Only At Night update

When I got back to my desk, I found a fat manila envelope on my desk, dropped right in the middle of my workspace with the unmistakable air of a cat leaving the present of a dead mouse. I guessed it was a dossier on Chris Armstrong, the prodigal accountant. I straightened the little brass tines, opened the flap, and emptied out the contents. It turned out I had guessed right. Hopefully this boded well for my career as a detective.

The dossier was extensive, if not exhaustive—enough to make me worried about what Thana’s file on me looked like. I read through all of it, figuring that I would have to go cover to cover at some point, so I might as well do it while I was on the clock. Maybe a psychologist—or Sherlock Holmes—could’ve deduced the whole set-up from Armstrong’s background, but to me, it seemed he had as normal a life as anyone could get after the 1950s ended. 

He’d grown up in a small city in Virginia. Two parents, but they’d parted ways amicably when he was in his teens. Both of them stayed in the same zip code, so he’d lived with his mother while having frequent contact with his father. The dossier didn’t cover his social life—thank God, I felt Big Brother enough as it was—but he’d had good grades in school, been part of some clubs, and seemed to have no problem getting into a highly regarded college. Not Harvard or Yale. 

He plugged away there and at graduate school for the appointed amount of time, got a job at a Wall Street firm, but quit with a moderately sized nest egg to pursue a less hectic career. Good for him, I guessed. That brought him to my fair city, where he’d started working for Thana, a model employee for six years. Between that and his time on Wall Street, he was easing into his forties, still not married, and no kids, not that I expected an accountant with an A- average to owe child support payments. 

He lived alone in the nice part of town, was a member of a reading group and softball team, and if he had any intrigue in his life, it had to come by mail with his Netflix subscription. Nothing in his file cried out that he was on the verge of stealing from his employer and hitting the road, but then I suppose it wouldn’t. Those tend to be the people who don’t get trusted with millions of dollars. 

The envelope also held a set of keys with convenient tabs identified him. The key to his apartment, the key to his mailbox, the key to his locker at the gym… After how gratifyingly hazy the file had been on his inner life, this brought it right back to being creepy again. No wonder Thana had figured out about my vampire slaying. My manager brought micromanaging to a whole new level.

In the haze of uncooperative, unseeing facts, the keys felt real and tangible. I closed my hand around them. I wasn’t going to build some psychological profile of Armstrong, but I could check his apartment, check his mailbox, check his childhood home if I had to. He had to be somewhere and he had to have gone there from somewhere. There must be a trace. It was just a matter of finding it.

And maybe I didn’t have a crime lab to find a trace of dirt on someone’s shoe and determine he was holed up at Old Man MacMurray’s property, but I was willing to bet that if I could get my hands on something digital of Armstrong’s, I could hack through whatever protection he had in place. Which was probably, what, Norton Antivirus? Yeah. I could take that.

I put together a go-bag. Laptop, wires, USB drives, all the tools of the trade in a leather satchel that looked like what Indiana Jones would store his laptop in. It was what I took with me on service calls. This time, though, I took a box cutter out of my desk and stowed it in the satchel. It probably would’ve been paranoid to take a gun, but considering I had almost been killed walking through the parking lot a few days ago, I thought some sort of weapon was called for.

I saw Carina on my way out. She quirked one finely etched eyebrow at me, nostrils flaring as she took in my scent, big blue eyes raking over me, and I was vividly reminded of her naked, the milky white of her body, the coiled weight of her breasts tight on her chest and firm against mine, all the tiny quirks of her pert lips as she responded to me inside her, cute little mouth roiling and weaving the same as her folds did around my member. 

I could only attribute it to some odd blend of guilt and whetted appetite after the threesome with Thana and Abigail—or whatever it was. A part of me wanted to drown that whole encounter in Carina, replacing it all with both memories and new experiences. Hardness strobed through my cock. I wanted to fuck her right there, and I heard Carina let out a faint growl as she absorbed and processed and resisted my urge.

“Down boy,” she cooed, her eyes flicking up from my half-hard bulge. “Where are you off to in such a hurry? Wanted to see me?”

“Always,” I said. “But Thana gave me a job. I need to go take care of it.”

“Oh?” Carina folded her arms under her breasts, boosting them to further prominence. Not that they could get much perter or more high-set. “What’s the job?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Then I reconsidered—she deserved to know—and pulled her off the main hallway and into the recess of a doorway. “She knows about the—four guys.”

Carina’s eyebrows flicked upward. “Those four guys?”

“Yeah. Them. She wants me to find some guy for her to get her to keep quiet.”

Carina nodded. “Okay, I’ll talk to Richard, he might be able to help—“

“No, no,” I cut off the idea with a curt chop of my hand. “We’ve had enough help from him. We already owe him a favor.”

Her cupid’s bow lips pinched together. “He’s a friend, Ivan. He isn’t going to bleed us for everything he can get.”

“I still don’t want to owe him anything. Anyway, I haven’t even tried handling this on my own.”

“Have you ever been a bounty hunter before?” she asked incredulously.

“No, but I don’t think he’s ever been on the run before. It’s an even match.”

She sighed. “Fine. If that’s the way you want it.” She sniffed. I thought absurdly that she might be on the verge of tears before realizing she’d just picked up a new scent. “You’ve fucked.”

My stomach pitched downward. I had a tangle of excuses and explanations and justifications—and guilt, but before I could figure out which would make it to my mouth, Carina broke in with a blunt follow-through. “Thana or Abigail?”

“Abigail,” I said. “Thana watched.”

“How was she?”

“Pretty good,” I had to admit, disarmed by just how even-tempered Carina was being. I wondered what would happen if women realized how being calm and centered could hit so much harder than those soap opera hysterics they seemed to watch countless TV shows for. I wasn’t even defensive anymore, just numb.

She saw how my cheeks were burning and spread out her lips in a wide, cherubic grin. “Dude, calm down. We’ve been dating for five minutes. I’m not expecting you to give up your playboy lifestyle yet.”

“It’s not a…” I wondered how in the hell a person could put this. “It’s not a thing. Thana seemed to think as long as we were… allies…”

“Yeah, that’s the usu’ for vamps,” Carina said. “Thinking one whiff of their pussy will turn you into Renfield or whoever that guy was. Didn’t even do the job herself. Shame. I’ve kinda been wondering if I could outfuck her.”

“I don’t think you’re in the same sport,” I said. “She mostly seemed like she wanted to see how Abigail…”

“Took it?” Carina finished for me. “Maybe. Those two haven’t exactly been subtle about having their eye on you. Guess it made me kinda gun-shy about making my move. Anyway, if it smooths things over, go for it.”

“Go for it?” I repeated.

“Yeah. We’re all animals. When I’m wolfed out, I’ve been tempted to hump end-tables. Thana Morgan is way more understandable. She has that great bitchy vibe. Be pretty funny if you fucked her brains out the way you do mine.”

“Think I did that for Abigail. Thana seemed impressed.”

“Well then, that’s one ace up your sleeve. Who knows how eager she’ll be to kill you if you’re her favorite stud?” Carina chirped happily, eyes gleaming with mischief to show she was aware of precisely how she’d needled me. 

I grudgingly thanked her and went on my way. While Carina might think we were all animals, she definitely had it in her head that I was her animal. Anyone can pet a dog, but it only sleeps in one place. I didn’t even know if I minded the oddity of the stance, the strange mix of possessiveness and pride she took in me being some kind of cocksman par excellence—showing the vampires what they were missing and this werewolf was getting. 

But she was right. We did need an edge when it came to Thana Morgan, and if all we had at the moment was a ten-inch dick, it was a start.