“What?”
“The girls said you were naked when you came through the door. Shotgun in hand. Crosses. Stakes.” A slow grin started. “Which had to be something to see.” His brow went up a notch. “Half an hour before sunrise, you were in the backyard.” Disbelief tainted the words, but so did something else. He added, softer, his smile widening, “Naked.”
“Meditating,” I said, fighting the blush that wanted to rise at the way he said “naked.” Like it was something wonderful, and he was sorry he had missed it. “On the rocks Katie got for me.”
“I heard about the rocks.”
“Did you inspect them too, while you were roaming around my house?”
“Not your house.”
My den, Beast growled, but I kept it inside. “For the moment it is. What were you looking for? Or do you just have an unnatural affection for broken cameras?” The kettle started that low hiss it does before it whistles.
He looked mildly surprised at the camera comments. Or maybe he was just surprised at me in general. “Boss wanted to know the hunter hired by the council.”
I scented the lie. It stank from his pores. And since we both knew that Leo, as head of the vamp council, had known exactly who I was before I was hired, the lie hid a secondary purpose. If I could figure it out. Silent, I considered his words. Remembering little things that had been said. Others that had not been said, but left hanging, unspoken.
I understood. Son of a gun. Leo was getting the feed from Katie’s security system. Probably everything, not just the cameras in this house. So why hadn’t he seen the rogue attack Katie this morning?
The whistle started low and rose in volume. While I thought, I stood and lifted the kettle off the flame, splashed boiling water over the teapot and into the strainer in its top, equalizing the temperature inside and out before filling the pot. I set it on the table, wrapping it in a tea cozy to keep it warm while it steeped. Bruiser’s eyebrows went up at the domestic motions. “Do you cook too?” he asked, the tone teasing. “ ’Cause any woman who does a weapon striptease, handles a Benelli like she knows how to use it, and can cook, pushes all my buttons.”
“I don’t cook,” I said, smiling when Beast showed me a stack of raw steaks. Bruiser smiled back, thinking I was flirting. Casually, while he was relaxed, I said, “Does Katie know Leo has access to her entire security system?” Bruiser went still. Gotcha. I smiled and twisted the knife a bit deeper. “Leo put a camera in Katie’s backyard. Makes sense for him to have access to all her security cameras, too.” Making a mental leap, I added, “I bet he has video from the security of all the vamps in the city. Maybe audio, too.” Bruiser’s face went hard. I unfolded the tea cozy and slipped the strainer full of leaves from the pot, setting it on the plate. Carefully, I poured tea into both mugs. “Sugar? Milk?” I asked sweetly.
After a moment he said, “Sugar,” the word clipped.
I put a heaping spoonful into each of our mugs and stirred both, the spoon making dull tinking sounds. Pushing his mug to him, I sat back with mine, letting the steam warm my face, the mug heat my fingers. “I’m not interested in vamp politics,” I murmured, watching him through slit lids, “except where it impacts my life and pocketbook. But I have a job to do, so I want answers. With cameras in place, why didn’t Leo know about the rogue vamp attack this morning until I called? And the attack on the Mearkanis master in her lair. Ming. Why didn’t he know and stop it? Unless he hopes to gain something from the deaths.” I took a chance and added, “Like worsening the schism developing in vamp politics. Like Leo’s little pals in the hood, armed to the teeth to hunt vamps.” Bruiser didn’t twitch or anything, but I could have sworn the skin tightened around his eyes. “Is Leo mounting his own rogue hunt? And if so, why?”
After a moment, Bruiser raised the mug and sipped, a delaying tactic while he thought. He was annoyed at my questions, but his expression mutated into a that-wasn’t-so-bad look at the taste of the tea. Finally, “I’ll tell you that, if you tell me how you found the cameras so fast. You didn’t even sweep for them,” he said, meaning an electronic sweep. “You just went right to them. I know. I checked the digital footage when the system told us they had gone out.”