‘Don’t fall for his tricks,’ the belt hissed, startling me. ‘You know as well as I do that it’s a monster. It doesn’t deserve an apology. Not from you.’
Common sense warred with the belt’s warning. Royce had been devious and underhanded, yes, but he hadn’t done anything to do me direct harm. Still, he’d never been fully forthcoming with me, and offering him any kind of apology now might lead to my giving him more information he could use against me. I’d have to remember to be careful about that in all my dealings with him from now on.
“No,” I managed to say aloud, responding to Royce in a much more subdued tone. “Not now. Not yet.”
He made a sound that might have been a snort. It was hard to tell over the crappy cell connection. “Forgive me if I don’t have the patience to deal with your insufferable attitude this evening. Good day.”
And the bastard hung up on me.
I had to look at the screen to be certain. But it was true.
That fucker.
He probably would have said as much if Sara was hurt (or, God forbid, worse). Surely she was fine. But now I wouldn’t know until the next time I confronted the vampire in person.
And apologized.
That. Fucker.
I’d make the time to see him and check on Sara. Somehow. Meanwhile, with both the Nightstrikers and a couple of NYPD detectives on my side, I should be able to track Chaz down in no time. The sooner I put an end to this mess, the better.
Chapter 9
I returned to the house much subdued. There wasn’t a lot of time until sunrise, and despite my confidence that I could find Chaz, I was consumed with a sense of quiet desperation about what to do about Sara or what would happen if I turned. No matter if I turned or not, I was certain there would be consequences for killing Vic, too. The belt wasn’t helping with its alternately radiating senses of smug superiority and irritation. When the sun rose and the belt went inanimate, the soreness and aches of the night settled in to take their places as my companions for the day.
Muscles burning, I settled into a bath, tears from a combination of pain, frustration, and helplessness mixing with the steam.
I had to concentrate on the one thing I thought I could do something about. There had to be some clues to where Chaz was hiding. He wasn’t clever enough to conceal himself from me or the cops forever—but that was just it. I didn’t have forever. I had eighteen days left. If I didn’t step up my efforts, and I turned before I found him, Jack and the other White Hats would kill me before I could see this thing through to the end.
I would visit Chaz’s brownstone after I got some rest. Even with the heat soaking into my muscles, it didn’t help me relax. Without the belt there to shield me from myself, guilt was gnawing at the edges of my consciousness, teasing at my brain, my inner voice telling me what a fantastically shitty person I was.
That I would even briefly consider justifying murdering a man who had done me no wrong was sounding a lot less plausible now that I didn’t have the belt telling me why it was so right. The more I tried not to think about it, the more it ate away at me, consuming my thoughts.
Even after I got out of the bath and lay down on the bed, I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, Vic’s surprised eyes stared up at me from below the hole blasted in his forehead, while a phantom gunshot echoed in my ears. Tossing and turning for what felt like hours, I eventually gave up and threw on a robe, padding downstairs to the kitchen.
Most of the people in the house had drifted into nocturnal schedules, save for Jack and Nikki. They ran the shop during the day, and would only pull all-nighters when a hunt was on. The house was quiet and dark with all the shades pulled down. No one stopped me when I rummaged through the cabinets in search of something to drink that had a little more bite to it than the milk, OJ, and soda in the fridge.
“Looking for something, pretty lady?”
I jerked, banging my head against the top of the counter cabinet as I pulled back, scowling at Bo as I rubbed the newly forming bruise. He smiled sheepishly, tugging absently at a loose thread on his Looney Tunes T-shirt before holding his hand out.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. Can’t sleep?”
I accepted the offering, and he tugged me to my feet. “No. I just ... No.”
He nodded, then ambled over to the freezer, pulling out a bottle of vodka hidden under a bag of ice. Of course. The one place I hadn’t looked. That perpetual smile of his briefly waned when he looked at me again, maybe put off by my expression. Desperation is never flattering.
“We’ll find him. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but we will. Soon.”
I only nodded, pulling out a couple of glasses while he brought the vodka and orange juice to the table, pouring a liberal helping of each into the glasses. We settled into our seats, cradling our drinks, sipping in companionable silence. It took a little time for me to build up the courage to say what was on my mind.
“It’s his face, Bo. I can’t stop seeing it. Can’t stop feeling my finger tightening on the trigger. Over and over again.” Taking a big gulp of the drink, I prayed it would hit me hard enough that I’d manage to pass out and get some rest today. Even if it meant the hangover from hell later, all I wanted now was a little slice of oblivion. “How do you live with that? Knowing you took somebody’s life away?”
“You don’t,” he said, avoiding my eyes as he spun his glass between his palms. “You just keep going, and remind yourself every step of the way that you’ve got a bigger purpose in mind. If you’re looking for peace, you won’t find it with us. If you’re looking for forgiveness, the only one who can give you that is you. Justice, now, that we can help you find—but you’ll have to accept that there will be some collateral damage in the process. No one can help you accept that but you. If you can’t carry the weight of that knowledge, you’re not in the right place.”
Well. Good to know. Though the serious words were a bit incongruous coming out of the mouth of a man wearing a Daffy Duck T-shirt, I wasn’t about to point out the inconsistencies.
Bo nudged the vodka and juice closer to me and then got up, taking his glass with him. He clapped me lightly on the shoulder before heading back to bed, saying nothing more as I pondered the mysteries of the contents of my glass.
Bo hadn’t used a bad analogy when he compared the burden of knowing what I’d done with a heavy weight. My shoulders were stooped with the burden of knowledge, and I felt as if I was carrying around about a thousand extra mental pounds. Nothing wanted to line up like it had in my formerly simple life. It might not have been perfect, but it all made sense before, and my worries, though they had seemed huge and occasionally insurmountable at the time, had become laughably minuscule in the face of the need to kill-or-be-killed.
Though I was a private investigator, I had been reluctant to use old-fashioned, reliable methods to gather what I needed and end this as rapidly as possible. I was thinking too much like a law-abiding citizen. Early on, using my key to get into and search Chaz’s home and sending one of the White Hats to question some of the people at the gym where he worked hadn’t led to any clues, but I had done a very haphazard job in my haste.