Blinding white flashed overhead. A moment later, the thunder cracked, deafening, almost a physical blow. Falise cowered.

“Lady?” Ednund asked. “Did you have a destination?”

“How about the estate on St. Lucia?” She lifted a fist. “Damn you, Father, for sending me to this cesspool of a place.” A pause. “I was thinking I wanted a drink.”

“That would be the tavern.” Clarice’s wet face gleamed in a flash of distant lightning.

“I’ve got a two-SDR coin left.”

“That will buy you a single glass of whiskey.” Again, Clarice’s voice held no emotion.

“And then what?” Falise wondered as she started down the partially lit avenue.

What the hell have you done, Derek?

Chapter 37

  37  

Kylee stepped out of the hospital and into the rain. Tip had been too drugged to talk, let alone carry on a conversation. Bored, she had left Madison seated in the visitor’s chair, her head nodding, eyes closed.

Kylee figured that it wouldn’t be another five minutes and Madison would be snoring.

Stopping in the light under the double doors, Kylee sniffed the wet wind. Pulled up her hat, and let her eyes adjust to the darkness. She caught the odor of crops, the sweetness of corn, the barest whiff of mint, the smell of the pepper plants. And yes, a taint of quetzal blowing in from out beyond the fence.

In that moment, she was hunting, leaping scrub, reliving the fast pursuit of a darting chamois. Her senses expanded, delighted with the flashes of white lightning and the hollow booming of thunder.

Quetzal scent from beyond the fence. Had to be Whitey’s lineage.

Ought to tell Talina.

Kylee took a deep breath, turned her feet toward Inga’s, figuring that’s where she’d find Tal. Especially after a day of searching for a killer. Fancy soft meat, no less. Strangled. The story had been all over the hospital. Kylee herself had snuck into the autopsy room. Not much to see. Just a brown-skinned man with nothing much going for him but a quickly sutured Y incision and loose facial skin.

Even Tip had a better body.

As she went, her gaze searched the shadows. Had to remind herself that humans were night-blind. Unable to distinguish the things she could with her IR and UV vision. And they pitied her?

A smile cracked her lips.

She’d thought she’d be home by now. Back to sleeping against Flute’s warm stomach, hunting, living the paradise that was the Briggs homestead.