The human complied immediately.
His trembling ceased, along with his panicked stammering.
“What are you doing?” she asked, setting her briefcase down to draw up beside the vampire.
“I tranced him. He’ll tell us everything we ask.” Lucan turned his attention back on the calmed human. “You can start with your name.”
“Danny Boudreaux.”
Lucan glanced her way and she shrugged, signaling that the name meant nothing to her.
“What about your friend in the van, Danny? What’s his name?”
“I dunno. My friend Ricky—he knows him, not me.”
“Ricky is the other guy you were with tonight?”
Danny nodded.
“And what did Ricky tell you about the man with the camera?”
“He said the dude was offerin’ us fifty bucks to come with him and jump this lady he’s been watchin’ for a couple of months. Said he wanted to see what would happen if we got her good and pissed off.”
“You succeeded,” she muttered.
“There was supposed to be an extra hundred in it for us if we could grab the bitch’s briefcase away from her.”
“A lousy hundred dollars,” she said. “You don’t have the first idea what’s in these jars or what to do with it. And you’d spend the rest of your miserable life trying to figure it out.”
Lucan slanted her a look. “I don’t think it mattered to anyone what was inside it. The man with the camera knew the briefcase was important to you. He only wanted to test your reaction to the theft. He’s been watching you long enough to know your habits, where to find you.”
“What for? Just to make a feeble attempt to mug me?”
His face turned grim. “So he could capture the altercation on video. More specifically, your reaction.”
She arched a brow as a cold understanding settled on her. “Because whoever’s been watching me knew my reaction would be something more than human.”
He nodded. “And now he has both of us on video during the attack.”
“We need to get that camera.”
“The man who hired you, Danny. Do you know where we can find him?”
The human shook his head, his eyes closed, his mind still caught in the web of the trance. “I don’t know anything else. Ricky set it all up.”
Danny slumped and a cell phone screeched with a heavy metal ringtone. The grating noise filled the shop, although it didn’t seem to register with the dazed human at all. Lucan rifled through Danny’s pockets and found the bleating phone.
“Jackpot.”
He held the phone up, showing her the name on the screen.
Ricky.
He pushed the call to voice mail, silencing the racket. “We have everything we need now. I’ve got a plan.”
She pointed at Danny. “What are you going to do with him?”
He smirked. “Mind-scrub the little fuck, then toss him back in the gutter. When he comes to again in the morning, he’ll have one wicked hangover, but he won’t remember a thing that happened.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Not a thing.”
She walked over and punched the human in the face.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“Much. Let’s hear your plan, vampire.”
AFTER DUMPING DANNY IN A side alley a few blocks away from the candle shop, Lucan and Lilliane hailed a taxi and headed to the Bywater to find one Richard “Ricky” Dubois.
A quick call to Gideon, the Order’s resident computer genius at the Boston headquarters, had been all it took to gather a full dossier on Danny’s erstwhile partner in crime. The GPS tracer Gideon placed on Ricky’s cell-phone signal now led them straight to the small-time thief’s location outside a seedy bar down at the river. The place was packed, never mind that it was also dank and dilapidated, a squat redbrick eyesore sitting about as far off the tourist maps as you could get.
Lucan didn’t have to guess which of the huddled, drowned rats smoking blunts under the tattered awning at the bar’s entrance across the street was the human he needed to find. He could still picture Ricky’s slack-jawed stare from earlier tonight. Judging from the way he weaved and swayed on his feet, Ricky had been trying to take the edge off his tattered nerves. Better that he ended up here instead of running to the police station with his eyewitness account of paranormal happenings. Although, given Ricky Dubois’s rap sheet, Lucan doubted he would ever approach the authorities on a voluntary basis.
He paid the cab fare, then looked at Lilliane beside him. “You sure you’re ready to do this?”
“I’ve never been ready for most of the things that have happened to me, and yet here I am. Hunting lowlifes with a vampire. Next stop, Disneyland.”
“Yeah. You could be one of the attractions.”
“I feel like I should be offended by that.”
“I’ll let you make jokes about me stopping off at the blood bank for a snack if it makes you feel better. In the meantime, we’ve got work to do.”
He wasn’t used to bringing civilians along on patrols with him, least of all an unarmed woman of questionable powers who might slow him down. As one of the Breed he could traverse miles in mere minutes. He would have done so on this mission, but Lilliane had made it clear before they left the candle shop that this was her problem as much as his and she wasn’t about to sit on the sidelines. So, like it or not, and for the record he didn’t, he was saddled with a partner.
“I repeat,” he said. “Are you ready?”
“Do it.”
They stepped out and the taxi rolled away.
He’d hoped to have the element of surprise on their side, but as they crossed the street, Ricky Dubois glanced over and spotted the incoming threat. His face paled to a ghostly shade of white.
Then he bolted.
Straight into the crowded bar.
“You take the front entrance,” he told Lilliane. “Flush him out toward the back. I’ll cover the rear of the building and make sure our little rat doesn’t slip his trap.”
She nodded and they split up.
He knew he didn’t have to wait and make sure she made it inside. The woman was strong and capable of handling herself. He only hoped she’d stick with the plan to collar Ricky so they could interrogate him, not coldcock the idiot into next week the way she’d done to Danny.
Not that he blamed her.
It wasn’t so long ago that his famous temper had ruled him too. He’d been angry at the world. Angry with himself for all the ways he’d failed in life, and for all the things he couldn’t change. Meeting Gabrielle had changed that. She changed him. He couldn’t help wondering if some of Lilliane’s fury might be from self-inflicted wounds as well.
In another place, another time, he might be interested to find out.
Right now, all he wanted to do was fix this situation, then get home to his mate and team.
Lilliane Smith’s problems were her own to solve.
Calling on his Breed genetics, he flashed past the crowd near the front entrance like nothing more than a chilled breeze. He was waiting at the bar’s back door when Ricky crashed through from inside and stumbled onto the rough gravel.