2
We did not manage to become bosom companions in those first few hours on the road. Mr. Sutherland sat in the backseat, silent and taciturn, alternately glaring out the window and checking our progress against an atlas. Did he give me information from the atlas while I struggled to find our way back to civilization? No, he just grimaced every time I made a turn, which was super-helpful.
The plan for this excursion to Half-Moon Hollow, Kentucky, was that I would drive as far as I could each day and well past sunset, letting Mr. Sutherland sleep during the day in the little car cubby. We would pull over at carefully chosen roadside motels at a “reasonable stopping time” so I could eat and rest. Mr. Sutherland didn’t have a driver’s license, so he would not help out with the wheel time.
As I said, that was the plan. But, as in most cases where I was involved, that plan went awry. Terribly, terribly awry. Thanks to our late start and my accidentally looping around Tacoma twice, we reached a motel at 2 A.M. It could not come soon enough. After nearly twenty-eight hours without sleep, I was getting a little punchy. Falling asleep at the wheel and killing myself would be a really bad way to finish up my maiden voyage.
We had not reached the vicinity of the approved first-night motel choices. We weren’t within fifty miles of those choices. There was not a Ramada or a Holiday Inn in sight. Now, the one-story, nondescript-beyond-the-dripping-rust-stains-on-the-exterior-walls Pine Heights Motel? That we had.
I pulled the car to a stop and jumped out without a word to Mr. Sutherland. I didn’t feel obligated, since he hadn’t spared one for me since we’d pulled out of his driveway. I walked into the office to book two rooms, studiously ignoring the fact that the rooms were only thirty-two dollars per night and that the clerk gave me keys—real, old-fashioned, metal keys on honest-to-goodness plastic tags. Also, his emphasis on the “pay-perv-view” channels as an amenity really creeped me out.
When I emerged from the office, feeling significantly less confident in the accommodations than when I’d walked in, Mr. Sutherland was leaning against the car, glowering at any object that crossed his field of vision.
“This motel, if you can even call it that, is unacceptable. Miss Puckett, if you will review the preapproved itinerary—”
“I did read it, all sixteen pages,” I told him. “And unfortunately, we weren’t able to make it as far as planned—”
“Unacceptable!”
“Whether you accept it or not, that’s the way it is!” I shouted back.
Mr. Sutherland squinted at me again, which was either his idea of intimidation or he had some strange facial tic when he was angry. He snatched the key from my hand. “And my credit card, if you please. I don’t believe I can trust you with purchasing decisions.”
I slapped the card into his outstretched palm, then yanked the rear door open and dropped his overnight bag at his feet. Counting down from ten, I cleared my throat, hoping that I sounded the least bit contrite. “Look, we are on the road. Traveling is unpredictable. There will be contingencies. You are just going to have to accept that the days will not go completely according to plan.”
Mr. Sutherland smiled nastily. “I’ll be sure to tell your supervisor you said so.” He spun in the direction of his room, without a glance back at me. “Good night, Miss Puckett.”
I pressed the heel of my hand against my sternum, hoping to quell the tension building there as he walked away. Mr. Sutherland slipped the key into the door to 6C, pointedly ignoring my presence. I glared at his back, praying that I could keep my mouth shut and get my ass into my room before I chucked a loose cement block at his head. Calm, I told myself. Stay cool. Do not concuss the client.
And then I remembered the disdainful little sneer he’d given me when my shoes dripped on his precious floor. And the snotty way he’d informed me that I wasn’t responsible enough to be trusted with his credit card. No, he was not going to get away with talking to me that way. I would not put up with that bullshit for three more nights.
“You know what, you are a real piece of work.”
He turned to give me an incredulous look.
I cleared my throat and tried for a more respectful tone. Not because I was working for him but because, you know, he had fangs. “If you feel the need to contact Ms. Scanlon, I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do to stop you.” He smirked slightly, before I added, “But if you plan to call now, I think you should consider how you’re going to get home.”
He didn’t offer me another glance as he slammed his room door shut.
I opened my door and shut it behind me, whacking my head against the state room-tax notice. A familiar rise of panic burned my throat at the idea of returning home early, of seeing Jason before I was ready. But if Mr. Sutherland was going to tattle on me, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop him, so I might as well get a good night’s sleep. Sighing, I dropped my bag onto the bed and scanned the dismal little room. It was too dirty to be considered Spartan, too outdated to be considered retro. The carpet may have been a sort of burnt orange at some point, but it was now more of a knotty brownish gray. The bedspread was the same paper-thin synthetic fiber used in all cheap motels. I had no doubt that long after the nuclear winter, future civilizations would visit our planet and find scratchy motel bedspreads flapping across the earth’s wasted landscape. I made a mental note to toss that particular specimen to the floor and avoid touching it for the remainder of my stay. I was not sleeping on that thing.
I checked my phone again, finding that Jason was down two calls to my mother, who had called a total of ten times that day. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I calculated the time difference. It was 5:30 A.M. in Kentucky, which meant Mom would be up and on her treadmill already—just another way in which I wasn’t living up to her high standards. She picked up on the first ring.
“Sweetheart!” she cried. “Why haven’t you called?”
“Because you’ve been calling enough for the both of us?” I suggested dryly.
“Well, I just wanted to know that you’d arrived safely.” She was using the unreasonable client-quelling voice that she used as one Puckett in the firm of Puckett and Puckett, Attorneys at Law. This was not a good sign.
Mom, my father, and my brother, Glenn, practiced in the long-held family firm, their shiny law degrees from the University of Kentucky displayed together in a three-part frame. There was supposed to be a fourth frame, but I hadn’t finished the requirements for a bachelor’s degree, much less law school.
I rubbed at my left eye, which tended to twitch when Mom used “the voice” on me. “Which was why I texted you as soon as I arrived in Tacoma.”
“Yes,” she protested. “But I want to know how it’s going!”
Now, most people would consider that the sweet, interested curiosity of an involved parent. But my mother had ulterior motives. Mom didn’t want me to tell her how well I was doing or what Mr. Sutherland was like. She wanted to know if I was tanking ahead of schedule, forcing me to “come to my senses” and drive my butt back to Half-Moon Hollow, where I was safe and contained.
As much as her assumptions of disaster hurt, I supposed she had good reason. At the tender age of twenty-six, I’d launched failed careers as, among many other things, a photographer, a pastry chef, a magician’s assistant, and a florist. Mom and I suffered from an opposition of life philosophies. I tried to think of life as the search for the next great adventure. I liked waking up each morning not knowing what I would be doing by the end of the day. I liked learning new things, throwing myself into new situations, even if it meant a few bumps and scrapes along the way. But ultimately, I was a guidance counselor’s cautionary tale. Mom blamed the public-school system and insisted that the family should have sent me to St. Bridget’s Academy across town, even if it meant having to convert.
We were about as old money as a family could get in Half-Moon Hollow. Pucketts were pillars of the community. We served on committees and councils. We funded buildings and restored memorial statues. We sponsored youth sports teams and hosted Labor Day picnics for state senators.
Well, that’s what my family did. I served the community in more of a “judge ordered me to” sort of way. Until the previous year, I’d been the family embarrassment, the college dropout, the kid who never quite made it into the Christmas newsletter. My shameful status was temporarily revoked when—
“Have you called Jason?” Mom asked.
—when I agreed to marry Jason.
I let out a long, slow breath. “No. The point of me taking this trip is that I have space and don’t have to talk to Jason, so I can figure out what I want.”
Mom sniffed. “Well, he’s worried. I know you’re upset with him, but he’s worried about you. He asked me to pass that along.”
“Hmph.”
“I really think you should just come on home. I know you’re hurt, honey, and I’m not saying you don’t have good reason. But you can’t run away from your problems. I’m so worried about you, out there on your own. And how are you supposed to do … whatever it is that you’re going to do concerning Jason unless you talk it out?”
I tugged at Jason’s tasteful diamond engagement ring, hanging from a sturdy chain around my neck. “We did talk it out, Mom. We have spent hours talking around and around this Lisa thing. We spent a whole weekend getaway at the lake talking about it. I canceled the wedding. I keep giving his ring back, but he finds some way to slip it to me again. We’re never going to break out of this weird, pointless cycle unless I have time to figure out what I want, without him hovering over me with apology flowers, apology candy, apology jelly.”
“Apology jelly?”
“Yeah, I didn’t get that one, either,” I muttered.
“Well, I don’t think this temp job”—Mom said the words with as much contempt as good manners and the Botox injections that kept her from expressing the full range of human emotions permitted—“is the answer to your problems. And besides, we miss you around the office. It’s just not the same without you.”
“I’ll bet.” I chuckled, genuinely laughing for the first time all day.
Despite the fact that I lacked only two credits for my certification, I was a terrible paralegal. Filing systems made my head hurt. I could not handle rude clients in the delicate, pacifying manner prescribed by firm policy. And every time I used the Xerox machine, I posed a danger to myself and others.
But since the spectacular failure of my photography studio in Chicago, I’d been training under the aging Mrs. Whitaker to take her place as the primary support staffer at Puckett and Puckett. My parents were well aware that I wasn’t an asset to their office. But they wanted to know that I was safe, that I was taken care of. And ultimately, I think that was why they liked the idea of my marrying Jason. He was safe. He would be a good provider. And he would probably keep me from setting fires with most household appliances.
“Mom, everything’s fine here. I’m enjoying my time on the road.” I sighed. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“Oh, sweetheart, how could you say that? You know I’m only worried about you. I would think that you would want to come home, just so I would know you were safe. I just want you to be happy.”
As long as it was her preferred brand of happiness.
“I like this temp job, Mom. It was really nice of Iris to hook me up with this assignment. She knew I wanted to get out of town to clear my head, and she helped me out. And believe it or not, I’m actually qualified for the work. I’ve moved almost a dozen times over the last eight years. I have a lot of experience driving back and forth across the country,” I said, taking the phone away from my ear long enough to pull a White Stripes T-shirt over my head. “And the one thing that you can say proudly is that I have a pristine driving record.”
My close encounter with the despondent chicken was on a need-to-know basis. Mom didn’t need to know.
“Well, it seems a very silly way to make a living.” She sniffed. “Then again, if it lasts as long as the other jobs, I won’t have much to worry about.”
And there went the eye again.
A half hour and many “I just want what’s best for you’s” later, my self-esteem was properly checked. Mom had given me the up-to-the-minute news on my family. Jason had successfully defended one of Daddy’s best friends from tax-evasion charges. Daddy shot a seventy at the Half-Moon Hollow Country Club and Catfish Farm, a new personal best. Glenn had just broken a record for highest-ever settlement against a grocery store in Kentucky. The management at the Shop-N-Go in Murphy hadn’t properly shelved bottles of dish soap, resulting in back pain and suffering for someone not smart enough to step around a puddle of it. My sister-in-law, Courtney Herndon-Puckett, had decided to open a brick-and-mortar store for her start-up cosmetics business.
OK, that one caught me off-guard.
“Does the world really need an outlet for repackaged Mary Kay products?” I asked, slipping into well-worn jeans and orange Chucks.
“Please don’t mention Mary Kay in front of Courtney. You know that upsets her.”
Courtney wanted to teach me how to apply makeup that didn’t make me look like “a sad-clown hooker,” film it, and post it on YouTube to promote her business. I wasn’t really worried about Courtney’s feelings.
I managed to wind down the conversation halfway through the semicondensed version of who from church was having surgery/a baby/surgery to help them “tighten up” by saying, “Sorry, Mom, my boss is calling on the other line,” and hanging up quickly. Was there a call from Iris? No. But it was more mature than what I used to tell her to cut calls short: “Sorry, Mom, a pigeon just spontaneously combusted on my windowsill.” That only worked when I was living in a city, anyway.
Palming my keys, I took a deep breath as I wandered out into the cool early-autumn night. Talking to my mother always left me feeling hollowed out, as if someone had taken an overpriced melon baller from Williams-Sonoma and scraped away perfectly spherical chunks of my resolve. Picturing a giant fruit salad composed of my emotions probably meant that I needed food desperately, or I would never get enough sleep to qualify as human in the morning. The Waffle Shoppe sign blinking across the parking lot put me in the mood for French toast.
Hold the melon.
The Waffle Shoppe did not disappoint. It had all of the charm and atmosphere you’d expect for a place that sold all-you-can-eat pancakes for $3.95. The Formica table was peeling, and three-quarters of the menu pages were stuck together with some mercifully unidentifiable mystery substance. But the coffee was hot, and the patrons were quiet. If I’d had my camera, I would have taken quiet, quick face shots, character studies. People were way more interesting to shoot while they were concentrating on their food, but you had to be careful, because in some establishments, the management took that personally … or they suspected that you were a narc.
I struck up a friendly conversation with Nina, my waitress, which, according to the truck-stop code, meant that my food wouldn’t be spit in intentionally before it arrived at my table. I consider that a quality dining experience.
After a delicious breakfast/dinner of apple cinnamon French toast and hash browns, I wandered into the motel parking lot, carbo-loaded and ready for bed. I had a long day of appeasing the ninety-year-old woman trapped in a vampire’s body ahead of me, and that would require sleep.
Shuffling across the lot, I plucked nervously at the engagement ring I wore around my neck. I hadn’t wanted to hold on to the ring at first. The moment I’d found out about Jason and Lisa, I’d taken it off and hurled it across the room, vowing never to touch it again. And I wouldn’t have, if the damn thing hadn’t gotten caught in my vacuum cleaner and destroyed it … the vacuum cleaner, I mean. The ring was fine. Damn it.
I’d seriously considered putting it through a wood chipper and sending him the fragments. But considering that it had survived the innards of my vacuum cleaner unscathed, I foresaw that plan ending in some sort of tragic, accidental Fargo scenario.
Jason Cordner was my first serious boyfriend. I’d dated casually before, but the boys I chose were either as dull as a box of mud or closet sociopaths. I’d moved back home, licking my wounds from the inevitable collapse of my studio, and my parents thought I needed “good influences.” I was on the verge of making up a boyfriend to get my mom off my back when I met Jason at the annual Puckett Labor Day picnic.
Jason was a junior partner in a law firm my parents occasionally consulted with. I dropped buffalo wings down the back of his polo shirt. He claimed it was love at first sight. I think he might have gotten barbecue sauce in his eye.
I liked Jason. He didn’t light my world on fire at first, but he seemed like a genuinely nice guy, a kind person. He made me laugh. He let me in on intimate little details that none of my previous boyfriends had shared, such as home address and marital status. And he made me feel centered, special, as if I was a fascinating work in progress, instead of an enormous fuck-up. We did all of the normal, boring things that normal, boring couples did. Pizza, Half-Moon Hollow High football games, arguing whether to watch a Sandra Bullock movie or Vin Diesel. He introduced me to his best friend, Lisa, who’d lived next door since they were kids.
The year we were together was the calmest of my life. Jason thought it was “cute” that I loved photography and suggested that I work at the Sears photo studio part-time if the artistic urge struck. My parents saw our relationship as some sort of sign that I was growing up. They stopped questioning me like a naughty teenager every time I left the house. They stopped telling quite so many embarrassing stories about me at family dinners. I think they were afraid that they were going to scare Jason off. They could not have been happier when Jason proposed, Daddy because it meant that I was someone else’s problem now and Mom because it meant that I wouldn’t move away from Half-Moon Hollow and she’d be able to keep an eye on me.
Because of their assurances that they were “like brother and sister,” I accepted Jason and Lisa’s relationship at face value. I overlooked inside jokes, frequent hugs, and sickeningly sweet nicknames. And then, one afternoon, I was shopping for wedding dresses with Lisa—my maid of honor—and she left her purse in the dressing room with me. Her phone went off while she went to look at a veil, and I recognized Jason’s text ringtone, the clink-clink sound from Law and Order. I ignored it once, and twice, and three times. He texted her four times in the span of about three minutes, and even though I knew it was a bad idea to look at her phone, my curiosity won out. The texts were descriptive and detailed. He was so in love with her, he typed out in painstaking text-speak, but so confused. He loved me, but he felt like a fraud when he was with me. He didn’t want to hurt me, but he didn’t want to lose her. He begged her not to give up on him while he “figured things out.”
To say that I flipped my shit in the middle of the Bridal Barn was an understatement. Because I also flipped a rack of plus-sized mother-of-the-bride dresses and a display of bridal tiaras and the cash register, all in an effort to get my hands on Lisa.
I paid for the damages out of a weekly deduction from my Puckett and Puckett paycheck.
Most of the damages.
Jason’s betrayal wrecked me in ways I hadn’t imagined possible. I didn’t get out of bed for days … after my dad bailed me out of jail for the public-disturbance charges. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t realize how much I could hurt until the first man I’d opened my heart to considered me second-best. I’d loved him. I’d loved what I thought was a kind heart, a strong soul. He was always so good, so open with me; I didn’t think he’d ever lie to me. I didn’t think he was capable of it. I’d loved the life I thought we were going to lead together. I thought that making a life with someone, accepting all of his quirks and differences, seemed like the ultimate epic adventure. And I’d worked hard to make myself into the woman I thought he deserved. I honestly tried to make the best of my job at the law firm. I let my mother select a work wardrobe for me at the Elegant Professional Boutique, which specialized in pantsuits in a dazzling array of taupe. I stopped dyeing neon streaks into my hair. Eventually, the most exciting part of my day was choosing which flavor of yogurt to take with me for lunch.
Little by little, I’d given up so much of myself, and the painfully embarrassing thing was that Jason hadn’t even asked me to. I’d done it willingly, because I thought it was what he wanted. It turned out, of course, that what he wanted was Lisa. After all of that, he still didn’t want me. The life I thought we would share didn’t mean anything to him. If it had, he would have been honest with me. He wouldn’t have been able to tell another woman that he loved her.
Jason was torn—and not in the way I wanted him to be. When he realized that I was going to call off the wedding because of what he insisted was just an emotional affair, he promised me that it was over. The wedding plans had scared him, he insisted, and he’d panicked. That was something I could understand. Mom’s daily quizzes on napkin colors and floral preferences nearly drove me to the brink, and I was supposed to be interested in that stuff. I felt terrible, listening to his voice, that I hadn’t noticed how stressed he was. Maybe if I’d picked up on it, we could have avoided this whole mess.
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to forgive him. I wasn’t ready to give up what I thought we’d had together or my parents’ tacit approval. But my anger kept getting the better of me. Every once in a while, I would be overwhelmed with the urge to punch Jason in the throat. I couldn’t seem to stop checking his texts whenever he left the room. I wanted to trust him, but after reading the sweet, loving messages he’d sent his supposedly platonic best friend, I felt this weird need to assure myself of his fidelity. I was starting to feel like that crazy girl you saw on episodes of Cheaters, and I hated every moment of it, so I broke it off with him. And even though part of me still loved him, I canceled all of the reservations and wedding plans. The ring relay cycle began. I gave it back. He returned it. I gave it back. He returned it.
On our scheduled wedding day, when Jason said he had something to ask me, I said I had something to tell him. He went first and proposed all over again. I responded that I would be leaving in two days to take a vampire-transport job from Iris and needed the time to think about whether I’d ever be ready to trust him again. I was determined to make a final decision on the road. When I got back, I told him, I was either going to commit to Jason or give back his ring permanently.
I was pretty sure he wished that I’d gone first.
These were heavy thoughts, unwelcome distractions, as I made my way across an empty parking lot, also known as the lonely serial killer’s playground. As I crossed the battered concrete partition that separated the motel lot from the restaurant, I heard the faint plinks of gravel skittering across blacktop behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled up. I was being watched. I could feel eyes sliding over my skin like some icky radar system. I squared my shoulders and listened attentively as I moved.
I was about thirty paces from the motel office, twice that to my room. I could break out at a run, but that could provoke the nasty “chase” instinct common in parking-lot predators. And there was a good chance that I could trip and smash my face on a speed bump.
When I’d worked at Bite, a vampire bar just outside Chicago, the bouncer trained the waitresses on basic self-defense. The owner didn’t want us walking to our cars after closing without some idea of how to take care of ourselves. I actually did pretty well in my sparring matches, despite the fact that Tino the bouncer was roughly the size of a compact car. Tino speculated that my unique ability to find trouble meant that I spent more quality time in panic mode than the average person. Being accustomed to the fight-or-flight response, I was able to channel all of my adrenaline into hurting someone besides myself. After I called Tino a number of colorful names, I thanked him for his helpful insight.
My ability to defend myself in rough situations—along with a brief but memorable stint as a taxi driver in Cleveland—turned into quite the selling point for my boss, Iris, during the hiring process. I could parallel-park and adjust my radio while flipping a rude gesture at another driver, all the while calculating a 20-percent tip in my head. I demonstrated my skills to Iris when she hired me. She asked me never to do it again.
I slowed my steps, unwilling to stop completely and look around. I popped my thumbs, shaking the blood into my fingers, still hoping that I could make it to my room without confronting Mr. Parking Lot Creeper. It had been a very long time since my last sparring match with Tino, and I stood a pretty good chance of pulling something. Driving long hours the next day with a wrenched hamstring would suck.
Seriously, where is half-naked, oil-covered Jason Statham when you need him? I wondered, thinking of The Transporter and how he would handle this situation.
The crunch of gravel moved closer, maybe five paces behind me.
Stand and fight it was, then.
Just as I was about to turn and yell at whoever it was to leave me the hell alone, I heard a shout and the sound of feet dragging across pavement. Two mismatched truckers in full plaid regalia had Mr. Sutherland pinned against a car, wrapping a thick chain around his middle. My client seemed more embarrassed than angry, his fangs in full play as he spoke in that rapid, clipped accent. “Get your hands off of me, you cretins!”
“We caught you, asshole! You don’t sneak up on ladies like that!” the heavier of the two truckers shouted in a heavy Texas accent, giving Mr. Sutherland a violent shake. His arms, bared by ripped sleeves, were as thick as tree trunks and twice as gnarly. His partner had more of a straw-blown build, dirty-blond hair, and a lazy eye that seemed to follow me as I stormed over to them.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Let him go!”
“Get back!” the lankier trucker yelled. “Go to your room, honey. Just get out of here. Let us take care of this.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded as he looped the chain around Mr. Sutherland’s arms, pinning them to his waist. His skin sizzled and smoked where the chain came into contact with his wrists. These idiots must have sprayed the chain down with colloidal silver, a common trick among bar brawlers who were unsure of whether their opponents were living or undead. For vampires, touching it resulted in burning, itching, weakened muscles and, eventually, a wish for death. And Mr. Sutherland was sort of emo, anyway.
I surged forward, making a grab for him, but Lanky caught my arm and dragged me away to a “safe distance.” My hand clamped over my purse strap, and I yanked free, using Lanky’s body momentum to shove him a good arm’s length away.
“Saw this foreign jackwagon following you from the diner, all stealthy-like,” said Heavy-Set, his bewhiskered jowls aquiver. “We figured he wanted to make you his midnight snack or worse. Girlie, don’t you know better than to wander at night when there are vampires running around? We saved your life!”
I turned on Mr. Sutherland. “You were following me? Really?”
Mr. Sutherland huffed indignantly but didn’t comment, what with the silver cutting into his flesh and slowly poisoning him.
“The way we look at it, you owe us a little reward,” Lanky said, posturing and leering at me.
“Look, I appreciate the thought … and the inappropriate, ultimately doomed flirting,” I said, approaching them slowly with my hands up.
Weakened by silver, Mr. Sutherland sagged against the car. Heavy-Set was leaning on him, counting on his bulk and the silver to keep my vampire client in place. But the trucker’s feet were set too close together, and his center of gravity was too low. One hard push, and Mr. Sutherland could get loose.
Lanky was circling a bit too close to me for my comfort, arms down at his sides, because I was no threat, in his mind.
I smiled sweetly and added, “And I understand the urge to hurt him. Hell, I’ve only known him for a couple of hours, and I would gladly punch him in the junk for you. The problem with that is that the grumpy, slightly creepy guy you’re wrangling is my responsibility. I’ve got to deliver him halfway across the country in three days. I get paid less if he’s banged up and silver-scarred.”
“You work for them?” Lanky demanded, thoroughly disgusted. “For vampires?”
“I know it’s cliché, but the dental plan is amazing,” I deadpanned. “So what I need you to do is step away from the vampire and move along.”
Heavy-Set shook his head, twisting the chain a bit tighter around Mr. Sutherland and dragging him toward the bed of their truck. “Nope, I can’t let that happen. You need to be protected from yourself, honey. And that means we teach Mr. Dead here that you don’t stalk ladies in parking lots.”
“Don’t worry, he won’t be able to hurt you,” Lanky assured me. “We’ll take care of him.”
I sighed. “I’m really sorry about this, but I’m afraid I can’t let that happen.”
While Lanky was distracted by Mr. Sutherland’s struggles, I brought my arm down, just hard enough to pop him on the side of the neck. Tino would have been very proud. The bony heel of my hand connected with the supersensitive brachial nerve, and Lanky’s legs folded under him as if some cruel puppeteer had cut his strings. He collapsed, boneless, and his head bounced against the pavement with a solid thunk that set my teeth on edge.
He was going to feel that in the morning.
I shot a look over my shoulder, to where Mr. Sutherland had shimmied free from the chain and held Heavy-Set by his neck, his feet dangling four inches off the ground. It would appear that Mr. Sutherland had regained his strength rather quickly.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, attacking a vampire in a parking lot? Are you nuts?” I demanded as the redneck coughed and wheezed, clawing at the hands clutching his throat. I gently tapped Mr. Sutherland on the shoulder. He snarled at me, fangs bared. I took a step back, my hands raised. “It’s hard to understand him when he can’t breathe. Damn it, Mr. Sutherland, put him down!”
I kept waiting for him to release his grip on the wayward do-gooder, but he continued to hold him. “Language, Miss Puckett.”
“Mr. Sutherland,” I said, clearing my throat, “I think it would be better if we just sent these men on their way. They didn’t mean any harm … to me.”
“I didn’t see them coming,” Mr. Sutherland seethed.
That … was an odd response.
“Well, it’s been a while since you’ve been out of the house, right?” I told him. “Maybe your instincts are just a little off. I’m sure in a day or so, you’ll be back to your hyperaware, completely paranoid self.”
He growled, squeezing Heavy-Set’s throat until he turned a disturbing shade of puce.
“If you kill him, it’s going to mean calling the police, filing a bunch of paperwork, and missing your deadline with the Council,” I reminded him.
With a hiss, Mr. Sutherland dropped Heavy-Set to his feet. Heavy-Set sank to his knees, coughing and sputtering. He saw his friend crumpled on the pavement like a battered rag doll. “Damn it, you killed Mel!”
I stepped between Heavy-Set and Mr. Sutherland. “Your friend should be fine in a few minutes. Just make him sit up slowly, and help him get up on his feet. He’s going to be sort of wobbly. And please tell him I’m really sorry about the headache.”
Heavy-Set struggled to his feet. He pulled at Lanky’s arms, dragging his dead weight to the truck and barely missing shutting the door on his leg as it flopped uselessly out of the cab. They screeched out of the parking lot as if their taillights were on fire.
I turned to Mr. Sutherland with as much poise as I could muster and demanded, “What the hell? Why were you following me? What are you even doing out of the room?”
“I wanted to keep an eye on you. I wanted to make sure I could trust you.”
“So I’m untrustworthy because I deviated from your precious schedule?” I demanded. “What, you thought I was going to meet a co-conspirator at a diner, so we could plan the kidnapping of the most anal-retentive, fastidious vampire since Freud? You have more issues than National Geographic.”
Yes, Freud was a vampire, which, when you thought about it, made sense. It was the only plausible explanation for his theories’ maintaining academic credence for so long.
“I can’t see anything coming when I’m with you,” he bit out, his voice frustrated and gravelly. The cords of his neck stood out as he loomed over me. His hands rose as if he was going to grasp my arms.
I stood, teetering on the edge of a choice. Let him touch me, give in to the strange skittering thrill his voice sent up my spine, or move and maintain my sanity.
I grunted, backing away. “What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know!” he shouted back.
“Fine!” I huffed, turning on my heel toward the motel. I’d had enough of this crap for one night. What gave him the right to follow me? Spy on me? Let him call Iris. Let him tell her why I had to save his butt from redneck bystanders. Heck, she might hire me full-time. At the moment, I just wanted to shower and get some sleep before we had to get back on the road.
Mr. Sutherland kept pace with me, checking over his shoulder every few seconds to make sure we weren’t being followed. “How exactly did you manage to overpower a man twice your size, if you don’t mind my asking?”
I stopped, tilting my head toward him. “Iris didn’t tell you about my background, did she?”
“Your CV did not include mentions of your amateur cage-fighting career, no,” he said as I unlocked my room door.
“Can you keep a secret?” I asked, giving a sly little grin as I leaned closer.
His lips quirked, and for the first time, I saw what his face looked like without that mocking veneer. His eyes crinkled a bit at the corners, twinkling at me in mischievous pleasure. “I’m a vampire. Of course, I can.”
“So can I.” With a sharp smile, I slammed the door in his face.
Motel showers were always a crapshoot. The temperature always seemed to hover between “weakly warm” and “human lobster.” And there was always the chance that you could find new friends with more legs than you, scuttling out from under the shower curtain. I really hated that. But the Pine Heights showers seemed bug-free, if lacking water pressure.
The rush of smacking someone around had finally ebbed, and I was drained of all energy. I had to lean against the wall to wash off the road dirt with a washcloth that could have doubled as sandpaper. I slipped into boxers and a wife-beater, enjoying the chance to go braless after more than eighteen hours of being lifted and separated. I towel-dried my thick hair, humming the melody to a Lady Gaga song and reveling in the thought of sleep.
After digging lip balm and a paperback—my nighttime essentials—out of my shoulder bag, I tossed the towel aside. I coated my lips in Burt’s Bees balm and found my place in my Catch-22. I’d only read two paragraphs before the door connecting our adjoining rooms rattled under thunderous, rapid knocks from the other side. Forgetting my braless state, I opened the door to find Mr. Sutherland wearing emerald-green monogrammed silk pajamas and a stricken expression.
Had I fallen asleep and woken up in a Rock Hudson movie?
He glanced down, eyes widening at my skimpy sleepwear. I cleared my throat. “Can I help you?”
He grimaced, far more Tony Randall than Rock. “My wallet is missing.”
A DAY WITHOUT A SWORN AFFIDAVIT IS LIKE A DAY WITHOUT SUNSHINE