“Fantastic,” he muttered, as they climbed back into the truck.
Neither of them said much on the way to Marco’s. For his part, Colin was not looking forward to seeing the place with Marco gone. Not that they’d been close, not like his friends from back home, and sure as hell nothing like his buddies from the SEAL teams. But they’d both loved horses—not just riding them, but the simple beauty of the animal. Marco had been so pleased to find someone he could talk to, someone who understood the fine points of horse breeding and training the way Colin did. Colin may not have taken up his father’s business, but he’d been raised on the family’s ranch, had worked in the barns almost from the day he took his first step until he’d walked away and joined the Navy. He’d gone into the service partly because it was the last thing anyone expected of a boy from Georgia who’d been nothing but trouble all through high school. But he’d also done it to escape his father’s determination to control every aspect of his youngest son’s life.
It had been a surprise for Colin to discover he could still enjoy talking about the family business and he would miss those conversations with Marco.
“You said a security team was out at Jeremy’s,” he said, breaking the silence. They visit Marco’s place too?
She nodded. “Night before last, same as Jeremy’s and Preston’s.”
“So, why—”
“I need to see for myself in daylight so I can tell what I’m looking at.”
Colin nodded. Made sense to him. Although, to be honest, he still didn’t know what to make of Leighton. She seemed to be just what she claimed, a private investigator hired by the vamps to look into these crimes. She didn’t swarm all over his crime scene like some sort of drama queen pretender, and she didn’t wave her gun around like an amateur. Neither one of her guns. He’d noted the backup piece in the small of her back before they’d left town.
And his confusion wasn’t just because she was a woman, either. He’d served with plenty of females in the military, some good, some not, just like the men. But none of them had looked like a fucking fashion model or wore a diamond wedding ring that even his untutored eye knew was worth more than most people’s annual salary. Not to mention showing up and claiming to work as a private investigator for vampires. How did one get a gig like that anyway?
He drove around the final curve to Marco’s house, tree branches skimming the roof of his truck. Marco had valued his privacy. He’d never bothered to make his house anymore approachable than absolutely necessary.
Colin stopped the truck and switched off the key, staring through the windshield. The place looked abandoned already. The paddock was empty, the doors open on the small barn’s vacant stalls. Even the house looked diminished somehow.
“You’re sure the horses are safe.”
“Absolutely,” she assured him.
He drew a deep breath and shoved open the truck door. “All right, let’s do this.”
A few minutes later, they were in the basement of Marco’s house—a basement Colin hadn’t even known existed until Leighton had led him to it. All the times he’d been in Marco’s place and he’d never noticed the door concealed by the den’s paneling. But then, why would he?
Leighton had cruised the walls, running her hands along the joints, as if she knew what to look for. And clearly she did, because she’d given a satisfied grunt and popped the door right open to reveal a rough stairway under the house. A chain pull had turned on the overhead light, but Leighton had augmented it with a couple of halogen lamps from the duffle bag she’d thrown in the back of his Tahoe. It was bright as daylight in the basement now, which made what they were looking at even more of a surprise.
“You’re a Navy SEAL, right, Murphy?” Leighton asked thoughtfully.
“Retired, but yeah.”
She glanced back at him. “That makes you the expert as far as I’m concerned. What do you think happened here?”
Someone had blown a hell of a hole in Marco’s basement wall, that’s what had happened. Or not precisely in the wall. The target had been the reinforced door which now lay halfway on its side, warped and hanging from a single lower hinge, exposing a small insulated room beyond.
Apparently, this was Marco’s daylight place, and it wasn’t anything like they showed in movies. There was no coffin filled with dirt, no wax-draped wall sconces with cobwebbed candles. It was a modern, pleasant and simple bedroom with a queen-size bed and a single nightstand with a reading lamp. Or it had been before someone had trashed the place. Presumably after murdering Marco.
“Murphy?” she jogged him out of his thoughts.
“Yeah, okay. The door was heavy enough, and it had interior hinges, but it was old, and these walls . . .” He slapped one of the crumbling structures. “. . . are older than dirt and breaking up. There was probably just enough of a seam to shove some plastic explosive—I can’t say what kind without chem tests—into the gap. Set the fuse and scurry back upstairs until it goes boom. A controlled explosion, blow the door off its hinges and . . . that’s it.” He sucked a breath through his nose and surveyed the damage. “I’m guessing Marco was pretty much helpless since they came at him during the day, right?”
“Pretty much. And he lived out here all alone, so there was no one to defend him.”
“Damn waste.”
“Yes, it is. Who around here had the knowledge to do something like this?”
“A lot of people. But, yeah, to answer your real question. Anyone with my kind of training sure as hell could have done it.”
“Any former military besides you live in Cooper’s Rest?”
“Not active, not anymore.”
She raised her eyebrows, questioning.
“My buddy grew up in Coop’s. It’s how I ended up here, but he left a while back. He’s living down in San Diego and making big bucks working for a private contractor to the Pentagon. We’ve got a couple of older guys who were in Vietnam back in the day. I suppose it’s possible they’d have the skills for this, but I’m pretty sure they were regular infantry. Plus they stick to themselves and, from what I’ve heard, they’re both more concerned with getting stoned than killing anyone. Whoever did this wasn’t stoned.”
“No,” she agreed. “Whoever did this was very focused and knew exactly what he was doing.”
She sighed, then checked her watch, which was an expensive but unshowy sports model. The lights caught her wedding ring again, and he tried unsuccessfully to imagine letting his wife work for vampires. Even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t a terribly modern attitude to have. Somehow, he didn’t think Leighton cared much about what her husband let her do.
“If there’s nothing else you want to see here,” she said, already moving toward the first halogen lamp. “I’d like to get over to Preston’s before heading back to town.” She doused the light without waiting for his answer, sending half the basement into deep shadow. The second lamp quickly followed until there was only the weak gleam of the overhead bulb, turning the wreckage of Marco’s hideaway into nothing more than a black chasm of darkness beyond the dim, yellow glow.
Colin took a last look around the place where Marco had died and pulled the chain on the overhead, dropping the basement into darkness once again.
A short drive took them to Preston’s house, which was more of the same. Different on the outside, there was no paddock or barn, but the basement could have been Marco’s, right down to the method used to destroy the nearly identical safe room.
“It’s like the same guy built both places,” Colin remarked, as they walked around to the back of his truck.
“Maybe he did,” Leighton said. She watched while he opened the cargo hatch, then hoisted her duffle inside. “The two of them moved up here at pretty much the same time. They never lived together, the way some vamps do, but they were friends. So, it’s very possible they had the same contractor build their daylight rooms. Probably a vampire, since they wouldn’t trust a human with that kind of knowledge. Either that or they killed the human as soon as he finished.”
Colin stopped with his hand still on the open hatch overhead. “You’re joking, right?”
“Sure, if that makes you feel better.” She stepped back, so he could close the cargo door.
He studied her narrowly, trying to figure out if she was serious.
She saw him watching her and smiled. “Don’t worry, Murphy. It was probably a vamp builder, anyway. Come on, I need to get back to town and pick up my car.”
Colin walked down his side of the truck and slid behind the wheel. “You gonna be at the big meeting tonight with this guy Raphael?” he asked as Leighton settled into the passenger’s seat and reached for her seat belt.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she said. “I don’t think he’s going to be too happy with me, though.” She clicked the seat belt home. “Or you, either.”
Colin paused in the act of turning the ignition to stare at her. What the hell did that mean?
Chapter Fourteen
Raphael woke to the scent of Cyn, warm and fresh from the shower, still smelling of soap and water and the light scent of her shampoo. Her skin was satiny smooth as she curved her body around his, her soft, full breasts a delightful weight against his bare chest, and her legs caressing his. She lay on top of him, kissing his closed eyes, her mouth lingering on his lips in invitation.
He stroked his fingers through her silky hair and down over her back. She hummed with pleasure, arching against his touch. Without warning, he tightened his hold and reversed their positions, so she was beneath him.
She smiled, raising her eyes to meet his . . . and sucked in a breath, freezing to stillness at the anger he knew she had found there.
“Did you think I wouldn’t know?” he asked with a deceptive calm.
Her expression flashed through a series of emotions—surprise, guilt, even defeat briefly—before finally settling on her usual angry defiance. “I needed to see for myself, dammit.”