Blood Trail

boy.

    "Do you mind if we wait for Ms. Reid to arrive?" Celluci asked, before the man at the desk could decide if Vicki's words had been agreement or attack. He figured he'd already gone through his allotment of impassioned diatribes for the day.

    Frowning slightly, the man shrugged. "I guess it won't hurt if Barry sent you. He's the club's pride and joy, you know; nobody around here comes close to being in his league. He'll be going to the next Olympics and, if there's any justice in the world, coming back with gold.
    Damn!" As he reached for the phone, he motioned toward the stairs. "Clubroom's on the second floor, you can wait for Bertie up there."

    The clubroom had been furnished with a number of brown or gold institutional sofas and chairs, a couple of good sized tables, and a trophy case. A small kitchen in one corner held a large coffee urn, a few jars of instant coffee, an electric kettle and four teapots in varying sizes. The room's only inhabitant at 3:00 on a Monday afternoon was a small gray cat curled up on a copy of the Shooter's Bible who looked up as Vicki and Celluci came in then pointedly ignored them.

    From behind the large windows in the north wall came the sound of rifle fire.

    Celluci glanced outside then picked up a pair of binoculars from one of the tables and pointed them down-range at the targets. "Unless they're cleverly trying to throw us off the trail," he said a moment later passing them to Vicki, "neither of these two are the marksman we're looking for."

    Vicki set the binoculars back on the table without bothering to use them. "Look, Celluci, there's no reason for both of us to be stuck here until four. Why don't you swing around by Dr.
    Dixon's, take the twins and their father home, and then come back and pick me up."

    "While you do what?"

    "Ask a few questions around the club then talk to Bertie. Nothing you'd need to baby-sit me during."

    "Are you trying to get rid of me?" he asked, leaning back against the cinder block wall.

    "I'm trying to be considerate." She watched him fold his arms and stifled a sigh. "Look, I know how much you hate waiting for things and I doubt there's enough going on around here to keep both of us busy for an hour."

    As much as he disliked admitting it, she had a point. "We could talk," he suggested warily.
    Vicki shook her head. Another talk with Michael Celluci was the last thing she needed right now. "When it's over, we'll talk."
    He reached out and pushed her glasses up her nose. "I'll hold you to that." It sounded more like a threat than a promise. "Call the farm when you want me to start back. No point in me arriving in the middle of things."

    "Thanks, Mike."

    "No problem."

    "Now why did I do that?" she wondered once she had the clubroom to herself. "I know exactly what he's going to do." The chairs were more comfortable than they looked and she sank gratefully into the gold velour. "He only agreed to go so he could pump the wer about Henry without me around to interfere." Did she want him to find out about Henry?

    "He's already been searching into Henry's background," she told the cat. "Better he finds out under controlled conditions than by accident."

    It was a perfectly plausible reason and Vicki decided to believe it. She only hoped Henry would.

Thirteen
    "I'm sorry, you just missed him. He's gone back to bed."

    "Gone back to bed?" Celluci glanced down at his watch. "It's ten to four in the afternoon. Is he sick?"

    Nadine shook her head. "Not exactly, but his allergies were acting up, so he took some medicine and went upstairs to lie down." She placed the folded sheet carefully in the laundry basket, reminding herself to inform Henry of his allergies when darkness finally awakened him.

    "I'd hoped for a chance to talk to him."

    "He said he'd be up around dusk. The pollen count doesn't seem to be as high after dark." As she spoke, she reached out to take the next piece of clean laundry from the line and overbalanced. Instantly, Celluci's strong grip on her elbow steadied her. Almost a pity he isn't a wer, she thought, simultaneously thanking him and shaking off his hand. And it's a very good thing Stuart is out in the barn. "If you stay for supper," she continued, "you can talk to Henry later."

    Allergies. Henry Fitzroy did not look like the type of man to be laid low by allergies. As much as Celluci wanted to believe that a writer, and a romance writer yet, was an ineffectual weakling living in a fantasy world, he couldn't