My easiest option would have been to run away, but I was in no mood for that. Who did these people think they were? The manacles that bound me were far too strong and heavy for me to break during daylight, but with the coming of dark I shattered them like glass.

And, yes, men started shooting. But a moving target is remarkably hard to hit. Especially a target that moved as quickly as I did at that moment. I wasn't looking to do anything fancy, just to dispatch these men as swiftly and as efficiently as possible. If any of them survived that, I would wreak my cruelty on them at my leisure.

But who was I kidding? My blood was up. It had taken all of my resolve and determination to remain calm and to speak as I had to my captors. And the smell of the child beater's blood ... oh, heavens. When I was free, I ran riot over them, tearing, and ripping, and killing my way through them 'til not a one was left standing.

And I fed. It's not a thing of which I'm proud. My great vanity always has been in my self-discipline, my ability to stay calm, focused, and chaste. I lost all control for a short time, a thing that fills me with great shame.

That sense of loss and humiliation only made it harder to regain myself afterward. For a time, albeit brief, I did nothing but knock around lifeless corpses. When I did come to myself, it was to realize that I'd been shot several times. No matter that; none of the wounds were anything approaching serious.

I steadied myself and began looking around. My first task was to take a body count. All five of my original captors were dead, and I recovered my belongings from them, including my beloved notebook. It was none the worse for wear, and I set it aside with care so as not to get blood on it.

The accountant was missing his head entirely—well, pity that—and so too dead were the men who came with him. I hadn't had a good look at the group who came in last. The man with the sport coat was absent a throat, and two mangled bodies were piled near him. I do believe not a single one escaped my wrath.

Well, shit.

I should have spared at least one of them to answer a few questions. That was terribly, terribly sloppy of me. As a substitute, I rifled through their belongings. There was nothing within that told me much about the men. I pocketed some spare cash—yes, I know, I'm a skinflint. And I grabbed the phones of the boss and the man in the sport coat, who according to their drivers' licenses were named Jeff and Weaver, respectively. What sort of parent names their child Weaver? No wonder he became a Renfield.

I've become quite adept over time at cleaning up quickly. I found some dingy old coveralls in a cabinet, retired to the washroom, and came out some minutes later looking like a bag person, but totally blood free.

I bagged my bloody clothes, made sure that I had everything, and remembered to shut the lights out before I left.

Not long ago, as I recall, I was making great boasts to you about not leaving a trail of bodies. Well, this was not my finest hour.

I considered torching the place, but that would take too long. And besides, a fire would only guarantee the prompt arrival of emergency services. Hopefully the bodies would be some days stewing in the old warehouse before they were discovered.

I'd liberated a couple of sets of car keys, and I borrowed the high-end SUV that responded to the first key fob I pushed. It took a few minutes to get my bearings. I was somewhere on the West Side. I ran a few errands, picked up a change of clothes, tossed the old ones, and dumped the SUV near Lincoln Park. I soon was ensconced in an all-night joint called the Melrose Diner, in an area of Chicago affectionately known as Boys Town.

I ate, reviewed the phones I had pinched, and seethed.

On the good side, I had fed. My mind was focused and energized. I'd have to go through detox again, but that wasn't too bad. What I needed was answers. Weaver's phone was a blank, a burner of some sort. It appeared that he deleted numbers from the call registry as he'd called them. I had his driver's license and keys, so I might slip by and rifle through his place.

The only recent calls on Jeff's phone were from a local Chicago number, from one Elliot Huber. I knew my next stop.

***

I don't like to dally. But I took an extra hour at the Melrose to compose myself further and to drink some coffee. The folks there were friendly, and the rhythm of the place helped put me at ease. People could be wretched, but they also could be a balm.

I several times pulled out my notebook, leafed through it as if it were my lover's skin, and kissed it tenderly. Please don't laugh at me.

On reflection, it was clear how incredibly lucky I was, and how close I had come to death. My internal clock is pretty accurate, but not perfect. By my body's estimate, 15 minutes had remained before sunset when Weaver and his people arrived at the warehouse. Weaver clearly was not a hired man. He was a flunky whose fear of his masters would have demanded that he kill me the instant he had a chance.

It was a close call. But I've often been lucky in that way.

My ride came ten minutes later, and soon I was on the corner near Huber's offices. A number of bars and taverns were nearby, so the street was brightly lit and busy with people. I saw no reason to horse around, so I went inside.

It was after business hours, but it wasn't terribly late. A young and pretty receptionist looked up with a smile.

"Can I help you?"

"Mr. Huber." I didn't wait for the young man to reply, but followed his eyes to a back office where I knew I'd find his employer. Most people had such easy tells.

When I got to the office door, I let myself in. Huber was sitting in a swivel chair behind a large oak desk, cigar pinched between his teeth. He was laughing and joking with a large man who leaned against the far wall. The second chap clearly was muscle of some kind, because when I entered, he moved toward me.

"Who paid you to find me?" I asked Huber.

"Listen, miss," said the large man as he reached for my arm to lead me out.

I struck him once in the throat with the side of my hand. He went down in a heap, and I stepped over him. It would be a few minutes before his body realized it was dead, and the sounds of the man gurgling would do my job for me in convincing Huber not to be any trouble.

"I'm waiting for an answer."

"Weaver," the man said in a rush. "That's all I knew him as. Paid cash."

"Well, shit. You're gonna have to do better than that, Elliot."

A look of fear and panic flashed across the man's face, and his eyes shot back and forth, as if looking for an answer.

"There's some lawyers," he said at last. "Brubaker and Calloway. They faxed over a description."

I snapped my finger several times, and the man rushed to his filing cabinet. A single sheet of fax paper soon appeared in my hands. It was as the man said.

"Gimme your phone." When he did, I checked the device to see if he'd called the number on the fax sheet. He had not.

I asked a few more questions, rummaging through the place as I did, checking desk drawers and cabinets. But it soon became clear that the man had nothing beyond what he already had given me. After yet a few more queries, and a stern warning not to tell anyone about my visit, I shoved him back into his chair, tossed the jacket hanging there across his head to shield the blood, and yanked off both of his ears. I pressed my hand against the jacket when he began to squeal.

"Shh ...," I told him. "You'll frighten the kid out front. Take it like a man." What did the guy want? I was giving him his life. "I'll be back if I need anything else," I said as I left his office. "Don't make me have to look for you."

Out front, I found the receptionist still there, standing near the front door, a look of shock on his face. I hustled the kid out, handed him one of the wads of cash I'd found in Huber's desk, and told him to have a good time. Then I headed back to the hotel.

I didn't really want to relocate, but such things happened sometimes. I kept an emergency identity squirreled away in my car, and I recovered those items now. Credit cards, ID, and pocket litter for one Miriam Vasquez, along with a spare bag of clothes.

There wasn't anything worth recovering at The Strand, so I hopped over to my new digs, a place called the William Claymore, an older hotel but one with beautiful and elegant stonework. I had no trouble getting a room, one of their larger suites on the top floor. It was extravagant, but I could afford it.

What to do next?

I didn't need much by way of rest, so I decided to amble over and check out the offices of Brubaker and Calloway. They conveniently were located in the Loop, on Jackson Boulevard, about five blocks from my new lodgings. I knew lawyers kept odd hours, so there might be a chance to find someone there with whom to have a quiet chat. I pulled out my phone on the elevator down to the lobby and looked up their website.

Most technologies still were quite new to me, so it took a little time to fumble to the right place. I stopped and took a seat in the hotel lobby as I browsed. Brubaker and Calloway, headquartered in New York, with offices in Washington, Toronto, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Well, that was interesting. They specialized in finance, mergers and acquisitions, and other corporate needs. Even more fascinating.

I made the five-block walk in a hop, skip, and a jump. The offices were not as I had expected. True, they were on the fifth floor of a mid-rise office building, but the map located near the security desk indicated that they occupied only a part of that floor, along with several other firms with less lofty sounding names.

The guard indicated that everyone had gone home for the evening, and only a little bit of flirting and chatting was required to discover that the occupants of 5C seldom stayed late. That definitely did not sound like corporate attorneys, who even I knew were famous for their peculiar, and often long, hours.

After thanking the guard, I made my way to the alley behind the building. I had not planned on burgling anything that night, but since no one was around, why not? It took only a short turn to wrench a rear door from its hinges near the loading docks, and I ascended the back stairs six at a time. You may have noticed that I could be unusually fleet when I chose to be so.

The Chicago offices of Brubaker and Calloway were not exactly Spartan, but they were sparse. After letting myself in, I counted three proper offices and no more than 10 workstations, several of which looked not to be used. The place was small, and it was short staffed, at that.

I suppose it wasn't too odd. I was under the impression that companies sometimes kept small offices in important-sounding buildings of large cities for the sole purpose of having something valuable to slap on their letterhead. That might be the case here. Grand sounding titles often weren't so grand when one peeked behind the curtain. But I had to have a look.

Fortunately, some folks still used paper, and I found a call roster stuck underneath a desk blotter at the most heavily used station. The roster was only a few weeks old, and gave the names and addresses of what I assumed to be seven employees.

I decided I would start at the top of the list, with a fellow named Skip Hendricks, who the roster identified as the managing partner. His home was nearby, on the near North Side.

First, though, I still had the keys to a place in Wicker Park. The lawyer could wait because the lawyer probably was just a lawyer. But I had the keys to the home of Weaver Napier, and he was a vampire's familiar.