“Kidding. Just kidding. Start on Big H info and the backgrounds on Derek’s men first. I need them by sunset. Two days will be fine for the permit stuff.” He shook his head at me with something like a horrified exasperation. “Hey, I’m used to Reach’s timeliness,” I said. “If you can’t cut it—”
“I can do it,” he said, sounding surly.
I turned away before he could see my amusement and went on into the living room. I stopped in the middle of the room, bare feet on the cool hardwood floor, chewing egg, and stared. There was a hole in the wall. It opened up under the stairs to reveal a little room with a slanted ceiling and another hole in the floor. The room’s walls were lined in stone—slate, maybe—and there was a bed with a lumpy mattress and tousled sheets under the most sloped part of the ceiling. Across from the bed was a small stand with a pitcher and bowl, a ewer, I guessed. There was very little dust and no mold, which I thought was interesting, except for wallboard dust, which now was everywhere, including on the man kneeling in the corner, holding a measuring tape. He was making the safe room I’d asked for, but it looked like I had a hidden one already, one I hadn’t known about.
Eli didn’t look around before he said, “You didn’t know this room was here?”
“I noticed the space my first night here, when I tore up the digital video equipment.” I toed the broken electronics he had left in a pile. I thought about the lack of dust and walked over to the sheets. Fingered them. Fancy sheets were something I had learned about since coming to work for Leo. These weren’t rotten, limp, or even old; they were new linens, 600 or better thread count, in a hidden room in my freebie house. I sniffed, several short inhalations, and recognized Leo and Katie. Well, crap. Most vamps had several lairs, which explained why this hidey-hole room was so dust free. One or the other—or both—had been sleeping here. Recently.
“There’s another hidden space in a closet upstairs,” I said. “But it isn’t my house and I wasn’t into vandalism. At the time.” I didn’t feel so bad about it now, however, knowing that I’d shared my house with the MOC and/or his heir when it was convenient for him.
“You need a safe room, you got a safe room,” Eli said, looking around, following the geometry of the small space, “one supported by cypress timbers and lined with stone and poured cement, in case of fire. All I have to do is repair the wall and hide the opening with that steel door.” He pointed out into the main room, and I saw a steel door in cardboard and shrink-wrap leaning against the wall. I hadn’t even noticed it until he pointed it out—there was too much other destruction. “Then I cover it with a hinged bookcase. It’ll do in a pinch, especially as it has an escape hatch.” He peered into the hole in the floor. It was framed with wood and was wide enough to admit a skinny person. Me. Or a vamp. They were always skinny.
I evaluated the Ranger. He would have a harder time fitting through unless he could knock a shoulder out of joint. Some people could, but it hurt for a long time after. His clothes were tighter today, revealing broad shoulders and a tapering waist, narrow hips and sleek butt in jeans and army-beige tee. Likely six-pack abs if he took off his shirt. I shook my head and then chuckled at the thought of Leo’s face if I barged into his lair in the middle of the day. Or if I had survived his aborted attempt to burn me out by hiding in his own lair. The MOC would not have been amused.
Eli asked, “Something funny?” I shook my head but let my grin stay in place as I moved farther into the safe room to peer over his shoulder, licking egg off my fingers. Below the opening in the floor was damp earth covered with water-beaded plastic. “The passageway comes out in two places,” he said, “under the side porch, and at the back of the house. I’ve already been to Katie’s to check out the hidden room under her stairs and start renovating, but Tom suggested that I not work on it today. It might be inhabited.”
I nodded. Inhabited. Right. Multiple vamps had been at Katie’s and they would need a safe place to sleep by day.
“I’ll check it out tonight,” he said. “For now, I’ll finish off the wall repairs and buy a hinged bookcase. We can store the ordnance here. You got any books to put on the shelves?” I figured he meant something other than Tactical Weapons Magazine and Gun Digest, and shook my head again. “You don’t talk much, do you?” He was turned away, but I could hear the laughter in his voice when he added, “I like that in a woman.” Before I could think of a snarky reply he added, “I’ll pick up some books at a secondhand bookstore today.”
Since I had been identified as a woman of few words, I just shrugged and went back to the eggs. They were pretty good with salt. I put on tea, and was cracking and salting my fourth when Stinky-Boy said, “I got something.” He looked up, and when I didn’t look impressed, he grinned. “I got you a history, and I found it before Reach did.”
I dropped the shell into the garbage and leaned over his shoulder, reading the file as I chewed and swallowed the egg. “What is Greyson Labs?”
The kid grinned up at me. “It’s the company that paid the salary of Ramondo Pitri, the man you killed in Asheville.”
I stopped chewing, and said, “And you figured this out how?”
“I tracked down Pitri’s bank records and got a look at his pay stubs. Greyson designs cancer-fighting drugs.” He was grinning ear to ear and it was an amazing piece of detective work, but it wasn’t much on its own.