Chapter 37
And he did try. The first attempt came in the form of an unexpected visitor that roused me from a disjointed sleep.
“She’s not in here.”
It was a man’s voice. Professional. Familiar. Yet, not familiar enough for me to place.
“What do you mean she’s not in there?” The second voice was Jack. “One of us was on the door at all times. Where would she have gone?”
“The sheets are missing, maybe she Rapunzelled out.”
Despite how tired I’d been, and how much my body yearned for sleep, it didn’t come.
I’d tossed and turned all night. My passenger pressed on my bladder.
The room felt too large, the bed so wide I felt exposed, and my hopes of sleeping in a real bed were dashed as I’d ended up in a nest of blankets on the floor between the mattress and the wall on the side opposite the door.
I popped my frizzled bedhead up to find Jack standing next to Jerome. “Who’s not in where?”
“Jesus, Delilah.” Jack clutched his chest, his brow relaxed then knit together. “Why were you sleeping on the floor?”
“Why did you randomly barge in at—” I looked at the clock, blinking the blur away from my vision. “One?”
“In the afternoon, if you’re wondering.” Jerome, toting a bag of rattling equipment, made his way matter-of-factly across the room. “Now, let’s get you up onto the bed and so we can give you a checkup.”
Still wrapped in blankets, I had no intention of leaving the comfort of my blankety nest to get subjected to more tests. “Yeah, I’ll pass.”
“I wasn’t asking.” Jerome patted the bed. “Up.”
Not moving, I watched Jack hover by the doorway, wondering if he’d called Jerome before or after my declaration of rejoining the vamp case.
“Jack, out,” Jerome ordered. There was a brief stare down between the two, before Jack relented, closing the door over behind him. “Okay, now, up.”
“I appreciate the effort you made for whatever this is, but I’d rather not if it’s all the same to you.”
“Delilah, you were checked out of the hospital against medical advice. Now, I cancelled all of my appointments and drove five hours at Jack’s behest to make sure you were okay, so if you won’t do this for me, or for you, think of someone else and do it for them.”
“You just dropped everything and came because Jack asked you to?” I wasn’t jealous.
Jack and I might have had feelings for each other, and acted on those feelings once, almost twice, but Jack could do what he wanted with whoever he wanted.
My hesitancy came from what I knew of Jack and Jerome’s relationship, and that it had been tumultuous.
Jerome sighed. “He’s a bad habit. I can’t bring myself to say no when he asks. Even if we are better off apart.”
“He can be kind of convincing,” I offered.
“And hard-headed.”
“And over-bearing.”
“And fixated.”
“And overconfident.”
“And now, I’m going to need you to get up on the bed for me so we can get you checked out.” He got me there.
Shuffling in my sheets, I slowly got to my feet. “I think you’ll find there’s more of me than you’re expecting.” I dropped the bedspread before sitting next to Jerome.
“Jack usually brings me his friends when they are missing pieces. Not the other way round.” Jerome pulled a stethoscope out of his bag and wrapped it around his neck, not looking the least bit surprised. “How are you feeling?”
“That depends… Did Jack bring you here to convince me not to go back in the field?”
“What do you think?” Jerome warmed up his hands then donned some gloves. “Bad habits aside, what Jack wants won’t sway my medical opinion.”
That was good enough for me. So, I told him the truth, as he did a quick series of tests, expressing concern over the scarring on my stomach and any pain I may have been experiencing due to my passenger.
I must have passed the exam satisfactorily because he abruptly handed me a prescription bottle and said, “Take these for the next week, they’re perfectly safe in your condition, and it will keep the infection at bay.
I don’t see any reason to keep you out of the field, so long as the right protections are in place. ”
Jerome carefully packed the equipment into his bag, hemming and hawing before making to leave. “I warned you to be careful, Delilah. Jack has a way of getting people into trouble.”
“Is this your way of saying I told you so?”
“Not quite. I’m telling you it can get worse.” Jerome, with all the seriousness of a handsome soap-opera doctor said, “If you still don’t believe me, do yourself a favor. Ask Todd how he lost his tongue.”
It was the mob, while he was doing undercover work. I wasn’t sure how much Jerome knew given the secrecy involved in FBI, so I kept it vague, “He told me what happened.”
“You know about the mob?” A flicker of surprise then pity flashed across Jerome’s face. “Yes, but do you know who set them in his direction?”
?
After that Jerome had the audacity to get up and leave. Leaving me with a strange sinking feeling that Jack was responsible for Todd’s brush with death and his missing tongue. But if that were the case, why would Todd remain in Jack’s company?
Unless he didn’t know.
The likelihood of that was so infinitesimally small, I concluded Jerome had been trying to get in my head and left it at that.
What a shit-disturber. And to think I thought we’d been bonding.
If Todd could stand with Jack after everything he went through there must have been a reason. So, with my first test passed, I vowed to put the vamp case back on track. Even if Jack wasn’t pleased with the idea.
For the next few days, Jack tried anything and everything to keep me away from the vamps, and focus on taking care of myself. To enjoy the view. Read a good book. Peruse all the art the Hessinger castle had to offer, which I admit had been quite awe-inspiring for a grand total of one hour.
Problem was I wasn’t meant to do nothing. For me to feel like myself, to be myself, I had to be helpful.
A part of me burned at how selfish I’d been.
I alone was responsible for derailing the vamp case by focusing on my own problems. After all, I prodded Mads about the safety deposit box, which took me and the agents away from the investigation, I acted rash and stormed out of FBI headquarters which resulted in me getting kidnapped, and two whole teams dropped what they were doing to be dedicated to my search and rescue.
Therefore, it was up to me to get things back on track. Otherwise, I couldn’t live with myself.
Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t able to get much on the vamps from Jack.
He wasn’t shutting me out, per se, but redirected my focus onto what he thought I wanted to be doing, rather than what I needed.
Which is precisely how I ended up holed up on the carpeted floor of a random closet digging through the updates on Todd’s phone.
If Jack wasn’t attached to his cellphone like a damn lifeline, I would have stolen his. But as he was, I knew if I wanted more than thirty minutes with a device to be able to play catch up, I needed to get my information somewhere else.
Ignoring all of the search updates and threads pertaining to anything other than the vamps, I brought myself up to speed on Todd’s phone.
Not much progress had been made, given the distraction my disappearance provided, but it appeared Fawzy, Zhou, Kaatz, and Thruppy were still planning on attending the fang ceremony without us—without knowing who was responsible for the familiars’ deaths.
Just a loose plan to draw the offenders out and catch them in the act.
I clucked my tongue in disproval. In the odd moment I hadn’t been planning my escape from the Seal, I’d mulled over the vamp case as a form of penance and escape.
Admittedly, the moments were short lived, or otherwise punctuated by Three’s singing, so I didn’t come to many conclusions or ‘aha’ moments.
But I did manage to form questions I was not in a position to answer, or at the very least investigate, from my cell.
What inciting incident fed into anti-vamper’s belief in not only the vamps, but their “cure”?
Had there been other epinephrine-related attacks?
Or an instance where it saved a familiar’s life?
And why the muggings? Was there another motive for these attacks?
Did they escalate to epinephrine-induced murder? If so, how? Why?
Grabbing the stack of paper I’d stolen from one of the Hessinger offices, I started taking notes.
Since I didn’t have my notebook, I organized everything into piles.
The knowns, the unknowns, and the yet to be proven, including all of the facts and updates that occurred while I was out of commission.
Vamp hunters, epinephrine, muggings, false confessions, deaths after fang ceremonies.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I worked to visualize how the different pieces connected.
I was fairly confident the vamp hunters were trying to prevent familiars from being turned into vampires and they thought epinephrine would keep their victims’ heart beating.
When that failed, they arranged their bodies in the shape of a cross in cemeteries to prevent the transformation from taking place.
But where did the muggings come into play?
All of the mugging victims had hickeys or bite marks on their necks, but they were given at gatherings, not fang ceremonies. And from what I could gather from the notes and files, the muggings only seemed to take place in Huntington.
It had to mean something. There wasn’t a pattern to the muggings by chance, it had to happen for a reason.
Everyone was focused on the attacks experienced by the victims and the money stolen, but what if there was an ulterior motive?
Yes, the victims’ wallets were stolen, but what if money hadn’t been the objective?
What if it was all a ruse to get information only obtained from someone’s wallet? Like—
Like their home address.