Lucky Break (Chicagoland Vampires 10.5)

“Yikes.”

My grandfather nodded. “Moody grabbed the kid, used him as a shield to get out of the room. He didn’t hurt him, thankfully, but Moody was gone by the time I made it outside, made sure the kid was safe.”

“Did you find him again?”

“I didn’t—not in so many words, anyway. Four months went by without a single sign of him. And then, one night, I pulled over a car for running a red light. Darryl was behind the wheel.”

“I doubt I’ll get that lucky.”

My grandfather chuckled, turned to me, and smiled. “Maybe, maybe not. The point of the story, Merit, is that not every op is successful, even if you tried your best. Sometimes there’s General Tso’s chicken.”

“And it is infuriating. Delicious, but infuriating.”

“So it is. You’re a perfectionist, just like your father.”

I humphed.

“I know you don’t care for the comparison, but it’s the truth, baby girl. You’ve both worked very hard to craft your particular worlds. You, with school, ballet, now Cadogan House. Your father with, well, every other house. You won’t succeed every time. But if you’re lucky, and you work hard enough, you’ll come out on top more often than not.”

We reached the van, and he stepped carefully down from the curb to the road, knocked on the back door twice. After a moment it swung open, revealing Jeff and Catcher in matching red Ombudsman T-shirts and khaki shorts. Jeff had opened the door with a grin; Catcher sat at one of the very swank van’s computer stations, eyes tracking across the black-and-white image currently on the monitor.

“You ran a good race,” Catcher said, without looking at me.

“Did I?”

He clicked something, typed, clicked again. “Security cams say you did. You kept up with him, handled some shots and obstacles.”

That actually brightened my evening quite a bit. Compliments from Catcher were few and far between, because he was at least as much a perfectionist as my father and I. Their rarity made them more meaningful.

“The jump was a nice touch, too,” Jeff said, sitting down on his swiveling stool again. “But you might want to put a little more space between you and the bus next time.”

“The bus?” Ethan asked, stepping behind me.

“I had plenty of room,” I promised him, which was entirely true, if four inches counted as “plenty.”

“I’m mapping the route,” Catcher said to my grandfather, “so we can backtrack, pull any casings.”

“Excellent,” he said, then handed over the plastic bag to Jeff, who looked it over.

“You’ve also got some pretty good throwing skills,” he said. “We caught that shot at the perp on camera.”

Ethan’s eyebrows lifted again. “Throwing skills.”

“The dagger,” I explained. “It was a lucky shot, and that’s not false modesty. But it was kind of fun.” I really was going to have to talk to Malik about knife throwing.

Jeff nodded, unlocked a small metal cabinet, and placed the knife inside. “Were you able to get a shot of his face from the cameras?”

“Eh,” Catcher said. “I get motion, but not a lot of detail. You want to give me a summary, I’ll add it to the APB.”

“Six foot two or three, medium build. Muscular but lean. Red hair with some curl to it. Blue eyes. Pale skin. Human, and in good shape. Possibly not very experienced with supernaturals.”

“Why do you say that?” my grandfather asked.

“He had a gun and a Taser, used the latter on Nadia, the gun on me. He was smart enough not to use the gun first—knew it wouldn’t be entirely effective—but not experienced enough to use a blade or stake, which would have taken me out altogether.”

My grandfather nodded. “Good observation. There’s a task force on the Circle—they come together when new information arises—and we’ll get the description to them, see if it rings any bells in the organization.”

“Malik also has a list of organizations he’s gleaned from his financial review,” Ethan said. “He’ll get them to you. He’s confirmed the Circle’s close financial ties to Navarre, but I think we can agree this has moved well beyond finances.”