Biting Cold: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (CHICAGOLAND VAMPIRES SERIES)

from lockup to a med facility.”
    “How are the guards?” I wondered.
    “Also dead, as were two med techs, although we haven’t seen pictures yet. Information doesn’t flow in like it did when your grandfather was official.”
    I nodded. “So it looks like a hit on Paulie by someone with a grudge.”
    “That could be Tate,” Kelley said. “There could be facts we don’t know.”
    “There could be,” I said. “But let’s play devil’s advocate. What if this has nothing to do with Tate? Maybe somebody had a grudge against Paulie wholly unconnected to the mayor’s office. That’s not hard to imagine, since Paulie was running drugs.”
    “True,” Luc said. “But I’m a fan of Occam’s razor—the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Two Tates explode onto the scene, and one of their comrades goes rather dead. It’s not hard to imagine those two things are related.”
    “So for now, we work from the assumption that Tate killed Paulie,” Kelley said. “And brutally. Why?”
    “Cleaning up loose ends?” Luc suggested.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “Ethan and I talked about this earlier. Tate had nothing to lose from Paulie being alive. He’s the one who screwed Paulie, not the other way around.”
    “So what’s his motive?” Luc asked. “Tate’s all double-your-pleasure now, and the two of them are out there roaming the world.” Luc pretended to hold a microphone. “Seth Tate, you’ve been touched by evil and split into two people! Where are you going next?”
    He mimed extending the microphone to Kelley, who leaned solemnly over it. “To Disney World, Ron. I’m going to Disney World.”
    I looked up at the screen, the emptiness in Paulie’s gaze, and the wound at his throat. “Cutting ties,” I quietly said. “Maybe it’s not about revenge. Maybe it’s symbolic—Tate was cutting ties to his past. But why? And why cut him?”
    “What are you thinking, Sentinel?”
    I squinted at the screen. The wound was slick and clean, not unlike what happened when flesh met a sword. “The Tates literally flew out of the missile silo, and at least one of them has the power to control a vehicle. If Tate wanted Paulie dead, why not just wipe him out with magic? Why use a weapon? Why use a blade?”
    Luc and Kelley tilted their heads at the screen. “Huh,” Luc said. “Good catch, Sentinel.”
    “He had a sword in Nebraska,” I explained. “I don’t know if he created it or found it, but he was pretty good with it.”
    “If Tate was the perp,” Kelley suggested, “maybe he wanted a tangible act. He didn’t just snap his fingers and blow Paulie away. He wanted to participate in it, and he did so. Slowly—with purpose.”
    “So he’s a man with a purpose,” I said. “Or two men with a purpose, who aren’t afraid of murder. That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
    “Especially since we don’t know what the mission is,” Luc said.
    “It looks to be an angry mission,” I said. “A brutal, angry mission.”
    “True that, Sentinel.” Luc’s phone beeped, so he pulled it out and checked the screen.
    “Well, that is interesting,” he said, then tapped his phone a little more. “I signed up for the Hyde Park neighborhood watch. They get crime alerts from the CPD.”
    “Sneaky,” I complimented. “Not a bad way to stay in the loop.”
    “No, it is not,” Luc said, then tapped the panel for the overhead screen. “Especially when it gets us a picture of our perp from the clinic’s security camera.”
    Kelley and I both leaned forward, then watched as an image of a man who looked just like the former mayor of Chicago filled the screen.
    “Looks like we can confirm Tate has an agenda,” Luc said.
    I sighed. “Yeah,” I agreed. “Problem is, which Tate? And which agenda?”
    We stared at Tate’s picture in color and in black and white. We blew it up, then shrank it again, trying to discern any identifying feature that might tell us which Tate had done the deed. But there were no scars. No moles. No hair whorls or visible birthmarks. By all accounts, there was nothing distinguishable about this particular Tate.
    So no dice.
    That was problematic in two ways. First, it got us no closer to figuring out what the Tates were and where they were going. If we were to have any hope of closing these guys down, we needed to know what they were so we could plan our attack accordingly. Otherwise, we were severely outmatched against two magical something or others