Dead But Not Forgotten Read Online Free PDF Page B

shut in Kevin’s face and cut him off from Kenya and Glick. Kevin threw himself forward against the bar, but it gave only a little before a cold, inhumanly strong hand closed around the collar of his shirt and yanked him backward. Next thing he knew, he was pinned against a hard, chilly vampire body with an iron rod of a forearm across his throat to hold him still as Stan Davis glided up to face him.
    â€œSon of a bitch,” Kevin spat, and tried to slip free. He might as well have been trying to bend stone. “Let me go!”
    â€œIf I do that, you’ll only needlessly sacrifice yourself,” Davis said. “Calm yourself. If you want to see her alive again, you need to think before you act.”
    â€œThen
help me
!”
    â€œI will,” said the sheriff of Area Six. “For a price.”

    Once again, Kevin found himself sitting in a booth across from the vampire who called himself Detective Wallace. The difference this time was that next to Wallace was Stan Davis, and Stan’s vampires were ranged around the room in easy striking distance.
    â€œHe’s going to kill her,” Kevin said. Every nerve in his body was on fire with the need to
do something
, to charge out that door and find Glick. “I’ll give you what you want. Just help me get her back.”
    The silence stretched on. He might have been sitting across from two mannequins, except for the reaction in his gut to their presence. Finally, Wallace (if that was even his name) said, “You should have just let it alone. We knew he was heading for us. We’d have taken care of him.”
    â€œYou know what’s going on with him?”
    Wallace shrugged. It was such a tiny gesture that it hardly even registered as a ripple, but it conveyed the exact level of disinterest he must have felt. “He got his hands on something he shouldn’t have. We knew he’d come here for another hit when he started coming down.”
    â€œWhat the hell is it?”
    Silence, again. Finally, Davis said, “I thought you wished to bargain for the woman.”
    As if he owned her. Kevin took a few seconds to calm himself before he said, “All right. What do you want?”
    â€œA favor,” Stan Davis said. “It would seem having eyes in Area Five might benefit me. I don’t trust Sheriff Northman.”
    â€œYou want me to spy on
vampires
? On Eric Northman? How am I supposed to do that?”
    â€œHow you accomplish it is not my concern. That is what I want, or your partner dies.” There was something in Davis’s cold eyes that might have been amusement. “I think you have some attachment to her beyond only professional loyalty.”
    Kevin hated that the vampires could see it in him. But he also knew that the seconds were ticking away, and he remembered Glick’s bloody mouth, that limp cat in his hands. Remembered the dead teenager lying on the concrete of the dirty parking lot, covered with a sheet.
    He hated that a whole lot more.
    â€œAll right,” he said. “If I see something you need to know, I’ll tell you.”
    â€œNo,” Davis said. “You will tell me everything. Everything that Sheriff Northman does. I expect monthly reports.”
    Kevin realized he was clenching his hands so hard that his fingernails were gouging half-moons in his palms. “Fine, I’ll find a way,” he said.
    â€œOne thing. If you promise and do not deliver, I will kill you and your partner. It will not be quick.”
    This time, he had to swallow a mouthful of bile to get the words out. “I said yes. Now
help me
.”
    Davis sat back and glanced at Wallace. That was apparently all the authority that was needed, because Wallace slid out of the booth, crooked a finger, and three vampires answered his summons. They headed for the door.
    Kevin got up.
    â€œWhere do you think you’re going?” This time, Davis definitely sounded amused.