Sharkbait

“All done,” I sent to Adrienne. The door opened immediately, and she rushed to my side to verify I was all right. Like a nervous Mom with her pup, she sniffed and checked my over before she relaxed. “It was no big deal,” I said.

“I still don’t like it,” she said as Alexander brought the lights up, then called his people back into the room. She led me back to the chairs we had been at before.

The Master Vampire stopped at a highboy secretary, removing a package sealed in a big Ziplock bag. Waving the cop over, he handed the bag to his man. “This is Detective Sergeant Jack O’Meara of the Boston Police Department, Homicide Division.”

My eyes got wide, and I heard Adrienne suck her breath in. “You have a cop?”

“I have a lot of things, Vicki. Some are beautiful, some valuable, others useful.”

“Very convenient,” Adrienne said.

“It makes each job easier,” the woman said. He pulled a letter out in a smaller ziplock bag. “Four nights ago, a woman left an envelope for me with the bartender at a place I use as a drop site. It offered fifty thousand dollars to kill ‘swimsuit model Vicki Lawrence.’”

This beautiful vampire was the assassin? Wow. “You took the deal?”

“You’ve become rather famous this year, Vicki. I’ve seen your swimsuit ads and your television show, and you’re a strong werewolf with powerful allies,” she replied. “Fifty grand to kill a husband nobody cares about is one thing; killing a connected or public figure is quite another.”

The Detective picked it up. “You can’t just pretend to investigate, then close an investigation when the press and the brass are both up your ass to find the killer.”

That made sense. “So what did you do? You told Alexander about it, and he told Luna Adrienne?”

Alexander nodded. “The activities of my coven and familiars are measured and carefully monitored. Naturally, I warned Luna Adrienne because I have no wish to start a war between our species. I also directed Emily to take the contract.”

Emily was a weird name for a vampire assassin, but she continued. “My response was ‘fifty thousand upfront, another hundred and fifty when she’s dead.’ Last night, she left this envelope.” She handed me another bag; inside were five bundles of hundred-dollar bills, and a printed piece of paper.

I looked through the plastic at the note; it included my Coronado address, a description of my SUV including the license plate, my Friday afternoon and Monday morning trips to the Amphibious Base, upcoming Bodyglove appearances, and my morning runs and Dojo training. “Someone has been watching me,” I said.

“Yes. There was a memory chip with surveillance photos and videos,” Emily said. “As you can read, she expects me to fulfill the contract in the next two weeks.”

I could see how mad Adrienne was getting. “Do you know who is paying you?”

Emily pulled up her phone and played a file for us. It was a surveillance video from a bar. A woman wearing a courier uniform with a baseball hat walked in, talked to the bartender for ten seconds, handed him the package, then left again.

It wasn’t Traci. “Any idea who that is?”

Detective Jack nodded. “She’s an employee of a delivery company. I didn’t look too closely to avoid spooking them. This company probably got the package from another delivery service with directions to send it on. It’s enough to hide the sender from me.”

There was no short-cut here. “Did you catch a scent?”

“The perfume was overwhelming, so there was no scent I recognized. You could try,” Alexander said.

I remembered Traci’s scent well from the Scratch and Sniff, despite the coating of my ex-mate’s spunk. I opened a corner of the bag, taking a deep sniff before quickly closing it again. The overpowering floral scent made my eyes water; it was as bad as running the perfume counter gauntlet at Macy’s on the weekend. I tried to sort through it and got nothing. “I can’t make it out. Damn, you’ll have to launder that before you spend it.”

“That was my reaction,” Alexander said. “Jack, tell them what you think.”

“The person behind the contract is local,” he said. “Emily doesn’t work outside New England, and there is plenty of local talent in California that didn’t come into play. The window to hit Vicki in Boston is between the Ocean Explorer and the airport, compared to dozens of options in Coronado. That tells me the person lives in the region and is familiar with the underworld here.”

It made sense. The Killington Pack in Vermont was a three-hour drive away. If the Detective was right, it eliminated Skip Bonino, the California boy. It did not eliminate Brian as a suspect, but killing me over our incident on the Ocean Explorer was extreme. “If the person ordering the hit is this careful, with this many cutouts, how do we catch them?”

“It won’t be easy, but there are two options. You believe that Timothy and Traci Lords are behind this, so you need to find them.”

“That won’t be easy,” Adrienne said. “They were exiled from Killington, and aren’t allowed on Pack lands, but they could be anywhere in the Boston area.”

Jack nodded. “That is true, but they would need a place to stay. That means they have rented an apartment or a house, or they are staying somewhere with a friend.”

Adrienne nodded. “I can speak with the new Killington Alphas. They can look through the Beta’s records and financials, and see if they can figure out who might be helping them.”

Alexander nodded. “The city is Vampire territory, and they would know it. It would be a ballsy move to hide out in our territory, and Timothy has no balls,” he said. “That doesn’t mean he isn’t close. There are hundreds of towns where he could hide among humans and away from werewolves and vampires. It would be a needle in a haystack to even scent them.”

“There are over eight million people in the greater Boston area,” Emily said. “Even if you sent hundreds of wolves to roam the streets, it could take months.”

“Traci is pregnant,” I said as I looked up. “She would be about six months along. That means doctor visits,” I said. “We must have people working for the National Health Organization who can search for pregnant women at that term in this area, focusing on those having their first baby and new to the area,” I said.

“I’m sure we have assets who can help. If not, we’ll get our hackers going on it,” Adrienne agreed. “Heck, they might be using their real names still.”

“I haven’t gotten any hits on addresses for them in my searches,” Jack said. “That means they are staying with someone, or they changed their names.”

It was going to be a challenge. “What’s your other idea?”

Alexander sat back and smiled. “Kill you, then follow the payment back to who sent it.”