“You’re going to London with Anne and me. Declan knows how to run a murder investigation.”
Brigid nodded. “I’ll get you the name of my man for ballistics, Dec.”
“Thanks,” he said before he looked at Murphy. “And the ship?”
“Go through the usual channels. Pay whoever we need to in order to make it disappear.”
“Yes, boss.”
Declan and Brigid walked away, leaving Murphy alone with the one person in the world he wanted more than any other.
The person who distrusted him the most.
“Patrick, you had no way of knowing—”
“No, that’s bollocks, Anne. I should have put a man on him. Should have known they might go after a human in my organization.”
“He wasn’t in your organization.”
“Fuck that. He was. I should have known.”
He dropped her hand and walked away from the fire-blackened body and toward his car. There was nothing else he could do that night. He needed to take shelter, and he didn’t want to go to any of his homes. Didn’t want to face any questions from servants.
His human driver got out and opened the back door for him just as Anne put her hand on his shoulder.
“Patrick, please.”
He stopped but didn’t turn. “I can’t be polite tonight, Áine. Leave me be.”
She dropped her hand, and Murphy slid into the car, feeling the first ache in his bones that warned him of the sun.
Where to go?
His old driver, sensing his mood, asked him, “Campsite, sir?”
“Good thinking, Ozzie.”
Ozzie made his way out of the city and to the large protected campsite Murphy had set up years ago to appease his human kin. The leader of his clan knew who and what he was. Didn’t like it but accepted it. They were too superstitious to give him any problems. Outside of his Traveller clan, his caravan was known only to him and Ozzie, who was a distant kinsman. It wasn’t hard to conceal. Not even vampires were more secretive than Travellers.
He noticed the playground had been torn up again when they pulled in. The meadow had been cut, but he could see trash lying about, likely from some other clan passing through. It wasn’t surprising.
“Oz.”
“I’ll take care of it in the morning, sir. Have a word with Old Keenan.”
“The rubbish is one thing, but I won’t have them selling the children’s play set for scrap. Make that clear.”
“Yes, sir.”
The windowless vardo back in the trees was painted a dusky green to blend in with the forest. It backed onto a small stream so he could hear the water running when he woke. The children did not play near it. There were horseshoes nailed into the trees around it, and mirrors and bits of bone hung from their branches. The old women had planted wild roses around his wagon fifty years ago, but he excused their superstition and chose to enjoy the fragrance instead.
The caravan looked traditional on the outside, but the interior was modern. Ozzie would guard him during the day, but Murphy knew no one would dare bother him. He was safe as houses in the camp.
He undressed and stepped outside to dunk himself in the stream. Braced from the water, he shook off and took refuge in the darkness of the wagon, opening a bottle of blood-wine he kept in reserve. It tasted sour and metallic on his tongue, but beggars could not be choosers, and Ozzie had donated blood to him the week before.
A quiet tap on the door roused him from the stupor he felt creeping closer. It had to be Ozzie, checking to see if he needed anything before dawn. Murphy walked to the door and opened it, clad in nothing more than a woolen blanket wrapped around his hips.
“Oz, I’m…” The words died on his tongue. “What are you doing here?”
Anne said nothing, pushing her way into the vardo and shutting the door behind her. His body, despite his exhaustion, flared to life.
“Did you think I’d forgotten this place?” she asked. “That I could ever forget this place?”
“Yes.”
“Well… I didn’t.”
He stepped closer and leaned in, damning the dawn as he took her mouth. He dropped the blanket and threaded both hands into the windblown hair she’d tried to pull into a loose bun. He tugged at the pins until it flowed down her back, nipped at lips that opened softly for him.
“I told you,” he said, his words slurred from exhaustion. “I won’t be polite.”
She slipped her arms around his waist and maneuvered them closer to the raised bed enclosed by thick curtains. Pushing him back onto the platform, she slipped off her jacket and stepped out of her shoes, climbing into bed beside him and pulling the velvet drape closed.
“You don’t have to be polite. Sleep, Patrick. We’ll talk in the evening.”
And for the first time in one hundred years, Patrick Murphy fell asleep with his body and heart whole, his mate resting her head in the crook of his shoulder, blood of his blood beside him.
Chapter Eight
THE PROBLEM WITH TAKING a younger lover was those stolen moments before they woke. Anne had often wondered whether thirty years’ accumulation of moments had led her away from Murphy at the end. For in those quiet moments that age afforded her—when her mind was clear and his body at rest—she could think clearly about the man who’d stolen her heart and captured her soul.
Still waters run deep.
The old saying had no better example than Patrick Murphy. The calm, politic facade he showed the world concealed a depth of passion he revealed to precious few. When he woke, he would consume her.