Backward.
* * *
At home, I ran the plate.
The owner was A-1 Retro Services out of New Jersey. No address. I did a Google search on A-1 Retro Services and got nothing.
This might seem like a dead end, but it wasn't. It was proof that I had, indeed been followed. In particular, by someone who knew how to stay anonymous. Not hard to do, actually, but it did take some creative accounting.
I stared down at my screen, drummed my fingers, let the information soak in. Ultimately, the question remained: why was I being followed?
I thought about that as I sat back in my office chair and listened to Anthony playing something called Skylanders on his Xbox. Tammy was still at school. I'd arranged with her best friend's mom to pick her up as well. These days, there were only so many times I could dash out the door and into the sunlight.
Either my condition was getting progressively worse, or I was becoming more monstrous.
Or maybe they were one and the same.
My inner alarm hadn't stopped jangling since we'd gotten home; now, it was just one long, continuous buzz inside my inner ear. Enough to rattle me and keep me on edge.
It's not uncommon for a P.I. to be followed. Granted, it certainly doesn't happen as much as it might in movies or books, but it can happen. The last time I'd been followed was seven months ago, by a handsome, blond-haired vampire hunter with issues. He was last seen heading west on a Carnival Cruise ship to Hawaii, courtesy of yours truly.
So who was out there now? Who was watching me? And why?
The two vans had been driven by experienced surveillance drivers, working in tandem with each other. Now, private eyes piss a lot of people off. Especially cheating husbands and wives.
Except cheating husbands and wives did not use an advanced tag-team surveillance technique.
Down the hallway, in his bedroom, my son laughed loudly. Maybe I shouldn't let him play video games. Maybe a good mother would have punished her son for being suspended from school.
But I just couldn't justify punishing him for helping a girl. Punishing him for doing something right.
The inner alarm continued to buzz, so much so that I nearly yelled, "Stop!"
Instead, I got up and paced.
After a few laps, I realized the warning bells were only getting louder.
Jesus, what was happening? What was going to happen?
I didn't know.
Although my psychic abilities had grown, I still could not predict the future. And as I paced my living room, I paused twice to glance out the big living room window that overlooked the front lawn and the cul-de-sac leading up to my house. The cul-de-sac was empty. The street beyond was empty, other than two teenagers sitting on a neighbor's fence, talking and texting.
Random cars were parked here and there.
No sign of any cargo vans.
The buzzing between my ears sounded like a swarm of gnats circling my head. I nearly swatted at them, like King Kong swatting at airplanes on top of the Empire State Building.
I forced myself to sit on my couch, forced myself to take deep breaths, to calm down. I focused on my breathing.
There. Easy now. Calm down.
And from this state of semi-tranquility, I closed my eyes and was able to cast my thoughts out like a net. An ever-widening net that trawled through my house, through the different rooms, and out into the back yard -
Where I saw two men creeping through my back yard.
They were both armed with crossbows.
I gasped and snapped back into my body, just as glass broke from down the hallway.
Anthony's room.
Chapter Thirty-three
I stumbled off the couch, disoriented and dizzy, braced myself on a wall, then hurtled through my small house.
"Anthony!" I screamed.
I was in my son's room in a blink, and what I saw took a second or two to absorb. The bedroom window was broken. The sound of running feet. My son standing there in the center of his room, breathing hard, fists clenched.
"It's okay, Mommy. They're gone now."
I looked my son over wildly, then hurried over to the broken window. Our house abuts the Pep Boys parking lot, separated by our backyard fence. From inside the house, I could just see a white van peeling away from the fence, zigzagging briefly.
Sweet Jesus.
I considered pursuing, but there was no way in hell was I leaving my son. I noted the broken glass wasn't inside the bedroom, as I had expected. The glass was outside, littering the dry grass, sparkling there under the last of the setting sun. A sun that was even now burning me alive.
I fought through it, grimacing, trying to piece together what had happened. The glass was broken out, which meant...
And then I saw it, a few feet away. Anthony's Xbox controller was lying in the grass, too, broken into two or three pieces.
He had thrown it. Through the window. I looked back at my son. But he wasn't looking at me. He simply stood in the center of the room, fists clenched, looking out through the broken window.
"What happened, Anthony?"
"There were two of them," he said calmly. He did not sound like my little boy. He sounded years older. "I saw them climb over the wall. One of them looked in the window."
"And you threw your controller at him." My voice, still shocked, was now full of something close to awe. "Through the window?"
He nodded. "It hit him in the face. He screamed and fell down. When he got up, he was bleeding bad. I think some glass was in his face. Maybe his nose was broken."
Holy shit.
"Then both of them ran off again. They jumped the wall, and that's when you came in."
My God.
"You need to get out of the sun, Mommy."
My son took my hand and led me away, out of his room and into the hallway. I could smell my own burning flesh. If I looked hard enough, I might even see steam rising off my skin.
I said, gasping, "Are you okay, honey?"
"Of course, Mommy."
I pulled my son in close and held him tight. Two men with crossbows. Vampire hunters. Here at my house. Following me.
"Who were those men, Mommy?"
"Bad men."
"Were they robbers?"
I nodded but didn't say anything. I pulled him in closer, and we stood like that in the hallway, holding each other tight, while the cool wind came in through the broken window, rattled the blinds, and eventually found us huddling together in the hallway.
Chapter Thirty-four
Have you pissed anyone off lately, Moon Dance?
It was nearly midnight, and, after working with a 24-hour glass service, I had contacted Fang and gotten him up to speed.
No more than usual, I wrote.
And you're sure one of them wasn't our vampire hunter from last year?
I shook my head, although I was alone in the room. I'm fairly certain. Randolph the vampire hunter worked alone, and this was a two-man crew. Besides, Randolph and I are on good terms.