46.

“You can’t do this,” Caxton said. “Not now.”

Fetlock held out his hand.

“Look. She has to be destroyed. If I don’t do it—”

“I’m not a fool, Caxton. I’ll take care of it. But I won’t burn her in the parking lot like this. It’s illegal, for one thing. And it’s the wrong thing to do.”

“You trusted me!” she said. “You said this was going to be my investigation and I could run it as I saw fit. You said you would keep your hands off it.”

“That was back when I thought you were a competent officer. I don’t doubt you know what you’re doing, or that this is important. But your behavior is increasingly erratic and your methods are not acceptable. I’ll take it from here.”

You’ll never find Jameson, she thought. And if you do, he’ll tear you apart. She pressed her lips together until they burned so she wouldn’t say anything. Then she raised her hands to her lapel and unpinned her star. She put it in his hand and watched him shove it into the pocket of his coat.

He moved quickly then. He pointed at the troopers, who were just standing around watching her disgrace. “You and you—get that body off of there. Move it inside, get it in a room with only one door. You—go tell your Commissioner that Laura Caxton is no longer an employee of the federal government. If he wants to take her back as a state trooper that’s his business. Trooper Glauer.”

“Sir,” the big cop said, standing to attention.

“You work directly for me now. Go down to the SSU room and be ready to brief me when I arrive. I want to know everything she’s been doing while I wasn’t here.”

Suddenly the two of them were alone in the parking lot. She stared at him with a growing horror. This was real. She was being removed from the case. Her authority to hunt down Jameson and Malvern was gone.

“Damn it, Fetlock! At least let me cut her heart out!”

His stare, as he looked down his nose at her, was nothing short of reptilian. He held her gaze, pinning her like a vampire hypnotizing his victim, for far too long. Then, finally, his face fell. “Tell you what. We do owe you for getting us this far. I’ll let you watch.”

He went off to give more orders, leaving Caxton alone. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun was already standing on the horizon, ready to sink.

There were things she needed to do before it did. She ran out to her car and squatted next to its driver’s-side door. Careful not to make too much noise, she unstrapped the Velcro that held her holster around her thigh and waist. She looked at the 90-Two with its clip full of Teflon bullets and its flashlight/laser attachment, checking twice to make sure the safety was on and there was no round in the chamber. Opening the door, she shoved her weapon and its holster under the driver’s seat. Opening the glove compartment, she took out her spare pistol—an old-fashioned Beretta 92, the kind she had always carried before Jameson started wearing ballistic vests, and shoved it in her pocket. There was no spare holster for it, but she would just have to make do.

Heading back into the building, she went looking for Glauer, intending to give him a piece of her mind. She found him down in the SSU room obeying orders. “I shouldn’t even let you in here,” he said, looking up from a file cabinet.

“You sold me out,” she said. “You can at least let me check a few things.” She went to the laptop where it sat on the bookshelf and powered it up. She’d never seen a vampire rise on its first night, but she had a bunch of first-person accounts from previous vampire hunters, and maybe she could find something to confirm her fears. She wanted to be forewarned as best as possible about what was going to happen when Raleigh woke up.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when Glauer touched her on the shoulder. She spun around, ready to curse him, or maybe hit him, but he gave her a look of such hurt feelings she couldn’t follow through.

Then he lifted one finger to touch his lips and mustache. She narrowed her eyes—what was he trying to tell her? To be quiet?

He looked down and pointed to her belt. To the cell phone she carried there. She took it out and held it up for him. She’d never liked it, it was too big and clunky, and she would be glad to give it back to Fetlock, if that was what Glauer was after. He did take it from her, but instead of putting it in his pocket he fiddled with it for a second and then shoved his thumbnail into a narrow depression on the back of the case. The battery popped out with a nasty clunk that sounded like plastic breaking. He put the battery and the phone down on a desk next to him.

“You can be a real jerk sometimes, do you know that?” he asked her. “I didn’t call him in. I didn’t need to.”

She stared at the phone. “He was monitoring my calls,” she said. She had known that much. “You aren’t suggesting—”

“He said he’s going to get me one of these phones, too. He told me he could hear everything you said when you had it on you, and most of what was going on around you. There’s a microphone built into the mouthpiece that’s active even when you’re not making a call. He could hear you whenever he wanted to.”

“He was listening to me all the time?” Caxton asked, horrified. “You mean the federal government was spying on me?”

Glauer shrugged. “It’s what they’re good at.”

“Jesus. So much for his hands-off management style.”

“He’s making me the lead on the investigation,” Glauer told her. “But I’m not ready.”

She did something then that was very unlike her. She lurched forward and hugged him, hard. He was so big that her arms barely fit around him. “Just be careful,” she said. “Don’t take chances the way I did. If you think you’re in danger at any time, just run away.” That wasn’t what Jameson had taught her. It was no way to catch a vampire, either. It might keep him from getting killed, though. “I’m sorry I said those things before. About you and Raleigh. I know you did your best—nobody would have thought, looking at her, that she had a sneaky bone in her body.”

“No, you were right. I screwed up. And now I’ve gotten promoted for it.” He hugged her back, hard enough to make her feel like her eyeballs were bugging out, then they both let go. “Listen. The Commissioner isn’t going to like any of this. He’ll probably bust you back down to highway patrol. If there’s anything you need around here, get it now, and put it somewhere safe.”

She nodded her thanks and bent over the remains of the phone. Opening another compartment, she slipped out the SIM card. Before she headed out of the briefing room she took one last look at the whiteboards. Dylan Carboy, Jameson Arkeley, and Justinia Malvern looked back at her. “Good luck,” she said to Glauer, and then headed for her office.

There she copied all of her email to her home account and took down the few personal effects she’d used to ornament the walls—a picture of Clara at the annual auto show, a picture of Wilbur, one of the dogs she’d rescued, her certificates from the Academy. She shoved them in a manila envelope and tucked it under her arm. From her desk drawer she took her old phone and put the SIM card back in, then tucked the phone in her pocket. She had no doubt Fetlock would know what she’d done, but she didn’t care.

Leaving the office, she started toward the Coke machine. All this humiliation and public chastisement was making her thirsty, but she stopped before she could get there. Suzie Jesu-roga, the captain of the area response team, was standing in the hall in front of her. Captain Suzie, as Caxton knew her, was wearing a full suit of riot armor, including helmet, and carrying a patrol rifle, a big semiautomatic assault rifle.

“Hi,” Caxton said. She knew Captain Suzie relatively well, had worked with her on occasion. She had no idea what the other woman was doing there. “Something I can help you with?”

“Vice versa, it sounds like,” the Captain said. “Come on, this Fetlock guy said I should come and fetch you.”

“Jesus, what time is it?” Caxton asked. She looked down at her own watch—it was four-fifteen. She whirled around to look out the windows and saw the sun was just a smear of orange on the horizon. It was going to set in a matter of minutes.