Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
He rubbed his temples. He was seriously on the verge on one giant motherfucking headache.
Jackson jumped from his chair and rubbed his hands together gleefully, like a youthling preparing to do something naughty. “Think about it. The two of you could masquerade as a couple so that no one realizes she’s down there to scope things out. You could attend the regional awards gala and be all over each other. Dancing, kissing, slipping into one of the private salons for a little—” he made a kissing sound “—and no one would think anything of it.”
Clenching his jaw so hard that his molars ached, he did his best to ignore Jackson’s asinine idea. “That reminds me. I’m cancelling the ceremony. It doesn’t seem right to celebrate Guardians’ achievements when several of our own are suffering. I’ll postpone the event and give out the awards another time.”
A few of them murmured in agreement.
“Plus,” Lily said, “it may not be safe. This attack was orchestrated, premeditated. Guardians are clearly a target and until we find out who’s responsible, Darkbloods could strike again and injure innocent members of the vampire community.”
“I disagree,” Alfonso said, shaking his head. “Cancelling the ceremony would be a big mistake.”
Santiago scowled. He didn’t like to be challenged.
“In my personal opinion,” Alfonso added benignly.
“A mistake?” The more he thought about it, the more his pupils dilated with anger. Trying to keep his people safe wasn’t a strong enough reason to cancel the damn party?
It was Santiago’s responsibility to keep the region as free from Darkblood scourge as possible, not Alfonso’s. He needed to ensure the safety of the small vampire community who lived peacefully among the humans here in the Northwest. Thanks to Dom’s contact in the Seattle Police Department—a man he knew through some military training they’d done together—a meth lab explosion was what the papers had reported. Damage control when humans died or disappeared was difficult enough. But an entire building?
He stood, kicking the chair out from behind him and paced around the room. He’d root out these bastards once and for all. Wearing a daysuit, he’d find where they slept in those coffins of theirs and let Misery carve them into little pieces. They’d find justice all right. At the point of his knife. He sure as hell didn’t have time for a damn party.
“Listen,” Alfonso said. Santiago spun around to see him holding up his palms. “I’m not trying to challenge your authority on this, but in my opinion, the ceremony shouldn’t be cancelled. Darkbloods may not know the extent of the collateral damage. If you cancel it, they’ll know they succeeded. They’ll scurry around like a bunch of rats when the cat dies and you’ll have more problems on your hands. On the outside, I say it should be business as usual. Don’t let them know how deeply they affected us. And then behind the scenes, when they’re least expecting it, we nail their asses.”
Jackson pulled out a half sandwich from somewhere and took a bite. “He does make a good p—”
“Stop. Just shut the hell up. Everyone.” Santiago fired off a string of expletives in several languages, ignoring that they all were lifting their eyebrows and rolling their eyes at his outburst. Let them. It was no skin off his nose. They could bellyache all they wanted, but in the end, it was his decision to make.
The room was uncomfortably silent as he absently scraped at another splinter in this thumb. Last thing Santiago wanted was for Darkbloods to think they had the upper hand. Leave it to a guy who spent years inside Darkblood operations feeding intel to the Agency, to know how the bastards thought and operated. He had to admit, Alfonso did make some good points.
“We’d have to step up security,” Santiago said finally. “Eliminate all possible breaches.”
For the next few minutes, they hashed out exactly what needed to be done if the ceremony wasn’t cancelled.
“That doesn’t solve the original problem,” Lily said quietly when everyone was done talking. “We don’t know the source of the leaks.”
“I still think you and Roxy should pretend to be lovers,” Jackson said bluntly, wiping the back of a hand over his mouth. “What a fun way to find the traitor.”
“I don’t care about fun.” Santiago pinched the bridge of his nose as his head began to pound. The lingering effects of UV exposure weren’t something he needed right now. If he had known all this was going to happen, he would have fought the urge to go to the Ridge. “Some might know she’s the head tracker at the Academy.”
Jackson shrugged. “So what? We have various trackers there all the time. She could be your new hot girlfriend who’s in town because she’s going to the ceremony with you. She could poke around, ask a few innocent questions, and no one would be the wiser.”
Alfonso turned to Lily. “Do you think she’d go for it?”
“I could ask,” she said.
“I don’t see why it has to be her, why we have to involve an outsider.” Santiago was well aware that his argument was getting flimsier, but this couldn’t be the only solution. “I’m perfectly capable of reading people. I’ll go down there myself.”
Lily laughed. “And you’re about as subtle as my fist to Jackson’s nose. Seriously, Santiago, Roxy’s amazing at analyzing people and their underlying motivations.”
“Hey,” Jackson protested. “Leave my nose out of this.”
Lily recounted an event that happened when Roxanne was mentoring her out in the field when she was a trainee at Tracker Academy. “We were following Darkblood scent in New Orleans, which led to a small voodoo shop in the French Quarter. With all the smells permeating the small space—herbs, potions, gris-gris—I was having a hard time distinguishing the one I’d been tracking. The shop owner, an elderly human woman whose face was as weathered as a dried apple, was arguing with a customer. It was obvious she didn’t want him to leave. I assumed she wanted him to buy one of her concoctions, but Roxy said it had nothing to do with making a sale. She could tell that the woman’s motives for keeping him in her shop were pure, not selfish. But the man didn’t listen. Ten minutes later, he was killed in the middle of Canal Street by a runaway carriage.”
Jackson sat forward in his chair. “So the old woman was a psychic.”
“Yes, and Roxy knew she was telling the truth simply by listening to her.”
“Remind me not to invite her to play poker,” Jackson said.
Alfonso was nodding his head. “That’s pretty compelling, Santiago. She didn’t have to talk to the woman to get a good read on her intentions. All she did was listen. I say you should do this thing. What would it hurt?”
Santiago was fighting a losing battle and started to protest again.
“Guess you could always send her down there on her own,” Lily said.
“Kind of defeats the purpose though,” Alfonso countered. “People would wonder why she was there. Sure, you could invent something, but this is the simplest solution of all. She’s Santiago’s girlfriend, in town to attend the gala. Doesn’t get much simpler than that.”
With every beat of his heart, this headache grew stronger. Santiago did not want to pretend to be Roxanne Reynolds’s lover. That would mean she’d have to share his room at the field office, that they’d have to put on a show and act like they cared about each other. She was too different from him to make a charade like that work.
Besides, he didn’t let affairs of the heart control him in real life, so he sure as hell didn’t want to pretend they did. Hell, he wouldn’t even know how to act in a fake relationship. He rarely let himself carry on with a woman longer than a few days and he always kept his heart out of it. His father’s philandering