“You think that a pretty young thing like you will soften an old man’s heart, with drink and blushing? No.”
“I’m new in town,” I said, soldiering on. “I came here for the first time two nights ago, and I’m just trying to learn as much as I can before I have to leave. I’ve been pretty sheltered until now. I was in a pack for a while. It wasn’t anything like this.”
“You came from a pack?” His eyebrows bunched together in curiosity.
I knew if I kept rambling long enough he’d interrupt. I nodded earnestly.
He scowled and shook his head. “The pack. Is archaic. In the old days, we needed it for protection. To defend against hunters, against rivals, against the vampires. Now? Easier to buy each other off. All the packs will go away soon, trust me.”
I thought about Carl, my former alpha, running his pack into the ground to maintain his own sense of importance, and hoped he was right.
“My name’s Kitty,” I said.
He arched that peculiar brow at me. “A joke?”
“’Fraid not.” I’d never seen much reason to change my name just because it had become a hideous irony.
He stared at me long and hard, like he was deciding whether or not to give something valuable away. Finally, he said, “Fritz.”
“Nice to meet you, Fritz.”
“Bah. You’ll go away and in a week I won’t remember you.” He regarded his glass thoughtfully for a moment, then shook his head. “On second thought, you I will remember. Kitty.” He snorted a brief laugh.
I had to smile. It heartened me that he could be amused by something, anything, and the icy wall around him seemed to chip a little.
He drained his glass, as he’d done the day before.
“Can I get you another one?”
He shook his head as he pushed back his chair. “Only one. Then I go. Goodbye.”
“Where?” I blurted. “I mean, you obviously live in D.C. But what do you do? Where do you go?”
I’d said too much, crossed a line before earning his trust. He’d never talk to me again. He threw a glare over his shoulder and strode out the door, shrugging deeper into his coat.
Jack came over to pick up the empty glass and wipe down the table. “Good work,” he said. “I’ve been here for a year and never heard him say more than one word.”
I needed more than one word if I was going to get him to tell me his story. If I was going to convince him to tell his story on my show . . . But I was getting ahead of myself.
Then Luis walked through the door, and all such thoughts left my brain entirely. My giddy smile grew even giddier when I saw the same smile on him. He took me out for seafood, then back to his place, and Leo didn’t break down the door on us this time.
The next morning, I drove to Bethesda and looked for Dr. Flemming.
The letterhead located him at the Magnuson Clinical Center, a research hospital that dated back to the fifties. I had to check in at the front gate of the campus, show ID and everything. I told them up front that I was visiting Flemming. Since the campus included several working hospitals, security was used to visitors. They gave me a pass and let me in.
Flemming’s office was in the basement. I made my way from elevator to corridor, unsure of what I’d find. Fluorescent lighting glared off scuffed tile floors and off-white walls. I passed one plain beige door after another, marked with plastic nameplates, white letters indented into black backgrounds. At the ends of corridors, safety notices advised passersby about what they should do in case of emergency, red lines moving through floor plans helpfully directing them to the nearest exit. Wherever our taxpayer dollars were going, it wasn’t for interior decorating.
The place smelled like a hospital, antiseptic and sickly. The vigilant attempts at cleanliness were never able to completely hide the illness, the decay, the fact that people here were hurting and unhappy. I didn’t want to breathe too deeply.
I found Flemming’s nameplate at the end of a little-used hallway, after passing several unmarked doors. I hadn’t seen another person in the last five minutes. It seemed like he’d been relegated to the place where he’d be most out of the way.
I knocked on the door and listened. Somebody was inside. Leaning close to the door, I tried to make out the noises. A mechanical whirring sound, almost constant. Crunching paper. A paper shredder, working overtime.
And if that wasn’t enough to make me suspicious . . .
I knocked louder and tried the doorknob. It was locked, requiring a magnetic key card to open. No sneaking in and catching the good doctor unawares, alas. I rattled the knob insistently. The paper shredder whined down and stopped. I waited to hear footsteps, heavy breathing, the sound of a gun being cocked, anything. Had Flemming—or whoever was in there—snuck out the back? I wondered if Bradley had a lock pick that worked on card readers.
I considered: was I ready to stoop to going through Flemming’s waste bin, piecing together strips of shredded documents, to find out what his research really involved and what he was hiding?