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garage. “He came from inside the garage. Maybe he wanted your car?”
    Lance snorts. “He’s not very smart if he was after my car. That thing has so many anti-theft devices, it does everything but blow itself up if it’s tampered with. Besides, if he was already in the garage, and you didn’t see him, why wouldn’t he just wait for you to leave?”
    “Not only didn’t I see him, I didn’t sense him. Not then, not during the attack, not after, when I bled him.”
    “He was shielding himself from you,” Lance says. He holds out my mug.
    “Right to the end,” I reply, taking it.
    Lance releases a breath. “You and David have any jobs lined up the next couple of days?”
    I shake my head.
    The sun is beginning to tint the sky. He squints up at it.
    “Let’s take a drive,” he says.
    “Where?”
    “To my place in Palm Springs. We can bury the mummy in the desert along the way. We’ll spend the weekend.”
    “I’ll get a sheet.”
    Lance follows me inside. “And we’re taking your car.”
    When I raise a questioning eyebrow, he replies, “The Jag has a bigger trunk.”
    But his thoughts say, No way am I putting a rotting corpse in the Aston Martin.
     
     
    THE RIDE THROUGH THE DESERT ON AN EARLY JULY morning is lonely and quiet. Not many souls willing to brave temperatures already into the eighties. Having a vampire’s constitution, however, allows Lance and me to put the top down on the Jag and let the warmth of the sun bake our bones.
    I’m driving. We take the 15 to 74—the scenic route on a road that hairpins back and forth as it gains elevation through the Santa Rosa Mountains. This is rattlesnake and coyote terrain. Desolate in a beautiful way.
    We choose a place to turn off at a junction between the highway and an unmarked dirt road. In the fall and winter, this is a popular ATV playground. In the summer, the only visitors slither or scurry away at the sound of the car’s approach.
    We drive miles into the desert, the road so well traveled the Jag has no trouble on the hardscrabble surface. Ten miles from the highway, we park. We’ll have to go on foot from this point if we want to bury our mummy friend where he’s not likely to be found when the change of season turns the desert back into a four-wheeling playground.
    Lance hoists the sheet-shrouded body over his shoulder. I grab a pick and shovel, and we start toward an outcropping of rock in the distance. Up until this time, we’ve traveled in silence, enjoying the sound of the desert wind, the feel and smell of it in our faces, the guttural purr of the Jag’s engine. But after a few minutes, I feel Lance’s gentle intrusion into my head.
    What should we do about this guy?
    I frown. Besides bury him? I don’t know. What do you think? After all, we can’t be sure he wasn’t after your car. Maybe he’s just a thief.
    A snort. If he’s been watching the house at all, he knows we’re vampire. Not too smart to try to steal from one of your own.
    Maybe he was down on his luck. Saw this as an opportunity to make some real money.
    Lance shakes his head. He was an old soul. Even if he hadn’t understood the concept of compound interest, he would never have gotten so desperate he’d resort to stealing. He’d seduce a human into supporting him first.
    I’ve run out of excuses. Lance doesn’t follow with the logical conclusion, just lets the idea drop between us where it lays until I pick it up and put into words what we’re both thinking.
    “Which means, he wasn’t a car thief at all. He was after me.”

CHAPTER 6
    S AYING THE WORDS OUT LOUD PLUNGES ME RIGHT back into the nightmare of Ortiz’ death and Williams’ threat. Williams is the only one I know who hates me enough to want me dead. Was this an attempt to make good on that threat?
    Lance reads my thoughts. Why now? It’s been three months since the fire. And why would he send someone to do a job he’d want to do himself?
    Both good questions, and ones to which I have no