Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [143]
“Not sure what you were expecting,” I said, even though I knew good and well he’d assumed I was a man. My greatest secret—an accidental secret, born of masculine assumptions and simply never corrected.
“I expected someone …” He hesitated. “Taller.”
I said, “I get that a lot.”
“But why …? Why are you here?” he asked, so plaintively I could’ve almost felt sorry for him if I hadn’t known what he was, and what he did in his spare time. It was plain from the question that he’d already figured what I was doing. He was only stalling, or wondering if he could change my mind. In other words, he was wasting everyone’s time.
This didn’t stop me from doing a little rambling.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve put Ian through? Never mind the personal hassle you’ve caused me. I can take it. I’ve been on the receiving end of worse, sent by better than the likes of you. But Ian? All he wanted was to get his sight back. And all you had to do was help him, and he would’ve been eternally in your debt—a debt you can bet he would’ve honored. Since you’ve chosen to wad up all that trust and throw it in his face, I’m going to go ahead and assume that you have no idea exactly how valuable a vampire’s debt can be.” It could’ve meant anything—up to and including eternal life—but I let him do that math on his own.
“You figured he was weak, and that you had nothing to fear from him. You strung him along with promises of help; you gave him hope, and then you betrayed him. So make no mistake—I’m not here on my own behalf. I’m here for him. I’m here because you aren’t allowed to hurt him anymore, and you’re not allowed to inconvenience me anymore, either.”
“You’re here to kill me?”
“Bingo, Sunshine.”
“But, but …” And here came the bargaining. “But if you think you can avenge your client just by killing me, you’re wrong. I was only a pawn in this whole thing! I was just doing my job.”
“The last excuse of cowards,” I said. I drew up much, much closer. So close I could feel his breath on my face, and the warmth of his feverish terror radiating from his body.
“But it wasn’t me!”
“Are you about to blame Bruner? Because buddy, that ship has sailed.”
“No—” He was frantic now, flailing. Throwing out anything he thought would slow me down, as if anything could. “Not Bruner. Not just Bruner, anyway—it’s that other guy. He’s the one who’s been dumping money into it. He paid for the offices, for the CIA thugs, for everything. He’s the one who wanted the old experiment documentation, bad enough to kill for it. Then when he found out a vampire was going after it, I … I don’t know. I guess he wanted the vampire, too.”
“Are we talking about Sykes?” It’d been the only loose name I’d ever turned up, connected with the offices. I was glad I’d filed it away because look—here it was again.
“He made his money in Department of Defense contracts,” Keene babbled. “Doing high-definition satellite surveillance programming and camera systems. Real long-range stuff.”
I actually stopped. I held him out at arm’s length and narrowed my eyes. “Keep talking. I’m listening.”
“That’s … that’s all I know. He’s the one who turned the program back on; he’s the one who’s paying for it. The guy’s loaded. Uncle Sam’s made him a billionaire.”
Okay. Something had slipped between the cracks here. Jeffery Sykes. I’d figured the name was a front, or just a figurehead on a corporation. Apparently I needed to look closer. He sounded like an actual man. He sounded like an actual problem … maybe even the root of an actual problem.
I asked, “What does he want with people like me? What does he want with Ian?”
His desperation hit a fever pitch. “I don’t know! Why don’t you go and ask him, and leave me alone?”
“Oh, I’m going to ask him all right.” Viciously, once I caught up to him. “But leave you alone?” I gave a little laugh, and let the hunger I was feeling in my gut go all the way to my eyes. “That was never going to happen.”
David Keene was cooling on the couch, and I was feeling good.
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