Isaac stopped the car. We were already on the side of the road. “You’re making the biggest mistake of your life.”
I’d jerked the gearshift into park and grabbed his balls before he could even scream. He did, though, as soon as I gave them a hard squeeze.
“Who was it? Who sent you to finish me off?”
“Fuck you.”
I squeezed his nuts like they were stress-relieving orbs. Isaac let out a high-pitched shriek that gave me an instant headache.
“Now, I’m going to ask you again, and don’t make me angrier. Who sent you?”
“Oliver,” came the pained reply. “It was Oliver!”
That wasn’t the mayor’s name. In fact, it wasn’t anyone on our list of human or vampire suspects.
“You’d better make me a believer. Oliver who?”
“Ethan Oliver!”
I froze, stunned. Isaac let out a gasping snicker. “You didn’t know? Hennessey was sure Francesca had told Bones.”
“Ethan Oliver,” I whispered. “Governor Ethan Oliver? He’s a vampire?”
“No, he’s human. He’s just in business with them.”
It clicked into place. “He’s Hennessey’s shadow partner! My God, I voted for him! Why did he do it?”
“Let go of my balls!” Isaac rasped.
I got a firmer grip on them instead. “I’ll let go when you make sense, and the clock’s ticking. Every minute that goes by, I squeeze harder. You won’t have any left inside of five.”
“He wants to run for president, and he’s using Ohio as his podium,” Isaac rushed out in one breath. “Oliver stumbled across Hennessey a few years ago. Think it was when he was buying * on the side. Hennessey came up with the idea to harvest people for feedings, like he had in Mexico, and Oliver loved it. Problem is, it’s the pretty young girls who sell most easily, but things get messy when a bunch of them go missing. So they make a deal. Hennessey cleans the streets of the homeless, drug dealers, prostitutes, and degenerates as his end of the bargain, and Oliver makes sure the paperwork disappears on any of the high-end tail Hennessey needs to keep his clients happy. But that got to be a lot of work, so Hennessey began getting the girls’ addresses and stopping the reports before they started. Made my job a lot easier, not having to listen to all those sniveling families. It was perfect. Crime rate goes down, economy goes up, voters are happy, Oliver looks like Ohio’s savior…and Hennessey makes a bundle.”
I was shaking my head in disbelief at the sheer callousness of it all. Frankly, I didn’t know who was worse—Hennessey, for doing it, or Oliver, for making himself out as a hero on the bones of hundreds of victims.
“Oliver sent you to kill me, clearly, but what about my mother and the other girls who were at that house? What were you going to do with them, and I dare you to lie to me.”
My new clench got a squeak from him, but it also made my point. What he told me next was no candy-coated fabrication.
“Oliver freaked when he heard about the police all over that house and how some girls were recovered alive. He wants any traces to him erased, so I was supposed to shoot you, and then plant a bomb at the hospital where they’re taking the girls. Oliver was going to pin it on Muslim extremists. He saw how Bush’s numbers spiked right after 9/11, so he thought it would push him over the top as the next presidential candidate.”
“You fucker,” I growled. “Where’s the bomb?”
“In the trunk.”
I thought rapidly. Oliver would be expecting a ka-boom within the next couple hours, and when it didn’t happen, he’d send someone else to finish the job.
“Isaac,” I said in a pleasant tone, “you’re coming with me. I’m revoking my vote.”
The governor’s residence in Bexley was decorated festively for the holidays. A large evergreen was in the front, complete with lights, garland, and ornaments. More lights were strewn around the exterior, and the gardens were filled with poinsettias in addition to their usual seasonal blossoms. Isaac parked by the wrought-iron fence about a block from the entrance.
“What do you think you’re going to do, ring the bell?” he asked caustically.
I sat behind him in the backseat, his own gun poking him in the side. Otherworldly energy permeated from the property. Oh, here there be monsters, all right.
“How many are there? And you know what I mean.”
He didn’t play dumb. “Three, maybe four vamps, plus the usual guys.”
Judging from the heartbeats, there were about six human guards. Maybe they were just innocent schmucks doing their job. Maybe not. The vampires I suffered no conscience qualms about, and not for my usual reasons. If they were here guarding Oliver, they knew damn well what was going on.
“They know you? The guards? You’ve come here before, right?”