"Do you remember feeling any kind of jab or anything?" Jo asked, completely oblivious of his thoughts. "Maybe a sudden sharp pain in the neck or arm that might have been a needle? Or—Oh!" she interrupted herself suddenly, eyes widening. "It could have been a tranq gun. I bet an elephant tranquilizer would have taken you out for half an hour."
"It could have been," Nicholas agreed quietly.
Standing suddenly, Jo moved around the coffee table and began to pace the carpet, arms crossed under her breasts and pushing them up. The woman was completely and utterly nude and apparently totally unselfconscious about it as she murmured, "How it was done doesn't really matter. I mean we can supposition on that all we want. You were probably drugged, the woman was probably controlled. You were taken home, she was killed, placed in your lap, blood splashed on you and in your mouth, and all just in time for Decker to show up and witness it. But none of that really helps. We can't prove it now. We need to figure out why it was done."
Nicholas nodded, his eyes drifting from her breasts to her behind as she turned to pace back again. Damn, she had a killer figure. He doubted the nanos would have much work to do body wise when he turned her. The thought drew him up short, and Nicholas swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. For the first time in fifty years, he had hopes for a future. But it was a false hope if they couldn't work this out.
"Did you have any enemies?" Jo asked suddenly, spinning to peer at him.
Nicholas shook his head. "No, not that I know of."
She clucked at that with disgust. "You were a rogue hunter, Nicholas. You probably had loads of rogues who weren't happy with your capturing them."
He winced, but then sighed and explained, "Most rogues don't live to be unhappy about it. Mostly they're staked and baked shortly after we bring them in."
"Staked and baked?" she asked.
"Staked out to bake in the sun all day," he explained. "After centuries of avoiding the sun we're pretty sensitive to it. It does a lot of damage. The nanos repair as much as they can but run out of blood to work with and start attacking the organs in search of more. It's pretty painful," Nicholas admitted with an almost embarrassed grimace.
"It's pretty Draconian," Jo said dryly.
"Yes," he acknowledged. "It's supposed to be a deterrent to others to convince them they don't want to go rogue and risk having that happen." Nicholas cleared his throat and added, "I think they may have stopped that practice the last couple of years, though, I'm not sure."
"Hmm," Jo murmured. "But they did that when you were still an enforcer?"
Nicholas nodded uncomfortably. "But not by me. Enforcers just bring them in. We aren't supposed to kill them. They get a trial just like a mortal would, and then the Council has them staked and baked and beheaded."
"Nice," she said on a sigh. "So no one you brought in could be behind this."
Nicholas was nodding in agreement when she added, "But family members could be, someone who had a rogue relative and blames you for bringing them in."
He shook his head again and peered down at his hands as he said, "Relatives tend to shun rogues. They're upset and embarrassed by them and often even deny their existence or relationship to them."
"Is that what happened to you?" Jo asked quietly.
Nicholas simply shrugged, but it was what had happened. From his checks on his family through mortal employees he knew that his brother and sister never spoke of him anymore and that Jeanne Louise, his little sister, who had adored him and made a pest of herself visiting all the time, often catching him and Annie in inopportune moments, even denied his existence now. As far as she was concerned, he had never been born.
"I'm sorry," Jo said quietly, and he glanced up to see she'd moved around the coffee table and now stood before him in all her nude glory. Just the sight of her perky breasts peering him in the face was enough to cheer him somewhat, but when Nicholas reached for her, she skipped out from between his legs and the coffee table to move back to the open area of carpet, out of his reach. "Right, so it probably isn't about being an enforcer. We have to think about this."
Nicholas sank back against the sofa with a sigh as she continued her pacing.
"So…" she murmured. "Annie called you and said she had something to tell you, but died before she could tell you what it was… in a car accident that decapitated her." Jo grimaced and paused in her pacing to turn and ask, "How did the accident happen? I mean decapitation in a car accident is pretty rare, I would think. Did she crash under a semi or something?"