Free Darkness Returns by Rob Cornell Page B

She did a turn, not only taking the space in with her eyes but sniffing, as if trying to pinpoint the direction of whatever scent she’d caught. Her mouth curled down.
    “I don’t like it.”
    “I don’t like any of this,” Lockman said and drew his pistol. He came full into the apartment and shut the door behind him. He sucked a breath through his nose, trying to pull any hint of what Jessie was smelling. He got a musty stink from the couch and the dry dust on the hardwood floors that was thick enough for them to leave footprints in. Nothing else.
    “She hasn’t been here in a while,” he said. “If she ever was.”
    “Nobody has.”
    A good point. Teresa’s apartment or not, there was something suspicious about the place. It occurred to Lockman she might have rented the space simply as a front, somewhere to lead curious tails sent by the likes of Renee for example. Spend a night on the couch if the tail decided to stick around for the long haul. Carry on the next day and lose the tail, then go back to her real dwelling.
    If that were the case, odds of them finding many clues to her location dropped.
    Jessie crept toward the bedroom door. The old floorboards creaked under her boots. “It’s coming from here.”
    “Still don’t know what?”
    “I’m a vampire, not a bloodhound, thank you much.”
    “Sorry.”
    She shook her head as if jangling something loose. “Never mind. I’m just feeling bitchy tonight.”
    She reached the door and stopped, looked over her shoulder at Lockman. “You want first dibs on the bedroom?”
    He knew she expected him to say yes, but he also heard the challenge in her voice that seemed to ask Do you think I can handle this? Of course she could. She had saved his ass in the alley a couple hours ago. If something dangerous was waiting for them in the bedroom, she might even be the better equipped one to deal with it.
    A strange transition. Not one Lockman wanted to surrender to so easily.
    “Let me take point.” He racked a round into the chamber and crossed to the door. “I know you’ve got my back.”
    She stepped aside.
    Lockman listened at the door. Was that a faint sound? Scratching? The building probably had rats in the walls. He also could have been hearing something from outside. He grabbed the knob, twisted, gave it a two count, then threw it open and leveled his pistol in front of him, scanning for a target, movement, any sign of attack.
    The room was almost completely empty. A map of New Orleans on a corkboard hung on the wall. Red and blue pushpins marked several spots on the map, with the heaviest concentration of pins all around the Quarter. The only other item in the room sat square in the middle of the floor. A white plastic bucket, the outside edges spattered with dark, rusty stains. Dried blood.
    “That what you smell?” Lockman asked.
    Jessie squeezed into the room between him and the doorjamb. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose. “Depends.”
    “On what?”
    “What’s in the bucket.”
    She started forward. Lockman reached out and grabbed her jacket sleeve. “Wait.”
    “For what? It’s a bucket.”
    “Could be a booby trap.”
    Her lips puckered into a tiny smirk. “Booby trap? Do people still use that term?”
    “What else would you call it?” He waved a hand. “Forget it. Could be a bomb or something.”
    “I don’t smell any C4, which is what Teresa would probably use, right?”
    How long had Jessie been a vampire? He should have been used to these surprise insights. Still, he couldn’t hold back the tug at one corner of his mouth. “You know what C4 smells like?”
    “Dude, I’ve spent enough time around you and your special ops friends to catch a whiff of C4. And vampire Jessie can smell all sorts of things. Like the fact that you are seriously sweaty right now.”
    Lockman hadn’t noticed until she said something. Now he felt a drip of sweat roll down between his shoulder blades like the tip of a wet