Harris is taking questions from the press, mostly giving pat cop-speak answers that imply Gloria is simply coming to the station to answer questions. O’Sullivan was her business partner. She’s not been implicated in any wrongdoing nor is she a “person of interest.” This is all routine. The press will be kept informed of any breaks in the case. Now, good night.

Gloria stands beside him, mute, subdued. When she sees David and me standing at the back of the crowd, she looks away quickly, not meeting our eyes. I feel David tense beside me.

Harris ushers Gloria to one of the waiting patrol cars. She doesn’t resist. Camera strobe lights break the midnight gloom like a hundred rising suns. David stands beside me, his rage burning nearly as hot.

“That bastard,” he says. “He waited for her.”

I wish I could say something to ease David’s concern. In truth, what Harris did is exactly what I would have done. Exactly what David and I have done in pursuit of a bail jumper. Waited to catch Gloria alone. Waited to get her away from David, her human pit bull. I watch the car pull away, followed by a dozen media vans. I hope Gloria’s smart enough now to lawyer up before she answers any of Harris’ questions. I saw him in action. He’s one savvy cop.

I’ve never seen David so distraught. I don’t know what to do to help him. Part of me doesn’t want to. A day ago, I thought he and Gloria were quits. It galls me to acknowledge he hid the fact that he’d been calling her and begging her to get in touch with him.

Should I tell him the reason she contacted me today? That she wanted me to act as go-between and convince Rory to stop blackmailing her for sex?

Which would mean telling David that Gloria had slept with Rory.

How bad could that be?

The look on David’s face answers that question.

He’s watching the departing cop car, too, his dejection so intense I feel it like an ache in my own heart. Tempting though it is, I’m not cruel enough to add to his misery.

At least not tonight.

“Go home, David. There’s nothing more we can do. Gloria will show up on your doorstep as soon as she’s released. You know she will. Where else would she go?”

Hearing that galvanizes him into action. The last glimpse I have of my partner is David in the front seat of his Hummer, pulling out of the parking lot, cell phone at his ear. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s calling his own lawyer, ordering him to get his ass down to the police department to protect Gloria.

I turn to go back into the bar. When I arrived earlier, this lot had been full. I had to park my car in the street, on Broadway. Cutting through the bar is the shortest route.

It’s been a hell of a long day. Both the blood drive that drove me to Culebra and the sex drive that brought me back here are gone—dissipated like rain on a parched desert floor. All I want to do now is go home and go to sleep.

Hey, good-looking. I’ve been waiting for you.

The intrusion of a strange vamp voice in my head brings me to a stop. The bar is still crowded, but the happy-hour martini mob is long gone. The crowd now is young and raucous. The smell of beer and pot is not as strong as it was in Beso de la Muerte, but it’s there. If Detective Harris had the nose of a vampire, this place would have been slated for a raid by the vice squad.

I look around. Where are you?

Over here. In the corner.

I follow the direction of the voice. There’s a man, a young man, standing by himself in the shadows. He has wavy brown hair, shoulder length, so soft looking and shiny my fingers itch to run themselves through it. I can’t quite make out his face, but he’s dressed in jeans and an open-neck polo, and I let my eyes drift from broad shoulders to a narrow waist. Farther south.

Every nerve in my body starts to vibrate.

Who are you? Are you working for Williams?

He smiles and steps into the light. The face of an angel.

Who’s Williams? Culebra sent me. He thought you might need a—distraction tonight.

Whoa. Suddenly, fatigue and lethargy are gone. Blood starts pounding, sending such a strong current of desire through me, my knees go weak.

The angel senses my reaction. Was Culebra right?

God bless him, I respond. Your place or mine?

MORNING AT THE COTTAGE IS MY FAVORITE time. Sipping a cup of fresh-brewed coffee on the deck outside my bedroom is my favorite way to pass the morning—even a dark winter’s morning like this one. It helps, too, that I’m blissfully sated from a night of blood and sex. It could be storming outside and I’d still be purring.

I reluctantly sent Culebra’s “distraction,” Lance, on his way a few moments before. Turns out he’s an underwear model for Jockey and has an early morning photo shoot up the coast in Malibu. Seeing him in and out of underwear last night answered one of life’s biggest questions. Are those bulges in the magazine ads real? I’m happy to report that they are—at least Lance’s is. No padded jock straps necessary for that guy.

Turns out, too, that Lance has a last name, Turner, and a brain as agile as that lean, athletic body. He made me laugh, and he made me sweat. I’d like to see him again.

I’ll have to find some appropriate way to thank Culebra.

Glowing from the infusion of healthy vamp blood, second only to a human’s in restorative powers, and feeling comfortable in my skin for the first time since the fiasco with Gloria started, I sink into a deck chair and take in the view.

I live in Mission Beach, steps from the boardwalk. I was a sophomore in college when my grandmother died and left me her fifty-year-old cottage. I’ve lived here ever since, though I had the place rebuilt after the fire Avery set destroyed it a while back.

I love it here. Sometimes, in the summer, it’s a bother to be interrupted by some half-drunk partier, leaning on the doorbell to ask to use the bathroom. When I was human, I’d threaten to call the cops. As a vampire, all I have to do is show my true face and I never have a repeat offender. Never.

In winter, however, it’s different. I think it’s odd that winter in San Diego is considered the off-season. True, there is the overcast and the fog, a blending of shades of gray that often makes it hard to determine where the sky ends and the ocean begins. But the air temperature seldom dips below sixty and while the water isn’t warm, it attracts a better surfing crowd. Not the sun-worshipping, hard-drinking, noisy, young hordes of summer, but a mature, serious, respectful group who honor the ocean rather than attempting to beat it into submission with their boards.

Wow. I hold the warm cup in both hands and press it against my forehead. That was almost poetic. Must be a combination of the fog rolling in picturesque swirls off the water and the calm that comes from a satisfying night of sex.

I know this glow won’t last long. Williams said the were Sandra was coming to see me. Then there’s David and his angst. I don’t want to think about what kind of mood he’s going to be in. Hopefully, if he comes into the office, it won’t be with Gloria in tow.

The telephone rings as I’m about to go back downstairs for a second cup of coffee. It’s my cell phone. I grab it up and keep going, glancing at the caller ID. I expect to see our office number or David’s cell number, but instead it’s one I don’t recognize.

“Hello?”

There’s a moment of silence before it’s broken by a breathy, “Anna?”

Great. Gloria. I resist the urge to disconnect and turn off the phone. “What do you want?”

“I need to see you.”

“I don’t want to see you. We have nothing to talk about. Are you with David? Does he know you’re calling me?”

Another silence. “I haven’t spoken with David since I left you both at the restaurant.”