One Grave at a Time
Page 2
"Let us pass, or we'll leave, and you can explain to your boss that the visitors he expected had better things to do than have their time wasted."
The guard who'd demanded our ID hesitated for a loaded moment, then stepped aside without another word. The twin fangs gleaming from Bones's teeth retracted, and his eyes bled back to their normal dark brown color.
I put my wallet back in my pants. Guess I wasn't going to need my driver's license after all.
"Wise choice," Bones commented. I brushed past the guards, with him following behind me, my uncle still muttering that he didn't like this. No shit, I thought, but didn't say it for more reasons than not wanting to appear like I was talking to myself. This was Don's first trip back to the building he'd run for years and ultimately died in. Now he was returning in a supernatural form that most of his colleagues couldn't even see. That had to be discomfiting in more ways than I could imagine.
We went down the hallway toward the elevator, and I mentally catalogued the differences since the last time I'd been here. There used to be two busy offices in this section, but now the only sounds of activity were our steady footfalls on the linoleum floor.
When we got in the elevator, I pressed the button for the second sublevel, where the staff offices were located. A poignant sense of deja vu washed over me as the shiny doors closed. The last time I'd ridden this elevator on the way down, I had been rushing to Don's bedside to say goodbye. Now he stood next to me, the other side of the elevator hazily visible through his profile. Life certainly had some bends in the road that I never would have anticipated.
"Just so you know, if I see a bright light while I'm here, I'm running into it without waiting for you to say a damn word," my uncle said, breaking the silence.
The wryness in his tone made me laugh. "I'd be cheering you the whole way," I assured him, glad his sardonic sense of humor hadn't vanished despite the roughness of the past several weeks.
The elevator stopped, and we got out. I instinctively wanted to turn toward what used to be Don's office but made a left instead. Tate said he didn't feel right moving into Don's old office even though it was the largest and had a mini command station in it. I didn't blame him. It would feel like grave robbing to strip Don's things out of his office when he was still technically here, though only a handful of people in the building were aware of that. My uncle hadn't wanted anyone to know of his new, ghostly status, but I'd refused to hide the information from any undead team members who could still see and talk to Don.
Tate's door was ajar. I went inside without knocking though I knew he wasn't alone. Someone with a heartbeat was in there with him. A heartbeat, and too much cologne for a vampire's sensitive nose.
"Hey, Tate," I said, noting how stiff his posture was despite the fact that he was sitting. The reason for his tenseness must be the tall, thin man who stood a few feet away from Tate's desk. He had graying hair cut in the same high-and-tight style Tate favored, but something about his bearing suggested his hair was the only military influence he had. His stance was too relaxed, his hands boasting calluses that I'd bet came from pens versus weapons. His startled glance up revealed that he hadn't known we were here until I spoke, either, and while vampires were stealthy, I'd made no attempt to conceal the sound of our approach.
The arrogance in his stare once he recovered from his surprise made me mentally reclassify him from civilian to government desk jockey. Usually just two things accounted for such an immediate, overconfident attitude at a first meeting: a wealth of bad-ass undead abilities, or a person who firmly believed that his connections meant he could make his own rules. Since Mr. Cocky was human, that left the latter.
"You must be the new operations consultant," I said, smiling in a way that would look friendly to someone who didn't know me.
"Yes," was his cool reply. "My name is-"
"Jason Madigan," Don completed the sentence the same time as the gray-haired government contractor. My uncle's voice sounded strained, almost shocked. "What is he doing here?"
Chapter Two
I kept my attention on Madigan, not looking over at Don even though it was my first instinct. Mustn't let on that there was a ghost in the room, and the question had been rhetorical since Don knew Madigan couldn't hear him.
"Cat Crawfield . . . Russell," I introduced myself. Okay, Bones and I weren't married according to human law, but by vampire standards, we were bound together tighter than a piece of paper could ever make two people.
A wave of pleasure brushed against my subconscious, drifting out from the shields Bones had erected around himself as soon as our helicopter landed. He liked that I'd added the last name he'd been born with to my own. That was all the officiating I needed to decide that I'd be Catherine Crawfield Russell from this day forth.
Even though I hadn't needed Don's reaction to deduce that Madigan was going to be a pain in my ass, years of strict farm-bred manners made it impossible for me not to offer my hand. Madigan looked at it for a fraction too long before shaking it. His hesitancy revealed that Madigan had a prejudice against women or vampires, neither of which endeared him any further to me.
Bones stated his name with none of my hand-offering compulsions, but then again, his childhood had been spent begging or thieving to survive the harsh circumstances of being the bastard son of a prostitute in eighteenth-century London. Not being endlessly drilled about manners and respecting your elders like mine. He stared at Madigan without blinking, his hands resting inside the pockets of his leather coat, his half smile more challenging than courteous.
Madigan took the hint. He dropped his hand from mine and didn't attempt extending it to Bones. The faintest expression of relief might have even crossed his face, too.
Prejudice against vampires, then. Perfect.
"You were right, weren't you?" Madigan said to Tate with a jovialness that rang false. "He did come with her."
For a second, my gaze flicked to Don. Good God, could Madigan see him? He was human, but maybe Madigan had some psychic abilities . . .
"With vampires, if you invite one spouse, the other is automatically included as well," Bones replied lightly. "That's an age-old rule, but I'll forgive you for not knowing it."
Oh, Madigan meant Bones. I stifled my snort. What he said was true, but even if it weren't, Bones wouldn't have stayed behind. I didn't work here anymore, so it was not like I could be threatened with anything if Madigan didn't like my attitude. And he wouldn't, I could promise him that.
"What's up with the ID check on the roof?" I asked to steer things away from the staring contest between Madigan and Bones that the consultant would lose. No one could outstare a vampire.
Madigan shifted his attention to me, his natural scent souring ever so slightly underneath its preponderance of chemical enhancement.
"One of the oversights I noted when I arrived two days ago was that no one checked my identification when I landed. This facility is too important to be compromised by something as simple as sloppy security."
Tate bristled, hints of emerald appearing in his indigo eyes, but I just snorted.
"If you're arriving by air, they kinda figure that after they've double-checked the identity of the aircraft, the crew, and the flight plan, whoever's inside is who they're supposed to be. Especially if you invited those people here. But if they weren't, and they still pulled all the rest of that off, fake ID would be the easy part. Besides"-another snort-"if anyone got here by air that didn't belong, you think they'd be able to get away with their aircraft in weapons range and several vampires able to track them by scent alone?"
Instead of being made defensive by my blunt analysis of how useless a roof ID check was, Madigan stared at me in a thoughtful way.
"I heard you had difficulty with authority and following orders. Seems that wasn't exaggerated."
"Nope, that's true," I replied with a cheery smile. "What else did you hear?"
He waved a hand dismissively. "Too many things to list. Your former team raved about you so much I simply had to meet you."
"Yeah?" I didn't buy that as the reason I was here, but I'd play along. "Well, whatever you do, ignore what my mom has to say about me."
Madigan didn't even crack a smile. Uptight prick.
"What does an operations consultant do, I wonder?" Bones asked, as if he hadn't been busy using his mind-reading skills to eavesdrop in Madigan's mind from the moment we arrived.
"Ensures that the transfer of management in a highly sensitive Homeland Security department is as smooth as it needs to be for the sake of national security," Madigan said, that smugness back in his tone. "I'll be reviewing all records over the next few weeks. Missions, personnel, budgets, everything. This department is too critical to only hope that Sergeant Bradley is up for the task of running it."
Tate didn't so much as twitch a brawny muscle even though the implied insult had to burn. For all the issues I'd had with him in the past, his competence, dedication, and work ethic had never been among them.
"You won't find anyone more qualified to run this operation now that Don's gone," I said with quiet steel.
"That's not why he's here," Don hissed. He'd been quiet for the past several minutes, but now he sounded more agitated than I'd ever heard him. Did becoming a ghost give my normally urbane uncle less control over his emotions, or did he and Madigan have a nasty history together?
"He's after something more important than auditing Tate's job performance," Don went on.
"I'm particularly interested in getting caught up on your records," Madigan said to me, oblivious to the other conversation in the room.
I shrugged. "Knock yourself out. Hope you like stories about the bad guys-or girls-getting it in the end."
"My favorite kind," Madigan replied with a glint in his eye that I didn't care for.
"Are Dave, Juan, Cooper, Geri, and my mom in the Wreck Room?" I asked, done with playing stupid word games. If I spent much more time with him, my temper might overcome my common sense, and that wouldn't be good. The smartest thing would be to play docile and let Tate find out if Madigan was really sniffing around this operation for ulterior motives.
"Why do you want to know their location?" Madigan asked, as if I had nefarious intentions he needed to protect them from.
My smile hid the fact that I was gritting my teeth. "Because since I'm here, I want to say hi to my friends and family," I managed to reply, proud of myself for not ending the sentence with dickhead.
"Soldiers and trainees are too busy to drop what they're doing just because a visitor wants to chat," Madigan stated crisply.
My fangs jumped out of their own accord, almost aching with my desire to tear the snotty expression right off Madigan's lightly wrinkled face. Maybe some of that showed, because he followed that comment with, "I must warn you, any hostile actions toward me will be taken as an attack against the United States itself."
"Pompous prick," Don snapped, striding over to Madigan before stopping abruptly, as if remembering there wasn't a single thing he could do to him in his current state.
A thread of warning edged into my furious emotions, Bones's silent reminder for me to get control of myself. I did, forcing my fangs to retract and my eyes to return from sizzling green to their normal shade of medium gray.
"Whatever would give you the idea that I'd attack you?" I asked, making my voice as innocent and surprised as I could while mentally folding him into the shape of a pretzel.
"I might be new here, but I've extensively studied reports on your kind," Madigan said, dropping his patronizing G-man façade to show the na**d hostility underneath. "All of them show that vampires' eyes change color right before they attack."
Bones laughed, a caressing sound that was at odds with the dangerous energy starting to push at his walls. "Bollocks. Our eyes turn green for reasons that have nothing to do with intent to kill-and I've seen vampires rip throats out without the slightest change in iris color. Is that the only experience you've had with vampires? Reports?"
The last word was heavy with polite scorn. Madigan stiffened.
"I've had enough experience to know that some can read minds."
"Shouldn't concern you. Men with nothing to hide have nothing to fear, right, mate?"
I waited to see if Madigan would nut up and accuse Bones of prying into his mind during this conversation, but he simply adjusted his wire-rim glasses as though their location on his nose was of prime importance.
"Your mom and the others will be done with training in an hour," Tate said, the first words he'd spoken since we'd come into his office. "You can wait here, if you'd like. Madigan was just leaving."
"Are you dismissing me?" Madigan asked with a touch of incredulity.
Tate's expression was bland. "Didn't you say right before Cat got here that you'd had enough of me for the day?"
Faint color rose in Madigan's cheeks. Not embarrassment, from his scent spiking with hints of kerosene. Carefully controlled indignation.
"I did," he replied shortly. "You'll have those reports for me in the morning? I assume staying up the rest of the night should be no hardship for someone like you."
Oh, what an asshole. My fangs did that let me at him! thing again, but this time, I kept them in my gums while also stifling the nosferatu green from leaping into my gaze.
The guard who'd demanded our ID hesitated for a loaded moment, then stepped aside without another word. The twin fangs gleaming from Bones's teeth retracted, and his eyes bled back to their normal dark brown color.
I put my wallet back in my pants. Guess I wasn't going to need my driver's license after all.
"Wise choice," Bones commented. I brushed past the guards, with him following behind me, my uncle still muttering that he didn't like this. No shit, I thought, but didn't say it for more reasons than not wanting to appear like I was talking to myself. This was Don's first trip back to the building he'd run for years and ultimately died in. Now he was returning in a supernatural form that most of his colleagues couldn't even see. That had to be discomfiting in more ways than I could imagine.
We went down the hallway toward the elevator, and I mentally catalogued the differences since the last time I'd been here. There used to be two busy offices in this section, but now the only sounds of activity were our steady footfalls on the linoleum floor.
When we got in the elevator, I pressed the button for the second sublevel, where the staff offices were located. A poignant sense of deja vu washed over me as the shiny doors closed. The last time I'd ridden this elevator on the way down, I had been rushing to Don's bedside to say goodbye. Now he stood next to me, the other side of the elevator hazily visible through his profile. Life certainly had some bends in the road that I never would have anticipated.
"Just so you know, if I see a bright light while I'm here, I'm running into it without waiting for you to say a damn word," my uncle said, breaking the silence.
The wryness in his tone made me laugh. "I'd be cheering you the whole way," I assured him, glad his sardonic sense of humor hadn't vanished despite the roughness of the past several weeks.
The elevator stopped, and we got out. I instinctively wanted to turn toward what used to be Don's office but made a left instead. Tate said he didn't feel right moving into Don's old office even though it was the largest and had a mini command station in it. I didn't blame him. It would feel like grave robbing to strip Don's things out of his office when he was still technically here, though only a handful of people in the building were aware of that. My uncle hadn't wanted anyone to know of his new, ghostly status, but I'd refused to hide the information from any undead team members who could still see and talk to Don.
Tate's door was ajar. I went inside without knocking though I knew he wasn't alone. Someone with a heartbeat was in there with him. A heartbeat, and too much cologne for a vampire's sensitive nose.
"Hey, Tate," I said, noting how stiff his posture was despite the fact that he was sitting. The reason for his tenseness must be the tall, thin man who stood a few feet away from Tate's desk. He had graying hair cut in the same high-and-tight style Tate favored, but something about his bearing suggested his hair was the only military influence he had. His stance was too relaxed, his hands boasting calluses that I'd bet came from pens versus weapons. His startled glance up revealed that he hadn't known we were here until I spoke, either, and while vampires were stealthy, I'd made no attempt to conceal the sound of our approach.
The arrogance in his stare once he recovered from his surprise made me mentally reclassify him from civilian to government desk jockey. Usually just two things accounted for such an immediate, overconfident attitude at a first meeting: a wealth of bad-ass undead abilities, or a person who firmly believed that his connections meant he could make his own rules. Since Mr. Cocky was human, that left the latter.
"You must be the new operations consultant," I said, smiling in a way that would look friendly to someone who didn't know me.
"Yes," was his cool reply. "My name is-"
"Jason Madigan," Don completed the sentence the same time as the gray-haired government contractor. My uncle's voice sounded strained, almost shocked. "What is he doing here?"
Chapter Two
I kept my attention on Madigan, not looking over at Don even though it was my first instinct. Mustn't let on that there was a ghost in the room, and the question had been rhetorical since Don knew Madigan couldn't hear him.
"Cat Crawfield . . . Russell," I introduced myself. Okay, Bones and I weren't married according to human law, but by vampire standards, we were bound together tighter than a piece of paper could ever make two people.
A wave of pleasure brushed against my subconscious, drifting out from the shields Bones had erected around himself as soon as our helicopter landed. He liked that I'd added the last name he'd been born with to my own. That was all the officiating I needed to decide that I'd be Catherine Crawfield Russell from this day forth.
Even though I hadn't needed Don's reaction to deduce that Madigan was going to be a pain in my ass, years of strict farm-bred manners made it impossible for me not to offer my hand. Madigan looked at it for a fraction too long before shaking it. His hesitancy revealed that Madigan had a prejudice against women or vampires, neither of which endeared him any further to me.
Bones stated his name with none of my hand-offering compulsions, but then again, his childhood had been spent begging or thieving to survive the harsh circumstances of being the bastard son of a prostitute in eighteenth-century London. Not being endlessly drilled about manners and respecting your elders like mine. He stared at Madigan without blinking, his hands resting inside the pockets of his leather coat, his half smile more challenging than courteous.
Madigan took the hint. He dropped his hand from mine and didn't attempt extending it to Bones. The faintest expression of relief might have even crossed his face, too.
Prejudice against vampires, then. Perfect.
"You were right, weren't you?" Madigan said to Tate with a jovialness that rang false. "He did come with her."
For a second, my gaze flicked to Don. Good God, could Madigan see him? He was human, but maybe Madigan had some psychic abilities . . .
"With vampires, if you invite one spouse, the other is automatically included as well," Bones replied lightly. "That's an age-old rule, but I'll forgive you for not knowing it."
Oh, Madigan meant Bones. I stifled my snort. What he said was true, but even if it weren't, Bones wouldn't have stayed behind. I didn't work here anymore, so it was not like I could be threatened with anything if Madigan didn't like my attitude. And he wouldn't, I could promise him that.
"What's up with the ID check on the roof?" I asked to steer things away from the staring contest between Madigan and Bones that the consultant would lose. No one could outstare a vampire.
Madigan shifted his attention to me, his natural scent souring ever so slightly underneath its preponderance of chemical enhancement.
"One of the oversights I noted when I arrived two days ago was that no one checked my identification when I landed. This facility is too important to be compromised by something as simple as sloppy security."
Tate bristled, hints of emerald appearing in his indigo eyes, but I just snorted.
"If you're arriving by air, they kinda figure that after they've double-checked the identity of the aircraft, the crew, and the flight plan, whoever's inside is who they're supposed to be. Especially if you invited those people here. But if they weren't, and they still pulled all the rest of that off, fake ID would be the easy part. Besides"-another snort-"if anyone got here by air that didn't belong, you think they'd be able to get away with their aircraft in weapons range and several vampires able to track them by scent alone?"
Instead of being made defensive by my blunt analysis of how useless a roof ID check was, Madigan stared at me in a thoughtful way.
"I heard you had difficulty with authority and following orders. Seems that wasn't exaggerated."
"Nope, that's true," I replied with a cheery smile. "What else did you hear?"
He waved a hand dismissively. "Too many things to list. Your former team raved about you so much I simply had to meet you."
"Yeah?" I didn't buy that as the reason I was here, but I'd play along. "Well, whatever you do, ignore what my mom has to say about me."
Madigan didn't even crack a smile. Uptight prick.
"What does an operations consultant do, I wonder?" Bones asked, as if he hadn't been busy using his mind-reading skills to eavesdrop in Madigan's mind from the moment we arrived.
"Ensures that the transfer of management in a highly sensitive Homeland Security department is as smooth as it needs to be for the sake of national security," Madigan said, that smugness back in his tone. "I'll be reviewing all records over the next few weeks. Missions, personnel, budgets, everything. This department is too critical to only hope that Sergeant Bradley is up for the task of running it."
Tate didn't so much as twitch a brawny muscle even though the implied insult had to burn. For all the issues I'd had with him in the past, his competence, dedication, and work ethic had never been among them.
"You won't find anyone more qualified to run this operation now that Don's gone," I said with quiet steel.
"That's not why he's here," Don hissed. He'd been quiet for the past several minutes, but now he sounded more agitated than I'd ever heard him. Did becoming a ghost give my normally urbane uncle less control over his emotions, or did he and Madigan have a nasty history together?
"He's after something more important than auditing Tate's job performance," Don went on.
"I'm particularly interested in getting caught up on your records," Madigan said to me, oblivious to the other conversation in the room.
I shrugged. "Knock yourself out. Hope you like stories about the bad guys-or girls-getting it in the end."
"My favorite kind," Madigan replied with a glint in his eye that I didn't care for.
"Are Dave, Juan, Cooper, Geri, and my mom in the Wreck Room?" I asked, done with playing stupid word games. If I spent much more time with him, my temper might overcome my common sense, and that wouldn't be good. The smartest thing would be to play docile and let Tate find out if Madigan was really sniffing around this operation for ulterior motives.
"Why do you want to know their location?" Madigan asked, as if I had nefarious intentions he needed to protect them from.
My smile hid the fact that I was gritting my teeth. "Because since I'm here, I want to say hi to my friends and family," I managed to reply, proud of myself for not ending the sentence with dickhead.
"Soldiers and trainees are too busy to drop what they're doing just because a visitor wants to chat," Madigan stated crisply.
My fangs jumped out of their own accord, almost aching with my desire to tear the snotty expression right off Madigan's lightly wrinkled face. Maybe some of that showed, because he followed that comment with, "I must warn you, any hostile actions toward me will be taken as an attack against the United States itself."
"Pompous prick," Don snapped, striding over to Madigan before stopping abruptly, as if remembering there wasn't a single thing he could do to him in his current state.
A thread of warning edged into my furious emotions, Bones's silent reminder for me to get control of myself. I did, forcing my fangs to retract and my eyes to return from sizzling green to their normal shade of medium gray.
"Whatever would give you the idea that I'd attack you?" I asked, making my voice as innocent and surprised as I could while mentally folding him into the shape of a pretzel.
"I might be new here, but I've extensively studied reports on your kind," Madigan said, dropping his patronizing G-man façade to show the na**d hostility underneath. "All of them show that vampires' eyes change color right before they attack."
Bones laughed, a caressing sound that was at odds with the dangerous energy starting to push at his walls. "Bollocks. Our eyes turn green for reasons that have nothing to do with intent to kill-and I've seen vampires rip throats out without the slightest change in iris color. Is that the only experience you've had with vampires? Reports?"
The last word was heavy with polite scorn. Madigan stiffened.
"I've had enough experience to know that some can read minds."
"Shouldn't concern you. Men with nothing to hide have nothing to fear, right, mate?"
I waited to see if Madigan would nut up and accuse Bones of prying into his mind during this conversation, but he simply adjusted his wire-rim glasses as though their location on his nose was of prime importance.
"Your mom and the others will be done with training in an hour," Tate said, the first words he'd spoken since we'd come into his office. "You can wait here, if you'd like. Madigan was just leaving."
"Are you dismissing me?" Madigan asked with a touch of incredulity.
Tate's expression was bland. "Didn't you say right before Cat got here that you'd had enough of me for the day?"
Faint color rose in Madigan's cheeks. Not embarrassment, from his scent spiking with hints of kerosene. Carefully controlled indignation.
"I did," he replied shortly. "You'll have those reports for me in the morning? I assume staying up the rest of the night should be no hardship for someone like you."
Oh, what an asshole. My fangs did that let me at him! thing again, but this time, I kept them in my gums while also stifling the nosferatu green from leaping into my gaze.
