did.

“My name’s Earl Hamilton. I’m chief of Lord Aden’s daylight security team. Lord Aden said I should introduce myself.”

Sid smiled. Bad boy, schmad boy. How could you not love a guy who thought about you like that?

“Thank you, Mister Hamilton.”

“Oh, call me Earl. Everyone does.”

“Earl. It’s a pleasure, thank you. I’ll just—” A thought occurred to her. “Let me give you my cell number, Earl, just in case I can ever help out.”

Numbers exchanged—she got Earl’s number, too—Sid made her way to the street and climbed into the taxi which Earl had summoned for her. The ride was thankfully short. At her own building, she rode up to her condo, went directly to the shower, and then to bed. She was nearly asleep before she realized there’d been something
 . . .
or rather, some
one
very important who’d been absent from the night’s bloodbath at the slavers’ holding house.

She reached for her cell phone automatically and called Aden, not remembering until she got his voice mail that he wouldn’t get the message until later, and she simply could have waited until she saw him. But as long as she had him, or at least his so-abrupt-it-was-almost-rude voicemail response, she left a message.

“Hey, it’s me. We’ll talk later, and you probably know this, but
 . . .
we didn’t get everyone at that house tonight. You know that, right?”

She barely managed to disconnect before she was sound asleep.

“Pinto,” Bastien repeated, then shared a look with Aden before asking Sid, “When was the last time you saw him?”

She grabbed the notebook out of her bag and thumbed through it, looking for Pinto’s name. “It was just before the big gala,” she said, half to herself, then found the note she was looking for. “Yep. Eight days, to be precise. He was at their place in Fuller Park. It’s kind of a drug clearinghouse for them.”

Both vampires were looking at her oddly.

“What?” she asked.

“I don’t want you lurking around drug houses anymore,” Aden said flatly. “Especially not in Fuller Park.”

She shrugged. “I’m careful. And that’s where they do their business. It’s hard to keep track of them if I don’t go where they go. Duh.”

“Sidonie.”

For the first time, she registered how intent he was. How angry. At her? Why would he be angry at her?

“What?” she asked, confused and a little irritated that he was giving her attitude for doing her job.

“I understand your need for revenge for your friend’s murder,” Aden told her, clearly trying not to be patronizing and failing miserably. “But this has to end. If Pinto is still alive—”

“He is.”

“—we will take care of it. These people are too dangerous for you to continue this surveillance on your own. It’s only dumb luck that you haven’t been seriously harmed before this.”

Did he just say dumb luck?

“If not for me,” she pointed out with admirable patience, “you’d still believe Pinto was dead. I think there’s a little more to what I do than dumb luck.”

“We’re getting off the subject,” he said, shutting her down. “Bastien, if Pinto’s alive—and it seems he is,” he added, before Sid could do more than open her mouth to protest. “I want him found. Get Elias on it immediately.”

Bastien nodded, turned on his heel, and left the office, leaving Sid alone with Aden.

“You,” he snarled, closing his fingers around the front of her jacket again, pulling her against his body and up onto her toes, and holding her there as he lowered his mouth to hers. But Sid wasn’t ready to kiss and make up. She bit his lip angrily and pulled back.

“Look,” she said, trying without success to push him away. “I get the whole alpha male, vampire lord-of-all-he-surveys thing, okay? I kind of even like it in the bedroom. But out in the real world, you are
not
the boss of me. I don’t forfeit my brain just because we have sex. And I’ll do whatever I think is necessary to get my story. And it’s not like most of what I do is that dangerous. I’m not aiming for Woodward and Bernstein. But I’m not stupid either. I don’t take unnecessary risks, and I’m careful with the risks I do take.”

Aden was eyeing her with very little expression on his face, which made it difficult to tell how he was receiving her liberated woman speech. Whatever his reaction was, however, it didn’t extend to his body, which was ready to fuck, and no question about it.

“Kind of like it?” he asked finally, one corner of his mouth curling upward with amusement as he focused on the one part of her speech that she’d thought he’d have no problem with. “I think I can do better than that.”

Sid’s first thought was that she wouldn’t survive if sex between them got any better than what they’d done last night. But she didn’t tell him that.

“I’m serious,” she insisted, trying to keep from smiling back at him.

“So am I,” he insisted.

“Aden—” she began, but Bastien chose that moment to return.

“My lord,” he said. “Elias is here.”

Aden glanced at her, but anticipating his vampires-only speech, she said, “I’ll sit in the outer office. I want to check some things anyway, and I’ve got my laptop with me. You all have Wi-Fi?”

“Of course,” Bastien assured her. “The code’s above the keypad on the phone.”

“Good enough,” she said. She looped her backpack over her shoulder, but then she paused, pretending a thought had just occurred to her, and said, “Don’t forget to engage your cone of silence device.”

Aden rolled his eyes, but still managed to give her butt a firm swat as she walked away. What was it with him and her ass?

She sat down at the desk, pulled out her laptop, and went to work as Bastien and Elias disappeared into Aden’s office and closed the door. What she’d told Aden about her last sighting of Carl Pinto was correct as far as it went, but her full notes, going all the way back to the beginning of her investigation, had all been transferred into her laptop. She had a system that let her track the individual players over time. And just as she’d been able to predict which house the slavers would use for this month’s transfer, she’d be able to see the pattern in Pinto’s movements that would help Aden track the vamp down and get rid of him once and for all.

She was still hunched over her notes when the office door opened and Elias walked by sometime later. She nodded at him and waited to see if Aden would call her back in. When he didn’t, she wasn’t particularly concerned. Figuring he and Bastien were still conspiring, she flexed her fingers, ready to go back to her own work, but then realized Elias had left the door partway open, and she could hear Aden and Bastien talking. Eavesdropping shamelessly—she was a reporter, after all—she stopped working and leaned toward the open door, listening.

“… a concern, my lord.” She caught the tail end of Bastien’s sentence.

Aden laughed dismissively. “You know me better than that, Bastien. When have I ever let a woman get in my way?”

The two males laughed, and Bastien said something she didn’t catch, but she did hear Aden’s reply.

“It’s all about blood, my friend,” he growled. “But don’t worry. She won’t be around much longer.”

Sid blinked, surprised at how much his words stung. She wasn’t even sure they were talking about her, but she couldn’t shake the sense that they
were.
That Bastien had been concerned she would get in the way of their plans to seize the territory, and that hers was the blood Aden had dismissed so readily.

It shouldn’t have bothered her. After all, it was no more than she’d been telling herself all along, that this thing between them was temporary. Her bad boy fling. So why did it hurt so much to hear him say it?

She stood and gathered her things. There was no more reason for her to stay. Aden didn’t need her—he’d made that abundantly clear—and her reason for being here in the first place was done. She’d wanted justice for Janey, and she’d gotten that. Or close enough. Carl Pinto was still out there somewhere, but she had the tools to find him. Better tools than Aden had. After all, she was the one who’d found the house last night. She’d find Pinto, and, despite what Aden seemed to think, she wouldn’t be stupid about it either. She’d find him and pass on the information to Aden via telephone. During the day, when she could simply leave a voice mail message. And that would be it as far as Aden was concerned. There’d be no need to humiliate herself further, no need to pretend that there was something besides sex going on between them. Because he clearly wasn’t feeling anything at all.

Time to let go of her bad boy and go back to her real life.

The phone rang as she closed her laptop and slipped it into her backpack. Someone picked it up before it rang a second time. Not that she would have answered it anyway. She wanted no more part in vampire business. She’d already gotten in deeper than she’d ever intended.

Stepping over to the office, she spied Aden and Bastien deep in conversation. Whatever they were discussing now, they’d gone back to their secret vampire voices. Maybe something to do with the phone call. Not that she cared, she reminded herself.

Aden looked up the moment she appeared in the doorway. A few minutes ago, she’d have interpreted that to mean they had a connection. Now, she just figured he wanted to make sure she didn’t overhear whatever he and Bastien were plotting.

“I can see you guys are busy,” she said, with false cheer. “And if I’m going to finish this, I’ll need my old notebooks, which are back at my condo. I’ll head over there now, and if I come up with anything, I’ll give you a call.”

Bastien smiled, but she could tell by his quick glance at Aden that he was waiting for the boss to react before he said anything.

Aden just studied her silently, as if waiting for her to say more. But there wasn’t anything else. She was going home.

ADEN WATCHED Sidonie as she stood there in his office doorway and fed him a huge steaming pile of bullshit that she apparently expected him to take at face value.

“I’ll give you a call,” she said, and turned away without so much as a wave.

He stared at the empty doorway until he heard the ding of the elevator, followed by the sound of the doors closing. Then he glanced at Bastien. “Put Kage on her. And tell Hamilton I want her tailed during the day.”

Something had put a bug up her ass. He didn’t know what it was, but he intended to find out. If she thought she could dismiss him with a lame excuse and walk away, she had a lot to learn. And he was going to enjoy teaching it to her.

But not tonight. That phone call had been formal notification of a challenge. Not from Silas, which might have been expected, but from a vampire named Ramiro Salvador. Aden didn’t know much about Salvador. He was from Mexico, which made him one of Lord Enrique’s people, and he’d been at the gathering on Sunday which had officially launched the challenge. Officially being the operative word, since the maneuvering, and the killing, had begun days before… as Aden had reason to know.