Eli, not so much. I wasn’t sure whether Deon really had the hots for my partner, or just liked yanking his chain. Maybe both. Eli wasn’t generally homophobic, but the recent zealous attention had made him a little gun-shy.
“Civilian,” I muttered the insult to Eli. “Big man can’t take a little honest adoration?”
Eli shook it off and retook his stool, to focus on the screens. Deon turned his attention to making more sushi as some of the girls came down from their rooms upstairs to see what was going on. The set of Eli’s shoulders relaxed as scantily clad females joined the mix, and the scents of lotions, perfumes, hair products, and sex pheromones filled the room. By their scents, I recognized Christie, Ipsita, and Tia, who started to drape herself all over Alex until I cleared my throat. She halted mid-drape and sat instead on a stool, arranging her body over the bar in a languid pose. Alex gave me a nasty glare, which I also pretended not to see.
We had some rules in our little family group. One was no cussing. The other was no hookers, no matter how refined and smart and expensive, until Alex was of legal age, cleared of his legal troubles, and could afford their rates. At that point, any ensuing diseases and emotional and legal fallout were the responsibility of the Kid. Until then, the girls were off-limits.
On the central screen, the robot was nearly at the porch, casting long and tangled shadows from the lighting set up by the emergency workers. Some helpful bomb squad member had placed a six-foot-long ramp from the street to the porch, and the robot made a ninety-degree turn, rolling up to the bomb box. I shifted my attention to the screen whose footage originated from on top of the robot. The black-and-white picture showed the box clearly, an ordinary cardboard box, totally taped up. Innocuous looking to the eye. I’d have picked it up and carried it inside except for the smell of things that shouldn’t have been there. Though ordinary humans wouldn’t have detected it, C4 plastic explosives had a faint but peculiar scent, one that stayed in Beast’s memory.
On one side of his body, the robot carried a miniature X-ray camera and the footage went all shaky as the handler turned the robot, vibrating the top-mounted camera. Moments later digital images appeared on a different screen. Eli sighed, a faint breath of sound, but even without it, I knew it was bad. Eli launched into instructor mode. “C4 is composed of explosives, chemicals used as a plastic binder, a plasticizer, and usually an odorizing taggant to help detect the explosive and identify its source, chemicals such as DMDNB.” I didn’t ask what that was and fortunately Eli saw no reason to educate us. “The explosive in C4 is RDX, also known by the boom jockeys as cyclonite or cyclotrimethylene trinitramine.”
I thought a moment and then let my mouth relax into a smile. Boom jockeys. People who rode the boom of an explosion. “Funny, funny man,” I muttered.
“It looks like you might have four ounces in there, which is enough to do a lot of damage to your house all by itself if you’d brought it inside before it detonated, but the big package of nails inside is the real bad news.”
I felt cold all over. If the bomb had gone off inside, everyone within projectile range would have been injured. Maimed, scarred, possibly dead.
Eli leaned forward, pointed at a shadow on the screen, and added, “That might be a cell phone. If so, then a cell call to the device would be the trigger mechanism.” He pointed to another shadow. “However, this might be tied to a detonator . . . here”—he moved his finger higher—“to go off if you ripped the tape and opened it.”
“Wait a minute. Someone sent a bomb to Jane?” Christie asked, finally waking up enough to understand what was going on. There was near reverence in her voice, as if getting a bomb delivered was cool or something. In her world, maybe it was.
Today, Christie was decked out in yoga pants and a near-transparent tank top. No bra, but spiked matching nipple rings that looked downright painful. She wore her usual metal-studded dog collar, one only a vampire dominatrix would have worn. In the human BDSM community, a dog collar was usually worn by submissives, but in the vamp BDSM community, the dominatrix wore one. Because when a vamp tried to drink her down, it hurt. A lot. Ditto for the nipple rings. There were tiny little barbs on the ends, turned so they wouldn’t hurt her but would hurt anyone getting too close. Part of me felt, Ewww. A second part of me just thought people were weird. And yet a third part was horrified that I had learned so much about stuff like this—and that it didn’t bother me that I had.
Christie had one foot up tight against her butt on the stool and the other out to her side and up on the bar in what looked like a stretch capable of ripping the average person’s pelvis apart. “A bomb! That is so cool!” she said.
“It’s not something to be proud of,” I said mildly.
“It means that somebody thinks you’re important enough to try to commit a federal crime over,” she said. She had a point. And that should bother me. A lot.
“What’s it doing now?” the Kid asked his brother.
“It’s looking to see if there’s a third trigger beneath the box. So far, so good.”
This looked like a long, drawn-out procedure, so I opened my phone when it buzzed, saw the name, and tapped the Kid’s shoulder. “Trace this.” I showed him the Darth Vader happy face on the screen. It was Reach’s icon, and Reach—the best-known research guy in the paranormal hunting business—had proven to be an inconstant ally, and a sometime enemy.
The Kid nodded, shushed the girl’s conversation, removed one screen from among the pile, and started tracing the call. He nodded for me to go. I hit the call button and said, “Hey, frenemy. You gonna tell me something good today or stab me in the back?”
“Just a word of warning.”
I wasn’t sure the croak was Reach’s voice and trepidation cascaded through me. I put him on speaker and asked, “Reach?”
His breathy laugh sounded like something broken. “Yeah. What’s left of me. They found me. And they took me out.”
Eli stepped to the side where he could watch the screens and me too. One hand had already found his weapon.
“Who took you out?” I asked.
“A human. Might have been a woman. Tall. Spoke English like a foreigner, talking with whispery, sliding sounds. Accompanied by two vamps, male and female. The male never spoke. The female vamp had a Middle Eastern accent. The human and the vamps were tattooed with wristbands of falcons. Or hawks. Raptors, anyway. Don’t know.”
Vamps did not tattoo themselves very often, which made these vamps unusual, and therefore interesting. The Reach I knew would have found out any unknown info before his attacker got out the door good. Now, not only did he not know the gender of an attacker (which seemed impossible), he also didn’t know what kind of bird was in a tattoo. This was not the Reach I knew. The sense of dread deepened, making my palms ache. “How bad are you hurt?” I asked, my throat tight.
He gave that broken, breathy laugh again. “Well, I won’t type two-handed ever again.”
“Reach,” I whispered.
“Don’t,” he said. “Save it for yourself. They were here for information about Leo, but they also were looking for you. Not just where you lived. They had that.” I turned and looked at the video screens. Reach’s torturers knew where I lived? “They wanted everything,” he said. “And I gave them everything I had. Not that it did me any good. They left me in pieces anyway. This was a week ago. I couldn’t call until now. The lead vamp made sure of that. He’s coming for you, for the icons you have. The something Leo has, or might have. But more important, he wants someone he called . . . I don’t know. It sounded something like E-sen-do Lucy. I don’t know who it is, but they want her—or him—bad. Be careful, Jane. Make sure your family is safe.” The call disconnected.