“Oh. I…I thought we were staying at my place. I don’t have anything to wear and I—”

“We’ll go pick some of your things up. Then we’ll come back. Please. I will just feel safer if we are behind these walls and the heavy security we have.”

“All right. We’ll stay here. Let’s go get my things.”

Rafe let her out of his arms, but as soon as he did he wanted her back again. The possessiveness of his desire floored him. He had never been the sort to slather someone with affection. But it seemed instinctive to do so when Renee was around. Hell, having sex in an elevator? At his age?

But he smiled just from the memory of it. And suddenly he wanted her alone—in his bed. Where he could make love to her properly.

“Is something wrong?” she asked him when he didn’t seem to be following her.

“Hmm? Oh. Nothing. Let’s go,” he said, guiding her to the elevator. The sooner they got to her place the sooner they would come back.

And right then that was all he wanted.

Chapter 17

Rafe followed her into her apartment a short while later and waited somewhat impatiently for her. His hunger for her was growing exponentially with each passing moment. They’d had a narrow escape that day. The committee could have taken them away from each other forever. He wasn’t about to squander a minute of what they now had.

“So tell me more about this undercover assignment, since you seem to know so much about it,” she called from the back bedroom.

Rafe cringed inside. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t even want her thinking about it. Considering it. But he was determined to appeal to her logic and the only way he was going to be able to do so was to make it sound exactly as dangerous as it was.

“There’s a sycophant that leads all of the sycophants out of the waterfronts. His name is Killean. There are many very powerful sycophants beneath him, but he is the main sycophant for that area. He, however, answers to a phant named Draz, who’s in charge of all of the sycophants on the Eastern Seaboard. Draz’s network of confidants would be impossible to break through. So all we can do is go for his lesser lieutenants. Like Killean. If we can find him. He is constantly on the move, keeping his location secret so we cannot pin him down.”

“And why can’t you send a vampire after him?”

“We can smell a phant from a mile away and they can smell a clean vampire the same way. The only way to fit in would be to become a phant ourselves. And once you do that you are lost to that world. There’s no way for us to go undercover. That means only a human could go undercover. Drug addiction is something humans can recover from—albeit with difficulty. Sycophanthropy is not. At least, not in the time it would take to worm into a position close enough to make a difference. Listen, this is a long-term con. That means long-term drug abuse. What about your job? It makes no sense that you would even consider a thing like this.”

“Here’s the thing,” she said, coming in from the back room with a duffel bag in hand. “I have a lot of time coming to me. Vacation, personal days, sick days…or I could transfer to vice and have them put me in undercover. Kill two birds with one stone. There are options.”

“In all of those options you have to pump poison into your body. I know you keep your body pristine and you do it for a reason. Are you going to fly in the face of all that discipline?”

“That discipline is what I will need to come back from drug addiction. And besides, I won’t have to use a lot. Just enough to get by. How often does a person have to use before they’ll be deemed ‘too dirty’ for a lawful vampire and dirty enough for a sycophant?”

Rafe frowned. She was taking this far too lightly. He didn’t like it.

“It only takes once for them to be ‘too dirty’ and it takes about a week to get clean again…depending on how clean the person was to begin with. But that’s pushing it. It would be safer at two weeks.”

“Great. So all I have to do is use once a week. Just enough for me to come off dirty.”

“And if others ask you to use while you’re undercover? It will look suspicious if you turn them down. You’re supposed to be a junkie. A junkie goes for a fix whenever he can get one. Anything less will blow your cover.”

“I’ll take each situation as it arises. You know, I used to work vice before I came to homicide. I know how it works. I never went full-blown undercover like this but I would dress as a prostitute and walk the corners. I realize that this would be different, but I’m fully capable of pretending to be something that I’m not. And I’m fully capable of remembering who I really am in the process, of not getting lost in it.”

“This is different. Very different. I don’t think you fully appreciate the lure and temptation and danger of hooking yourself on drugs. And what drugs would you use? Heroin?”

“God no. Needles leave track marks and are hard to come by clean. I’m not out to give myself AIDS or blood poisoning. And heroin is tough to control. Meth is just as bad. That stuff…I don’t hear of too many people coming back from using that stuff with any success. I would pick crack as my drug of choice. Crack is smoked. You can fake smoking. It will help me keep it down to the bare minimum.”

“This is all moot,” Rafe said with frustration. “You haven’t even known about vampires for two days and you’re willing to throw all in with us? Doesn’t that sound a little reckless to you?”

“I’m a cop. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s how to judge a situation and come to a quick conclusion. Your people need help, help I can provide. And besides, it’ll still be cop work. Stopping crimes. Catching bad guys.”

“Wouldn’t going to vice again be like stepping backward? Won’t it hurt your career?”

“Not if I direct the reasons for my switch. I can do it without too much damage. I can say it’s only temporary. They’ll go for it. It’ll mean switching precincts to get closer to the action, but I can switch back once this is over with. You can bet if your guy Killean is running an illegal operation of the magnitude you’re suggesting, then they have already got guys in play trying to get him. All I have to do is jump in. But what I need to jump in is something they don’t have. I need Killean’s location. If we find out where he is—or how to anticipate where he’s going to be—I can use that as an in. Because you can bet if you guys are having trouble finding him then humans are doubly so.”