If Chase wanted to reach the senator, he figured there was a good chance Bobby Clarence might be in the police station tonight along with his pretty aide.
Curious enough to find out, Chase reconsidered his plan to bolt. Instead he fell in line and let the cops march him farther down the corridor toward the room where his eyewitness had gone.
CHAPTER THREE
"PLEASE MAKE YOURSELF COMFORTABLE, Ms. Fairchild. This shouldn't take long." The police detective who met her at the station opened the door to the witness viewing room and waited as she walked in ahead of him. Several grim-faced men in dark suits and a handful of uniformed officers were already waiting inside.
Tavia recognized the federal agents, men she'd first been introduced to in the hours following the recent shooting at the senator's party. She nodded to the group in greeting as she stepped farther into the room.
It was movie-theater dark inside, the only light coming from the oversized pane of glass that looked into the empty lineup area on the other side. Overhead fluorescent panels bathed the room in a stark white glow that didn't make the place any more inviting. A height measurement chart traveled the length of the back wall, with the numbers 1 through 5 stenciled in evenly placed intervals above the seven-foot mark.
The detective gestured to one of several vinyl-upholstered chairs positioned in front of the large window. "We'll be starting soon, Ms. Fairchild. Have a seat, if you like."
"I'd prefer to stand," she replied. "And please, Detective Avery, call me Tavia."
He nodded, then strode over to a watercooler and countertop coffeemaker in the far corner. "I'd offer you coffee, but it's nasty even when it's freshly made. End of the day like this, it's worse than crude oil." He put a paper cup under the watercooler dispenser and pushed the lever. The clear jug belched a few big bubbles as the cup filled. "House white," he said, turning to hold the water out to her. "Yours, if you'd like it."
"No, thank you." Although she appreciated his efforts to make her feel at ease, she wasn't interested in pleasantries or delays. She had a job to do here, and a laptop full of schedules, spreadsheets, and presentations to be reviewed once she got home. Normally she didn't mind long hours of work that spilled into long nights of the same. God knew, she didn't have to worry about a social life getting in the way.
But she was on edge tonight, feeling the strange mix of mental hyperintensity and physical exhaustion that always dogged her after a round of treatments and examinations at her doctor's private clinic. She'd been under her specialist's care for most of the day, and while she wasn't thrilled about having to make an evening pit stop at the police station, part of her was anxious to see firsthand that the man who'd opened fire on a crowded room of people a few nights ago and then went on to orchestrate a bombing in the heart of the city this morning was, in fact, behind bars where he belonged.
Tavia walked closer to the viewing window and gave it an experimental tap with her fingernail. "This glass must be fairly thick."
"Yep. Quarter-inch safety." Avery met her there and took a sip of water. "It's one-way glass, looks like a mirror on the other side. We can see them, but they can't see us. Same goes for audio; our room is soundproof, but we have speakers tuned in to monitor their side. So when the bad guys are standing against that wall out there, you don't have to worry about any of them being able to ID you or hear anything you say.">Head tipped down toward his chest, he drew in a shallow breath and caught a whiff of something even more disturbing beneath the stale foulness of the room and the coppery tang of coagulating red cells - something raw and feral, verging on rabid.
Him.
The realization made his mouth quirk, but it was hard to appreciate the irony when his gums were throbbing with the need to feed.
Thanks to the fierce thirst that had been his constant companion for longer than he cared to admit, his sensory inputs were locked in overdrive. He felt every minute shift in the air around him. Saw every twitch and tic in the movements of his restless cellmates. He heard every anxious breath taken and expelled, every rhythmic heartbeat, every rush of blood pulsing through the veins of all three humans, who were little more than arm's reach from him inside the room. His mouth watered feverishly at the thought. Behind his flattened upper lip, the points of his fangs pressed like twin daggers into the cushion of his tongue. His vision started to tighten, burning amber as his pupils narrowed to thin slits under his closed lids.
Fuck. This was a bad place for him to be, especially in his condition.
Bad place, bad idea. Bad damned odds of walking away from this whole situation in any way, shape, or form.
Not that he'd given a shit about bad ideas and doomed outcomes when he'd offered himself up to the police on the front lawn of the Order's estate earlier that day. His only concern had been protecting his friends. Giving them the opportunity - very likely their only prayer of a chance - to avoid discovery by human law enforcement and, he hoped, find a way to clear out of the compound and get to someplace safe.
And so he hadn't resisted when the cops clamped handcuffs on him and hauled him into the station. He'd cooperated during the seven hours of interrogation, doling out just enough information to the local boys and the feds to satisfy their endless questioning and keep them focused solely on him as the kingpin and mastermind of the violence that had taken place in the city over the last couple of days. Violence that had begun a few nights ago with a holiday party shooting at an up-and-coming young politician's swank North Shore home.
The botched assassination attempt had been Chase's doing, but the intended target wasn't the golden-boy senator or even his highprofile guest of honor, the United States vice president, as the cops and federal agents were inclined to believe. Chase had been gunning for a vampire named Dragos that night. The Order had been hunting Dragos for more than a year, and suddenly Chase had found the bastard rubbing elbows with influential, well-connected humans, passing himself off as one of them. To what end, Chase could only imagine, and none of it was good. Which is why, when he saw the opportunity to act, he didn't hesitate to pull the trigger on the son of a bitch. But he'd failed. Not only had Dragos apparently walked away from the assault, but Chase found himself the focus of every media outlet in the country in the hours that followed. He'd been spotted at the senator's party, and the eyewitness had given law enforcement a nearly photographic description of him.
Couple that with a bombing the next day at Boston's United Nations and a police pursuit of the suspects - a carload of heavily armed backwoods malcontents who led the cops right to the Order's front door - and Boston's finest were sure they had uncovered a major domestic terrorist cell.
A misconception Chase was happy to indulge, at least for the time being.
He'd spent the daylight hours inside the station, content to let the cops believe he was cooperative and under their control. The longer he sat there, pretending that the blame for all that had gone down lately rested squarely on him, telling them all the things they wanted to hear, the less impatient law enforcement was to stake out the mansion or raid the place. He'd done all he could to deflect attention from his friends at the compound. If they hadn't used the time wisely and evacuated by now, there wasn't much he could do to fix that.
As for him, he had to get moving too.
He had payback to deliver on Dragos - payback and then some. The bastard had stepped up his game in the past few weeks, and after this latest strike, which had nearly exposed the Order to humankind, Chase dreaded to think what Dragos might be willing to do next. For what wasn't the first time, Chase considered the senator Dragos had been currying favor from lately. The man was in danger purely by association, if Dragos hadn't already recruited him into service since Chase had last seen him.
And if Dragos had turned a United States senator into one of his Minions - particularly a senator with Robert Clarence's personal access to the White House via his friendship with his university mentor, the vice president? The ramifications were unthinkable. The fallout from a move like that would be irreparable.
All the more reason to get the hell out of this place ASAP. He had to make sure Senator Robert Clarence wasn't already under Dragos's control. Better still, he had to find Dragos. He had to take him out once and for all, even if he had to do it single-handed.
The metal handcuffs at his back couldn't hold him any longer than he allowed. Neither could this locked room, nor any of the cops who'd strayed by the hallway and paused to glower in at him through the small glass pane in the holding cell's door.
Night had fallen. Chase knew that without the benefit of a clock on the bare walls or a window looking onto the city street outside the building. He could feel it in his bones, all the way to his weak and starving marrow. And with the night came the reminder of his hunger, the wild thirst that owned him now.