One Grave at a Time (Night Huntress #6)(6)

“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 *. 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.

Then Madigan turned back to us. “Cat. Bones.” He said our names like we should apologize for them, but I just smiled as though I hadn’t already eviscerated him in my fantasies several times.

“So great to meet you,” I said, holding out my hand again only because I knew he didn’t want to touch it.

He took it with the same faint pause he’d shown last time. I didn’t squeeze once I had him in my grip, but oh, it was tempting.

As soon as I let him go, Madigan swept out of Tate’s office, trailing a cloud of aftershave and irritation behind him.

“I’m following him,” my uncle said flatly. “And I’m not going back with you later, Cat.”

I glanced at Tate, who gave me a barely perceptible nod. In truth, I was relieved that he didn’t attempt to argue. Don could snoop on Madigan a hell of a lot more effectively than anyone else. Maybe Madigan was here because Uncle Sam was just being paranoid at having a vampire in charge of an operation that hunted and concealed evidence of the undead. If so, Madigan would waste a lot of taxpayer dollars by scrutinizing this operation only to come to the conclusion that Tate was an outstanding replacement for Don. His record was spotless, so I had no fear of Madigan’s unearthing any skeletons in Tate’s closet—real or metaphorical.

But that wasn’t why I was glad my uncle was focusing more on Madigan than on finding his way to the eternal doorway for the other side. If Madigan had a more sinister reason for being here, Don could alert us faster than anyone else. I had faith in Tate, Dave, and Juan being able to get themselves out of here if Madigan’s dislike of the undead took a more menacing turn; but my mother, for all her bravado, wasn’t as tough as they were.

And this wasn’t a regular building that she could just bust through a wall to escape from. The fourth sublevel was built to contain vampires against their will. I should know. I designed it back when I was capturing vampires so Don’s scientists could make a synthetic wonder drug called Brams. That drug, derived from the healing compound in undead blood, had kept several members of our team alive after they’d sustained grievous injury. Then Bones joined the operation, and Don got over his fear that raw vampire blood—far more effective in healing than Brams—would turn anyone evil who drank it. Bones donated enough of his blood for Don to parcel out to injured team members as needed, and the vampire cells on the fourth sublevel had remained empty for years as a result.

But that didn’t mean they couldn’t be put back into use if Don was right and Madigan was here for other reasons than a routine evaluation.

Or maybe I’d had so much shit happen lately that I assumed the worst about everyone now, whether I had valid reason to or not. I gave my head a shake to clear it. For all that Madigan pissed me off, it wasn’t too long ago that Don had had the same prejudice about vampires. Hell, it was just eight years ago that I’d thought the only good bloodsucker was a dead bloodsucker! Yes, Madigan’s attitude screamed Suspicious Bureaucratic Bastard, but hopefully his spending some time with Tate, Juan, Dave, and my mother would make him realize there was more to supernaturals than what he’d read in the pages of classified murder reports.

“So, what do you think of him?” Tate drawled, the former tightness now gone from his tone.

“That he and I won’t be BFFs,” was all I said. No need to say more when this room could be bugged.

Tate grunted. “I’m getting that vibe, too. Maybe it’s a good thing that . . . circumstances are what they are.”

By Tate’s careful allusion to Don’s condition, it was obvious that he, too, was taking no chances over our words being played back to Madigan later.

I gave a concurring shrug. “I suppose everything does happen for a reason.”





Three



By the time Bones and I got in our car on our last leg home, it was only an hour before dawn. We could’ve gotten back to our Blue Ridge house quicker if we’d flown the whole way, but it was less flashy to keep our helicopter at the local private airport. Even though our nearest neighbor was over two dozen acres away, a helicopter coming and going tended to attract a lot more notice than a car. The lower our profile in our home area, the better.