Night and Day (Book 2): Bleeding Sky Read Free

and a lot worse.”
    “So
are we blown?”
    I
shook my head. “Don’t think so. Your story was credible and they’re not
going to ask any questions. By tomorrow night, the job should be done and it
won’t matter anyway.”
     
    It
was about twenty after ten when we got back to the car. The rest of our
stroll around the block had been quiet and uneventful.
    “I
think we’ll skip the return visit to follow her home,” I said as he slid
behind the wheel. “We already know she’ll head home around midnight, and
she’s going to be watching her rear-view mirror very carefully on the drive
uptown. No reason to spook her again.”
    “So
what’s next for tonight?”
    “I
go to bed early for a change. You spend a few hours with Sara, and go over
the client meeting tomorrow night. She’s been in on a few, and knows how it
works. Pay attention to what she tells you. We like satisfied customers and
that doesn’t happen when the client cops an attitude because of something
you say.”
    Night
and Day Investigations operates out of the Triangle Building, where
Expedition and Second meet at Hennessy, overlooking Expedition Square.
Thanks to some financial wheeling and dealing by my late partner, we owned
the building. Which meant I owned half the building. Bain owned the other
half, just as he owned half of Night and Day.
    Brenner
pulled the car to the curb on Second behind my Jeep and we got out. The
square was quiet, the streets mostly empty. Almost five and a half years
after the war, and more than two years after humans were released from the
internment camps, a lot of people stayed off the streets after dark. It
takes a long time for bad memories to fade.
    “Mr.
Welles,” Benny, the night security guard in the lobby, said with a nod as we
passed. I smiled and nodded back. It was the least I could do. Well, that
and the nice raise I’d given him last fall after he killed a vampire intent
on turning me.
    As
usual, I avoided the antique elevator and went up the stairs to the fourth
floor, Brenner right behind me. After Joshua’s death, one of the first
things I’d done was get an elevator company in to check it. They said it was
fine, a hundred percent. That was good to hear. No accidents, no lawsuits
from the families of those killed when they hurtled to their death in our
elevator. But I still didn’t like the way it creaked going up and down, so I
stuck to the stairs.
    Sara
was behind her desk when we came in. Sara Tindell. Small, blonde, cute. And
destined to remain that way forever, unless misadventure of some sort
stopped her heart from beating and ended her life. We have two secretaries
at Night and Day. Sara for the night investigator, Cynthia DiPierro during
the day for me.
    She
smiled at Brenner, then gave me a bigger smile. After Joshua was murdered,
we’d had a little....well, I guess you’d call it a fling. It never quite
reached the level of an affair.
    I
hadn’t initiated it. She had. Male Vees seem to lose their sex drive along
with their erections when they turn. Or maybe the fact that they have no
lead in their pencils, as Sara put it, just made it unimportant to them.
Female Vees, on the other hand, seemed to retain those needs, as evidenced
by Mrs. Maxwell. And Sara.
    I’d
put Sara off as long as I could, but it came down to either going along with
it or losing her as a secretary. And she’s a good secretary. So I took one
for Night and Day Investigations.
    It
was okay. I think she enjoyed it more than I did. I could never get past her
low body temperature. I like my women warm.
    After
a few months, it went from weekly to every other week to monthly to done. It
wasn’t anything I said or did. Maybe she got what she wanted. Maybe she sensed my
unease. Maybe I didn’t hit the sweet spot for her in that department.
Whatever it was, she stopped suggesting it, and that was that. At least for
the time being.
    “Everything
go all right?”