St. Devon’s Academy looked more like a maximum-security prison facility than a private school. Its sleek modern buildings sat behind tall concrete walls that had barbed wire installed along the tops. Almost all schools these days had fences or walls, but this was the first one she’d seen that had its own guard tower. Seeing a guy armed with a high-powered rifle and a scope looming above a bunch of little kids kicking around a soccer ball or just hanging out, acting like this was all normal, made her heart sink.

When it came to carriers, the police were subject to the same checks as ordinary citizens. Ellie and Danny had to wait several minutes while two men armed with assault rifles checked and rechecked their IDs. Forms were signed, fingerprints scanned, and after the gate was unlocked, Danny pulled up against the curb of what appeared to be the main building. Another pair of armed men guarded the door. Others were stationed at various checkpoints and roamed the perimeter and parking lot.

Vanilla Pudding pulled up behind them. Ellie got out and again asked the boy if he felt safe. He assured her that he did, and off he went to the front door to submit his hand to the portable fingerprint scanner one of the guards was holding.

“You happy with your job?” Vanilla Pudding asked.

“Is anyone?”

Vanilla Pudding smiled. He had tiny, baby teeth. “Reason I’m asking is, my company has a lot of clients who are young girls. They’d feel more comfortable in the presence of a woman.” He reached into his coat and came back with a business card. “If you want to make some real money, with real health benefits, call me.”

Ellie thanked him, handed him back his documentation and weapons, and headed back to the patrol car.

“Your stop-and-frisk routine back at the house,” Danny said as they drove away. “You mind telling me what that was about?”

Ellie shrugged. “We saw something, so we stopped.”

“We?”

“The kid looked scared shitless, so I decided to check it out.”

Danny’s gaze cut to her; he wanted, she knew, to call bullshit. And he’d have been right, of course.

Ellie had been a patrolwoman for a little over a year, but her real goal—her future—lay in the LAPD’s newly formed Blood Crimes Unit. Admittance was extremely competitive—only the best and brightest. She considered herself reasonably intelligent, knew she was a hard worker, and, for the most part, had good people skills. What she had going against her was lack of investigative experience—and BCU looked for two years minimum, even for lowly data analyst positions.

The way she figured it, the more information she could collect on the blood world during her stop-and-frisk routines, as Danny called them, the more knowledge she would accumulate, and the more attractive she’d look when she reapplied to the BCU.

There was another, more personal reason she didn’t want to get into it with Danny—with anyone.

Ellie was about to change the subject when Danny, thankfully, did it for her. “You ever wonder what it’s like?” he asked.