[Anita Blake 17] - Skin Trade Read Online Free PDF Page B

executioners.”
    â€œHow did you know to call me?” I asked.
    â€œThey’re only holding the message back from the media, not from other marshals.”
    â€œSo, you know about the writing on the wall; that’s why you called me.” The question was, did he know about the head? How good were his sources these days? Once he’d been like a mysterious guru to me. All-knowing, all-seeing, and better at everything than I was.
    â€œYou telling me that you aren’t going to fly to Vegas to hunt this bastard?”
    â€œNo, I’m definitely going.”
    â€œThere’s something you’re not telling me,” he said.
    I leaned against the side of the building and said, “You know about the head?”
    â€œThat the vampires took the head of Las Vegas’s executioner, yeah. I’ve been wondering why they took his head. They’re vampires, not ghouls or a rogue zombie. They don’t eat flesh.”
    â€œEven ghouls that cache food almost never take the head. They prefer meatier bits.”
    â€œYou’ve seen ghoul food caches?” he asked.
    â€œOnce,” I said.
    He gave a small laugh. “Sometimes I forget that about you.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThat you are one of the only people who run into weirder shit than I do sometimes.”
    â€œI don’t know whether to be insulted, flattered, or scared,” I said.
    â€œFlattered,” he said, and I knew he meant it.
    â€œThey didn’t take the head for eating,” I said.
    â€œYou know what happened to it?”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œWhat, I need to ask?”
    I sighed. “No,” and I told him about the little present I’d gotten at work this morning.
    He was quiet for so long that I continued talking. “We’re just lucky it came in on the only morning that I do client meetings all day. God knows what Bert, my business manager, would have done with it if I hadn’t been there to make him wait for forensics.”
    â€œYou really think it was coincidence that the package got there on the only morning that you’d be in?” Edward said.
    I leaned a little harder against the wall, clutching the cell phone with one hand and my keys with the other. I suddenly felt exposed out there in the parking lot, because I understood exactly what Edward meant.
    â€œYou think Vittorio’s been monitoring me. That he knows my schedule.” I looked out into the daylit parking lot. There was no place to hide. Daylight meant there weren’t that many cars. I had this sudden desire to be inside, out of sight.
    I put my key in the door and used my shoulder to hold the phone while I opened the door.
    â€œYes,” he said. That was Edward: high on truth, low on comfort.
    I spilled in through the door and got it closed behind me before the two guards inside could do much more than push themselves off the wall. They were both in black T-shirts and jeans, only the guns and holsters ruining the casual look. They tried to talk to me, and I waved at them that I was on the phone. They went back to holding up their section of wall, and I went for the far door. The door was one of only two ways into the underground area where Jean-Claude and his vampires slept. It was why we had two guards in the storage room at all times. Boring duty, which meant they were two of the newer hires; I remembered that one of them was Brian, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember the other one’s name.
    â€œAnita, you still there?” Edward asked.
    â€œGive me a minute to find some privacy.”
    I opened the door leading down and closed it behind me. I was standing at the head of stone steps that led down and down. I kept one hand on the wall as I started down. High heels were not meant for these steps. Hell, they seemed carved for something that didn’t walk quite like a human being at all. Something bigger than a person, with different legs maybe.
    â€œVittorio