He leaped the four-foot fence with little effort and hurried into the forest. Circling around out of view, in case Glover was at home, he found a concealed, shady spot uphill where he could watch Glover’s front and back doors, his own house, and the street leading down to the highway. With the binoculars, he could even spot traffic down there.

  Not knowing what route Glover had taken earlier when sneaking out, Lee also made sure he was in a position where the man couldn’t sneak up on him, or stumble across him accidentally. Munching on an apple, Lee kept watch, his cell phone set on vibrate.

  Sometime after 3:00, a recent-model pickup came up the street. From the beginning, Lee could see it was the newspaper deliveryman—for obvious reasons. The driver stuffed the rolled-up Albuquerque Tribunes into small plastic boxes mounted on metal or wooden posts, like a mall carrier. Four residents subscribed, and maybe Glover, as well. He had a receptacle attached to a fence post beside the gate.

  Lee felt a vibration on his belt and reached for the cell phone slowly, careful not to allow an abrupt movement to give away his location to the delivery person, who was now approaching Glover’s house.

  He watched the carrier get out of the vehicle, walk around, and carefully insert the newspaper in the tube. Either the Tribune carrier gave great service to everyone, or he’d learned about Glover the hard way.

  Glancing down, Lee noticed that the call was coming from Captain Kelly. “Yes,” Lee answered softly.

  “Officer Hawk. You need to know that someone in the sheriff’s department just ran your fingerprints. Any idea where that may have come from?”

  “Give me a moment.” Lee was backtracking in his mind, trying to figure where his fingerprints had been left and why they’d been run, when Glover came out of his house and strolled up the walk. Whistling some sixties tune like he had no cares in the world, the man stopped at the gate, grabbed his newspaper, then stopped and looked around.

  Lee froze, knowing that he was in the shadows, behind several branches, and unless he moved it was unlikely the man would see him. Glover’s glance was cursory at best, going through the motions rather than actually searching, and he immediately walked back inside, still whistling that tune.

  Lee continued. “Perhaps someone lifted a fingerprint from my SUV last night, or our pickup. There’s an outside chance it was lifted from inside the house while I was away.”

  This would explain the missing twenty minutes on the video camera system. Glover could have come in through the front, found the system, erased the segment showing him coming in, then rewound it back to the moment before and dislodged the battery. He lifted a fingerprint, probably several, and had the larger prints run by his sheriff’s department inside man.

  “Wherever it was found, it’s a good thing we inserted your cover background into the system,” Captain Kelly responded.

  Diane’s prints were linked to her cover identity, as well, a good precaution they’d decided upon after learning that Glover had contacts in law enforcement.

  “I’ll call back,” Lee said, then hung up. He waited, checking the shadows to make sure no major leakage of direct sunlight was touching his face or hands, then moved farther into the forest, watching and listening for any sign of his neighbor.

  Still laying low and out of view from across the road, Lee called Diane. He got right to the point. “Glover must have caught a ride home. He’s also had my fingerprints run. My best guess is that he snooped around inside our house this morning before I got back.”

  “Hang on a second, sweetie,” she said. Fifteen seconds later, she spoke again. “Didn’t the video system pick him up on camera?”

  “I think he may have come in the front, found the system, then erased the section that showed him.”

  “When I get back, I can run a check on the software and see if it was erased or just stopped on its own,” she said. “And there’s no way that kind of tampering can be hidden without destroying the disk and/or deleting files. And that would be obvious, too.”

  “Good. I’ll look over your shoulder and learn.”

  “Any idea how you’re going to return, Lee?”

  “Yeah. I’ll sneak out of here just before you’re due back, pick up the SUV from its hiding place, then drive home very publicly, bandage on my arm and loaded for bear.”

  “I’ll be ready, too. We still don’t know how Glover is going to react when he sees you again.”

  Lee smiled. “Surprised, I think. It should take his ego down a peg. Check his sights.”

  “Well, we’ve goaded him into taking action once already, hopefully next time, we’ll be able to take him down in a way that won’t jeopardize … you know.”

  “I just hope we can do this without somebody else getting hurt. Give me a call just before you leave and I’ll run down and pick up the SUV. Once I have it, I’ll call you back and we can coordinate our return.”

  The conversation ended, Lee went back inside via the back door and looked around very carefully, wishing he had Glover’s bug detector.

  Later, Diane might be able to tell him exactly when Glover accessed their system, and from there, know the maximum amount of time he’d had to erase his image and snoop around the house. Nothing anywhere seemed out of place, so the man showed some really good black bag skills. He’d obviously tried to cover any sign of his presence, and was hoping they’d buy the battery issue as a reason the cameras stopped recording.

  An hour passed, and Lee saw Glover, wearing a cap, wrap-around sunglasses, and a bulky jacket, come out onto the front porch shaking a can of spray paint. He locked the door, then quickly painted a small section of the door with a closely matched color. After tossing the aerosol can into the trash, Glover walked over to the Jeep and climbed in.

  Cursing the fact that he had no vehicle, Lee watched through the binoculars as Glover drove down to the highway. Then he pulled over beside the mailboxes and parked. When Glover didn’t get out to check his mail, Lee decided that maybe something else was going on.

  Lee stepped out back and climbed up onto the roof, giving himself a good view of the highway from this elevation. He watched Glover’s Jeep for around six minutes, then a sheriff’s white, blue-striped department car pulled up beside him. Lee tried to read the number of the vehicle, located on the roof pillars behind the rear passenger’s side window, but it was just too far away to make out. Glover and the deputy were obviously talking, perhaps exchanging information. Hoping to get close enough to learn which officer was in the white-and-blue Ford, Lee jumped off the roof and began running parallel to Quail Run behind the property lines of his neighbors and downhill toward the highway. It was at least a mile away, but if he managed to cut the distance in half, maybe the ten-power binoculars and his own exceptional vision would be enough to get a plate or vehicle number.

  Passing through the trees, Lee had to make certain none of the residents saw him. He was moving quickly, and that, along with his suspicious presence, might result in a call to the sheriff’s office. The deputy down by the highway would be the one to respond, and … Lee thought about it for a second longer. If the deputy did answer the call, it was possible he’d be able to get a look at him, or her, and see who Glover was meeting.

  He slowed to a human pace and glanced around for someone in their backyard or kitchen window whose attention he might draw, but, just his luck, no one was looking out. The second house was occupied, judging from all the kid toys in the yard and the noise inside, but no one came to the window.

  Lee stopped, three houses down, and checked to see where Glover was now. “Damn,” he muttered. His neighbor was now driving back up the lane, and the deputy was heading down the highway, north, too far away to identify even with the binoculars.

  Lee glanced ahead and saw an attractive woman wearing what looked to be a cocktail waitress’s uniform—short black skirt, mesh stockings, and white, frilly blouse—walking to her car from the Weiner house. That was the name on the mailbox at the end of the lane that corresponded to the address.

  Glover must have seen her, too, because he stopped the Jeep right in front of the house. Lee crouched low behind a small juniper and waited. The man was looking in his general direction and Lee didn’t want to be seen—at least not yet.

  “Hey, sexy. Need a ride? My bedroom is just up the street,” Glover yelled out the window.

  The woman stopped and looked back at her front door, but didn’t speak. Lee got the idea she was wondering which direction to go, away from the crude comments or toward her car, which, unfortunately, meant going in Glover’s general direction.

  The sleazeball, meanwhile, turned off the Jeep’s engine and stepped out into the street. “Your bed will do, though. Or the kitchen table?”

  “Don’t come into my yard, Mr. Glover,” the woman finally replied, her voice shaky. “I’ll call the sheriff.” She fumbled in her purse for a cell phone, then took it out and held it up so he could see.

  Lee stood and began to move toward the Weiner house, using the building to screen himself from view. He’d have to do something if Glover tried to force himself on her.

  Lee could hear Glover laughing. “The sheriff’s going to have to find his own piece of ass. All you’ve been getting is a little Weiner, lady. Time for a beef stick.”

  Lee reached the back of the Weiner house, grateful that they didn’t have a dog to give him away. He’d already decided that if Glover forced her back into the house, he’d be there to throw him out … preferably through a window. Glancing at the cheap lock on the back door, he estimated he could pick it in fifteen seconds or less.

  Inching around to the corner of the house, Lee stopped and listened. He heard a car door slam, then an engine revving up—a car engine, not the one in the Jeep. Tires spun on gravel, slid, and raced off down the road. Mrs. Weiner had toughed it out and made it to her car.

  Glover laughed. “I’ll come by later, honey,” he muttered, a hint of menace in his voice. A vehicle door slammed, the Jeep engine started, then Glover drove off. Lee stepped over far enough to verify that he was heading home, not after the woman.

  Relieved that the woman had managed to drive away and he hadn’t been forced into a premature confrontation with Glover, Lee relaxed and checked his watch. It was too early for Diane to call, so he returned home, unseen.

  Two hours and forty-five minutes later, she called, letting Lee know she was now heading home, and he took a minute to tell her about the incident with Mrs. Weiner. Diane wasn’t surprised.

  Still wondering what Glover had been up to earlier with the deputy, Lee skirted the neighborhood completely this time and jogged east to the highway. He had his arm ready to slip into an improvised sling—not willing to bare his skin even to show a bandage. Vampires, even half vampires like himself, ran a risk exposing that much skin, even with maximum-strength sunblock applied.

  The SUV, only three miles away, had been screened around the outside by old bales of moldy hay Lee had quickly restacked, and it took just a few minutes to move the alfalfa from the front end. Lee slipped inside the vehicle, trying to ignore the waves of heat that had been trapped inside since nothing had covered the hood or top. The second thing that caught his attention was the heavy scent of a substance he immediately recognized—pot.

  Getting back out of the vehicle, Lee looked beneath the driver’s seat. Someone had planted several sealed bags of marijuana there. One had swelled up so much from the heat inside the car that it burst at the seal, which explained the characteristic scent.

  Lee put on gloves and removed the bags, then took them over to an old, rotting horse manure pile and emptied each bag. Taking a large stick, he scattered all the pot around until it more or less blended in. Knowing the grass was now unretrievable, he took the bags over to a clear spot on the ground and melted them into a small blob with a couple of matches. Whoever had planted them, probably this morning while Lee had been asleep, wouldn’t have left their prints.

  He drove a half mile away from the hiding spot, then pulled over and got out his cell phone. Lee got Diane immediately. “Somebody, probably Glover, tried to set me up in another way, it looks like.” He explained about finding the pot beneath the seat.

  “You don’t think he found the SUV and put the stuff under the seat after shooting you?”

  “No. The vehicle was too well hidden. Besides, the bales I used to hide the SUV were falling apart. He couldn’t have unstacked them, put in the pot, then restacked the bales without me seeing all the extra debris. The way I figure it, he put the stuff under the seat at the same time he ruined your tire, right in our driveway before dawn.”

  “Wouldn’t you have smelled the pot earlier? You’ve got the scent ability of a bloodhound.”

  “No, it was sealed up at the time, and I’m not that good. But the heat that built up while the car was in the sun all day swelled up the air inside the plastic bags and cooked the batch just a little. Hell, you could get high from the smell alone.”

  “Glover must have intended on having your murder explained away as the result of a drug operation gone bad. Cops would find your body, maybe mine, too, and then discover pot in the SUV you’d been driving. No need to ask about trouble with your neighbors, then. Even with Glover’s rep, the evidence would suggest somebody else was responsible.

  “It could have worked,” she admitted. “But where did Glover get the weed? Dealing pot, even by the kilo, seems too penny-ante for him. Unless it was from the same source that provided the coke or whatever he supplied to Breeann.”

  “A deputy could have found the stash in a raid and given it to him days ago. The same deputy he met with earlier today, probably. Cops get the best dope—ever hear that?”

  “If some of the cops around here are corrupt, and we’re operating under that assumption, it makes sense. Now we need to find out which deputies have access to their evidence rooms, and have taken part in pot busts within the past few months.

  “I’ll pass this on to SAC Logan, and you can do the same with Captain Kelly. I’m within five minutes of the turnoff now, Lee. I’m going to hang up, then keep both eyes open for trouble. No telling what’s going to happen when Glover sees me come into the driveway, alone.”

  “Worst-case scenario, shoot him. Don’t hold back, either, if it comes to that. A double tap in the face just in case he’s wearing a vest.”

  “At least he’s no friggin’ vampire.”

  Lee laughed. “I’m in position to watch you pass by. I’ll come up the lane five minutes after you pass the mailboxes. By then, Glover’s heart is going to be pumping overtime.”

  There was a moment’s pause, then Diane spoke. “You know, he’s really got me pissed off. Sexist asshole.”

  “Just stay your normal cool, collected self without giving him a target.”

  “Yeah. See you soon, I hope.” Diane hung up before he could reply. Lee turned the SUV around, backing farther off the road, but remaining close enough so he could see her pass. Maybe he’d follow just four minutes behind, or three and a half. A minute could be a lifetime if you were driving into an ambush.

  Lee ran the air-conditioning and fans on full, with all the windows down except the driver’s door glass, hoping to vent out as much of the pot scent as possible. Even with the actual contraband removed, it still had an odor he could detect, though it was fading.

  Once he started up Quail Run, Lee slipped his left hand into the sling—constructed from the first-aid kit materials—and drove with his right. His Beretta was in his waistband, in sight for anyone looking closely—like Glover. It served as a warning. If the man made a suspicious move, it would be his last.

  Checking his watch, Lee saw that Diane had passed by only three minutes earlier. The dust on the road was still drifting and she might still be outside in the driveway or walking up the steps of the porch. That would require her to put her back to Glover for a moment. He’d be watching her, that’s for sure. Resisting the impulse to speed up, Lee kept the fifteen-mile-an-hour speed limit, unrolling his window and turning off the air conditioner so he could listen. If he heard a shot, he was driving right through Glover’s yard and into his living room to take the man out.

  Then Lee remembered that they hadn’t checked for a bug in Diane’s car. Glover might know they were coming—and everything else. He speeded up.

  Diane’s pickup was there, right in front of their door. Good thinking! She’d used the vehicle to screen herself when she got out of the vehicle. Nobody was in sight, not in their yard, and not at Glover’s. When he was close enough for the angle to be right, Lee slowed, looking into Glover’s living room window.

  The sleazeball was beside the curtain, blocked mostly by the wall, gazing intently at their house, keeping an eye out for Diane, who was, hopefully, also watching Glover, as well, her pistol ready. This end of the street was an armed camp, Lee thought for a second.

  Then Glover saw the SUV. He stepped back, probably certain he was hidden now, and watched. The street was in shadows, due to the mountains just west that made for an early sunset, so there was no glare keeping Glover from seeing exactly who was behind the wheel.

  Lee pulled up right behind the pickup and stopped. The vehicle would provide him cover and concealment, and also probably cause Glover’s blood pressure to rise. The lowlife had no idea what Lee would do next, so he undoubtedly had a weapon at hand.

  Left arm in the sling, Lee got out of the SUV and stood so that his torso was protected by the engine compartment, then he looked over at Glover’s house and gave it the generic finger. It was petty and juvenile, something only a punk would do, but it fit his new identity. Gestures like that still felt odd, though. He hadn’t flipped anyone off in seventy years.