Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [120]
I didn’t really know anything. I had nothing but suspicion and a crappy psychic sense urging me to play my cards carefully. I kept an eagle eye on Bolton as he pranced back and forth up front, lacking only a long wooden pointer and a blackboard to be a junior caricature of Patton himself. Wait. Did Patton have either of those things? Or just a big American flag behind him? Maybe I’m confusing him with John Madden.
Things eventually wound down and Bolton quit pacing up front, announcing that this was the time for people to finish up coffee and use the restroom before getting into the van and heading out to the park. And just this once, the line for the men’s room was the slow-moving one.
Actually, I think there was only one bathroom, one small single-seater with a naked yellow bulb and a box of matches for air freshener. Thank Christ I didn’t need to go. No woman anywhere wants to follow that filthy man-funk parade to a potty. I may have been functionally dead for a few decades, but some things never change. And trust me, that’s one of ’em.
While the boys lined up to do their duty, at least the ones who had to go, I considered sidling up to the lieutenant but he sidled up to me first, giving me quite a start. “Why hello there,” I said, shooting for casual but idly interested, and ooh, aren’t you kind of cute? This was a stretch, since his sudden appearance had in no way charmed me and frankly made me a little worried, but this had been the plan, hadn’t it? Figure out if he—or anyone else affiliated with the club—knew about my kind.
I hadn’t thought past the point where he might. If he were utterly clueless, that’d be one thing. I’d write it off and continue exploring the exciting and aerobic world of parkour for fun and fitness (as the awkward marketing text suggested). But if he knew? About me? I hadn’t considered that far in advance. Because it’s always the one thing I don’t think about that turns around to bite me in the ass.
He said, “Hey. You new in town?” Only it didn’t sound like a line. It sounded like he actually wanted to know, in a calculating fashion.
“Sort of.”
“I can’t place your accent.”
“Oh. I wasn’t aware that I had one,” I said coyly. I knew I didn’t have one. I’d been in the Northwest long enough to have matched the bland diction that’s so common there. Unless you want to argue that the absence of an accent is an accent in itself, in which case I’d have to kick you in the shins. And I can kick very hard.
“Where’d you move here from?”
“I haven’t moved here from anywhere. Just visiting. Saw your flyer. Thought I’d check this out on my free night. It was either this or wander around on the lawn with a map of the big white monuments, trying to tell the difference and deciding whether or not to care.”
He grunted like a man from a tourist town who’d already seen all the tourist bits himself. “Okay. Welcome, then.”
Standing so close like that, almost right up against me in a fashion that might be considered harassment under different circumstances, he was a whole goddamn cluster of laser beams, projecting his intentions like a searchlight on a river. He’d locked on to me, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like his welcome. I didn’t want it. And suddenly I didn’t want to be anywhere near him, and I considered bolting on the spot except that a flash of panic kept me standing there, not quite touching this guy and not quite running away.
“Thanks,” I said. My mouth was dry. His was predatory. I lowered my voice, thinking it might be best to barrel forward, rather than play patty-cake politics until he could rouse the cavalry and have me carted off. So I said, “Maybe we could take a moment to talk in private, eh, Lieutenant?”
“Why would we do that?” Ah. Not stupid. Not wanting to be alone with me, even though a casual observer might’ve assumed that was all he wanted. The body language is not so different, when you watch it from afar.
“Because I want to ask you some questions. And you want to ask me some, too, or maybe you don’t want to