Sophia (28 page)

“I’m not complaining. He got more out of Hugh than we did. Like I said, I know the bar and I know Curtis. I’m going out there today. You wanna come with?”

“Sure, sounds fun.”

“And Robbie?”

Leighton made a dismissive sound. “Like they’d let me out of this place without him. We’ll come by your house. Give me an hour.”

“Bring all your guns, Leighton. You’ll need ‘em.”

* * * *

Colin was loading the magazine for his Benelli when he heard the truck coming down the drive to his house. He secured the shotgun in its combat sling, set the whole thing down and pulled open his front door. Leighton was standing next to one of the big Suburbans, talking on her cell phone, while Robbie walked around back and reached into the cargo compartment, emerging with a huge, black duffel bag. He slung it over his shoulder, strolled over to Colin’s Tahoe and dumped the bag on the ground.

Colin nodded to Robbie and leaned back inside to grab his keys. Beeping the locks open on his truck, he grabbed his gear and walked out onto the porch, closing the house door behind him. Robbie had already tossed the black duffel into the Tahoe. Colin eyed it curiously as he dropped his own gear next to it, but Robbie didn’t offer and Colin didn’t ask.

The two men leaned against the truck, watching Leighton on the phone. Colin didn’t know with whom she was talking, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t girl chat. She was listening carefully and responding with short, terse sentences he couldn’t hear.

Colin wondered again about the duality that was Leighton, with her model’s good looks and her concealed weapons. He wondered if she’d always been this way, or if Raphael had somehow molded her into what he needed.

“What do you think it’s like?” he asked Robbie thoughtfully.

“What’s that?”

He nodded in Leighton’s direction. “Having a vampire lover.”

Robbie’s dark eyes crinkled with amusement. “You’ve never . . .
indulged
with a vamp?”

Colin frowned and shook his head. “Hell, no.”
Not intentionally
, he added to himself. After all, he hadn’t known Sophia was a vampire back then.

Robbie laughed, teeth flashing. “Once they draw blood, the sex is terrific, man. But it’s more than sex if you’re actually mated to someone, like Cyn.” He gave Colin a challenging look. “Or like me,” he added.

Colin drew up in surprise. “You? Shit. I didn’t mean anything. I was just curious.”

“
De nada
,” Robbie said casually. “My wife Irina is Vampire. A tiny little thing who runs Raphael’s household with an iron fist.”

“She runs you pretty much the same way,” Cyn interjected, having joined them without either of them noticing.

Robbie grunted in agreement, looking like a very satisfied man. “You hear me complaining? So, what’d you find out?”

Colin quirked his eyebrows in question.

“That was an old contact of mine. A gun seller. Not altogether legal, but not a bad guy either. His business gives him a certain amount of access to his customer’s activities. Sometimes he has a problem with those activities and he’s willing to talk, including the white supremacist groups operating out of Idaho and parts west. He tells me there’s a whole lot of ordinance being trucked this way, along with the people to use it.”

“Damn. Let’s hope they haven’t arrived yet,” Colin muttered. “I hope you guys came prepared. What’s in the duffel?”

Robbie grinned and unzipped the black bag, pulling the two sides wide. He reached inside and pulled out an Uzi submachine gun, tossing it to Colin. He then dug farther in the bag and produced a Point Blank ballistic vest for Leighton, handing it to her with orders to “put it on.”

Colin inspected the matte black Uzi. He was familiar with the weapon, but preferred his Benelli. He handed it back to Robbie who was watching a grumbling Leighton don her vest. It was a concealable model, the same thing worn by most police departments in the country. It was also probably the only kind she’d be willing to wear. Anything heavier would weigh her down and restrict her movements.

“Where’s yours?” she asked Robbie, giving him a narrow look.

“In the bag. I’ll put it on if I need it.”

“Why can’t I—”

“Cuz I promised Raphael I’d take care of you. But mostly because you’ve got a piss poor sense of self-preservation.”

“I do not,” Leighton objected, but she was laughing when she said it.

Colin shook his head. He wasn’t even going to
try
to figure that one out. “Let’s roll,” he said out loud. “We’ve got a fair drive ahead of us.”

* * * *

“Colin here’s a virgin.” Robbie was leaning forward from his seat in the back, his substantial presence inserted between the two front bucket seats.

“I am not,” Colin protested immediately.

“Not like that,” Leighton clarified with a sideways grin. “Robbie’s talking vampire virgin. You’ve never been bit?”

“No,” he snapped.

“Really? I would have sworn there were sparks flying between you and that Sophia chick. Definite
sexual
tension,” she added, drawing out the word.

“That was a long time ago,” he responded stiffly. “And she never told me she was a vampire.”

Next to him, Leighton raised her eyebrows, but didn’t make any further comment about Sophia. “So what’s this place we’re going to?” she asked instead.

“Babe’s. It’s what we’d call a good ol’ boy bar back home. Sits just off the highway, the other side of the forest. It’s open five, sometimes six, days a week, but Friday and Saturday are the big nights, just like everywhere else. There’s at least one fight every weekend, and that’s just counting the ones where someone gets arrested or someone else ends up in the hospital. It’s a pain in the butt, but it’s been here a while, since back in the sixties. Strictly speaking, it’s not a part of Cooper’s Rest, but we’re the closest town to it.

He spotted the break in the trees signaling the bar’s parking lot. “Here ya go,” he told her.

The parking lot was full, or nearly so, when they pulled even with the bar. It wasn’t a big lot—just two rows in front, perpendicular to the highway. The rows had just enough room between them to maneuver, with spaces for four or five trucks to park side by side. And trucks were just about the only kind of vehicle anyone ever parked here. Colin surveyed the crowded lot and frowned. It looked more like a Friday night, than a weekday afternoon. One of the logging crews must have shut down early.

He drove past and made a U-turn, then parked his Tahoe in the last space next to the highway, driving right into to it with the front of his truck facing outward, so that he could make a fast exit, if it came to it. It probably wasn’t necessary, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d wanted a quick departure from Babe’s either. Fights were as common as the beer here, and the patrons played rough.

His tires were barely off the highway asphalt, his door opening right into traffic, if there’d been any. A Dodge Ram dually—a big truck with four wheels on the rear axle—was parked next to him, nose in to his tail. A scant few inches separated the two trucks, with the other guy’s passenger side squeezed right up against his.

He checked the highway and slid out of the truck. He went to close the door, but stopped when he realized Leighton was climbing over to his side from the passenger seat, rather than attempting the narrow space on the other side. His momma having raised him to be a gentleman, Colin held the door open while she levered herself onto the console and over with a surprising amount of ease, finally sliding across his seat and out onto the dusty roadside.

She grinned at him as she stepped out, then stood staring up at the rusted and bullet-pocked sign that hung from the top of a lodge pole pine at the edge of the parking lot.

“Paul Bunyan?” she asked, eyeing what had once been a fairly decent rendering of the huge lumberjack in his red plaid shirt, arm draped over the wide shoulders of his blue ox, Babe. She glanced over at the bar and back again, giving him a skeptical look.

Colin grimaced. “Yeah, well. The couple who opened the place back in the day were university professors from down south somewhere. They retired up here and opened this place. You’d think they’d know better, being professors and all. But while they were expecting the bar from Cheers, what they got was a lot closer to Cops. When Leon’s dad bought the place off of them—pretty much for a song, I’m told—he kept the sign. It was cheaper than buying a new one, and the name’s okay. This is lumber country, you know.”

“Who’s Leon?”

“Leon Pettijohn. He and his wife Ellen took over from his dad a few years back. That was before I got here, but word is the old man retired to Mexico for the weather. Leon’s here most nights, but Ellen works at the grocery in town. Far as I know, she never comes to the bar. Most women don’t.”

Leighton shifted her attention, her eyes scanning the nearly full parking lot before moving on to the bar itself. Not that there was much to see. Babe’s was a small, single story, concrete block building, with a satellite dish on the roof. The whole thing was painted black, and Colin knew if you got close enough it looked like the paint had been rolled on thick by someone more interested in getting it done than getting it done right. The only window was a tiny triangle of filthy glass set in the front door. The bar was set well back into the woods, with thick tree trunks crowding around the three sides that didn’t face the parking lot. Those trees blocked out what sunlight there was, leaving the whole building surrounded by bluish-gray shadows. When combined with the black paint job, they gave the whole thing a rather sinister feel.

Colin took another look at the trucks crowding the lot. “Fuck it,” he said and followed Robbie to the back of the Tahoe. Yanking open the cargo hatch, he grabbed his vest and pulled it on with a few swift movements. Robbie met his gaze and Colin shrugged. “Too many trucks in this lot. Could be nothin’, one of the logging crews shut down early. But could be our guys are having an impromptu meeting in there.”

Robbie frowned, then turned to look at Leighton and shook his head. Swearing under his breath, he pulled over the huge duffel, unzipped it and dug out his own vest. Leighton wandered back, her gaze sharpening when she saw what they were doing.

 
“What’re you thinking?” she asked Colin. Her right hand was resting at her waist, just inside her jacket. Not touching her weapon, but close enough that she could get to it. She felt it, too. Something not quite right.

“I think maybe you should wait here,” he said. “This isn’t exactly a place for ladies.”

Robbie coughed and Leighton gave him a dirty look before saying, “I didn’t come all this way to sit in the car. Besides, you’re the one who said to bring my guns. I’m guessing that’s because you thought they might come in handy.”

Colin shot a quick look at Robbie, who shrugged. “Don’t look at me, man. I’ve seen her shoot.” He reached into the duffle and handed Leighton one of the Uzis, along with three thirty-two round magazines, taking the second gun and some ammo for himself.

Leighton tucked two magazines into the thigh pockets of her black combats and slapped the other into the weapon with a practiced ease Colin hadn’t expected, despite her claims of experience and Robbie the Ranger’s endorsement. She glanced up and saw him staring.

“I’m pretty sure that weapon’s illegal,” he observed blandly.

“I’m licensed as a private bodyguard for Lord Raphael in every state in the Union,” she said, grinning. “I can show you my permits back at the compound, if you’d like.”

“I bet. I’ll go in first. You two hang back a couple steps. Most likely, I’ll know everyone in there, or they’ll know me, anyway. I hope you’re not shocked by foul language, Leighton.”

Robbie laughed out loud at that and Leighton muttered darkly, “Yeah, fuck you, Robbie. You fink.”