She saw it then. The slip in an otherwise careful facade.
"Drake Masters," he said, less a question than a demand. The senator cleared his throat and attempted to school his features into a mask of mild befuddlement, but Tavia had already seen past it. "What does Drake Masters have to do with anything?"
She let the question linger and stretch out. She didn't have an answer for it. Not yet. But she fully intended to find out.
"I have to go now," she said, and turned to make the short walk up to the house.
Aunt Sarah met her at the door, dressed in a red velour track suit with a green Christmas- themed apron tied around her hips. Holiday music poured out into the night, along with the aroma of fresh-baked bread and cinnamon and something meaty simmering on the stove. "There you are, at last," the older woman exclaimed. "Why haven't you been answering your cell phone? I've been trying to reach you all evening."
"I'm sorry. I must have the ringer turned off." Tavia stepped inside the house and watched as the black SUV slowly rolled away from the curb. "It's been a long day, Aunt Sarah. I should have called. I hope you didn't worry."
"Of course I worried. I love you." Her brown eyes crinkled at the corners as she looked Tavia over. "How was your visit with Dr. Lewis? Did you tell him about the night terrors and headaches you've been having lately? Did you pick up your medicine?"
"The appointment went fine, same as the last ten thousand of them. Got my new drug supply right here." Tavia shook her purse, making the pill bottle rattle as she met her aunt's welcoming gaze. She smiled at the older woman and all her questions and worry. It was the first real sense of comfort, of normalcy, she'd had all day. "I love you too, Aunt Sarah. What's for dinner?"
AT FIRST, Chase thought he was in hell. In addition to feeling as though he'd been run over by a truck - repeatedly - his mouth was cotton-dry and his head was ringing with the relentless beep and hiss of electronic machinery somewhere nearby.
He lay there for a moment, eyes closed, senses still attempting to come back online after a long, smothering sleep. Someone was in the room with him. Two people. Humans, a male and a female. They were speaking softly from both sides of him, the woman covering his bare legs with a thin sheet and blanket while the man reached over Chase's head to press buttons on one of the complaining monitors.
"BP's still wicked high," said the man, his booming Boston-roughened voice coming out of what sounded like a deep barrel chest. "Heart rate ain't come down much in the last hour either. This fella's body idles as fast as a damn race car."
"He's just lucky to be alive," replied the woman. "With all those bullet holes in him, his vitals should be flatlining, not clocking off the charts." She sounded middle age and tired, a wad of minty gum snapping as she chewed it noisily while she spoke. "I hear the lab screwed up his blood work again, so they're rerunning everything for the third time. Buncha clowns down there tonight or something, I swear to God. Meantime, looks like I'm going to have to start another bag of O negative before the next shift change."
Holy shit.
He wasn't dead, wasn't in hell either. He was in a human medical facility. Judging from the cold metal handcuff that secured his right wrist to the rail of the wheeled bed, Chase guessed he was still technically in the county lockup.
He had to get the f**k out of there.
His immediate instinct was to leap up and haul ass away from the place, before his strange lab results and unusual blood work started raising questions that no human being would be eager to learn the answers to. And as if that wasn't enough reason, there was also the fact that Dragos had recruited another Minion. Fury kindled below the thick fog of his injuries when he recalled the soulless glimmer of Senator Clarence's gaze. It burned even hotter when he thought of Tavia Fairchild, an innocent woman unaware of the evil looming close enough to touch her.
Chase had to do something. But he didn't have the strength to get up or get out. He couldn't even summon the wherewithal to lift his heavy eyelids.
He needed blood.
Not the packaged kind Nurse Doublemint was talking about, but fresh red cells, taken from an open human vein. The transfusions had probably kept his organs functioning in the time following the shooting, but in order for him to truly heal and regain all of his Breed strength and power, he needed to feed.
A lot.
And soon.
Moving beside him near the bed, the male nurse rearranged some of the tubes and tethers attached to Chase's free arm. "You hear about the other guy they brought back here from the situation in lockup tonight - the one this fella tried to use as a wrecking ball? He's busted up real bad."
The female exhaled a sharp grunt. "Oh, I heard about him all right. Severed spinal column, total paralysis from the neck down. Poetic justice, if you ask me."
"What do you mean?"
More gum-snapping and a whiff of peppermint as she leaned in to inspect one of Chase's chest wounds. "Before I came here, I used to work midnights over at Mass General. Admitted his wife to the ER more than once after he worked her over, then had an apparent attack of conscience and brought her in to be patched up. He always had some kind of excuse, like she ran into a wall or split her head open while she was cleaning. You won't see me crying that a guy like him is gonna spend the rest of his life flat on his ass, eating baby food and pissing in a bag." "No shit." The male nurse blew out a low chuckle. "They don't say karma's a bitch for nothing."
"And so am I when I haven't had a cigarette in more than two hours," she said, chomping even harder on her gum. "Can you finish up here while I run down and have a quick smoke?"