Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(25)

“More Rose Red than Snow White,” I said, doing my best to sound casual. Red meant take all the precautions, all the extra security measures, and Rose Red meant it was aimed at all of us. Once the

wedding was over I had no idea how we’d make the code words work in normal conversations; Claudia and Bobby Lee would probably make us all memorize a whole new set of words.

I heard the woman crying louder from the open door. The female uniform finally caught my eye.

“Gotta get back to work, we’ll talk more wedding stuff later.”

“We will,” she said. “Keep your head on a swivel out there.”

“You know I will.” I was walking slowly toward the officer with the questioning look on her face.

“I know you will.” There was a moment of silence where she probably wanted to say something more, but we didn’t have code words to handle it.

“Later, alligator,” I said.

That made her laugh, which was the point; when your friends worry about you, the least you can do is lighten the mood. I hung up to the sound of her laughter and went to find out what the female uniform wanted from me.





7

OFFICER KAY BEECHER had been very grateful to find another woman in the hallway with a badge, because she was on her period, and she was afraid she was about to go through her uniform pants. I sympathized as only another woman can, and let her go, taking her place in the doorway. A dark-haired woman in a pink maid’s dress complete with white half apron was partially collapsed on the bed crying into Kleenex from the box beside her.

Beecher had introduced us to each other. “Mona, this is Anita, she’s a U.S. Marshal and she’ll stay with you for just a few minutes.”

I raised an eyebrow at the first names, but Beecher whispered, “She’s really upset, first names help.”

I nodded like that made sense to me, and I guess it did. “Thanks . . . Kay.”

“Just keep her calm until Captain Storr clears her to go home.”

I whispered back, “She the one who put out the fire?”

“Saved the day,” Kay said, and made her power walk in the direction of a restroom that wasn’t in one of the rooms connected to the crime. First-day lecture for crime scenes: you do not use a bathroom that could contain evidence unless someone tells you it’s clear to use. Officer Kay was probably going to have to find a public restroom unless she could get another room opened that didn’t contain someone connected with the crime. I could be here awhile.

Mona snuffled into the Kleenex, looking at me through bleary tear-filled eyes. “What was your name, Anna?”

“Anita,” I said.

She gave a weak smile. “Anita.”

I smiled encouragingly, thinking it was nice to be the comforting presence for once instead of the threat. I rarely got to play good cop for some reason. Oh wait, because I was bad at it, but I smiled and really tried to look as harmless as my size and not as dangerous as all the weapons and body armor I was wearing.

She smiled back.

“It was very brave of you to tackle the fire with just a fire extinguisher,” I said.

She smiled a little more, then shivered, smile fading away. “I didn’t want what happened in New York to happen here.”

“That was bad,” I agreed. “Thanks again for protecting everyone here in the hotel.”

“I saw it on the news, all those poor people.”

“Yeah.” And then because I was never good at waiting around, I asked, “Did you see someone leave the room ahead of you?”

She shook her head.

“Did you have to open a lot of doors before you hit the right one?”

She blinked and looked at me, frowning. “What?”

“It must have been really scary with the fire alarm going off and everyone rushing to get out and you kept your head and looked for the fire.”

She nodded. “I was very scared, but I smelled the smoke, and I knew we had a vampire in the one room, and all I could think of was what happened in New York. I couldn’t let that happen here.”

I thought there was no way she smelled smoke, the carpet had barely begun to burn, but maybe she thought she smelled smoke because once she saw the flames she expected it. Memory is a funny thing, it fills in the gaps with what you expect, not always with what happened. It’s one reason eyewitness testimony is so untrustworthy.

“Did you see the light from the flames under the door?” I asked.

“No, the doors seal tight.”

“I guess it was lucky the New York fire was in your head, so you went right to the vampire’s room.”

“What did you say?”

“The New York fire has been all over the news, so it’s natural that working in a hotel, it would be in your mind.”

She nodded, looking puzzled, or something. I couldn’t read her expression; was she going into shock? It happened sometimes after the emergency was over even if you weren’t hurt. She had been checked for injuries; surely someone had done that.

“Did you get hurt, burned?”

She shook her head, staring at a point in front of her, but I think she wasn’t seeing anything in the room. It was just a direction to stare while she processed what had happened to her.

“Mona, you okay?” I glanced down the hallway, seeing if I could flag another uniform down to send Dolph this way, but everyone was too far away without me yelling. I didn’t want to get Kay in trouble or have to explain why she’d had to leave the area. There might not be a sisterhood among women or even female cops, but I knew how hard it was to be one of the boys when biology meant you’d never really be one. Having a heavy period emergency could ruin whatever street cred Kay had. Or she’d find tampons and pads all over her desk, in her locker, in her squad car, and she’d have to pretend it didn’t bother her, because if she let it show they’d play the joke forever. Hell, they might play it forever anyway. Nope, I would stay here on the door until she got back, or until someone who outranked me joined us, which would be Dolph. As a U.S. Marshal, I wasn’t technically in the chain of command for any local law enforcement. Marshals were sort of like warrant officers in the army; you knew what our rank was, but not where we fit into your power structure, and you were never sure who could give us orders and who we’d ignore.