Free Darkness Returns by Rob Cornell Page A

soon. “I believe you, Renee. But stop being so dense. You worked with her, you have to have some idea how to find her. A phone number, maybe even an address.”
    His eyes drifted back and forth. He worked his lips together.
    “If you’re worried about her coming after you, think about this.” Lockman pointed at Jessie. “She doesn’t have a vampire for a daughter.”
    Renee barked in pain as Jessie squeezed his fists in her hands. His knuckles cracked. “Okay. Shit. I had a guy tail her after she made her first offer. She went to an apartment somewhere outside the Quarter. I can get you the exact address. I have it inside.”
    Teresa had let one of these hacks tail her? Either she had gotten sloppier than he thought, or this guy had bad information.
    “You don’t have anything else?”
    “Better than her address?” His voice cracked.
    Good info or bad, it was all they had at the moment. Lockman nodded to Jessie.
    She let go of his hands and yanked him to his feet by the front of his pants. A strained exhale popped from his mouth on the way up. When she let go of him, he cupped his hands to his crotch and doubled over.
    “I’ll give you scary,” Jessie muttered under her breath.
    Lockman went into the bar with Renee and met Jessie out front five minutes later with an address written on a napkin. The address was within walking distance. Jessie wore a hoodie under her jacket and she pulled the hood over her head. They strolled through the Quarter in silence.
    Lockman had yet to talk to her about what happened with Ryan. He tried to broach the subject in the “Door Room” while they waited for the techs to program a route through the interdimensional network they had recently tapped into at headquarters. Jessie had shrugged it off and their door had opened before he could push the issue.
    “Are you okay?” he asked as they walked.
    The hood and its accompanying shadow hid her face. “Peachy.”
    “Kress stepped over the line—”
    She stopped. “I wanted to do it. I thought I could help him.” By him , Lockman knew she meant Ryan, not Kress. “But I couldn’t. Can we not talk about this now, please?”
    “I’m just trying—”
    “Please?”
    He dropped it. They walked the next six blocks in silence.
    Lockman looked up at the building as if he could determine some significance from outside. It looked the same as many of the other buildings in this part of the Quarter—old, a little ornate, and ready for some repairs. It seemed too easy. Lockman would have bet Teresa let the tail follow her to this place as a ruse, but Renee claimed his man had actually followed her into the building and saw her enter an apartment on the fourth floor.
    “What is it?” Jessie asked.
    Lockman shook his head. “Probably nothing. Just stay alert.”

Chapter Nine
    As he jimmied the lock to apartment 4C, Lockman felt a sense of déjà vu. It wasn’t that long ago that he broke into another of Teresa’s apartments in New Orleans, looking for clues. As he crossed the threshold into the one bedroom affair, he kept his hand low by his weapon, but didn’t draw. The door opened directly onto a spare living room. A couch that looked as old as the building sat in the center of the room with a pillow and quilt on it. The rest of the room was unfurnished except for the small television set on a wooden packing crate opposite the couch.
    This sparse layout alone made the back of Lockman’s skin prickle. His gut told him at once that this place had belonged to Teresa. Whether she still used the place as another question. After the screw up with the vamp drug lord, she might have abandoned the apartment, maybe even New Orleans.
    “Something smells funny,” Jessie said behind him.
    He put his hand on the butt of his gun in its shoulder holster. “Funny how?”
    “I don’t know. Familiar?”
    “I don’t smell anything. Except a few days of dust maybe.”
    Jessie shoved her way past him and into the center of the living room.