Simon had twenty-?four hours to live. When the deadline came, if Jameson offered him the curse, knowing what the alternative was—Caxton did not believe the son would say no. Caxton threw the car into gear, intending to chase after Raleigh and the half-?deads whether they liked it or not. The car surged under her—then died. The engine stalled out and she felt every muscle in her body tense up. She switched the car off, then back on. Put it in drive. The car shuddered and lurched forward, then stopped as the engine sputtered to a halt.
It took her too long to figure it out. It took her ten long minutes to get the hood open and see that the half-?deads had monkeyed with her engine, and even longer to fix what they’d done. By the time she got back on the road heading east they were long gone, and there were no tracks to follow. She didn’t waste any more time by getting frustrated. Instead she pulled a U-?turn and headed west. There was one more lead she could follow, she knew. One last chance to find out where the lair was. She knew she would take that chance—even if it meant throwing away her entire career.
Vampire Zero
Chapter 51.
She had to drive through the downtown section of Harrisburg to get where she was going. She passed through streets full of little stores, boutiques selling pricey clothes. In one window she saw a pair of young women laughing together as they dressed a mannequin in a bright red minidress with white fur trimming. At another store the proprietor was stringing up red and green lights. They were getting ready for Christmas.
Christmas. Caxton hadn’t celebrated the holiday much since her parents died. But the year before, when it had just been her and Clara, they’d exchanged presents, and drank eggnog, and even strung up mistletoe. She’d gotten Clara a special lens for her camera, one she’d been looking at online for months. Clara’s present to her had been a box of bath salts, scented candles, and a wooden massage roller. Things to help her relax. Most of them were still in the box, which sat underneath the bathroom sink in the back of the cabinet, where she saw it every time she reached for a new disposable razor. She could use that box now, she thought. She needed to relax, to get frosty, if she was going to pull this off.
She pulled into the parking lot of the jail in Mechanicsburg and switched off the car. She wanted to just sit there for a while and collect her thoughts, but she knew if she did she would never get up and out of the car, so she reached over and pushed the door open and let the cold winter air belly inside, the icy breeze pressing her coat against her body and stinging her cheek. She popped open her seat belt and then climbed out of the car and shut the door behind her.
Inside the jail only a few corrections officers were still at work. The cells were quiet, the prisoners inside either sleeping or contemplating their fates. As one corrections officer—one, thankfully, she had not met before—led her down a flight of stairs to the basement, she started to hear someone yelling, not saying anything, just making inarticulate noises. She was not surprised to learn it was Dylan Carboy making that racket.
“He’s not quite all there, you know that, right?” the CO asked. “He does this all night. It’s weird. It’s like he’s praying, but not to any God I ever heard of. You’ll have to keep an eye on him.”
Caxton nodded. She handed the CO a clipboard on which she’d filled out the appropriate forms. She had lied many times while checking the various boxes and writing in the numbers and authorizations required. She had put down Fetlock’s name as authorizing the transfer, then put her own phone number below it. If anyone called to confirm her authority her phone would ring and she would at least know they were onto her.
She doubted they would, however. Transfers like this happened all the time and cops tended to trust each other. She was counting on that.
“You’re with the Marshals Service,” the CO said, leafing through her paperwork. “This guy commit some kind of federal crime? We have him down for a couple local homicides.”
“He broke into the USMS archives and stole some files,” she lied. “I’m taking him to the field office up in Harrisburg, where we can ask him what was in those documents that he wanted.”
“Huh. Do you guys do a lot of interrogations at night?”
“When the subject sleeps all day, we do. We figure he’ll be more talkative now than tomorrow morning.”
The CO smiled. “You know about him, then.”
“I’m the one who originally brought him in. Listen, I’ll make it as quick as I can. I’ll probably have him back to you before breakfast.”
“You can have him as long as you want,” the CO said.
The door of the padded cell opened up and she stared inside. The gibbering and wailing stopped instantly. Carboy was up against the far wall, his hands lifted high above his head, the fingers splayed as if he were reaching for something on the ceiling. There was nothing there. Caxton didn’t know what that was about. She told herself she didn’t care.
“Come on, Carboy,” the CO said. “Don’t make this difficult, alright? This lady’s from the U.S. Marshals and she wants to talk to you.”
Carboy’s eyes focused on her slowly. “Caxton,” he muttered. “I knew you’d come back.”
The CO said, “You want me to get a straitjacket? He can be violent.”