"Look, I know he's a convicted rapist. I saw the way he looked at Professor Dallas tonight, and I saw his reaction to the blood and torture. I don't know what you're not telling me, but I know that Olaf would hurt me if he could I know that."
"You're afraid of him?"
I took a breath. "Yeah, I'm afraid of him."
"Good," Edward said. He hesitated then said, "You fit his vic profile."
"Excuse me?"
"His favorite victims are petite women, usually Caucasian, but always with long dark hair. I told you I would never have brought him in on this case if I'd known you were coming down, too. It isn't just because you're a woman. You're his physical ideal for a victim."
I stared at him for a few seconds, mouth opened, then closed it, and tried to think what to say. "Thanks for telling me, Edward. Shit. You should have told me this up front."
"I was hoping he could hold his act together, but I saw him tonight, too. I'm worried that he'll snap. I just don't want you to be the one in the way when it happens."
"Send him back to wherever he came from, Edward. We don't need him if he adds to the problem."
He shook his head. "No, he's got a specialty that's perfect for this case."
"And that specialty would be?"
He gave that small smile. "Go to bed, Anita. It's already dawn."
"No," I said, "almost, but not quite."
He studied my face. "You can really feel the sunrise without looking?"
I nodded. "Yep."
He looked at me, and it was as if he were trying to read me now. For the first time I felt that maybe, just maybe, Edward was as puzzled by me as I was by him, sometimes. He escorted me to my room and left me at the door like an overprotective date.
I was glad I'd prepared the room for safety before I left. If someone came through the window, they'd knock the dolls over or step on the mirror with its antlers. The door would have a chair and the suitcase in front of it. The room was as safe as it was going to get. I undressed, putting the guns and knives on the bed until I could decide exactly what was staying where for overnight. A man's extra large T-shirt that hung past my knees came out of the overnight bag. I'd started keeping one change of clothes, nightclothes, and toiletries in the overnight bag ever since the airline lost my luggage on a business trip. The last thing I pulled out of the overnight bag was my toy penguin Sigmund. I used to only sleep with Sigmund every so often, but lately, he'd been my constant companion under the sheets. A girl needs something to cuddle with at night.
The Browning Hi-Power was my other constant companion. At home it stayed in a holster I'd rigged to my headboard. Here I put it under my pillow, making very sure the safety was on. It always made me slightly nervous to put a loaded gun under my pillow. Seemed less than safe, but not nearly as unsafe as being unarmed if Olaf came through the door. I had brought four knives with me. One of them went between the mattresses. I put the Firestar back into the suitcase. I wanted something bigger than a handgun. I had a sawed-off shotgun and a mini-Uzi. Normally, I'd have brought more big guns, but I knew Edward would have more and better, and he would share. I finally decided on the mini-Uzi with a modified clip that held thirty rounds with enough humph to cut a vampire in half. It was a gift from Edward so the ammo was probably illegal, but then so was the gun. I'd been almost embarrassed about carrying it at first, but one night last August I used it for real. I'd pointed it at a vampire, pulled the trigger, and cut him in half. It had looked like his body was torn in half by some giant hand. His upper body had fallen slowly to one side. His lower body collapsed to its knees. I still had the vision of it like a slow motion image. There was no horror or regret. It was just a memory. The vampire had come with a hundred of his friends to kill us. I'd tried to kill one of them as messily as possible to get the rest to leave us alone. It hadn't worked, but that was only because the vampires were more afraid of their Master of the City than of me.
Maybe the Uzi was overkill for a human being, but if by some chance I emptied the Browning into Olaf's chest and he didn't go down, I wanted to make sure he didn't reach me. I'd cut him in half and see if the pieces could crawl.
28
IT WAS AFTER FIVE when I finally closed my eyes. Sleep sucked me under like a roll of black water, dragging me deep, and instantly into a dream. I stood in a dark place. There were small stunted trees everywhere, but they were dead. All the trees were dead. I could feel it.
Something crashed over to my right, something large moving through the trees, and a sense of dread rode before it like a wind. I ran, hands up to protect my face from the dry branches. I tripped over a root and went sprawling. There was a sharp pain in my arm. It was bleeding. Blood poured down it, but I couldn't find a wound.
The thing was getting closer. I could hear tree trunks snapping with sharp explosions. It was coming. It was coming for me. I ran, and ran, and ran, and the dead trees stretched out forever and there was no escape.
A typical chase dream, I thought, and the moment I thought it, I realized it was a dream, and the dream changed, faded into another dream. Richard standing in nothing but a sheet, one tanned muscled arm reaching out to me. His brown hair falling in a froth of waves around his face. I reached for him, and as my fingertips brushed his, a smile curving his lips, the dream shattered, and I woke.
I woke, blinking into a patch of sunlight that spilled across the bed. But it hadn't been the light that had woken me. There was a light tapping on my door. A man's voice. "Edward says get up."
It took me a moment to realize it was Bernardo's voice. It didn't take Freud to analyze the dream at the end with Richard in a sheet. I was going to have to be careful around Bernardo. Embarrassing, but true.
I sat up in bed, yelling through the door, "What time is it?"
"Ten."
"Okay, I'm coming."
I listened but didn't hear him walk away. Either the door was more solid than it looked, or Bernardo was quiet. If it had just been Edward, I'd have thrown on a pair of jeans under the over-sized T-shirt, and had some coffee. But there was company in the house and it was all male. I managed to get into the bathroom and dress without meeting anyone in the hallway. I was wearing dark blue jeans, a navy blue polo shirt, white jogging socks, and in black Nikes. Normally, I'd left the guns off until I went out into the big bad world, but at Edward's house the big bad world was staying in the next room so I put the Firestar 9 mm in an inner pants holster, set for a right-handed cross draw. Brushed, cleaned, and armed, I wandered toward the smell of bacon.
The kitchen was small and narrow and white. But all the appliances were black, and the starkness of the contrast was almost too much first thing in the morning. There was another bouquet of wild flowers in the middle of a small white wooden table. Donna had struck again, but truthfully I agreed with her. The kitchen needed something to soften it.
The two men sitting at the table did nothing to humanize the room. Olaf had shaved so that the only hair left were the black lines of his eyebrows. He wore a black tank top, black dress slacks. Couldn't see the shoes, but I was betting on a monochrome look. He was also wearing a black shoulder rig with a big automatic of some kind. I didn't recognize the brand. A black-hilted knife was in a holster under his left arm.
Shoulder holsters chaff when you wear them with tank tops, but hey, it wasn't my problem.
Bernardo wore a white short-sleeved T-shirt and black jeans. He'd pulled the top layer of his hair back on either side with a large multi-colored barrette, There was still plenty of hair to fall down past his shoulders, stark and black against the pure whiteness of his shirt. He was wearing a ten mil Beretta just in back of his right hip. I couldn't see a knife on him, but I was betting it was there.