Maybe if I had, Bria wouldn’t be hurting, and I wouldn’t be so angry at her.
Yeah, she’d lost her informant, but that was no excuse to lash out at the rest of us. Bria was being all pissy with us when all we were trying to do was get her to take a breath and think about things. But she was so hell-bent on going after Benson that she couldn’t see that. Well, if she wanted me to stay out of her way, then fine. I was out. Done. Finished. She could go after him however she saw fit, law or no law. I didn’t care anymore.
At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.
Despite the lovely view of the mountains, I was too restless and too worried about too many things to sit still for long, so after about half an hour of brooding, I got into my car and headed home, hoping that a hot meal would improve my mood, if not my situation.
Thirty minutes later, I crested the ridge that led up to Fletcher’s house, expecting the driveway in front of the house to be empty, but a car was sitting in my usual spot—a black Audi.
My eyes narrowed, and I thought back to the Audi I’d seen on the street outside the parking garage last night. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t the same car, since this one was actually a dark navy instead of a true black. Also, the windows weren’t tinted, letting me glimpse something very familiar, distinctive, and slightly disturbing dangling from the rearview mirror: one of the sparkly blue and pink pins shaped like the Pork Pit’s pig logo that Sophia had ordered for the waitstaff to wear.
But the most interesting thing wasn’t the pin or the car but who they belonged to. At the sound of my vehicle rumbling up the driveway, a figure got up out of the rocking chair he’d been perched in. His hand went to his gray tie, smoothing it down as he stepped to the edge of the porch.
Silvio Sanchez.
I was so surprised that I lifted my foot off the gas, and the car stalled in a thick patch of gravel. I let the tires churn, my gaze snapping from the woods to the left of the house, across the yard, and over to the ridge at the far right side of the clearing. But I didn’t see any other vamps lurking in the trees, waiting in the Audi, or peeking around the corners of the house. If Benson had ordered his men to take me out, there would have been at least a dozen of them here, too many for all of them to hide, but I didn’t spot so much as a shiver of movement. Silvio appeared to have come alone, which only made me more curious—and wary—about what he wanted.
So I put my foot down on the gas again, breaking free of the gravel pit, and parked. I palmed a knife and got out of my car.
I approached him slowly, my eyes sweeping over the porch where he’d been sitting, wondering if he might have planted a bomb there, if this was in fact some sort of half-assed assassination attempt. But the chairs and tables were exactly as I had left them, except for the one Silvio had gotten out of, which was still rocking—a chair that now had a fat manila file folder lying on the seat. He must have brought that with him, although I couldn’t imagine what sort of information it might contain.
I stopped a few feet away from the porch and stared at the vampire. He lifted his chin and returned my gaze with an unreadable expression of his own. I had a good poker face, but Silvio’s was even better than mine. Then again, it wouldn’t be smart to let your emotions show around Benson, lest he rip them right out of you.
Since Silvio wasn’t giving anything away, I stepped even closer to him, turning my knife so that light glinted off the blade and flashed into his eyes, to see if that would crack his calm façade. He squinted, his lips puckered, and his gaze fell to my weapon. I started rubbing my thumb over the hilt of my knife, still trying to rattle him. But instead of looking concerned, he simply sighed and squared his shoulders, as if my carving him up was inevitable.
Maybe it was.
“Silvio.”
“Ms. Blanco.”
We stared at each other. In the woods in the distance, the chirp-chirp-chirp of birds hushed, and the rabbits rustling around in the underbrush stilled and burrowed down into the leaves. The animals could feel the tension in the air, and they didn’t want any part of it.
Silvio cleared his throat, and his hand smoothed down his tie again, lingering on the pin glinting in the middle of the fabric, a B with two pointed fangs sticking out the ends of it. Benson’s rune. I liked the Pork Pit pig logo far better.
“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here,” he said.
“Not at all,” I deadpanned. “I was expecting someone to show up to try to kill me today. Did you draw the short straw among Benson’s men?”
Silvio sighed again and raised his eyes skyward, as if he found my comments childish. Didn’t much matter to me. At this point, he was lucky that he was still breathing and not bleeding out all over the porch.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I wanted to apologize once again for what happened at Northern Aggression. Roslyn is an acquaintance of mine, and I deeply regret scaring her.”
“Oh, I don’t think it was you so much as it was your boss.”
A faint wince creased his middle-aged features. “I tried to persuade him to approach you some other way, but Beau enjoys the little dramas he creates.”
“Like what he did to Derrick? Because that was certainly quite the floor show.”
For the first time, true emotion flickered in Silvio’s eyes. And unless I was mistaken, it almost looked like . . . grief. His nostrils flared, his lip curled up, and his jaw clenched tight, indicating that there was more than a little anger and disgust mixed in with his pain. And I suddenly realized why Silvio had been so tense at the club when Benson had killed Derrick.
Silvio realized that I’d seen the chink in his armor. He blinked, and his face became perfectly blank once more.
“As I said before, Beau enjoys drama,” he said, his voice tight.
“You cared about him—Derrick.”
“We went out a few times. He was nice. Anyway, that’s all over with now.”
Silvio shrugged, as if to dismiss their relationship as nothing special, but his entire body stayed stiff and rigid. I sensed that there was a lot more to his feelings for Derrick than his casual words, but Silvio wasn’t about to share that with me. I doubted that he shared much of anything with anyone. He’d been around Benson too long and was too used to keeping everything he was really feeling buried deep down inside where the vamp wouldn’t sense it.
“It’s only over because Benson wanted to show off to me,” I said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”