Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [45]
“Goddamn,” I said.
Some other thief had stolen the stuff I wanted to steal.
I tried to tell myself that this was a lucky break—because now, I did not have to break into a high-security facility and sift through boxes upon boxes of stale old paperwork. Now, all I had to do was find the thief and wrestle it away from him.
It might not be that difficult. The feds already had a suspect.
I didn’t have a name for him, but I jotted down his serial number. Mr. 887-32-5561.
I noted from the lack of a 636 that he wasn’t part of the supersecret program. Good. Then he wasn’t a vampire, or anything else interesting enough to warrant supernatural caution on my part.
This was not the world’s safest assumption. So, I vowed to revisit it later.
I scanned the document for more clues. Mr. 887-32-5561 was a military man (woman? Oh, screw it—masculine pronoun for convenience), but I had no idea which branch of service he’d been a part of. He’d gone AWOL shortly before the burglary and was presently wanted by the military police. He’d been on the lam for nearly eight years by now, and as an internal memo noted, it was as if he’d “stopped the planet and got off.”
I liked him already, and I psyched myself up for the prospect of tracking him down. I had every advantage, after all. I was not a bulky, cumbersome government agency without a clue in the dark. I was a thief—the very best of my kind—and I was slumming down the food chain after a man who might be a professional soldier, but was surely only an amateur stealer.
I said to myself, “Self, this is going to be a piece of cake.”
And I tried to make myself believe it.
5
Yes, yes. I should’ve known better than to say something like that out loud, in front of God and everybody. And sure enough, it eventually came back to bite me in the ass.
I clapped the laptop shut and, since the kids weren’t back yet from whatever errand they were running with their fresh influx of cash, I left them a note saying that I might be gone for a while. I tried not to make it sound like too much of a formal good-bye, because I sincerely hoped I wasn’t abandoning them (and all my stuff) once and for all; and besides, I didn’t want them to freak out when they discovered I’d left. I needed them nice and calm, not wondering if they ought to report me as a missing person—especially since I’d just wound them up with a whole slew of warnings before ushering them out.
I closed the place up behind me—not so tight that they couldn’t find their way in, but tight enough to deter any casual trespassers—and then I struck out for home.
Home was a calculated risk. I figured I’d scope the place out, and if I spied even the faintest hint of security breach or goggle-eyed operatives, then I’d hightail it elsewhere. But I didn’t yet have any good idea where Elsewhere might turn out to be, and there were a handful of things I’d prefer to destroy or collect from the old homestead if it were at all possible.
I parked my car on the edge of my neighborhood, at an easily accessible spot that would also make a straight shot of a getaway point. There’s nary a convenient parking space on any curbside of Capitol Hill, so I had to leave the Thunderbird parked entirely too close to a stop sign. But seriously, if the city meant for drivers to keep their cars thirty feet away from the corners, they’d mark the damn corners with paint or something. I’m convinced that it’s a conspiracy to write more tickets and bring in more revenue—so if I looked at it that way, then really, I was just doing my part to support Seattle’s public servants.
I mean, if they caught me.
And if I felt like paying the ticket, depending on where my Elsewhere turned out to be.
I took to the rooftops, even though I’ve already made a disclaimer on the subject. But it’s not every twenty-four hours that I pick up a vampire client, end up on the receiving end of a break-in, and inadvertently tangle with Uncle Sam. So really, it’s a wonder I managed to keep it to such a minimum.
I wasn’t sure