"Who is?" The muni worker's voice was incredulous. He looked to where she was gaping and let out a laugh. "You mean that guy? Lady, that's the friggin' mayor of Boston."
"Wha - "
It was true. Her eyes were wild as she watched the activity at the corner with new understanding. The black sedan wasn't after her at all. It had pulled up to the curb and the driver now waited, holding open the back door. The mayor himself came out of a restaurant, flanked by suited bodyguards. They all climbed into the backseat of the vehicle.
Gabrielle closed her eyes. Her raw palms were burning. Her knees, too. Her pulse was still pounding, but all the blood seemed to have drained from her head.
She felt like a complete fool.
"I thought..." she murmured as the driver closed the door, got in the front, then eased the official's car back into traffic.
The worker let go of her arm. He walked away from her, back to his sack lunch and coffee, shaking his head. "What's a matter with you? You crazy or somethin'?"
Shit.
She wasn't supposed to see him. His orders had been to observe the Maxwell woman. Note her activities. Determine her habits. Report everything back to his Master. Above all, he was to avoid detection.
The Minion spat another curse from where he was hiding, his spine flat against the inside of a nondescript door in a nondescript building, one of many such places nestled among the Chinatown markets and restaurants. Carefully, he drew open the door and peered around it to see if he could spot the woman somewhere outside.
There she was, right across the busy street from him.
And he was pleased to see that she was leaving the area. He could just make out her coppery hair as she wended through the traffic on the sidewalk, her head down, her pace agitated.
He waited there, watched her until she was well out of sight. Then he slipped back onto the street and headed in the opposite direction. He'd blown more than an hour on lunch break. He'd better get back to the police station before he was missed.
Chapter Ten
Gabrielle ran another paper towel under the cold water running in her kitchen sink. Several others lay discarded in the basin already, sopping wet, stained pink with her blood and gray with grime from the sidewalk grit she'd washed out of her palms and bare knees. Standing there in her bra and panties, she squirted some liquid soap onto the wad of damp toweling, then gingerly scrubbed at the abrasions on each of her palms.
"Ow," she gasped, wincing as she ran over a sharp little stone embedded in the wound. She dug it out and tossed it into the sink with the other shards of gravel she'd recovered in her cleanup.
God, she was a mess.
Her new skirt was torn and ruined. The hem of her sweater was frayed from scraping the pavement. Her hands and knees looked like they belonged to a clumsy tomboy.
And she'd make a public, total ass of herself besides.
What the hell was wrong with her, freaking out like she had?
The mayor, for chrissake. And she had run from his car like she feared he was a...
A what? Some kind of monster?
Vampire.
Gabrielle's hand went still.
She heard the word in her mind, even if she refused to speak it. It was the same word that had been nipping at the edge of her consciousness since the murder she'd witnessed. A word she would not acknowledge, even alone, in the silence of her empty apartment.
Vampires were her crazy birth mother's obsession, not hers.
The teenaged Jane Doe had been deeply delusional when the police recovered her from the street all those years ago. She spoke of being pursued by demons who wanted to drink her blood - had, in fact, already tried, as was her explanation for the strange lacerations on her throat. The court documents Gabrielle had been given were peppered with wild references to bloodthirsty fiends running loose in the city.
Impossible.
That was crazy thinking, and Gabrielle knew it.
She was letting her imagination, and her fears that she might one day come unhinged like her mother, get the best of her. She was smarter than this. More sane, at least.
God, she had to be.
Seeing that kid from the police station today - on top of everything else she'd been through the past several days - just set something off in her. Although, now that she was thinking about it, she couldn't even be sure the guy she saw in the park actually was the clerk she'd seen at the precinct house.
And so what if he was? Maybe he was out in the Common having lunch, enjoying the weather like she was. No crime in that. If he was staring at her, maybe he thought she looked familiar, too. Maybe he would have come over and said hi to her, if she hadn't charged after him like some paranoid psycho, accusing him of spying on her.
Oh, and wouldn't that be lovely, if he went back to the station and told them all how she'd chased him several blocks into Chinatown?
If Lucan were to hear about that, she would absolutely die of humiliation.
Gabrielle resumed cleansing her scraped palms, trying to put the whole day out of her head. Her anxiety was still at a peak, her heart still drumming hard. She dabbed at her surface wounds, watching the thin trickle of blood run down her wrist.
The sight of it soothed her in some strange way. Always had.
When she was younger, when feelings and pressures built up inside of her until there was nowhere for them to go, often all it took to ease her was a tiny cut.
The first one had been an accident. Gabrielle had been paring an apple at one of her foster homes when the knife slipped and cut into the fleshy pad at the base of her thumb. It hurt a little, but as her blood pumped out, a rivulet of glossy bright crimson, Gabrielle hadn't felt panic or fear.
She'd felt fascination.
She'd felt an incredible sort of... peace.
A few months after that surprising discovery, Gabrielle cut herself again. She did it deliberately, secretly, never with the intent to harm herself. Over time, she did it frequently, whenever she needed to feel that same profound sense of calm.