Free Night and Day (Book 2): Bleeding Sky by Ken White Page B

office. He’d definitely touched all the bases.
    I
went to the next page. Ronald Clay. No recent information available, but he
had been a first lieutenant in the army, assigned to EUCOM, the U.S.
European Command. He’d been stationed at Patch Barracks in Stuttgart when
the war began.
    American
military units stationed or deployed outside the country when the war began
had been ordered to return to the United States. A few followed those
orders, but not many. Most ignored them, even if they were given by human
officers in their chain-of-command. Those Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine
Corps units that ignored the orders were scattered across the world. And
included a rumored ten ICBM-armed submarines that had been at sea or went to
sea when the war began.
    Details
on what, exactly, was happening with any of the units, were scarce.
Everybody knew they were out there, but beyond that, it was all
hearsay.
    Some
people said they’d become mercenaries, selling their services to any country
willing to pay. Others said they served a U.S. government-in-exile that was
supposedly based in England, or Australia, or maybe Hawaii. Nobody knew for
sure, and I wasn’t interested in hearing speculation from people who
supposedly had the inside scoop from a friend of a friend.
    Was
Lieutenant Clay still in the US Army? Was he in the German Army now? The
file held no answers. I’d have to ask when I met him.
    The
next page was the one I was really interested in, but the one that had the
least information. A name. Anna Thodberg. Danish citizen. Nothing more. She
had to be the Ancestor that had unnerved Takeda, but the file didn’t even
say that she was a vampire.
    It
was disappointing. I didn’t know if the lack of information was because the
Vees didn’t want to share with a bloodsac like me, or if what I had was all
they knew. And it would be rude to go pawing through Takeda’s black envelope
to see if she had more information than what they’d given me.
    Those
who followed the Code of Bushido, like Miss Takeda, were touchy about rude
behavior.
     
    I
let Takeda deal with her anxiety in silence while we were on the interstate.
I figured she could use that whole Zen thing, if that was part of her
philosophy, and meditate her troubles away.
    It
also gave me the opportunity to try my new phone. I dialed the office and
Sara answered. “Night and Day Investigations.”
    “It’s
me,” I said. “I should be there in an hour or so. Is Brenner still
around?”
    “He’s
here,” she said. “Where are you?”
    “About
fifty miles north on the interstate,” I said.
    “Cynthia
left me a note that said that you’d left with the Security Force. Is
everything okay?”
    “Yeah,
everything’s fine. No problems.” I paused. “How did things go with Mr.
Maxwell?”
    “It
went really well,” she said. “Brenner did a good job on the client
presentation. It was obvious that Maxwell already knew she was cheating on
him, and was just waiting for the proof. He paid his tab in full and took
the file.”
    “Another
satisfied customer. Listen, we’ve got a new job, courtesy of the Area
Governor’s Office. Call Lexington and tell them that it’ll be a few days,
maybe early next week, before we can start active surveillance on that fraud
investigation. You’ll be able to work the paper trail, so we will definitely
be putting time into the case. Just not field time. Make sure they
understand that.”
    “Will
do,” she said. “What’s the new job?”
    “I’ll
explain when I get there. Don’t let Brenner wander off.”
    “No
chance of that,” she said. “I’m just about to walk him through skip-tracing
using that credit card you left me.”
    Shuster’s
card. “Good, that should keep you both occupied till I get there. I’ll see
you then.”
    As
I hung up, Takeda asked, “Is Miss Tindell well?”
    “Yeah,
Sara is fine. I’ll tell her you asked.”
    “I
understand