Blood Howl (3 page)

If people could spontaneously disappear into the wallpaper, it looked like that was what Redford was trying to do. It might almost work, too. The walls were drab, colorless, and the clothes Redford wore were a perfect match, as if he wore them just so he wasn’t noticed, so he really could vanish into the background at a moment’s notice. Unfortunately for him, the Houdini act wasn’t exactly working.

“I don’t understand,” he said quietly, wide eyes fixed on Jed’s face. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve never been arrested, I—I pay my taxes, I swear.”

Jesus, he’d walked into some kind of Dickens novel. Redford was going to bust out a
please, sir, I want some more
and beg for porridge any second now. There was an innocence about him, that sweetness edged out with something in his eyes, something darker lurking. But despite his well-cultivated cynicism, Jed believed him. Whatever Fil wanted him for, it wasn’t some righteous crusade. And normally, Jed would protest that he didn’t care. All he wanted was to get paid and be left alone.

Yet he found himself shrugging. “I know.” Jaw tight, he held Redford’s eyes for a long moment, the tick of a wall clock counting out heartbeats, counting down breaths, while they existed just for that second inside each other. He was going to help this guy. Mother of God save him, but he was, he knew he was. A very sizable portion of money, his funding for that grand fishing vacation, and he was kissing it goodbye because of some scrawny guy with sea-storm eyes and baggy clothes.

“Beer,” he commanded wearily, nodding toward the door. “Possibly whiskey. Definitely whiskey.”

Before he could take a step, Redford’s voice halted him, embarrassed and hesitant. “Is this about the noise complaint? I apologized, I swear. It won’t happen again.”

All he could do was laugh. It was harsh; the noise caught in his throat, and Jed shook his head and clapped his hand on Redford’s shoulder. “Yeah, darlin’. I’m sure you can really knock down the walls.” The image of Redford causing any kind of ruckus was goddamn high comedy. Pulling Redford with him, he headed out toward the car. “Jesus, who do I have to blow around here to get some goddamn drinks? Just come on, Red. We need to talk.”

Chapter Three

Redford

T
HIS
was a nightmare.

Redford would admit that his brain didn’t work all that well when he was scared, so he’d let Jed pull him out of the house, into Jed’s car, and drive them both to the nearest bar. The Elephant and Sparrow. It wasn’t a bar that Redford had been to before—to say that he didn’t leave the house much was something of an understatement—and he tried not to cringe too much as Jed took him inside.

The bar, somewhat like his house, looked as if it had been built decades ago and then forgotten in the midst of passing time. While Jed strode confidently toward a table, all charming grins and confident authority as he ordered drinks, Redford trailed behind him, nervous, rubbing a hand over his nose so that he didn’t sneeze from the smoke. The room smelled like sweat, old smoke, and older beer spills.

Jed must be some kind of law enforcement, he’d decided. CIA, FBI, something with initials and a lot of mystery. Redford didn’t know much about those kinds of things, so while the idea of Jed pretending to be a plumber and asking for diamonds was strange, he didn’t want to get himself into even more trouble. Jed had said that he was going to truss Redford up and put him in the trunk of his car. Was that legal? Redford doubted it. He also doubted drinking on the job was legal, but what did he know?

By the time his eyes had adjusted to the low light, Jed had already claimed a table and was waving him over. Redford wasn’t sure how to explain it, but Jed looked strangely in place, completely at home among the smoke and dark wood, the dirty floor and the copious amounts of leather being worn by the patrons there. Jed had changed in the car, slipping out of the workman’s jumpsuit and pulling on a flannel shirt, dog tags thumping lightly against a broad chest. And just like that, with one wardrobe change, he’d turned from an innocuous plumber to something more. Dangerous somehow, hard around the edges, and definitely not just some guy who wanted to fix his pipes. How had he missed that before?

Jed had placed two bottles of beer on the table, jostling for space with two shots of whiskey. His expectant, slightly impatient look had Redford scurrying over to join in. “Sorry,” he said quietly, eyes downcast to the table. “I’ve never been here.” Redford eyed the drinks. He’d tried beer once and hadn’t liked the taste. Whiskey was new to him.

This had to be about the noise complaint. Redford still felt so horribly guilty over that. He’d gotten his full moon routine down. He’d had the cage installed in the fairly well-insulated basement of his house for years now. Except the cage was getting old, and three weeks ago a portion of rust had eaten into the latch and it had given way. He’d have to replace the cage.

Maybe it was a good thing that Jed had come. Maybe they needed to round up monsters like him and put them somewhere that they couldn’t hurt other people. Redford hadn’t hurt anyone yet, but surely it was simply a matter of time.

Gathering up his courage, Redford chanced a look up at Jed. What little time he spent among other people was mostly spent avoiding their eyes, but Jed seemed to
want
to look into his. It was unnerving, and a whole lot surprising, because Redford had never seen anybody with eyes so green before. They reminded him of the forests he’d seen pictures of, of lush vegetation and dew-dappled leaves. Redford had always wondered what it would be like to visit one, to see something that achingly vibrant in person. He had a sneaking suspicion now, that it would be a little bit like staring into Jed’s eyes, that same tight leap in his gut, the same whirling heat in his chest, the awe and the longing and the strange rush of want.

“You’ve never been here?” Jed’s voice was like his personality, boisterous and demanding, flashing that smile around like he’d never been scared of anything in his life. It wasn’t all real, though. Something hid behind it, barely peeping around fraying edges. Redford might not get out much, might not even understand his fellow people too well, but even he could see behind Jed’s grin. Jed shifted forward on his chair, elbows propped on the worn wooden table, and knocked back his shot, chasing it with beer. “Jesus, it’s five steps from your house. I thought everyone went to their local bar. Isn’t it a rule, like wearing socks with sandals once you get past sixty?”

Long fingers fidgeted with the beer bottle, and Jed kept glancing away, toward the door. All that confidence, and yet Redford would have sworn he smelled nervous underneath the heady pine that was
him
, green and fresh, underscored by a sharp scent, like a candle wick that had just been lit. “So. About today. You don’t happen to have any enemies or anything, do you? Someone who’d, I don’t know, want to pay an unscrupulous bastard a nice chunk of change to whisk you away?”

Considering his answer, Redford reached out toward the small shot glass, raising it to his lips to take a hesitant sip. It burned, and he didn’t miss the amused look flashing across Jed’s face as he coughed, startled at the sensation. “No,” Redford croaked, rubbing his throat, frowning. “I’ve never been here. I don’t think it’s a rule. I don’t have any enemies.”

Jed talked a
lot
, and it was honestly a little difficult to keep up with him. He’d asked about four different questions right then, interspersed with his own commentary on his life and how things should go. As far as Redford was aware, no, nobody should be paying anybody to kidnap him.

The idea seemed to sink in right then, and Redford’s head shot up, wide eyes fixed on Jed’s. He’d been temporarily distracted by the horrible taste and burn of the whiskey. He wasn’t going to be drinking that again any time soon. “Somebody paid you to kidnap me? Who? What—what did I do?”

Jed’s hand, warm and solid, settled over his, fingers curling around his own. “Hey,” Jed said quietly, a dent curving between his eyebrows, concern and worry settling into the green depths of his eyes. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, I’ll help you figure it out.”

The touch lingered a moment before Jed pulled back, something else flashing across his face as he rubbed his chin and muttered to himself, “Jesus, I don’t know why I’m doing this.” Louder then, back to Redford, “Okay, look, I… do things. For people. It’s a kind of jack-of-all-trades thing. And two days ago, I got a call. Someone calling himself Fil hired me to acquire something at your address. That’s all I got so far, but I’m pretty sure this is low-key. I’ll just call the guy up and tell him no deal. Okay?”

Fil. Redford didn’t know that name, had never heard of somebody called that before. But someone named Fil had hired Jed to, what, kidnap him? Steal something from his house? That was why Jed had asked about diamonds. Well, Redford definitely didn’t have any kind of diamonds in his house.

“Okay,” he agreed tentatively, settling his hands on his lap. The skin where Jed had touched him was still warm. Redford didn’t know what it meant, but he rubbed a thumb over the patch anyway, frowning slightly. “He really didn’t say anything specific?” If he was going to have enemies, he’d like to know
why
, but apparently even the man hired to kidnap him or steal from him didn’t know why.

Shrugging, still with his gaze darting around the room, never landing on any one person for long but picking them all out, one by one, Jed took another long drink of his beer. “All the e-mail said was he’d lost something, and he was hiring me to get it back.” Jed’s gaze finally landed back on Redford. “Maybe it’d be a good idea if you stayed with me for a few days. The guy who called… let’s just say I’ve got a feeling of the not so great variety, okay? I think it might be wise if you weren’t at home until I fix this.”

“
What
?” Redford yelped, forcing himself to lower his voice to a whisper when he continued, “I’m not going anywhere with you! You—you—” Taking a deep breath, Redford tried to calm himself.

It was okay. He was okay, he told himself. This wasn’t anything to be scared over. Just a strange man that had come into his place with the intention of kidnapping him, hired by an even stranger man, for reasons unknown. This Fil person had lost something and wanted it back. Redford had no clue what he meant. “For all I know, this is just a way of kidnapping me,” he finished, beginning to desperately wish he’d taken some sort of self-defense class.

He had to get out of here—Redford knew that, at least. It didn’t matter that Jed had extremely nice eyes. He had to leave, because if Jed was tricking him, then common sense said that Redford should immerse himself in the safety of numbers for a while. Though the idea scared him, nobody could kidnap him in public, right?

“Well, yeah.” There was that smile again, lopsided and charming. Jed leaned back in his chair, arms behind his head, muscles pulling lightly under the flannel shirt he wore. “But the devil you know, right?”

Caught halfway in the act of getting out of his chair, Redford froze in the awkward position before slowly sinking back down to sit. Logic was a cruel mistress, and unfortunately Jed was right. He knew, at least, that Jed had not made a single violent move toward him yet. He’d even reassured him when he was nervous, being completely open about this “job.”

“So tell me this,” Jed drawled conversationally, and Redford didn’t know if Jed was just distracting him so that he didn’t leave or if he was genuinely curious. “That bedroom in your house. Didn’t peg you for a roses-and-doilies kind of guy.”

“I’m not.” Redford’s reply was murmured, and he’d assume it had been too quiet if he didn’t see that Jed obviously heard. “It belonged to my grandmother. She died ten years ago. She raised me since I was little. I never wanted to go in there and mess it up.”

If Jed was surprised, he didn’t show it, but there was no immediate reply, which left Redford time to wonder exactly why he’d just told Jed that. Living alone, avoiding people, Redford rarely dwelt on things that seemed so important to the rest of humanity, namely sex and relationships. He’d never had either, and at the age of twenty-eight, he’d never been particularly concerned over his lack of them. Except his gaze was hooked on the shift of Jed’s biceps under his shirt, the way the low light in the bar caught his eyes, and what was stranger, he found himself being truthful.

It made him wonder if he really could trust Jed. In an instant, his calm, peaceful life had turned into something out of a spy novel, and in order to keep his head above the rapidly rising water, surely he had to trust at least one person. Why not the man who was offering to save him from the mysterious client that wanted him burglarized or kidnapped? Redford could give him a tentative trust, for now.

“So you live in that little old house, all alone.” Jed’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Don’t get out much, do you?”

Redford silently shook his head, hair falling into his eyes. Back at the house, Jed had said that in twenty minutes the client would call. A glance at his watch confirmed that it had been nineteen minutes so far, and in a moment of silent communication, they both looked at each other, then at Jed’s cell phone, sitting on the table next to an empty shot glass. Redford found his breath coming quicker as the minute counted down, nervousness sour in the back of his throat.