Chapter 20
What. The. Hell.
Todd had a kid. No, not one kid, it turned out, but two, since Remy mentioned she had an eight-year-old sister. Todd had two daughters, and he never mentioned them to me. Not once.
I tried to hide my confusion through the whirlwind that followed, to clear my thoughts enough to call Jack, then Todd’s ex, and let them know Remy had been found safe and sound.
Because, yes, Remy had been at the center of the missing persons case Jack and Todd dropped everything for.
And it was Todd’s ex-wife who had called to tell him she’d gone missing.
To be fair, it didn’t look like Todd knew what to make of the situation either. From his expression, the tension knotted between his brows, he was trying to make sense of what occurred. How his daughter now stood only a few feet from him.
Perhaps he wished he had words of comfort, or questions he could ask her directly. But it was obvious there was a barrier. They didn’t know how to communicate.
Todd kept his eyes on me and Remy while he busied himself in the kitchen. His kitchen.
I did a spin. I was so absorbed in my thoughts, and making calls, I hadn’t realized I was in Todd’s apartment.
The layout was different from mine. Brighter.
Where my apartment went wide, his went deep.
The space was spotless, and surprisingly comforting, dotted with all manner of potted plants. All cacti. How fitting.
Remy pulled at my hand. Looking at her now, her resemblance to Todd was unmistakable. I should have seen it right away, the dark eyes, the slight slant of her nose, the way she furrowed her brows. There was no denying it.
“Do you think he’s mad?” she whispered.
I looked over at Todd. “No, his face just looks like that.”
“Not helping, Delilah.” If I didn’t know better, I’d say Todd was nervous. He didn’t know what to do, what to say, to his daughter.
“Are you mad?” I signed.
Todd’s eyes flickered between Remy and me, before shaking his head. “I… I just don’t know what to do. I’m relieved she is here, that she’s safe…”
“But you don’t know how to talk to her.”
Todd nodded.
Remy tugged at my shirt. “What are you saying?”
What came next needed to come from Todd, and we all knew it.
Wiping his hands on the dish towel tossed over his shoulder, he rounded the counter, and lowered himself to meet Remy’s eyeline.
Slowly, tentatively, he ran a thumb over her cheek in a gesture so sweet, I had to fight the urge to look away.
This was a moment between father and daughter, and I was intruding.
I told myself I kept watch just in case I was needed to translate.
Todd pointed to himself, then to her, mimed talking with his hand, then shrugged his shoulders.
“You don’t know… how to talk to me?” she guessed.
Todd tapped the tip of his nose twice and smiled. Translation: she was right on the nose. Of course, she was.
“Remy’s bright. She’ll learn, if you teach her.
” I was on the precipice of getting entangled in what was sure to be a very complicated family dynamic.
I was also very aware this apartment was Todd’s safe space and I was occupying it.
“Unless you need me for anything else. I… I should go.” Then I added, with a salute, before I made to leave, “Nice working with you, special agent Remy.”
But Todd followed me to the door, and caught it before I could slip all the way out. “I owe you an explanation.”
“You don’t. Owe me anything.” My signing was a bit rusty, but that didn’t make what I said any less true. I may have been surprised, and wondered why someone I considered my best friend didn’t share this part of himself with me, but this was none of my business if he didn’t want it to be.
“I’ll come over later.” His head slightly bowed. “If you’ll let me.”
His movements were somber. Apologetic. But I didn’t want to do serious right now, so I poked him in the chest. “Bring food.” When he nodded, I continued, with another poke to his chest, “And your brain.” Then I switched to signing, since I wasn’t sure how much to disclose about the case in front of a child, “We’re going to.
Get to bottom. Of what happened with vamps. ”
“Does that mean vampire?” Remy’s mouth hung open in disbelief.
Instead of answering her, I responded to Todd, “She’s cute.” I smiled, then said aloud, “She looks like you.”
“Heyyy!” Remy was indignant. “Take that back! I’m not that scary!”
“I don’t know,” I laughed. “Some of your special agent skills were pretty scary.”
She filled her lungs, inflating like she was about to rebut, then deflated, “Yeah, okay that’s fair.”
Todd cocked a brow. It only seemed reasonable to warn him about her newly acquired ‘skill’, a warning that perhaps he’d share with Remy’s mother and stepfather when they arrived to pick her up. “Remy is really good at marking escape routes. Aren’t you, Remy?”
“Oh, I’m the best!” Something about her changed, the child-mode I’d only gotten a glimpse of was activated.
She spun in a circle, then ran to the window at the far end of the room.
“Yeah, that’s a long way down. We’d definitely need a fire escape ladder to get out at this height.
” She spun back to face us. “Don’t worry dad, I’m going to teach Rory, and we’re going to be spies, and I’m going to learn how to sneak into the snack cupboard when mom and Raph aren’t watching! ”
Todd turned to me wide eyed, just as I slipped out the door with a smile. If there was a parent out there who could handle their child learning evasive techniques it was Todd. Plus, I’d left them both with something to talk about.
?
Freshly showered and full—of instant noodles and candy—I turned the air conditioning on full blast and wrapped myself in a comforter on the couch.
With the impromptu detour to Eureka, I’d spent far too much time dealing with my own personal drama.
In doing so, I’d also derailed the agents from the vamp case, and no small part of me was feeling the guilt of my actions.
I’d been brash. And furious. And… selfish.
I tried to remind myself that my own personal safety was in jeopardy with Mads on the loose, but I needed to get the vamp case back on track.
If anything bad happened to any more familiars, it was on me.
So, I sure as hell needed to ensure that we figured out who, exactly, was responsible to ensure they couldn’t hurt anyone else.
Notebook in hand, I started with my routine of writing down the knowns, unknowns, and questions yet-to-be-answered.
We knew familiars were being killed after fang ceremonies.
They disappeared after they were bitten and were taken to a nearby graveyard where they were injected with epinephrine until the point their bodies gave out.
We also knew that whoever did the killing, thought they were trying to save the familiars before they could transition into vampires, and when that didn’t work, the victims were laid out in a cross formation, their bodies aligned cross-spires that illuminated at the first light of day.
Then there was the elfish woman—yes, I refused to learn her name because the idea of what she was doing infuriated me and I refused to believe that a real person would be this foolish and selfish—with the false confession.
Someone must have convinced her to take the blame.
But, who, and how? What did she think she was getting out of this deal?
Whoever, convinced her to play scapegoat must have known her motivations, and knew what she would be willing to do to take the blame.
On top of that, there was also the strange interaction with that random officer, Officer Ellis, who approached me in the police station parking lot to give me grief over the hickey Carmen deposited on my neck. Said that people around Huntington were getting mugged because of them.
Which, all in all, seemed strange. A mugging, in the vamp case, was a social deterrent at best. Random at worst…
unless the mugging, was covering the real motive for these attacks.
I wrote a couple of thoughts down, then circled them twice with the intent to address possible motivations with the agents.
Flipping back and forth between the pages, one thing was clear. The vamp hunters were responsible for all the moving pieces.
Of that I was certain.
But who, precisely, was responsible, and why, was what we needed to figure out.
There were plenty of people online and in small communities who fancied themselves anti-vampers, but that was more of a protective measure.
They were people who toted garlic, and crosses, and crystals, and warned of welcoming strangers into homes.
I didn’t know of any anti-vamper, or vamp hunter groups, whose beliefs were extreme enough to go to these lengths.
And I sure as hell didn’t know any groups that operated on the belief that epinephrine would be an effective anti-vamp transformation counter measure.
Fittingly, “epinephrine” was the word I chose to welcome Todd, whose brow furrowed at my greeting.
Still, he followed me in, two bags in hand.
“We should be able to trace the epinephrine,” I continued.
“Whoever’s responsible for injecting the victims, would have had to buy it somewhere. Or stole it. A whole lot of it.”
Todd unpacked a takeout container from one of the bags he brought, handing it to me. “It was stolen.”
“Wait, really?” I sat back on the couch, container on my lap. “How do we know?”
Todd ceased what he was doing. “The world didn’t stop when we dealt with Mads, Delilah.” He tossed me a handful of napkins, as I opened the box. Burger and fries. Perfect. “Fawzy and Zhou followed up with police, they asked for reports of stolen auto-injectors or epinephrine solutions.”
“And?”
“They were stolen from ambulances.”
“Ambulances? Seems harder to rob than a pharmacy.”
“But if done right, they’re more likely to get away with it.
” I popped a fry in my mouth as Todd explained, “Paramedics conduct stock checks at beginning of shift. Restock after use. If no calls required epinephrine, no one would think to restock until the beginning of the next shift.” He rolled up his sleeves.
“We’re headed into the office to meet with the team tomorrow for an update. They were busy.”
In other words, I was already operating off old information. The questions I had regarding the vamps may have already been answered by the other agents. I squeezed the bridge of my nose. “I feel guilty.”
“You should.” Todd sat on one end of my couch and pulled the coffee table closer. “But not about the vamp case.”
Damn it. I knew where this was going.
“You kept a life-threatening secret from us, Delilah.” Todd leaned toward me, elbows to knees. “And it was happening right under our noses.”
“Impressed?” Was definitely the wrong thing to say. I took the rumble from the back of Todd’s throat to mean the burger and fries were going to have to wait, so I put the container back on the coffee table. “I know I shouldn’t have kept it from you, but I had it handled.”
I could have told him he had his own secrets that he didn’t feel were worthy of sharing, but I wasn’t going to bring his family into this. It didn’t seem fair.
“That’s not my point.”
“I told you when it mattered.”
“Also, not my point.”
My back resting against the arm of the couch, I curled my knees to my chest and gestured for him to take the floor.
“There’s something else you’re not telling us.” He was matter-of-fact, but not angry. If anything, he was more accepting than usual. “And I don’t know how much of a threat, whatever you’re keeping from us, is.”
“I—”
“I’ve been trying to give you room to tell me. If not me, Jack. On your own time.” He fished around in the second bag he brought. “But I realized I would be doing exactly what you are doing if I was in your shoes, so…”
He pulled something out. Whatever it was, it was sheathed. The leather worn. A familiar scratch on the side. No way. There was no possible way.
He handed it to me, handle first.
It was a knife. My knife, one that I had stored as backup beneath the floorboards of my old bedroom in Eureka.
I turned the handle over in my hands. It was properly weighted, the blades’ edge sharp, unlike the ‘play’ knives at the gathering. But there was one problem.
“I’m not allowed to carry weapons.”
“We’ll see about getting you permission to carry given the conditions of your work.”
I was still processing the fact that Todd had given me one of my knives, knowing that the only way it could be in my possession was if Todd had gone into the house where I grew up before we left Eureka, and intentionally looked for weapons stored there.
Lawrence and I must not have been as covert as we thought.
Sheathing the blade and placing it on the coffee table, I finally swallowed past the shock of Todd’s gift. “And here I thought Jack was the stalker.”
Todd picked up a fry and threw it at me. I threw it back.
“You know, I think I’m learning a bad lesson out of all of this.” Todd popped the fry in his mouth as I continued, “I keep getting rewarded for troublemaking.”
“Something you seem keen on teaching my daughter.” There was a warmth to him that quickly faded.
“This afternoon was full of surprises, but we don’t have to get into it.”
He rubbed a hand over his head. “I thought you knew.”
“What?” Todd seemed genuine, ashamed, and perhaps a bit nervous. It was utterly confusing. “How would I have known?”
“After you were roofied, you kept re-watching the Jackalope footage. You always started the video where I was talking to Jack about my family. You’re smart. I thought you knew, but you weren’t asking because you knew how much it…”
“Hurt?”
His reaction was enough. I was right.
I had to dig deep in my memory to recall what Todd shared with Jack at the Jackalope. “I’m still a stranger to them,” he’d said. “They don’t know me. They won’t.” His words took on a whole different meaning with what I now knew.
Ouch.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” I offered. “You don’t owe it to me. I was a little taken aback, yes, but this is only my business if you want it to be.”
“I want to. But first…” Todd leaned over, couch creaking as he pulled open the bag that produced my knife…revealing the cash Lawrence left. “You should put this somewhere safe.”