I smiled at him. “As long as you don’t touch her, I’ve got no problem with your agreement. I don’t think her attractiveness is debatable. And if you do touch her, I’ll slice your fingers off and feed them to a River troll.”
“River trolls are fruitarians.”
“Not the point.”
He chuckled, keyed in his code, opened the door to the garage. “No, I suppose not. Regardless, I only have eyes for you, Sentinel. Well, you . . . and her.”
I looked in the direction of his gaze, half expecting to find a beautiful woman in the garage.
But there was no woman. Instead there was a gleaming white, two-door convertible with sporty wheels, deep vents in the doors, and another vent across the back.
Hands on my hips, I glanced at him. “And what is this?”
“This, Sentinel, is an Audi.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” I could appreciate good steel, fine leather, and impressive horsepower, but I recognized the model for one singular and important reason. “You bought Iron Man’s car.”
“He’s not even immortal.” The clear disdain in Ethan’s voice made me snort.
“He’s a fictional superhero. You aren’t in competition.”
“He’s a very mortal superhero outside that suit,” he said, looking over his car with an appraiser’s eye.
“You’ve apparently put some thought into that.”
“A man carefully considers his ride, Sentinel. And his rivals. This car will get us where we need to go, and it will do so very, very quickly.”
There was hardly a point in arguing with that. It certainly looked like a fast car, so I let the comment pass and walked around the vehicle, gave it a once-over. The car absolutely gleamed, its interior deep crimson leather, its soft roof made of fabric in the same shade.
I looked at him over the car from the passenger side. “You do have good taste.”
“Of course I do,” he said. “Shall we go for a ride?”
“I mean, I’m not going to say no.” I grinned at him. “Have you named her yet?”
The faintest flush of crimson rode his cheeks. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him blush before. “Sophia,” he said.
o;If you could take a look, or get your people to take a look, maybe you’ll find something that ties him to the sorcerer, to the vampire. Something that explains why he was killed.”
“We’ll take a look,” Ethan said, nodding at me. “The address?”
Gabriel read it off. “I understand it’s near Hellriver. So be careful.”
In the 1950s, Hellriver had been “Belle River,” a pretty suburb near the Des Plaines River. That changed forty years ago, when an ugly chemical spill sent most of the neighborhood packing. The houses, churches, and stores were still there, but Chicago hadn’t been able to get the funds for a cleanup, and nobody wanted to live in still-toxic Hellriver.
“We always are. How did you find the address?”
“Damien made some calls. Caleb may not have been a Pack member, but he still had friends inside. It’s not supposed to work that way—defection is defection—but I can’t stop what I don’t see.”
“And now you can see it,” Ethan said.
“Yeah. We’ll be having some discussions about that.”
“Good luck to you,” Ethan said. “We’ll take a look and let you know what we find.”
“Appreciate it.” There was a thunk on Gabriel’s end. “Goddamn whelps. Somebody pull those assholes apart! Later,” he said into the phone, and the call ended.
“Sounds like he’s having fun.”