Blood Trail

said, on a hot Sunday afternoon in August, everyone with a good reason to be out of district headquarters should be and I might be able to get the information I need."

    "I thought you were just going to go in and ask them for the names of everyone who has a .30
    caliber rifle registered?" A Chevy cut in front of them and Rose dropped back a careful three car lengths, muttering, "Dickhead," under her breath.

    "I am. But as they have no reason to tell me, a lot is going to depend on how I ask. And who."

    Peter snorted. "You're going to try to intimidate some poor rookie, aren't you?"

    Vicki pushed her glasses up her nose. "Of course not." It was actually more a combination of a subtle pulling of rank and an invoking of the "We're all in this together" attitude shared by cops all over the world. Granted, she wasn't a cop anymore, but that shouldn't affect the ultimate result.

    The OPP District Headquarters overlooked the 401 on the south side of Exidor Road, the red brick building tucked in behind a Ramada Inn. Vicki had the twins wait by the car.

    Had she still been a cop, it would've worked. Unfortunately, that she used to be a cop, wasn't good enough. Had she not then tried to "intimidate a poor rookie" it might still have worked, but the very intense young woman she spoke to knew Vicki had no right to the information,
    "working on a case" or not, and, her back up, refused to show it to her.

    Things would have gone better with the sergeant if Vicki hadn't lost her temper.

    By the time she left the building, most of the anger was self-directed. Her lips had thinned to a tight, white line and her nostrils flared with every breath. She'd handled the whole thing badly and she knew it.

    / am not a cop. I cannot expect to be treated like one. The sooner I get that through my fat head, the better. It was a litany easy to forget back in Toronto where everyone knew her and she could still access many of her old privileges, but she'd just been given a nasty preview of what would happen when the people on the Metro force were no longer the men and women she'd served with. Her hands clenched and unclenched as though they were looking for a throat to wrap around.

    She started for the car, standing in solitary splendor at the edge of the lot. With every step, she could feel the waves of heat rising up off the pavement, but they were nothing compared to the heat rising off her. Where the hell are the twins? She half hoped they'd done something stupid just so she could blow off some steam. With most of the distance to the car covered, she saw them heading across the parking lot from the Ramada Inn carrying bottles of water.

    When they met, both wer took one look at her and dropped their eyes.

    "It didn't work, did it?" Rose asked tentatively, peering up through her eyelashes. Under her hair, her ears were forward.

    "No. It didn't."

    "We just went for some water," Peter offered, his posture identical to his sister's. He held out the second of the plastic bottles he carried. "We, uh, brought you one."

    Vicki looked from the bottle to the twins and back to the bottle. Finally she snorted and took it. "Thank you." It was cold and it helped. "Oh, chill out. I'm not going to bite you." Which was when she realized that they thought she might.

    Which was so absurd that she had to laugh.

    Both sets of ears perked up and both twins looked relieved. If they'd been in fur, they probably would have bounced; as they weren't, they merely grinned and drank their water.

    Dominant/submissive behavior, Vicki thought draining her bottle. She worried about that a little. If all the wer but the dominant couple were conditioned to be submissive as a response to anger or aggression, that could cause major problems out in the world.

    As Rose went around the car to the driver's side, two heavily muscled young men lounging around the Ramada Inn pool began calling out lurid invitations. Rose yawned, turned her back on them, and got into the car.

    And then again, Vicki reconsidered, maybe there's nothing to worry about.

    She tossed her empty bottle into the back seat with Peter. "Let's go get lunch while I come up with another brilliant idea."

    Unlike a number of other places, London had managed to grow from a small town serving the surrounding farming community into a fair sized city without losing its dignity. Vicki approved of what she saw as they drove into the center of town. The city planners had left plenty of parks, from acres of