The Secret Night Read online

  That certainty made him want to lock the doors and hold her captive. Which created yet another problem. Could he keep his distance from her while he made plans for an assault on Caldwell’s estate?

  Struggling for calm, he dragged in a breath and let it out. Reminding her that she’d been shot a few days ago, he said, “You need to rest and heal—while I consider a plan.”

  He could see she wanted to argue for haste, but she managed to remain silent. And somehow that was worse. She was trying to be cooperative, and he would rather have her at odds with him, so he’d have an excuse to keep her at arm’s length.

  “Could you just answer one question?” she asked in a small voice.

  “If I can.”

  “Caldwell has control over Margaret’s mind. Will…will she go back to normal when she gets away from him?”

  The pleading look in her eyes tore at him. “I got back to normal,” he said, almost choking on the words, since in the eyes of the world “normal” hardly described him. He also didn’t bother to say that he didn’t know anyone else who had escaped from the Master’s clutches.

  “We can talk more later,” he said. “I have a job to do in Baltimore tonight. Another ‘eviction.’”

  She looked so disappointed, he almost couldn’t bear it.

  “Eat,” he said. “Get your strength back. You can read any of the books in the library. Or watch TV. I have satellite. I’ll be back before morning.”

  “Okay,” she said in a low voice.

  Turning away from her reproachful look, he walked to the front hall. He grabbed a Stetson off the hat rack and turned to leave. Then he stopped and began retracing his steps, locking the door to his office on his way to the basement. He locked that door behind him as well.

  In his bedroom, he showered and donned black jeans, a black T-shirt and black boots. He added a black leather jacket and brought along the Stetson.

  TRAILBLAZER WATCHED the sleek little Acura sports coupe come down the road. Vickers was behind the wheel. Which meant this could be the perfect time to slip into the house and do some snooping. Of course, the surveillance system would pick him up. But with the master of the house otherwise occupied, that might not matter.

  He sat on his motorcycle hidden in the woods, debating his options, then decided to follow Vickers and see what he was up to now.

  He pulled out of the woods and followed a secondary road to the highway, where he picked up the Acura again. Too bad he hadn’t been able to put a transponder on it. But Vickers’s hidden garage was locked up tighter than the Pentagon.

  Dropping back, he almost lost Vickers, then spotted him turning onto the Baltimore Beltway.

  When it became clear where the man was heading, Trailblazer reached for his cell phone.

  NICK STRUGGLED to keep his mind on business. As he’d told Emma, his current job was similar to the one he’d done for the Dayton Acres folks. Except that the problems in Baltimore were somewhat more serious than out in Howard County. A neighborhood association, frustrated that their section of the city was going downhill fast, wanted him to clear the crackheads out of an abandoned house in their midst.

  To avoid attracting attention, he stayed below the speed limit. For a moment he considered the irony of that. He’d been born on an estate in Kent, not far from Canterbury, in England, well before the automobile was invented. Back in those days, one would have spent an entire day getting from Howard County to Baltimore. Now he could make the trip in under a half hour.

  He’d visited nearly all the cities of the world, but he still preferred the countryside, which seemed to be disappearing at a fairly rapid rate on the east coast of the United States.

  He wondered how long he could stay in his old Victorian. With housing developments proliferating in Howard County, a man who slept all day and came out only at night was bound to raise questions sooner or later. And then Nicholas Vickers would have to disappear. He’d have to take up a new identity—again. But not yet. Not until he finished his business around here.

  And that included Damien Caldwell. The trouble was, he hadn’t counted on Emma Birmingham pushing him to act before he was ready.

  NICK DROVE SLOWLY past the crack house. It was on a residential street lined with narrow Baltimore row houses, some still faced with the original brick but others sporting Formstone—a modern abomination that looked to be concocted of colored cement and mica and scored to resemble real cut stone.

  Some of the properties were well kept. Others had definitely seen better days. And he felt sorry for the up-standing residents whose neighborhood was slowly being taken over by low-life creeps.

  The vacant house where the druggies congregated or flopped was two doors in from a corner, making it convenient for the drifters to evacuate if and when the police came by—which evidently wasn’t very often. Then, when the coast was clear, the low-lifes simply oozed back a couple of days later.

  Nick had gotten the lay of the land during his preliminary surveillance of the place when the neighborhood association had first contacted him. Now he watched a man with filthy hair and a tattered coat climb the marble steps to the front door. Marble steps—a Baltimore tradition left over from a bygone era.

  Recognizing the intractability of the gang and drug problems the neighborhood was facing, he’d come prepared to inflict some damage. Actually, he was looking forward to it. He’d worked up quite a bit of tension in his dealings with Emma Birmingham, and now this job would give him the chance to cut loose.

  Wondering how many people were inside, Nick turned the corner and found a parking space about halfway down the block. He retrieved the currently fashionable cowboy hat from the back seat and set it on his head, tipping the brim so that it hid his face.

  Then he walked up the alley that approached the property from the rear. He waited in the deep shadows for a half hour, watching men and women meander in and out of the trash-littered backyard.

  Two men sitting on a faded sofa got up and ambled away. Another guy flopped back against the sprung cushions and stared into space.

  Nick held back. Something felt wrong about the scene. Something he couldn’t put his finger on. So he waited another twenty minutes.

  Finally he decided that the unsettled feeling in his gut came from the conversation he’d had with Emma before he left the house.

  He’d come here to do a job and get some much-needed distance from Emma. So he’d better get down to business.

  When he saw yet another stoner stagger out of the house, Nick acted. Maybe because he was still wound up over Emma, his assault was stronger than it should have been. He picked up the guy, dragged him unceremoniously into some scraggly bushes and bent his head back.

  The guy struggled, but Nick sent him a brain zap that turned his arm and leg muscles to jelly. All the guy could do was stare wide-eyed up at his captor. His lips moved as he tried to form words, but only a whiny, panicked sound emerged.

  Nick held the man in his rigid grasp, sinking his fangs into the flesh of his neck, and began to draw blood. But he didn’t take much; it was rank with whatever drug the guy had pumped into his system.

  With a feeling of disgust, Nick pulled back, hoping he wouldn’t get buzzed from the joy juice circulating in the guy’s system. He gazed down at the red drops glistening on the man’s neck and knew he should seal the small wounds he’d made. But the idea of putting his mouth on the guy again turned his stomach.

  Instead, he sent the man a jolt of mindless terror and watched him stagger away as fast as he could.

  After wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket, Nick decided it was time to clean out the rest of the druggies. He started toward the house. But someone inside must have seen him. He was only halfway across the yard when the shooting started.

  Chapter Eight

  Nick felt a bullet whiz past his head and realized it had gone right through the crown of his hat.

  Instinctively, he ducked, but the evasive action was too late. With the next shot he felt ho
t steel slam into his shoulder.

  Whoever was shooting from inside the house must have seen him take the hit, because he heard a whoop of satisfaction.

  “I got the narc! Did you see that? I got the bastard. Let’s go out and finish him off.”

  “Stay back, man!” another voice shouted.

  A barrage of bullets buzzed like angry wasps around him. Another slug sliced through his flesh, this time plowing into his chest, and he gasped from the sudden hot pain.

  If he were human, Nick was pretty sure he would soon be dead. Instead, he fought to endure the agony no mere human could have sustained.

  This was like the time in France when he’d helped save Caldwell’s castle from attack.

  But then he’d been mortal. Not now. Still, his whole left side and his chest were on fire and at the same time felt encased in cement. He knew hot blood was trickling down the inside of his shirt.

  He hadn’t come here intending to kill anyone, but self-defense was another matter. Crouching behind the now vacant sofa, he pulled out the gun he’d brought just in case. Teeth gritted, he returned fire simply to inform the bastards inside that he was still in the game.

  He had the satisfaction of hearing a scream from inside the house. He’d gotten one of them.

  At that moment, bright lights hit him in the face, and he could hear shrill babbling in the background.

  Good Lord, now what? It sounded as if some media type was excitedly reporting breaking news.

  With one arm up to block the blinding glare, he saw a television cameraman, along with the intrepid reporter, creeping toward him. He blinked rapidly in disbelief. Both men were apparently too stupid to live. Well, let them die if they wanted to. Nick was getting the hell out of there.

  NO BOOK WAS GOING to hold her interest at the moment, Emma decided after browsing through Nick’s library. Television took less effort, so she turned on the set in what looked like a den and flipped through the channels.

  On TLC, two middle-American couples had swapped homes, and one was painting the other’s dining room a burnt orange. On TMC she saw yet another rerun of Casablanca. Finally, a local access channel caught her attention. She thought she was watching some kind of low-budget cop show, but after twenty seconds or so she realized it was a live report. A news team covering an inner-city Baltimore church’s neighborhood improvement efforts had heard that a shoot-out was taking place a couple of blocks away.

  They’d hustled over to the scene, and now a newsman in a rumpled pin-striped suit was babbling excitedly, giving a play-by-play account of a gunfight between the residents of a crack house and someone outside.

  As the camera angle swung to the left, she caught her breath. The man now on the screen was wearing a leather jacket and a Stetson just like the one Nick had grabbed from the hall rack before he’d headed downstairs to get ready for his current job.

  She wanted it to be a coincidence. But, oh God—no. It was Nick. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she recognized his nose and his lips. He staggered back, and it looked as if he’d been hit.

  He hauled himself out of the frame, and the camera tried to follow him, but he disappeared down a dark alley, moving way too rapidly for a man with a bullet in his body.

  CROUCHING LOW and hoping his hat completely hid his face, Nick executed a strategic retreat from both the gunfire and the camera. The buzzing in his ears made it difficult for him to think. He figured it was the roaring of his own blood in his head. Then he realized he was hearing sirens. Ambulances and police cars.

  Finally, the cops were on their way—trailing the news guys by almost twenty minutes.

  What a city!

  He made it, undiscovered, to the end of the alley, then had to stop because his head was spinning and his breath was coming in great gasps.

  He’d lost a lot of blood. Too much. The need for sustenance clawed at his insides. And he was prepared to grab the first victim he encountered. But he was alone in the alley.

  He feared he was too weak to stagger any farther. Then he saw a cop car turn the corner at the end of the block.

  He could have handled one officer and sunk his fangs into the guy’s neck. But in his weakened condition, he couldn’t take on two armed cops.

  Hoping he hadn’t been spotted yet, he pressed himself against a high wooden fence at the back of a house. It helped hold him up, but he lost his hat in the process. Too weary to bend down and pick it up, he forced himself to move on, sliding his body along the vertical surface. When he came to a gate, his heart gave a lurch of hope. He fumbled with the rusted latch, it gave way, and he fell into someone’s backyard.

  He wanted to simply lie there on the small patio, but the cool bricks revived him a little, and he knew that the open gate would be a dead giveaway of his location. So he shoved himself up and eased the gate closed behind him.

  He stared up at the back of the house before him. It was completely dark. He hoped that meant no one was home. Careful not to bump into any garden furniture or planters, he headed for the basement door under a small cement porch. He tugged open the warped door and stumbled down the steps to an unfinished storage area, where he lowered himself to the cement floor, propping his back against a wall. When his head thudded softly against the wall, he heard a hollow sound. Was there a space behind the wall where he could hide? Maybe, but at the moment, he didn’t have the energy to investigate.

  He was still in agonizing pain, but he knew his body had the power to heal his wounds if he could only feed. Rolling to his back, he stared up at the steps and considered that if he’d been shot dead center to the heart, that could have killed even him. So he’d probably sustained a bullet to a lung.

  His vampire constitution would take care of that, but not unless he replenished his blood supply soon. And then there was the sun to worry about.

  His body bathed in perspiration and pain, he tried to make plans. Morning would come in a few hours. Then what? Perhaps he should hope for a cloudy day. That would help, but not enough.

  From his hiding place in the darkness, he cast his mind outward, searching for help. But he was too weak to summon anyone to himself.

  Except Jeanette. She would come to him.

  Jeanette? Was that right? Was he waiting for Jeanette?

  EMMA FELT UTTER TERROR clutch her throat. A few days ago, the only thing she’d known about Nicholas Vickers was that he was a private investigator and that Damien Caldwell considered him a dangerous enemy.

  So she’d come to his house to convince him to help her rescue Margaret. Then she’d gotten shot—and he’d cured her in some mysterious way that she still didn’t understand.

  Tonight it looked as if he’d been shot, and she felt a gut-wrenching fear for his life.

  “Nick,” she whispered, her gaze riveted to the television screen. “Oh Lord, Nick.”

  If he’d cured her, could he do the same thing to himself?

  On the television, sirens sounded. Then the live feed focused on a couple of police cruisers and an ambulance arriving. Uniformed cops jumped out and ran toward the camera, and the picture jerked as they pushed the news team back and out of the way.

  “The police have just closed off the area,” the reporter said. “Officer, can you tell us what’s going on?”

  “Get out of the way,” the cop snarled. “Before you get shot.”

  The picture swung wildly, and the commentary stopped abruptly.

  Finally, the camera again focused on the reporter. In the background, Emma could see news vans from other stations arriving and reporters jumping out.

  “We will continue to give you information as we get it!” the man she’d been listening to shouted as the police pushed him farther back.

  “Yeah, I’ll bet,” Emma muttered. “If they don’t arrest you for near fatal stupidity.”

  Now that the reporter and his cameraman had been shoved away from the action, the picture on the screen shifted to the crowd that had gathered on the street corner, and Emma turned away, kn
owing she wasn’t going to learn anything more substantive until the cops released some information.

  Which might not be until morning, for all she knew.

  Fighting the tightness in her throat, she paced back and forth across the Oriental rug. She had only met Nick a few days ago, but she’d already felt connected to him in her dreams, and she ached to go to him now, to help him in any way she could.

  He’d told her to stay put, rest and wait for him to come home. But she knew she couldn’t simply sit here waiting for news, watching the drama unfold on television.

  Dashing up to the room where she’d been staying, she grabbed her purse. By the time she’d run downstairs again, she knew she had another problem. She didn’t have a key to the house. If she left, she couldn’t just leave the doors unlocked. What if those awful bikers came back? And she had no idea how to set the security alarm.

  Angry with Nick for leaving her in this fix and angry with herself for not thinking to at least ask for a key, she paced into the kitchen. Wait. Didn’t everyone have a catch-all drawer in the kitchen, crammed with miscellaneous items such as rubber bands, twist ties, bottle openers and keys?

  Sure enough, even Nick’s stage set of a kitchen had such a drawer, complete with several loose keys. She took them to the front door and tested them. When she found one that worked, she let out a sigh of relief and hurried to lock all the doors. If Nick’s security system wasn’t activated, locking up would have to do.

  Stepping onto the front porch, she stopped short when a shadow emerged from the nearby woods. In the next second, she let out a nervous laugh. It was only a deer, grazing on a bush. It didn’t even bother to run away when she stepped off the porch.

  She’d left her car in the driveway, and panic gripped her when she saw that the spot was empty. She ordered herself to stay calm. Nick hadn’t taken her rental back to the airport. He must have stashed it somewhere.