When I had myself under control, I pushed away from the door and melted into the shadows. The night was warm and muggy, and the sweat wasn’t likely to dry. So far, winter in the Deep South was a joke. I needed a shower, fighting leathers, and info. I needed food. I jumped the fence into the narrow alley separating Katie’s from the building next door and walked down the narrow space, checking the cameras I had installed as I moved. Instinct. Habit, to check my security work for Leo’s heir. It all seemed okay.
The brick fence behind Katie’s was taller than I was by far, and I took advantage of the small hand – and footholds as I half climbed, half vaulted it, landing on the other side in the dark, and relaxed. I could tell by the smell that no one was here. I was alone. Safe. For now. Weird how a house that wasn’t mine, and never would be, felt like home.
Inside, I stripped and showered, standing under the heated water, letting it pound my muscles, washing the smoke and blood off me. There was remarkably little blood, and almost none of it mine. I washed my hair, shaved my legs, all the girly things I do so seldom. When I shift and then shift back, the hair is always fully grown again, which, even with my Cherokee-lack-of-hairiness, is a pain to remove. But this time, it felt like therapy, like feeding my girl soul, which I so seldom did.
Afterward, standing in my bathroom in the steam, the exhaust fan going, I coated my skin with pure jojoba oil and plaited my wet hair into a tight French braid. It wouldn’t dry quickly, but the damp didn’t bother me. I dressed with care in my long silk underwear, and when I could put it off no longer, I dialed Leo. He didn’t answer, and I closed the phone.
I opened the bathroom door, heard a click, and stopped in the doorway. Sniffing. Someone was here. I looked around, breathing in silently, slowly, thinking, analyzing the sound I had heard. The click was the kitchen door. I had changed the locks, but that didn’t stop anyone really determined. I switched off the bathroom light, throwing the house into night shadows.
A man had been here. I sniffed again. Yeah, a he. Male. Sweaty. Nervous. A stranger. Just like the stranger in the hotel, the one I’d killed weeks ago. I sniffed again, mouth open. Gun oil. The stink of a gun, recently fired. Herbal shampoo. Not Chi-Chi, here to pick up the blood; not anyone I knew. But if I survived tonight, I’d recognize his scent again.
Soundless, eyes on the bedroom doorway, I stepped to the bed and felt around on the fighting leathers for the holstered Walther and a vamp-killer. I came up with the smallest one, six inches of silver-plated steel, crosshatched steel grip, and gripped it backhanded in my left. Safety’d off the gun, and stepped slowly, weight balanced evenly, into the foyer. Night sight kicked in, the shadows growing lighter, the light through the windows brighter.
By the scent traces, he hadn’t come in through the front door. I stepped across the foyer, paused at the stairs. He hadn’t gone up there, but he had paused here for a while. More nervous. Edgy. I followed his scent back to the kitchen, to the side door. He had come and gone through here. While I was in the shower. Weapons on the bed. Nothing with me but a hair stick I could use on a vamp as a stake. Nothing to defend against humans. Stupid! He could have opened the door and shot me. So why hadn’t he? Because he had come in to kill me and heard the shower go off? Seen the weapons? Assumed I had a functioning brain cell and that I’d be armed, and had decided not to try to kill me. Instead, he had done . . . what?
I moved through the dark house to the kitchen door leading to the ground-floor level of the long, two-story porch. The door was shut, but the wood jamb was splintered where it had been kicked open, light-colored wood splinters on the darker floor. So . . .
I turned and studied the house, feeling, smelling, tasting the air. The blood vials. I raced back to the bedroom and bent over the shipping container. “Crap!” The bag holding the blood vials was gone. Rage boiled through me, Beast’s fury. Mine, she thought at me. Came into my den. Took what was mine. Thief of blood, she thought. Beast was possessive of her belongings. Of my belongings, for that matter. But . . . The laptop was still on the bed, the tiny green light showing standby mode. So was my arsenal. The intruder stole only the blood.
That severely limited who the traitor in Leo’s organization might be. Because only a very few vamps, blood-servants, and humans knew I had the blood, and even fewer might have guessed it was in my house. A human from Seattle might have figured it out, but more likely, the traitor had been in Katie’s house only moments ago. And he or she called the enemy. Mentally, I listed the people in Katie’s tonight. Derek and his boys: Angel Tit, Martini, and Chi-Chi. Katie. Koun. Alejandro and Estavan—vamps of Spanish descent who had been loyal to Leo for centuries. Girrard DiMercy, who had not always been loyal. Five blood-servants. Bruiser. The priestess. Crap. The priestess? She was loony tunes. Or so she appeared. Reach had included her in the list of possible bad guys, Leo’s possible spy. Reach . . . Crap. Reach.
If he had access to the security, and I had to assume he did, then Reach knew a lot more about the internal workings of the whorehouse, and more about Katie’s plans and thoughts, than I did. For all I knew, he had eyes in my house. I hadn’t done a sweep for electronics since I first moved in. I put a search in the back of my mind for later.
There were an awful lot of choices to consider for the position of traitor. Anytime the number of possible suspects went above five, things got sticky, especially when one of them was my security expert. But what would be Reach’s motivation? He didn’t need money. He couldn’t be forced to be a traitor, like somebody kidnapped his dog, like on a cheesy TV crime show. But then, everyone had a vulnerability somewhere.