"I can't find anything. No cop can be this squeaky clean," Gillian complained, shoving the files away from her, and they cascaded off the table and onto the floor. She could have stopped them from falling, but didn't.

Dana left her kitchen, chewing on a piece of jerky and reading the file in her hand with a slight frown reading more as disgust than worry.

"I could write a novel about the possibilities for shenanigans and the opportunities for them in these court cases.

"Yet I have not found something that would stand out. Something so dastardly and vile that it would serve as justification for our killer," she murmured, with her defenses completely down in their presence.

"Some British background there, Dana?" Elissa teased, and Dana blinked at them as her mind struggled to skip tracks. She stuck her tongue out at them and laughed at herself.

"I'm much older than this little city of yours," the coroner admitted, plonking down on the sofa beside her, "Unless we're not looking at this the right way..." she mused, but Elissa interrupted her.

"Or we're not digging deep enough or in the right places. Where do you find something on a cop?" she asked.

An idea occurred to Gillian, a tiny ruthless smile tugging at her lips as she glanced at them.

"The same place that little file on us went," it took a minute for her words to sink in as she rearranged her computer.

"Internal affairs," Elissa caught on and frowned. "There's no way to get in there," she stated flatly, but Gillian smirked as she typed fast and hard.

"What the hell are you doing? No, Gillian," Dana panicked, spotting the logo for internal affairs on the screen a moment before the site opened. It was too late to turn back, and the files opened like magic.

Dana nodded with admiration as Gillian typed in the names, and everything they needed to know, unfolded like a map.

"Someone was a bad girl at some point," Dana chuckled as Gillian exited and erased all traces of her intrusion as much as possible.

"I hope you're as good as you presume you are. Father would not be happy if you get sent to federal prison," Elissa warned. Her tone was not as stern as it might have been.

"Do you want to know or not?" she almost challenged Elissa, her finger hovering over the erase button.

"Don't be a dumb-ass," her sister grouched as she squeezed in next to them.

It took a while for them to read through all thirty files, but only three were worth mentioning in the end, and only two stood out.

***

"How in the Sam Hill do you cover that up?" Elissa asked as they stared at the man in the photo.

"That's why the public assumes all police are crooked," Gillian sighed, printing the file.

"And her?" Elissa asked as the second file printed, and she stared hard at the familiar face.

"I don't know. Why does it seem wrong?" she asked.

Was she just disappointed? Or was she such a lousy judge of character? No. She was rarely wrong about people and never in such a way. The bitter taste in her mouth caused her heart to harden, but she couldn't shake the sensation that there was more to this than met the eye. Perhaps because they were friends.

"The question is, would it feel wrong to him?" Elissa asked, and she had no answer for her.

It would be something to draw him to the detective and a close connection to them he would not easily ignore. If she were the dark thing hunting in the night, this would stand out like a red flag in a sea of white. It would be almost impossible to ignore and equally hard to pass up. It presented the perfect hole in their defenses and would prove a delicious point to him.

There would be no hiding any of this once he reached out and plucked the ripe fruit from the vine. The truth might even overshadow his atrocity.

"You think he's going to go for her?" she asked, although the answer was obvious.

"Dickson is just too easy a target, and this vampire isn't into low-hanging fruit. He's going to go for the throat and hit us where it hurts," Elissa uttered like a premonition and confirmed her suspicions.

A feeling of foreboding left them quiet.

"Am I wasting my time?" Dana asked hopefully, and Gillian stared her down.

"Who knows if he's finished playing with us yet? He has all the time in the world, and by now, he knows we're guarding them. He's in no hurry and enjoying this way too much. The only question is, how potent is his need for vengeance?" None of them could argue with Gillian's logic.

"I suspect he will stir the cauldron soon. He doesn't want the frenzy around our department to cool down and desires to escalate it, making us look incompetent and inferior," Elissa murmured.

Her words caused a chill in Gillian's heart.

"I wish I could figure out his intention. Is he just toying with us, or does he have bigger plans," Dana said, taking a sip of her wine and curling up on the white leather sofa.

"This is just the beginning. A stepping stone," Gillian said, drawing their attention to her. She was more sure of that than she had ever been.

"What is his intention, do you think?" Elissa asked.

"Tearing the blindfold from humanity's eyes and letting them see that their world is still filled with the monsters in their books. Only, there's nothing romantic about most of us, and the idea of something and the reality of it present two very different things. He'll paint us as monsters, praying on humanity and using humans to do our dirty work."

"I thought we would not speculate," Dana said, getting to her feet and padding over the thick Afghan to the liquor cabinet.

"I am not," Gillian said, their eyes meeting in a battle of wills.