I gathered myself to look for Becky, yelping when Jenks kicked me under the table. I glared at him until he said, “You don’t like Nick. Nick can get his own food.”

Feeling stupid, I slumped in my chair. “Right.” So I tried not to fidget as Peter took the next five minutes to get Becky’s attention. From the corner of my sight I watched Nick leave the bathroom, looking like the ailing vampire who was sitting beside me, trying to attract anyone in an apron. Hell, Nick even walked like Peter, slow and pained. It was creepy. He was good at this.

Professional thief, I reminded myself as I gripped my bag to assure myself it was still in my possession. How I could have been so blind? But I knew my ignorance had been born out of my need for that damned acceptance I hungered after almost as badly as Ivy lusted after blood. We weren’t as unalike as it seemed when you got right down to it.

The jitters started when Nick passed out of my sight. I turned my attention to Ivy, reading his progress across the bar by where her eyes went. “He’s good,” Ivy said, sipping her juice. “Audrey didn’t recognize him until he opened his mouth and said hi.”

“Did the Weres smell him?” I asked, and she shook her head.

Beside me, Peter gritted his teeth, and I was glad he’d had the opportunity to say good-bye to Audrey properly. He was a good person. It wasn’t fair. Maybe he could bring the memory of suffering and compassion into his undead existence, but I doubted it. They never did.

Ivy tapped her fingers on the table, and Jenks heaved a sigh. “They’re gone,” Ivy said.

I put the flat of my arm on the table, forcing my foot to not jiggle. All that was left was waiting for Nick’s phone call that he was in place.

Check.

Thirty-Three

So this is what it feels like to be a murderer, I thought, taking a tighter grip of the wheel of Nick’s truck, squinting from the low sun. I was nervous, sweaty, shaky, and I wanted to throw up. Oh yeah. I can see why people get off on this.

Beside me in Nick’s jeans and cloth coat, Peter watched the passing view as we drove to the bridge, half of Nick’s inertia-dampening curse fixed to the bumper. Peter’s left hand cradled the defunct statue with DeLavine’s blood smear on it. His right hand, looking slightly smaller than Nick’s, was holding the handle of the door. I was pretty sure it was nerves since he didn’t know the door had a tendency to fly open when you went over a bump.

Nick’s truck was old. It rattled when it shook. The shocks were bad but the brakes were excellent. And with the NOS, it could be startlingly fast. Just what every successful thief needs.

Silent, we endured the stop-and-go traffic to get onto the bridge, my attention on Ivy and Jenks behind us as much as on the cars ahead of me jockeying to get on the bridge. It had been Ivy’s idea to do this on the bridge. The stiff wind would hamper the Weres’ sense of smell, and the bridge itself would prevent a helicopter ambulance and slow things down. But most of all, we needed a stretch of several miles without a shoulder to minimize Were interference after the crash. The five-mile bridge gave us that along with a nice margin to actually run into each other. The goal was the bridge apex, but a mile either way would work.