"Hey, sweetheart," Heidi began.
Both Lauren and Stacey could hear the anger in Barry"s voice, though they couldn"t make out what he was saying.
"No!" Heidi said. "I didn"t! It must have been someone"s idea of a practical joke. I would never-"
The phone went dead in Heidi"s hand. Tears were apparent in her eyes as she stared at the other two women.
"He...he says I called him yesterday and said that it was off, that I was sorry, but I wanted to sleep with other men. And then I hung up on him!"
"I"ll call him," Lauren said quickly. "I"ll think of something to say. I mean, we all know how much you love him. And how much he loves you."
"He hates me!" Heidi said, distressed. "I didn"t call him, I would never have said those awful things." "You did call him. And that"s the problem. He"s your fiance-he knows your voice."
Heidi burst into tears.
"It"s going to be all right," Lauren said, the words hollow in her own ears, but they were the only ones that seemed appropriate at the moment.
Stacey was harder and firmer. "You need to start out by being glad you"re alive, and then you need tostart believing what we"re saying. You are going to do every single thing I tell you to do, and then, when we"ve all survived this, we"ll work on getting your fiance back."
"I"ll call Barry today," Lauren told Heidi, handing her a napkin to dry her eyes. "Don"t cry, Heidi. It won"t help any."
"Don"t cry?" Heidi exploded suddenly. "You"re telling me I was bitten by a vampire-because I "m weak-and that I called my fiance and trashed the prospect of my marriage. And you don"t want me to cry?"
"No, don"t cry, get mad," Stacey said. "You need to be angry. Take a good hard look at what the creature trying to seduce you made you do. Wake up!"
"I am awake. Believe me, I"m awake," Heidi retorted angrily. She wiped her face and stared at the other women. "If this is some kind of practical joke..."
"I wish it were," Lauren said softly, reaching across the table to gently touching her friend"s hand. "I"ll call Barry. We"ll convince him your phone was stolen by someone who overheard you talking about him and decided to be cruel."
"Will he believe it?" Heidi asked.
"Will he believe it if you tell him you were under the influence of a vampire?" Stacey asked curtly.
"You will call him? You"ll convince him?" Heidi said to Lauren.
"Of course. You love him, and he loves you. He"s just angry right now-but he loves you."
Heidi was quiet for a minute. "So...what now?"
"I have to get back over to the hospital," Lauren said.
"Yes, of course, we need to go back," Heidi said.
"Not you," Stacey told her firmly.
"What?" Heidi protested.
"You"re with me. You need another day to replenish what you lost-and you need to learn the ropes," Stacey told her.
"What ropes?" Heidi asked.
"Vampire killing ropes," Stacey said in a tone that left no room for argument.
Mark leapt up, knocking a table over in his haste to reach "Nefert.i.ti" before she could sink her fangs into the man.
"Stop!" he shouted, and threw himself at the woman. She went flying down to the stage beneath him. Her eyes-a deep brown with a hint of the light that gave her away seething fire- met his.
Then the heavyset man had him by the arm and was dragging him up.
"He"s a psycho!" Nefert.i.ti shrieked.
"b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Pay for your own entertainment," her big client bellowed.
"Call the cops," Nefert.i.ti said.
"I"ll handle this a.s.shole better than the cops," the man said, drawing back his ma.s.sive fist.
Mark easily dodged the blow. "She"s diseased!" he shouted as he ducked. The other man had put so much weight into his attempted attack that it carried him down to the floor with an oomph.
"Diseased?" he said. "Oh, G.o.d!"
Nefert.i.ti took that moment to race, naked, backstage. Mark leapt over the big man on the ground and followed her.
A half-dozen not-so-hot looking showgirls in various stages of undress shrieked as he went flying through the dressing room in pursuit.
Nefert.i.ti grabbed a silk robe and kept running, heading for the back door.
She pushed through it; Mark was right behind her.
The door led to a long hallway.
She reached the door to the street just a split second before he did. She burst outside, and he followed, catching her by the arm.
She spun around, fangs bared, ready to shape-shift. By then he"d drawn a small little squirt gun from his pocket. He fired and hit her squarely between the b.r.e.a.s.t.s.
She screamed.
People stared.
"Cops! Somebody call the cops!" came a cry.
"He"s got a gun!" someone else roared.
"It"s a frigging water pistol!" a third person chimed in.
One way or the other, Mark couldn"t afford to stick around. They made a pretty ridiculous picture, the stripper in her heavy make-up and robe, him with a water pistol shoved against her side, a wave of smoke rising from her chest.
He had to move, and quickly. He didn"t want to lose his hostage, but he also didn"t want to destroy her.
He wanted answers from her.
"Come with me-now. And quietly. You know what I have here. You can die for real, or you help me. The choice is yours," he said.
"I"m hurt," she said pathetically. "You"ll be more than hurt in two seconds if you don"t shut up and do what I tell you," he a.s.sured her.
She slipped an arm around his shoulders, pretending to be with him. Onlookers would probably just a.s.sume they"d had a lovers"
quarrel, he thought.
"I"m nearly...gone."
"Nearly, but not quite."
"You need to show some mercy," she whined.
"Like you were about to?" he suggested.
"I wasn"t going to kill him."
"We"ll never know, will we? Just shut up and come with me, or the cops will be here. And then I"ll have to kill you, because I can"t let you go," he promised her swiftly. "Let"s go."
She complied without further complaint.
The older woman sitting across the desk from Sean Canady was very upset. The desk sergeant had tried to explain that she couldn"t fill out a missing persons report, because the missing person hadn"t been missing long enough.
But the woman had been persistent.
Her name was Judy Lockwood, she said. She had raised her niece, Leticia, since she had been a small child and Judy"s brother, Leticia"s father, had pa.s.sed away. Leticia had grown up to be a fine young lady. She worked at the hospital as a nurse, and she hadn"t been sick a day since she started. She went to church; she always came home at night.
But she hadn"t come home last night. And she hadn"t reported in to her job at the hospital.
Because Sean had insisted on being told about absolutely anything even slightly out of the ordinary, Judy had been shown into his office.
He had put through a call to Mark Davidson the minute he had heard the two keywords "disappeared" and "hospital."
The woman in front of him was straight and slender, wearing a flowered dress that was clean, smelled of fresh air, and was perfectly pressed. She wore dignity about her like a cloak; she sang in the church choir, and she lived by a code of right and wrong. Sean"s heart seemed to squeeze as she spoke to him. He prayed her niece was fine. He doubted that she was-though, from all he was hearing, she was a far cry from the previous victims whose pitiful remains had been pulled from, the mighty river.
"When was your niece last seen, Miss Lockwood?" he asked.
"Just yesterday evening-and I know, I know, she hasn"t been missing long enough, but I"m telling you, something"s wrong. She said goodbye to Bess Newman, who was taking over her patients. Bess said she left late, because Leticia always stays longer, just to make sure all her paperwork is filled out and all her patients are in good shape. She"s a really good nurse, Lieutenant Canady," Judy a.s.sured him.
"But no one saw her after she left the hospital?" Sean asked.
"No," Judy said. "Did she drive to work?" Sean asked.
"Yessir, I was getting to that. Her car"s not in the parking lot."
"And you don"t think she drove somewhere, and that...something came up?"
She stared at him as if only a complete idiot could have made such a comment. "Lieutenant, you haven"t been listening to me.
Leticia is a very good girl. She goes to church. She has never missed a day of work. What can you imagine that would suddenly make a woman like that just decide she wouldn"t go to work?"
"Miss Lockwood, I am worried about your niece, and that"s why I"m taking this report myself."
Huge tears suddenly filled her eyes. "She"s a good girl. Not that I wish any ill on anyone, but from what I read in the papers...
those other girls took chances. My Leticia didn"t. She went to church. She went to work. She"ll go out on a date now and then, but with a good boy, a boy from the church. She"s never had any truck with boys in gangs. So she couldn"t have been taken by...
by whatever horrible monster...killed those other girls...could she?" she asked weakly, hopefully.
Sean covered her hand with his. "I"m going to follow up on this, Miss Lockwood. I promise you, I"ll do my very best to find her."
As Judy Lockwood started to rise, there was another tap on his door. The desk sergeant stuck his head in. "A friend of Miss Lockwood"s is here, Lieutenant," he said.
Another woman walked in. She was almost Sean"s size and, like Judy, beautifully dressed, down to her straw hat. "Excuse me, Lieutenant Canady, and thank you for your time. Judy, I just got a call from Leticia. She ran late into work, and that was all. She"s sorry you were worried, Judy, and she"ll talk to you tonight. But she"s fine, and that"s what matters, right?" She turned to Sean. "I have a cell phone, you see. The grandkids bought it for me last Christmas. Judy doesn"t like them, so she never got one."
"Thank the Lord!" Judy said, rising, clapping her hands together. She turned sheepishly to Sean. "Lieutenant Canady, I thank you for your time. And I am so sorry I wasted it."
"I don"t think it was a waste of time, Judy. We need answers around here right now, and I hoping anyone will come in when they"re afraid, just as you did."
"You"re a fine young man, Lieutenant."
He smiled. He was pushing fifty. He wasn"t sure that made him a young man at all.
They left his office, and he had just started to pick up his phone when there was yet another tap at his door. The desk sergeant was back.
"I"m sorry, sir."
"No. You did the right thing," Sean said.
As soon as the sergeant left and closed the door behind him, Sean picked up his cell and called Bobby Munro. "Stay there,. Stay in that room and don"t leave until I get there."
"Right, Lieutenant," Bobby said.
"Jonas still there?"
"Sir," Bobby said very softly, "he hasn"t left even to take a leak."
Let"s hope to h.e.l.l he"s as decent as he seems, Sean thought, then asked, "So what"s going on there? Everything fine?" "Yup. The doctor was in this morning. He hopes she"ll come to soon, and that she"ll be fine. It"s looking good. Well, as good as it can look, at any rate."
"Cansee you the chalk board that lists the nurses a.s.signed to the room?" Sean asked.
"Yeah, I can see it from here."