Chapter 23
23
C ole parked the Land Rover in a parking garage near Union Square. As he and Vanessa left the building, he took her hand into his, and they walked in the opposite direction away from Union Square. Some shops were open late, and there was also a good number of theaters in the area, as well as restaurants, accounting for the busy traffic on the streets and lots of pedestrians on the sidewalks. He figured while they were walking along these streets, it was unlikely that a vampire would attack in front of so many witnesses, making this the ideal time to talk.
After meeting Vanessa’s parents and brother, and finding out that she was a trained bodyguard, it made a little more sense why she had been able to kill his attacker with such ease. But it had also thrown up a lot of other questions.
“Your parents seem very easygoing,” Cole started.
“They are the best.”
“You look a lot like your mother. And she looks barely a few years older than you.” It had been downright puzzling when he’d conversed with her while waiting for Gabriel and Vanessa to finish their private talk.
Vanessa gave a one-shouldered shrug. “She takes care of herself. And I guess she has good genes.”
“Apparently Gabriel does too.”
“You think he looks young? I guess I can’t really tell. To me he’s just Dad. Maybe it’s because he dresses young,” she suggested.
“Hmm. Maybe. I was quite surprised to hear that you’re a trained bodyguard. That’s an unusual choice for a woman like you.”
She cast him a sideways look. “What do you mean like me?”
Cole smiled at her. “Beautiful with a body for sin.”
Her eyes sparkled at the compliment. “Perhaps I use my physical attributes to distract my opponents, and they don’t know what hit them.”
He let out a laugh. Vanessa had a way of avoiding answers to his questions, but he wouldn’t let her get away so easily. “I agree. You can be very distracting. But in earnest, why bodyguard training? Is that a prerequisite for working at that company? Scanguards?”
“Not a prerequisite per se. But every new employee is required to do the training with them so they can be used anywhere in the field. There are a few exceptions though.”
“Like?”
“My mother. She’s a physician, and she runs a clinic for Scanguards.”
That sounded odd. A clinic for a private security company? “Are you saying that every Scanguards employee goes to her clinic if they get sick?”
Vanessa hesitated. “Uhm, it’s more like when anybody gets injured on the job. Sometimes we bring victims of violent crimes to her.”
“But that’s what the emergency room of a hospital is for.”
“Victims of crimes like you who were attacked by…” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “…a vampire.”
Cole stopped and pulled Vanessa toward a building and out of the path of a group of pedestrians. “Are you saying that what happened to me last night, happens frequently here?”
He noticed the hesitance with which Vanessa nodded, and leaned closer. “How many freaking vampires are running around here trying to suck people dry? And how do you even know about them?”
He’d wanted to ask this earlier, but with everything that happened between them, there hadn’t been the right time, because he hadn’t wanted to spoil the romantic mood between them. But now, they were patrolling the city on the lookout for vampires, and it seemed the appropriate time to ask these questions.
Vanessa took a visible breath, her chest lifting.
“What is it?” he added. “Something wrong?”
She shook her head quickly. Maybe a little too quickly, before she answered, “It’s complicated.”
“I’ve got time.”
“Just promise me not to tell anybody what I tell you now.”
The suspense sent his heartbeat into the stratosphere. “I wouldn’t know whom to tell.”
“Let’s walk,” she suggested and hooked her arm into his.
He agreed by walking arm in arm with her.
“The company my entire family works for is a private security company, which you probably already know. The City of San Francisco hired them to deal with crimes by or against vampires, so that the public doesn’t find out that there are vampires living among them. It would only cause a panic, and a lot more bloodshed.”
Cole lifted his hand halfway in confusion. “Did you say crimes against vampires?”
“Yes, there is vampire-on-vampire crime and human-on-vampire crime. So we deal with that too.”
“But why? You should be glad when they kill each other off. And if a human manages to kill one, good for them.”
“There are many good people among the vampires. They live their lives, and don’t bother anybody. They need to be protected—”
“You can’t be serious,” he interrupted. “How can those creatures be good? I mean, the guy who attacked me, he was brutal, violent… it was disgusting…”
“The vampire who attacked you was a rogue.”
What the hell did she mean by that? “A rogue?”
“Yes, a vampire who isn’t playing by the rules. We think he was recently turned by somebody, and then let loose on the population to cause trouble for everybody else.”
Vanessa stopped and motioned for them to step into the covered entrance of a closed shop to continue their conversation.
“The night before you were attacked, one of the prostitutes that I look out for was attacked by a different vampire. He got away, and luckily Ginger survived, but we know now that there are more of those rogues. My colleagues found another victim two nights ago, a tourist. There will be more attacks, that’s why we’ve ramped up patrols.”
“Fuck!” The more he heard, the wilder this whole situation became. “Then who’s turning these rogues as you call them? It’s another vampire, right?”
“Yes, but in order to figure out who is turning them, we have to figure out why he’s turning them. And so far, we only have the identity of the one I killed last night.”
“How?”
“When a vampire turns to dust, certain things on his person don’t turn to dust: coins, cell phones, keys, wallets. That kind of stuff. Our IT guys have identified him, but we have no idea yet what connects him to the other rogues. There must be a pattern.”
“You mean like a profile?”
“Exactly. My sister-in-law, Scarlet, has been working on a profile of the rogues so we can predict who might have already been turned and who is at risk of being turned. That’s why I had to watch the twins last night—Scarlet is a psychologist for Scanguards.”
Cole understood. “Like an analyst in the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI.”
“Yep.”
“What has she got so far?”
“Not much, since we only have one confirmed rogue. If we capture or kill a second one, we might be able to find something that connects them. A common denominator that could lead us to more of them, and eventually to the vampire behind this, so we can eliminate them.”
“So, you’re saying you basically need at least two datapoints to figure out why these guys are chosen and turned by a vampire, right?” Cole asked, an idea forming in his mind.
“Yes, otherwise how would we be able to find out what they have in common?”
“Normally, I’d say you’re right. But there’s another way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you that I have my own company.”
“Yeah, something about an algorithm for online advertising.” Vanessa looked at him quizzically.
“That’s what it’s sold for, yes, but it has another application.” He felt excited now, because he could help Vanessa and her family eliminate the danger vampires presented. “The algorithm can create models using only one set of data, in this case, the vampire you killed.”
“I’m afraid you lost me there,” she said. “I’m not an IT genius.”
“Scanguards has an IT department, I assume?”
“Yep.”
“If I can show them what the algorithm can do, they’ll understand it. All I need is to get my computer and my data drives from my condo.”
For a moment, Vanessa said nothing, but judging by the way she bit her lip, he could see that her mind was digesting his words.
“Let’s do it. I’ll call Thomas and Eddie; they head up the IT department.”
Cole took Vanessa’s hand, turning toward the direction they’d come from. His idea would kill two birds with one stone: removing Vanessa from patrolling tonight so she wouldn’t be in danger of getting attacked by a vampire, and helping Scanguards find and eliminate the bloodsuckers.