Bad Mouth(15)

She sputtered and choked on the bitter liquid, dissolving into a coughing fit. “Did he?” she asked when she could speak again.

“He did.” His smile disappeared, leaving his features as cold and hard as Kade’s when she’d first met him. “Ms. Craig, I know your reputation, and I know the history behind it. I can see you’re upset about that, but hear me out.” He waited for her acknowledgement.

“Go on,” she said.

“I’m asking you to think before you judge Kade.”

She absorbed his words carefully. Having never met him, she had no idea where he’d get the idea that she judged Kade. Though he wasn’t exactly wrong in that idea. “What did he tell you?”

“He tells me very little, but I know him well, and I’ve deduced that he cares for you.”

She did her best to ignore the warmth spreading in her chest. “It’s only been—”

He held up a gloved hand. “Please let me finish. He’s not what he appears, Ms. Craig. He’s a good man in spite of his atrocious speech. All I ask is that you dig a little before you decide anything about him.”

“What are you talking about? Dig for what?” An ominous sensation grew in the back of her mind. She had a feeling she wouldn’t like what he wanted her to find.

“I’m…limited with what I can tell you.” He sighed, his gaze rolling upward as if for inspiration. Then he gave her a very direct look. “The VLO receives copies of transformation applications?”

“Yes, we do.”

“And completed transformation records? The assignments?”

Where in the hell was he going with this? “Yes to both.”

He stood and made a short bow. “May you have a good day, Ms. Craig.” He strolled toward the door.

She couldn’t believe it. That was all he was leaving her with? “Wait!”

He stopped just shy of the exit, his grin back in place. More of a Cheshire grin this time.

“Is that it? What am I supposed to do with that?” she asked.

“Lim-i-ted, Ms. Craig.” He winked again. “I have faith that you’ll get it.” With that, he left her as speechless as when he’d come in.

What did the transformation records have to do with anything? Their investigation concerned illegal ones. Her mind replayed the conversation while she paced the short length of her office. Dig, he’d said. In the records. Applications and approvals and assignments. And Kade.

With an exhausted resignation, she pulled her chair to the keyboard and searched for all the records for all transformations assigned to Kade. The earliest records were from 1975, nearly forty years earlier. That would be like yesterday to Kade, but she hadn’t been born yet. With such disparity between them, he had no reason to be attracted to her, but maybe it didn’t matter when the attraction was all about sex. Val swiped her hands over her face. Her cheeks were hot. She had to stop distracting herself with such thoughts. With a shake of her head, she read through the first four sets of records before she flounced back into her chair. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

She picked up the phone and dialed Graham’s extension. “Any luck so far? Please give me something to be happy about.”

His warm chuckle at her ear eased some of her tension. “Well, I have one bit of promising news. Two of the blooding victims were connected. They were business partners in a roundabout way. Nothing you’d notice at first. A shipping company and, believe it or not, a towing company.”

“That’s weird. No go on the others?”

“Still checking.”

“Well, it’s something. More than I got. Thank you,” she said, rubbing at her temple with her free hand. “I needed this.”

“Anytime, V. I’ll let you know when I find anything more.”

She hung up and sipped her barely tolerable coffee. This case had gone from cut and dry to outright confusing. They’d assumed the bloodings were random acts committed by crazed vampires. There shouldn’t be anything common between them. There shouldn’t be rhyme or reason to the choice of victims, nor should any humans at the scene have survived the encounter.

She drummed her fingers on her desktop and then turned back to her computer screen. She pulled up Kade’s very first record. July 1975. Samuel Lewis. Caucasian male, thirty years old. The second record: September 1975. Jed Grayson. African American male, twenty-six years old. The third record: December 1975. Robert McCray, Caucasian male, thirty-eight years old.

This was getting nowhere.

As she continued through the list, the theme was all male. Not one female. But that didn’t tell her anything that could unravel Ezra’s puzzle. To top everything, Kade had been one busy adjuvant over the last several years with a transformation every month. It would take days to get through his records to date.

All right. She gave herself one more shot before heading home for the evening. She plugged the name Samuel Lewis 1975 into the Internet search box. Running a quick look starting at the top, she saw nothing until she reached midpage, and there it was. The man’s face staring out from an old, fuzzy mug shot. Rape, murder, and armed robbery. That couldn’t be right. She read it again and then one more time.

Her heart racing, she checked Jed Grayson. On the second page of links, she found his story. Something about drug charges and a violent shootout with cops. Before the cops had busted into his place, he had murdered his family.

Her hands swept over her face. These men shouldn’t have gotten approved for transformation. On a hunch, she plugged the names into her criminal records database. Every single one. After the first fifteen records, she skipped every ten and then twenty until her fingers ached from typing. The pattern never broke over the entire forty years. Every one of Kade’s subjugates were the worst dregs of human society.

How long had this gone on and who drove it? The authorizations were signed mostly by different members of the Human Transformation Authority, an early predecessor of the VLO. All this time and no one noticed criminals getting through the cracks. Unbelievable. And these were the humans Kade had contact with most.

She remembered her reaction to the pictures of his newest transformation. With a wealth of foreboding, she checked the record, and it made her sick to her stomach. Jerry Finch, serial pedophile, three counts. The last victim was hospitalized for months following the assault, with burn wounds on the boy’s face. In a burst of clarity, she saw a glimmer of the real Kade. He hadn’t mutilated innocent subjugates at all. There was nothing innocent about any one of these humans.

He had to have known somehow that these were bad men, that they shouldn’t have been turned. It made no sense for him to proceed with the transformations. A hundred questions crowded her thoughts, and she needed answers only he could provide.

With a sudden burst of energy, she jumped up from her seat. A glance out the window revealed the setting sun. She snapped up her jacket, rushed out of her office, and caught the elevator down. He could have tried to defend his actions if he’d only told her about this. Unless he knew no different. Those criminals were what he knew of humans. Brutal, he’d said, and now she knew why he thought so. Maybe he believed he was doing the right thing by punishing those men. She needed to know his reasoning, but regardless of it, he had to stop. What he was doing was as wrong as his assignments to transform those men.

She couldn’t get to his penthouse fast enough. When she reached his door, she pounded on the worn, symbol-scarred wood. He opened the door himself, thankfully, but he tensed in surprise when he saw her. His brows rose expectantly as the silence drew tight between them.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I’m so sorry, Kade.”

“What do you have to be sorry about?”

Ignoring the question, she clutched his biceps, her gaze darting around the room. “Where’s your newest?”

“I sent him to my home in Glacier.” He rested his hands at her waist.

Her relief felt like the aftereffect of a deep-tissue massage. “A thousand thank-yous.”

“What’s going on, Val?”

“Oh, Kade.” How was she supposed to explain what had been done to him, how he’d been deceived? “None of your subjugates were eligible for transformation. Not one.”

He frowned, his eyes narrowing. “They were all approved, all legal.”

“They were approved all right, but they weren’t supposed to be. They had criminal records. They were felons, all violent, all evil.”

“You think I don’t know that? After I taste their blood, I see their sins.” At her questioning look, he elaborated. “My adjuvant ability is to see past events of those I feed from.”

She gasped. “Do you realize how valuable that is? You’re like cop, lawyer, judge, and jury all in one.” She waved her hand. “Never mind. Kade, if you knew what these men were, why did you transform them? You could have refused them.”