Chapter 5
Aside from a few bumps and hiccups in an attempt to even the score—and learning that Jack’s stamina in the bedroom was only when he was in control—the rest of the night was pleasant.
Jack’s dinner plans involved not only eating, but cooking the meal together. Where he quickly learned just how sorely my meal preparation skills were lacking. And that, if nothing else, I excelled at using a can opener.
Most of our evening was spent swapping stories, memories, the last good book we read.
We made sure to keep the nature of our conversation light.
Nothing too personal, too deep, or too charged, as if we both needed to distance ourselves from the darkness— the wrong—that permeated the other parts of our lives.
Even though Jack’s art, and the insights I gleaned from what were effectively his memories, brought a number of questions to mind.
A series of his sketches were set in a hospital, the point of view set from the hospital bed, as though Jack was the patient. Todd had been in one of them. Seated by a window, next to the bed. His grumpy face, relaxed by sleep, resting against his fist.
But in keeping things light, I didn’t want to touch that with a ten-foot pole. It seemed bleak. And extremely personal. Which meant my best laid plans for the evening were left unfulfilled.
I wanted to get to the bottom of why Jack thought he couldn’t have children, though I suspected the hospital scenes, and his infertility, were connected.
I’d need to bring it up another time. Or…
I could broach the subject with someone else. Someone who had clearly been there. Dig into why Jack was in the hospital, which might give me enough information, if they were in fact connected.
So, I kept my questions to myself. For now.
Logic told me that knowing more would help me make an informed decision, or at the very least normalize the situation. With more information, I hoped I could explain a lot of things away.
But I carried with me a glimmer of ever-present unease that threatened to swallow me whole.
The odds against this happening were far too great, and that didn’t even take into consideration the weight of the Seal’s intentions for me.
I wasn’t a virgin, but I had been… If they somehow found out, would they consider the circumstances close enough to fulfill the ‘prophecy’?
Cold washed over me as the scales of decision started to tip more to one side than the other.
If there was so much wrong in the world, why would I want to force a life into it?
?
By the time I got home, I needed something mindless. Something distracting. Easy. Which is how Todd and I ended up watching an entire season of drunken fifty-somethings squabble over nothing until the sun came up. A last hoorah before our obligations to the FBI resumed in full force.
“You did something stupid today.” Todd raised his brow as he took the bowl of chips I offered. He would have known I was at Jack’s, but he wouldn’t have known what we were up to. “You’re moving strange. You’re trying to compensate for something.”
I huffed at him.
When Jack had tried to ‘even the score’ in his studio, he’d flipped me onto his couch.
Onto my back, and my rib cage unceremoniously erupted in pain, and any thoughts of pleasure, or my release, were torn away.
Jack had apologized profusely while I recovered my breath, though we both realized that further intimacy was not in the cards.
“You asking or telling?”
Todd put the bowl in his lap. I was still getting used to casual Todd. Grey sweatpants, t-shirt, his tattooed arms on display. “It’s a—” He did a motion I couldn’t quite place. He did it again when he noticed I wasn’t cluing in.
“Moving scooter?” And that was my best guess.
“It’s a transition in the conversation.”
“Segue?”
“Yes!” He did the motion again. “Segue.”
“A segue into … that I should be less … careless?”
“About being careful about what painkillers you take.” He lowered his head and raised his brow, trying to get me to read into his choice of words, but I just raised my brows and stared right back.
Todd chuffed, leaning back against the couch, crossing his arms. Somehow the bowl of chips didn’t move.
“If that was supposed to be a clue, I’m going to need something better.”
Todd gave it a moment. But soon there was a glint in his dark eyes—he’d thought of something. “When Chardonnay knew Marguerite went to the club, she….” Made Marguerite take a drug test the next day because she believed everyone who went to clubs did drugs.
Oh god. There were two reasons why this was unsettling. One, both Todd and I had watched far too much reality TV. And two, Todd was letting me know that I was going to be tested for drugs on my next visit to the FBI. In little over twenty-four hours.
I tried not to let the horror show on my face. If Todd hadn’t told me—I shook the thought away. I needed to get on top of fooling the test and fast.
“Gotcha.” I nodded, biting the inside of my cheek.
“I can guarantee my result will be different than Marguerite’s.
” She had, in fact, tested positive, so I technically wasn’t lying, even if I tested positive for something else.
But I was curious. Why would Todd bring this up, unless he knew a way around the test? “But let’s say I did do drugs—”
“Then I’d tell you to do anything and everything to get a prescription before the test.” Not exceedingly helpful in my situation, or if there were drugs in my system that couldn’t be prescribed, but I appreciated that he was trying.
“Thank you,” I said, meaning it. He didn’t have to tell me anything.
The tests were supposed to be ‘random’ and I sure as hell shouldn’t have been made aware.
I grabbed a handful of chips, took control of the remote, and gestured to the woman on the screen.
“Now, for a more important question, do we love or hate Solene?”
?
“Ms. James, if you could come with me, please?”
The three of us, Jack, Todd, and I, had just passed security when the FBI’s drug program administrator appeared out of nowhere. I did my best to look shocked.
The drug program administrator led me straight to the nearest washroom, gave me a set of instructions, a specimen cup, and opened the designated stall door for me. Blue dye in the toilet told me there would be no scooping water out of the back tank.
Good thing I’d had just over twenty-four hours to prepare.
To be honest, twenty-four hours might have been overkill, but I wanted to be as close to certain as possible that the test would not give me away.
I spent the last day overhydrating, constantly running to the washroom to flush any trace of the hormones out of my system.
The idea was that if I drank enough, for long enough, the hormones would be too diluted to register on the test.
After starting the process, the longest I went without running to the washroom was forty-five minutes. Which meant every forty-five minutes, or less, I was up and moving.
But it would all be worth it.
If it worked.
My involvement in the test was over quickly. But the effects of my preparations lasted well beyond the testing window. I swore the other agents could hear all the water I drank sloshing around as I joined them in the briefing room.
Fawzy nodded at me, her legs outstretched, ankles crossed beneath the table, as I took up residence between her and Todd.
Kaatz, Zhou, and Thruppy, on the other hand, were too preoccupied with their notes and devices to do much more than look my direction.
It seemed whatever camaraderie we built on the Almeida case had been chilled.
“Great. Now, that we’re all here,” Jack stood, bringing everyone’s attention to the oversized projector screen at the front of the room, “this is our next case.”
An image of five people, three women and two men, lying on the ground in a cemetery appeared on the screen.
They were spaced apart from one another, evenly, with intention.
Each person looked like the lowercase letter T, positioned so that their legs were outstretched, ankles together, arms out to their sides at three and nine o’clock.
With their eyes closed, hair mussed, everyone knew better than to ask if they were sleeping.
“Five people were found dead in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati earlier this week.” Jack progressed to the next slide, a close up of one of their necks.
“Two puncture wounds were present on each of the victims. All found on the neck. Local PD has no witnesses, no footage, and their leads haven’t turned up anything useful.
The victims have been identified, their families informed.
No unusual activity or change in behavior.
But rumors and panic are spreading locally because of the state of the bodies when they were found. Zhou?”
For once, Agent Zhou raised her gaze from her phone.
“Residents are taking to social media, lots of chatter and misinformation. No pictures and no names shared, but when it comes to these murders, there is one word on everyone’s minds.
” Ugh. Vampires. Fucking vampires. It didn’t take a lot to put two and two together.
“Vampires.” Jack’s response lacked enthusiasm.
“Not that is needs to be said, but there is no merit to the rumors. People, not creatures, are behind this. Though the deaths appear tied to some sort of ritual.” Not one I had heard of, but I had tried to stay away from vampire cults.
They gave me the creeps, even if they were, for the most part, harmless.
“The bodies were not exsanguinated.” Fawzy leaned forward, elbows on her knees.
“The autopsies showed four of the five victims died from cardiac arrest, one burst aneurysm. But all of their adrenaline levels were extremely high. Two to three times acceptable levels during the autopsy. Likely even higher at time of death.”
Jack nodded. “Medical examiner suggests they were overdosed with epinephrine.”
“Awful way to go.” Kaatz spoke mostly to herself, shaking her head.