Sasha made a low sound in his throat that she found strangely comforting and came to sit in the overstuffed chair across from her. He didn’t sit like a human would, she noted with a touch of amusement, but pulled his legs up in the seat and flopped across the armrest like a dog getting comfy. He settled his chin on the back of his hand and looked at her with a blend of sympathy and lupine attentiveness.
“Why would Alexei do this?” she asked. There were so many other things she’d meant to ask, but Sasha’s presence had a way of inviting honesty. She didn’t want platitudes right now, only answers.
“Maybe he wanted to help.”
She sent him a look. “You really believe that?”
He made an apologetic face. “Not really, no. I mean – I think he knew he was helping, but I don’t think he did it out of the goodness of his heart. Sorry.”
“No.” She waved off the apology. “It’s what I figured. Got any magical Russian insight?”
“Maybe.” He shifted, curling up tighter in the chair. “Vampires – the ones I’ve met – are really territorial. They have families, sometimes, people who are close to them. But they don’t get along with each other all that well. Nik killed Alexei’s sire. So.” His nose scrunched up. “There is bad blood there.”
“In more ways that one,” she said with a halfhearted smile. “What are we going to do about him?”
“Alexei? I don’t know. Maybe we can reason with him.”
It was a lie and they both knew it.
Her phone pinged, and it was a text from her captain.
“Boss wants to see Lanny and me about the, quote, ‘missing goddamn body problem.’” She blew out a breath. “Feel like taking a walk?”
Sasha picked his head up, grinning. “Always.”
*
Based on his apartment, Lanny Webb was not the sort of person who would have wanted to befriend Jamie.
The décor consisted of Ikea pieces and a few bachelor pad staples. All the latest electronics, but no art of any kind. Jamie spotted a few framed family photos on top of the bookshelf in the living room…a bookshelf filled with CDs and stacks of magazines, predominantly Men’s Health and Shooting Times. The spare bedroom had been set up as a home gym, and the fridge was a blend of takeout containers and protein shakes, bags of dried apricots and domestic beer.
A portrait emerged in Jamie’s mind of a gym rat turned cop with no hobbies or interests aside from working out and paging through the occasional magazine. On his cursory walk-through, he didn’t spot so much as one real book.
How boring.
How normal.
His own room, in all the apartments he’d ever lived in, had always been a menagerie of art and half-strung canvasses. Coffee table books and computer printouts, museum-bought prints of his favorite inspirations to keep him fueled. Christmas lights and paint-streaked jeans and stacks of library paperbacks. He’d always kept orchids in the windowsill, usually a beta fish in a glass bowl. He’d surrounded himself with color and chaos and all the things that made him feel artistic.
And yet he’d never had much of a personal life. No steady girlfriend. No late nights out at bars, uproarious stories to tell after the fact. His life was small, closely-held, and unremarkable.
Lanny Webb, by contrast, was the sort of man who started bar fights, fucked women in public restrooms, and inspired the envy and aspiration of the men around him. His apartment was dull, but his life was not.
He’d never been able to decide which was the more pathetic existence.
Jamie sat down on the black leather couch and wondered what the hell he was supposed to do now.
His stomach growled, but nothing in Lanny’s fridge sounded appealing. Since the bastard creep who’d bitten him – Chad, the others had said his name was – hadn’t robbed him of his money, only his life as he knew it, he still had about fifty bucks cash in his wallet and all his credit cards.
New York was a big city. What were the odds someone would recognize him? Besides, no one other than his roomie and a handful of classmates even knew him. And Trina hadn’t told him to stay inside, only to lay low.
A takeout menu was taped up by the microwave, but he dismissed the idea immediately. He wanted to go out, breathe in city air, see the day without his glasses for the very first time. He wouldn’t stay out long, just enough to grab a late breakfast and stretch his legs a little. He’d come right back after.
Nodding to himself, he went to shower.
*
Lanny had met Trina’s dad a year ago. He’d been down from Buffalo, where he and his brother owned a moderately successful furniture business, and he’d swung by the precinct to take Trina out to lunch. Plenty of silver in his dark hair, sun and laugh lines on his face, but still trim and healthy-looking, Steven Baskin had spoken with a flawless upstate accent, but maintained an air of other all the same. He had Trina’s vivid blue eyes – Nikita’s eyes, Lanny now knew – gunmetal in some lights, oceanic in others. Something about the Slavic tilt of his brows, in the crooked, secretive smile hinted at bitter winters and the indominable spirit of a people whose oppressors had never managed to crush them. Steve Baskin had been born in America, but he was Russian through-and-through, and Lanny had decided he wholeheartedly approved of it, that day they’d shaken hands in the detective bullpen and Steve had invited him to come grab meatball subs with them.
But if Nikita Baskin was the real Russian of the bunch…well, Lanny wanted to change his opinion on record. Trina’s family sucked.
“I’m not gonna fucking just attack somebody,” Lanny griped. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
Nikita just hummed and signaled the bartender for another round. Since they were the only ones at the long mahogany bar at the Lion’s Den, the man stepped right over and refilled their tumblers with vodka.
“Okay, two things,” Lanny said when the guy was gone. “One: I fucking hate vodka. Especially at ten a.m. And two: if you’re so worried I might go nuts and bite somebody, do you really think getting me drunk is the best strategy?”
“You won’t get drunk,” Nikita said, downing his own shot. “At least not for a while. And it takes the edge off.”
“I don’t have an edge.”
Nikita turned to him slowly, gaze hooded and unimpressed. “You’re all edge, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend.”
“On that we are agreed.” He made another little motion and the bartender returned. “Drink your vodka.”
Lanny did, if only so Nikita would shut up about it. It warmed him, like all good liquor, but this was his third shot and he didn’t feel the usual rush of lightheaded giddiness that normally accompanied drinking.
“So what? We’re just gonna do shots all day?” His phone vibrated inside his jacket pocket, reminding him that he had an unread text. “’Cause I’m supposed to go to work.”
“Not today you’re not.”
“Oh, fuck you.” Lanny started to push back from the bar–
And Nikita reached out too fast for comprehension and locked his hand around Lanny’s wrist.
Lanny was strong, but Nikita was something else entirely.
“One more shot,” the Russian said, calmly, “and then we go.”
Lanny started to protest and the hand tightened a fraction; he felt the bones in his forearm shift under the force of that grip, and he nodded. “Yeah. Alright.”
The bartender came to pour him another round.
*
“Where’s your partner?” Captain Abbot asked.
Trina managed to keep her expression casual when she said, “He’s sick.”
“Yeah. Bourbon’ll do that to you.”
“He has food poisoning, I think.”
“Sure.” The captain gave a dismissive head shake and opened the file that sat before him on his desk blotter. “As soon as he sobers up, he needs to get his ass in here. This disappearing body shit?” He lifted his head and glanced first at Trina, then at Dr. Harvey, who sat in the visitor chair beside her. “It’s a fucking PR nightmare.”
“Sir,” Trina said.
Harvey cleared her throat delicately. “Actually, sir, I’m not sure ‘bodies’ is the right way of putting it.” When he stared at her, she continued: “Both of them got up off the slab and walked out of the morgue. The corpses weren’t stolen – they weren’t even corpses.”
“But you pronounced them both dead at the scene.”
“I did,” she said with a sigh.
“And why did you do that?”