THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

Eli’s progress report. He heard every word his friend said, and responded appropriately, but another part of his brain was busy cataloguing scents.
    Sandalwood, vanilla, leather, horse. All of these things he smelled, on top of Eli’s scent signature.
    Ainsley.
    Eli.
    Ainsley and Eli, enjoying a romantic tour of Old Montreal from the intimate confines of a horse-drawn carriage.
    Good. Excellent.
    He dug his nails into his palm.
    “So it looks like the repairs will be effected within the month, but it may take an extra few weeks to get some of the more esoteric lab equipment. We’ve purchased so much of this stuff to equip all the fallback labs. I just didn’t want to raise any unnecessary red flags by putting a hair-on-fire kind of rush on this.”
    Delano nodded his approval. “Good thinking. We’ve got all the capacity we need, even if we have to fall back to Calgary or Vancouver.”
    Eli inclined his head in acknowledgement.
    “What about Janecek?”
    “We’ve got ears to the ground everywhere, but no sign of him since the attack in St. Cloud. I’ve heard a rumor that he’s back in Prague, but I wouldn’t trust that piece of intelligence. It reeks of disinformation.”
    “He won’t have left the continent.”
    “Probably not even the country,” Eli agreed. “I’ll keep the pressure up until we find him. It’s hard to hide for long from other vamps.”
    “Indeed. Okay, what about the other matter I asked you to look into?”
    “The money’s going to an offshore account in the Cayman Islands.”
    “And?”
    “And those suckers are secret.”
    Delano raised an eyebrow. “And?”
    Eli sighed. “And as usual, money talks, at least when you have as much of it to throw around as you do.”
    “So what did you learn?”
    “The account belongs to a Lucida Machias, which is almost certainly not her real name.”
    “Spoken like a man who has a theory.”
    Eli took a photograph from the file in front of him and slid it across the table. “I think it’s probably this woman. Lucy Michaels.”
    Delano looked down at a photo of two women, standing arm in arm and smiling at the camera. One of whom was a much younger Ainsley, probably no more than nineteen or twenty. The other woman was shorter, finer boned than Ainsley, with curly dark hair to Ainsley’s straight fall of blond hair. He glanced over his shoulder, belatedly realizing he’d succumbed to an instinct to make sure Ainsley wasn’t within earshot. Stupid. She was upstairs in the penthouse, sleeping, a fact he’d taken trouble to ascertain before he and Eli had come down here to the lab to talk.
    “Where’d you get this?”
    “Ainsley’s apartment. But don’t worry. It’s a copy. The original is intact.”
    “And who is this Lucy Michaels?”
    Eli passed another document across the table, this one a copy of a microfiched newspaper engagement announcement. “She used to be Lucy Heatherington. In fact, that was her name when she posed for that snapshot with Ainsley. She left for college, but wound up having a baby out of wedlock in August eight years ago. No father named on the birth certificate. Came back to St. Cloud and worked for a book-binding company. She quickly met and married the guy in this picture, Weldon Michaels, who adopted her daughter, Devon. Michaels was the deputy chief with the local police department in St. Cloud at the time, and he’s now the Big Cheese there.”
    “Chief of Police.”
    “Yep.”
    Delano lifted an eyebrow. “And how does this lead to a secret bank account in the Caymans?”
    “Fourteen months ago, Lucy and Devon Michaels did a disappearing act.”
    Interesting. “A missing persons kind of disappearing act?”
    Eli shook his head. “There’s not even a murmur of anything like that. But they up and left. I got that directly from the woman who cleans house for them. She also thought Mr. Michaels might have a bit of a problem with his temper, judging by the bruises Mrs. Michaels tried to conceal.”
    “An abuser.”
    “No doubt about it. I had a little look-see into Lucy Michael’s medical records, thanks again to the power of the almighty dollar. She’s suffered enough fractures and contusions to raise her doctor’s suspicion, but when he confronted her, she wouldn’t cop to it. Too scared, is my bet. I mean, who’s she gonna turn to for help? Not the local PD, it would seem.”
    Delano gritted his teeth. Cowardly bastard, terrorizing a woman and child. Then another thought occurred