FORGET DRIVE-IN ZOMBIES and cow-mutilating drug lords. That was last night. Ric and I had slept in until noon. We should have been ravenous, but could only nibble on road snacks.

Today was the first day of the rest of my life, and the really scary part of my trip back to Wichita was starting now, this afternoon, with Ric and me sitting in Dolly’s front seat wearing what could pass for our “Sunday best” anywhere, preparing to enter a bland brick three-story building to find out all about … me.

The place looks like a morgue, Irma warned me. You do not want to go there, Street, in any meaning of the phrase. We do not want to go there, even with a bodyguard as professionally accomplished as Ric.

“Hush,” I said to quiet her nervous chattering.

“Huh?” Ric asked. “I didn’t say a thing.”

I just shook my head, unable to explain my paralysis. I was so full of dread I’d let him drive, even here in Wichita, through streets I knew like the lines on my palm. Leonard Tallgrass had provided the computer-map route past the three group homes he discovered I’d lived in until I was sprung from the system to attend Our Lady of the Lake convent school.

They were all sprawling one-story ranch-styles set in modest neighborhoods. I remember there had been uproars about having group homes in single-family communities, but I was used to being something of an outcast and that hadn’t really affected me.

I didn’t even recognize the exterior of the one home I’d supposedly lived in for four years. What might go on today in these five-to-six-bedroom homes gave me the willies.

Ric’s hand stretched across the wide front seat to take mine.

“Your fingers are like icicles, amor. It’ll be all right. You can stop hugging the car door. Dolly will be here when we get back.”

“You’re sure Quicksilver is all right with Tallgrass?”

“They hit it off like old camping buddies, you saw that. A dog wearing sunglasses waiting in a parked fifty-six Caddy convertible wouldn’t be cool in Kansas, you know that. In Vegas, anything goes, but here we’re undercover. Think of us as census takers. We’re official. We want dates and places and details and we are a couple of mean bureaucratic badasses no one will want to mess with.”

He wore a dark gray suit I’d never seen, drab and slightly shiny. I had inserted my gray contact lenses again and had clipped my hair in back so it seemed vaguely bun-like but covered my neck. I wore my TV-reporter outfit, a navy suit and matching pumps that did nothing for me but make me blend in with any background, from political press conference to neighborhood murder scene.

I’d copped an idea from lady police detectives. All my working suit jackets had deep, if discreet pockets. Carrying a bothersome purse makes a woman easier to dismiss as girly on the job. A narrow reporter’s notebook and pencil, ID and money clip were all I needed on me. With my black eyebrows and lashes, I’d only needed a pot of lip gloss and a dab of concealer for the camera. Nowadays, of course, I also armed myself with Lip Venom and Mid-night Cherry Shimmer. That was New Delilah, though. I was here in Kansas to meet Old Delilah’s worst nightmare.

I still kept my eyes glued to a fire hydrant coated in shiny aluminum paint on the street in front of the Wichita Child Protective Services building. That seemed like a good omen.

“Will I recognize this Haliburton woman Tallgrass dug up?” I asked, needing to clear my throat first.

Ric shook my captured hand. “Doesn’t matter. Lighten up, Delilah. I know a nonentity from a bad past can be even more terrifying than a monster in the present. I’ve been there, right? You saw me through. Now I’m seeing you through.”

I nodded, opened Dolly’s heavy door, and got out, checking the building’s side windows. Was anyone watching the parking lot below? My gaze panned rows of uncurtained windows with flower vases, photo frames, and office knickknacks lined up on the indoor sills.

“Mrs. Haliburton,” Ric said, “was in charge of group homes during the years you were in the system. Tallgrass had to do a lot of white-collar-crime type of digging to come up with someone who should know everything we want to find out. Relax. This is the simplest party we’ve ever crashed. Remember the Karnak.”

I couldn’t help smiling. Only Ric would call our life-threatening expedition to an underground empire of ancient vampires “crashing a party.”

The trouble was, I’d mostly done all my derring-do to save someone else’s skin. It’s harder to be as brave on your own behalf, especially when confronting childhood monsters.

Toughen up, Irma advised. The man is gonna find answers; it’s his calling. His inner kid has faced nightmares that make ours look like Saturday morning cartoons.

Except I’d never been a morning cartoons person. I’d hid out in the group homes to watch midnight monster movies. Any cruising vamp boys found the rec room with its Ping Pong table, jigsaw puzzles, and small-screen TV too nerdy to venture near.

I was beginning to understand why my memories of living in Wichita had gaping holes. We walked through the social services building into a bland lobby, elevator, and halls so forgettable I couldn’t describe them moments after passing through. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t remember much about my childhood; it was so forgettable. Not terrifying.

“We have an appointment,” Ric told the ash-blond receptionist in rimless glasses.

See what I mean? Irma prodded. Boring and bland and forgettable. No wonder we split this burg for Sin City.

We were shown into one of the offices without a vase or any trinkets in the window.

Mrs. Haliburton was sixtyish, with permed iron-gray hair and the required rimless glasses, and she, too, wore navy blue, which suited her pinkish complexion. Navy blue made my white skin look bluish, like skim milk.

She rose to greet Ric. “Mr. Montoya.” She gave me a demanding stare.

Already I hated her.

Ric was all professional interrogator. “Good to meet you, Mrs. Haliburton. This is my assistant, Miss Place.”

“You’re formerly with the FBI?” she asked Ric as we sat on molded blond-wood chairs while she reclaimed the squeaky black desk chair.

“Yes,” he said. “The Phoenix office.”

News to me. I guess if I could learn more about Ric, the trip to Wichita would be worth it.

“I don’t see,” Mrs. Haliburton said with a superior little laugh, “what you’re doing here, making inquiries. We’re up-to-date in Kansas, you know. We have our own FBI offices.”

“This is a Kansas case file I’m investigating,” he said, “involving a Wichita group home resident of a dozen or so years.”

“No longer in our system?”

“No.”

“You do understand, Mr. Montoya, that our group home clients are disabled in some way, have learning or behavioral difficulties? We must protect their privacy.”

Even Irma cringed inside me.

“I have a signed and notarized paper from the individual in question,” Ric said, producing a folded document from his inside jacket pocket.

“Is this related to a civil suit—?”

“Not at all, Mrs. Haliburton.” Ric’s smile was dazzling. “Merely a routine question of information—where, when, that kind of thing. So far,” he added, without the smile.

Mrs. Haliburton’s poodle-cut head reared back as she frowned at the paper. I didn’t sense that she recognized my name.

She handed back the document, folded. “Well, Mr. Montoya, Miss Place. You’re in luck. Everything was computerized during this girl’s residence. I can look her up in an instant.”

Gulp, Irma moaned.

Ric slid me a glance, his eyes a perfectly trustworthy brown with the colored contact lens in place.

Place. I smothered a nervous giggle.

To find me a fake surname, we’d worked our laughing way from Avenue to Boulevard to Circle to Drive. I’d firmly rejected Lane as being too reminiscent of Lois, before deciding that only Place, in honor of the Sundance Kid’s notorious girlfriend, Etta Place, also made a convincing last name. She’d been a mysterious lady lost to history. I might be en route to becoming another one.

Mrs. Haliburton’s scanty eyebrows lifted above the thick lenses of her glasses. Her keyboard clicked and her unblinking eyes scanned a series of computer pages invisible to us as we sat staring at the back of her monitor.

Then her frantic fingers stopped and her face went white.

Really. I’d never seen anyone actually do that, and she had started out a pearly pink.

“This file is sealed,” she announced, anger underlying her words. “You must have suspected that.”

“No,” Ric said, glancing at me. “Not at all. Only juvie court documents can be sealed. This isn’t one of those?”

“No,” she answered, to my relief.

“Then the file can’t be sealed,” Ric said.

“It is. That’s all I know. I can’t enter it, even if I would be willing to violate the seal.”

“That’s crazy,” I said, leaning forward in my slippery-seated chair. “She left the system at age fourteen, when she entered high school.”

“Check with the high school, then,” Mrs. Haliburton snapped at me. “I can refer you to the public school superintendent during that era. He would have to approve admitting someone with a record so … extreme it would be the only one ever sealed.”

She was one of those old-time female bureaucrats who still knuckled under to men, but gave women a bad time. I suddenly knew I’d probably run into her ilk many times before, among the social workers and group home supervisors.

“Thanks a bunch, Mrs. Haliburton,” I said, “but Delilah Street didn’t leave the system for a public high school. She had a scholarship to Our Lady of the Lake convent school.”

“That place! I don’t like your tone, Miss. I’m giving up my time to look into this matter as a courtesy to Mr. Montoya and his former affiliation. I know nothing of what yours is.”

Oh, I so wanted to snap that I’d been a reporter on WTCH-TV. How could she not even recognize my face? I hadn’t exactly been anonymous.

Ric put a hand on my forearm as he stood up, bringing me upright with him.

“I’ll take the superintendent’s information, Mrs. Haliburton,” he said, his voice as smooth as milk chocolate. “We appreciate your efforts.”

He held out his open hand until she huffed a sigh and scribbled something from the screen down on a memo pad. By the time she looked up and handed it over, she was simpering.

“Quite all right. Glad to oblige you, Mr. Montoya.” Her glance flicked my way and hardened. “You’ll find that Our Lady of the Lake is even stingier than the state with their records … to anyone.”

Ric took my arm firmly in hand until we were in the hall. “Amazing,” he murmured. “There’s no love lost between you and female authority figures, whether you remember it or not. That’s a valuable piece of information.”

I tried to shrug off his “gentlemanly” custody. I was ready to explode with indignation.

“State building, Del,” he murmured. “Security cameras everywhere, outside, in the elevator. Maybe even voice recording. Stifle yourself.”

“You—” In a minute, he’d be telling me I looked beautiful when I was angry, just to add fuel to my fire.

I bit my lower lip, a gesture I knew he found inciting, and shut up all the way to the parking lot. There, I stopped at the driver’s side and held my palm up until he tossed the keys into it.

“Where to, mon capitaine?” I asked.

“The motel, to regroup.” He got into the passenger seat and laid his left arm along Dolly’s channeled red-leather seat back.

“The Thunderbird Inn?” I wondered. “Sounds like a waste of precious time when here I got all dressed up to snow the ice queen.”

I turned the key in Dolly’s ignition, put her in gear, and sped her out of the parking lot fast to spin the dust of bureaucracy from her tires.

Ric’s fingers stroked the nape of my neck and curled under the tendrils of my pseudo-bun until shivers slithered over my spine.

“I don’t know why,” he said, “this Delilah Street is such a hot potato she’s got the only sealed file in the history of Wichita’s Department of Child Protective Services, but I intend to take Miss Place to the Thunderbird Inn and take her apart until I discover that.”

“You’re not scared?” I flashed him a sizzling glance.

“Only in a good way.”

The silver familiar uncoiled from its role as a sedate neck circlet and icily eeled into my concealed cleavage. As my spine shivers settled in my stomach, it wove in and out through my navy jacket’s front buttonholes, leaving the top two gaping open.

“Way to dress up a dull navy suit,” Ric said.

I depressed Dolly’s gas pedal hard enough to slam him back in the seat.

“Jerk,” I said, smiling. “If you think a little sex will make me feel better about being a bureaucratic forbidden zone … you may have a point.”

“I was thinking … a lot.”

“Is that why you sent Quick on a sleepover with Tall-grass last night?”

“I figured we needed downtime alone. Together.”

I nodded. “It’s so far past lunchtime it’s dinnertime. We’d better stop for fast food. Remember, chicken or fish.”

Ric consulted his cell phone screen. “Right at the second light.”

I followed directions and slowed Dolly on a wide turn into a drive-through lane before I saw and read the big sign on the tall pole. Ric was not only back, body and hopefully soul, so was his sense of humor.

“Jack in the Box, dude?”

When he shrugged, I noticed that even his lowbrow suit had great shoulder tailoring. “And you are so going to get fries with that.”

I did, in fact, feel a lot better.
 

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