Blood Debt

lightly. The muffled sound of car doors closing brought him to the window of the staff room where, tucked to one side, invisible from the parking lot, he watched a BMW reverse and pull away. The two people in it seemed to be fighting. He didn't recognize either silhouette.
    Probably kids looking for a quiet spot to mess around in. He yawned, thought about going back to sleep, thought about what the doc would say if anything went wrong, and decided it wouldn't hurt to look in on their uninvited guest.
    The access door to the electrical room was unlocked. He knew he'd locked it.
    Crepe-soled shoes silent against the tile, he entered the hidden room, half expecting an empty bed. The big cop was still tied down and out cold. He flicked on the light, hand raised to shield his eyes from the sudden fluorescent glare. The body on the bed didn't so much as twitch. A closer inspection seemed to indicate that nothing had changed.
    But something had.
    Hadn't there been a hunk of hair in the cop's face? No way he could brush it back tied down like he was.
    He tested the restraints with his finger. The left wrist was in the fourth hole, the right in the third. He usually did them up equally but, even half stunned, the cop had been fighting him and maybe…
    The cop shifted slightly, muttering a little. That was good. The sedative should be wearing off and a more natural sleep taking over.
    They used sedatives a lot in the prison hospital as it was easier than actually treating the patients and in his practiced opinion, the cop's chest now rose and fell in an unsedated rhythm.
    He frowned. Just over the left hip, there was a dark half circle on the pale blue denim. It looked moist, like…
    He touched it. It was almost dry but it looked like someone had been chewing on the cop's jeans. He closed his thumb and forefinger over the spot and tugged.
    "I don't wanna know what was going on in here," he said. The skin on the back of his neck prickled as he felt the weight of the cop's stare.
    When he turned his head, narrowed eyes were glaring up at him. "You got kinky friends, cop. Wanna tell me why they left you?"
    "I don't know what you're talking about."
    "Sure you don't."
    Unable to avoid it, Celluci rolled with the backhanded slap. "Fuck you," he growled.
    "Maybe." The closest phone was in the staff room. "We'll see what the doc has to say."
    "Where are we going?" Vicki spat the question through gritted teeth. Henry was driving again because he'd refused to give her the keys, had put on his Prince-of-Man face and said "No" in a tone that suggested arguing would be a waste of time. She'd gotten back in the car for Celluci's sake and had continually regretted it. In a minute, Henry was going to regret it, too. "The condo is that way."
    "There's a coffee shop on the corner up here, and we need to talk to a police officer."
    "Christ, Henry, this is Vancouver, there's a coffee shop on every corner." She reached for the wheel.
    When Henry maintained his grip, the resulting tussle was short; Vicki having spent thirty-two years mortal had no illusions about surviving the results of a moving car gone out of control. Besides, the seat belts got in the way of her attack.
    "Unlike most, this coffee shop has parking," Henry told her when she was back in the passenger seat, glaring out the window.
    "Somewhere for them to put the cruiser."
    And there was, in fact, a cruiser in the parking lot.
    "Go ahead, reinforce stereotypes," Vicki muttered as Henry parked the car and turned off the engine. "Now what?"
    "Now I go and have a word with the two constables, interrupting their break with a story of a body glimpsed from the side of the highway."
    She got out of the car when he did, grateful for the chance to untangle her personal space from his. "I can't believe you're actually going along with this. Hell, I can't believe I'm actually going along with this. We left him back there, Henry." With the car a barrier between them, she allowed a little'of the anger to slip from her grip—
    although who exactly she was angry with, she couldn't say. "We walked out on him. Left him helpless and alone."
    "It's a minimal risk, Vicki, and a risk he's willing to take in order to finish this once and for all. The police will be there within the hour.
    What could possibly go wrong?"
    "Famous last words." The night smelled of car exhaust and heated metal, less strongly here on the Coast than in Toronto but still too many people crammed into too small a space. Vicki