Guarding Valentina [Paladin Protection Agency 3] (Siren Publishing Classic) (3 page)

He stayed and watched as the police laid out their tape, took their photographs, and got Val’s statement. He had no idea what her story would be, but he was pretty certain that she wouldn’t be mentioning the fact that her attacker had been a vampire.

He stayed until the streets were empty and the pale light of a false dawn crept over the sky. Only once he was certain it was too close to sunrise for Christoph to return did he head back to his hotel. He was going to need a hot shower and a few hours of sleep. He knew that while he slept other members of his organization would quietly see to it that Nick’s body never rose again. Once he got permission to give Paladin’s people the truth, he would have to pay them a visit and explain to them just how much trouble they’d gotten themselves into when they’d raided that vampire nest in Oregon. He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his unshaven jaw. It was going to be a very long day.

Val had been ordered to take the day off and rest.
Yeah, right. Like that is going to happen.
She’d lost a teammate and been turned into a vampire hors d’oeuvre. She didn’t need rest. What she needed was payback. That didn’t mean she was going to advertise her disobedience, though, so she kept a low profile as she slipped into the operations room of Division S and snagged a chair in the back corner. Her strategy worked for all of ten seconds.

“Val?” Jase lifted his head and sniffed the air before turning in her direction. “I thought you were supposed to be off duty?”

“That new nose of yours is a serious pain in the ass, you know that, Jase?” Val had forgotten about her team leader’s new abilities. As a recently turned werewolf, he had developed an interesting array of talents, including an enhanced sense of smell. He’d only been back at work for a week after taking a long tropical vacation, and she hadn’t had time yet to adjust to his new abilities, or the fact he had gone from unrepentant playboy to eagerly expectant father in only a few months.

“Just wait until it gets closer to the full moon. I’ll be able to tell you what brand of shampoo you’re using from across the room.”

“Charming,” Val retorted and went to get a cup of coffee. Now she’d been spotted, there was no sense in trying to hide any longer.

“You had a rough night.” Jase joined her to top up his own mug. “You really sure you want to be back here already?”

“I don’t want to be anywhere else.” It was the truth. Paladin was her real home, and these people were her family. As much as she loved her parents and her noisy rabble of siblings, none of them understood her the way her teammates did. This was the one place she felt she truly belonged.

“You know Sin’s going to blow a gasket when he sees you’re back at work. Why don’t you hang out with Jake for a bit? You can see if you can help him track down your mystery man. He’s using traffic-cam footage to try to pull an image of whomever it was that dropped in to help you last night.” Jase chuckled. “Poor kid was already looking for images of Christoph when I got here this morning. No one told him vampires don’t show up on film.”

“And since Jake’s desk is over in the corner, there’s less chance Sin will spot me right away.” Val bumped her fist to Jase’s bicep. “Good thinking. Jazz must be rubbing off on you. I’m sure you didn’t used to be this smart.”

“Wise ass. Go help Jake before I remember I’m supposed to be the responsible leader-type and report you to the doc.”

“Yes, sir!” She tossed Jase a flippant salute and made her way over to where Jake was working behind a collection of oversized computer monitors.

“How the hell do you keep track of all this?” she asked as she dropped into a chair just behind Paladin’s resident computer wizard.

“Years of practice and a steady diet of Red Bull.” Jake turned around to greet Val, his blue eyes dancing behind his overgrown bangs. “I’ve been trying to find a camera that was trained on the area where Nick…fell.”

“Hey, it’s okay. You can say it. It’s where he died. I know, Jake. I was there.”

“I just…” Jake suddenly looked like a lost little boy instead of the brilliant and cocky twenty-six-year-old he was. “This is the first time I’ve known the person who didn’t come back. I don’t know how you guys do this.”

“Do what?”

“Keep going and act like nothing happened last night.”

Val lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’ll let you in on a secret, Jake. That’s all this is, an act. You work here long enough, you’ll figure out how to do it, too. We carry on because that’s the job. And finding the bastard who did this to Nick is the best way to honor his memory.”

Val took a deep breath and let Jake see past the wall she’d put up around her feelings. She felt the sting of tears and blinked them away before anyone else could notice. “You tell anyone you saw me cry, I’ll kick your ass up one side of this building and down the other.”

Some of the sparkle returned to Jake’s eyes as he nodded. “I didn’t see a thing. And, Val, thanks. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one feeling badly. I was starting to wonder if I’d signed on to work with a bunch of Borg.”

“Your geek is showing.”

“If you got that
Star Trek
reference, then so is yours.”

“Shh! If you give me away to the others, I will tell that little blonde down in payroll you have a thing for her.”

Jake paled. “Ingrid? You wouldn’t! It took me two months to convince her I’m seeing someone! She’s the most tenacious girl I’ve ever met.”

Val had to clap a hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter. “You didn’t. Seriously? What are you going to do when she finds out you’re not?”

“Who says I’m not seeing anyone?”

“Your time sheet says so. You clock more hours here than damn near anyone else. If you’re dating, then she’s either the most understanding woman on the planet or you’ve gone and made yourself a DIY girlfriend.”

“There are days I’ve considered that last option, believe me.” Jake muttered before spinning around and typing something too quickly for her to read it, but it set a series of images scrolling across one screen.

“If you figure out a way to build computerized companions, you’ll have a long list of clients, starting with me.”

“Single again? What about that guy you were seeing? Bruce? Bill?”

“Bradley.” She frowned into her coffee. “He dumped me by text message yesterday. Classy, huh?”

“You really did have a lousy day.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. So, have you found Aedan yet?”

“Your mystery man? Not yet, but I think I’ve managed to, uh…access a security camera that might give me another angle.” He typed for another few seconds and then cheered. “Got it!”

“Just don’t tell Sin how you managed to access that camera, you sneaky little hacker.”

Jake winked at her and then leaned in closer to the monitor as he fast-forwarded the feed to just before the attack. The camera was situated across the street from where she and Nick had parked their car last night, and it gave a half-decent view of the area on either side of the vehicle. Jake toggled the camera to normal speed, and they both watched in silence as Val left the car and headed off camera.

“I should never have left him,” she murmured as she watched herself disappear from view. “He’d still be alive if I hadn’t wanted a damned coffee.”

A warm hand touched her shoulder, and she glanced up to find Sinjin standing behind her. “I don’t think your being there would have helped much.” He directed her attention back to the monitor. One minute Nick was air-drumming to whatever was playing on the radio, and the next the overhead light was on and he was being dragged across the seats and out the passenger side door, struggling against some invisible assailant.

“Holy shit!” Jake swore and paused the recording. “What the hell was that?”

“
That
was Christoph.” Val stared at the image frozen on the monitor. “He had Nick within a minute of my leaving the car. He deliberately waited until I came back to kill him. He wanted me to see it.”

Sin cleared his throat. “You were team leader on that raid a few weeks back, Val. Clearing out that vampire nest in Oregon. Do you remember?”

How could she forget? They’d been hired to retrieve a man’s runaway daughter from what he thought was a cult. It had taken Paladin a while to track her down, and when they had, they’d been stunned to learn that she wasn’t part of a cult at all. It turned out she was one of the human devotees who voluntarily offered themselves as a food supply to a nest of vampires.

They’d retrieved the target, destroyed the nest, and the last Val had heard, the girl was locked away in a detox center somewhere while they tried to help her recover. Having seen the desperate way she’d tried to run back through the flames to rejoin her vampire lover, Val doubted she’d ever really get over it. The girl was more than a little broken.

“You think Christoph is connected to that?”

“He did accuse you of killing his children.” Sin shrugged slightly. “That’s the only time we’ve been involved with vampires.”

“Until now.” Val tapped Jake’s arm. “Can you keep playing it? I want to see if Aedan is on this recording.”

“Why wouldn’t he be?” Jake asked as he toggled another switch and the video footage started running again.

“Because I’m not entirely sure he’s human.”

“Fuck. Why wasn’t that in your report, Val?” Sin asked, clearly unhappy.

She glanced back at Sin. “Because it’s just a gut feeling.”

“Just great. So what the hell do you think he is?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. Two months ago I didn’t believe in vampires
or
werewolves. Now Jase is a lycanthrope and I have the fang-marks to prove vampires are very damned real. I have no idea what else might be out there, waiting for us to trip over them.’

“Thoughts like that are why I’m not sleeping well these days.” Sin sighed and then went quiet as Val reappeared on camera. She relived every second of the attack, quietly narrating her actions and the radio dialogue she’d had with Christoph. When Nick’s body crashed to the concrete, she realized the entire room was watching in silence as their comrade-in-arms fell to his death.

It was hard to watch, but harder still to see herself get attacked. Her hand curled into a fist as she viewed herself being immobilized, and when her throat was torn open she had to look away from the screen.

Sin kept his hand on her shoulder the whole time, offering her his silent support as they all watched the scene play out to the end.

“Jesus, Val,” someone uttered, and Jake paused the tape again.

“I lived didn’t I?” Val managed to sound flippant despite the sick twist she felt in her gut. “I guess he didn’t like the way I tasted.”

“All right everyone, back to work.” Sin’s voice traveled to every corner of the room, and people took the hint. “Go ahead, Jake.”

Aedan’s image appeared soon after. In fact he seemed to appear right in the middle of the screen. He didn’t walk or run in from the side. He simply materialized a few feet away from where Val had been sitting.

“Son of a bitch,” Sin muttered. “Can you zoom in at all, Jake? We need an image of his face.’”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“I knew there had to be a reason he managed to sneak up on me.” Val watched, riveted as her meeting with Aedan played out again.

Just before he vanished, she saw him kiss her and she ducked her head.
Shit. She didn’t mention that in her report either.

“Are all your reports so full of missing details, Valentina?”

Sin was using her full name, and that was never a good sign. “No sir. But I didn’t think it was relevant.”

“How about from now on you let me decide what’s relevant?”

“Yes, sir.”

She shot Jake a dirty look when she caught him smirking at her. “And you, not a word.”

Jake nodded and went back to retrieving the best image he could from the camera. The result wasn’t perfect, but it would be enough to run it through facial recognition software and hope for a hit.

“This might take a day or a week or a month. It really depends on if we get lucky.” Jake submitted the picture and leaned back in his chair, still smirking. “Do you want me to e-mail you a copy for your scrapbook, Val?”

“That’s it. I’m headed to the payroll office.”

“Payroll? What’s in payroll, Val?” Sin looked at them both with confusion as Jake frantically shook his head and raised his hands in mock surrender.

“I take it back! I’ll buy you coffee for a week. I’ll fix your laptop for you the next time you break it, Val. Anything you want, just please don’t say anything!”

“Whatever is going on, I’ve decided I don’t want to know.” Sin shook his head in bemusement and squeezed Val’s shoulder one last time before stepping away from them both. “Since you’re here against doctor’s orders, you’re assigned to desk duty. See if you can’t do some research and figure out what species of mythical creature your vampire-hunting friend might be.”

“I’ll get right on that.” Val stood up to head for one of the free computer terminals and then stopped dead as an alert flashed on one of Jake’s many monitors.

“Uh, guys? I have a hit on Aedan.”

“I thought you said that could take days?” Val asked as she turned around again. “So, what do you have?”

“He’s on a security feed. Ours.”

“What? When?” Sin demanded.

“Right now, sir. He’s at the front gate.”

Sinjin’s cell started ringing, and he looked at the caller ID and swore before answering it. “Heath here. What did he say his name was? All right, give him an ID badge and escort him to one of the secure meeting rooms.” He hung up the phone before looking straight at Val. “It would appear your mystery man is here, and he’s asking for you. Let’s go see what he has to say for himself.”

“I’m coming, too,” Jase called from across the room. “I want to see Val’s new boyfriend.”

“Don’t start, dog boy,” Val snarked as she headed for the door.

“Wolf, thank you very much. There’s a difference!”

* * * *