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    Sundown
    Sundown
    Sundown
    Ebook105 pages1 hour

    Sundown

    By Linda Winstead Jones

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Abby Brown runs a bar that doesn't open until sundown, since she and many of her customers are vampires who don't venture out in the sunlight. For a few hours each night they share the bar with humans, but after closing time it becomes their haven. 

     

    Detective Leo Stryker thinks opening at sundown is a gimmick, one the proprietor carries too far. Abby is beautiful, and more intriguing than she should be. And she won't give him the time of day, no matter how hard he tries. His charm gets him nowhere with her.  

     

    When a Sundown customer is brutally killed Leo wants Abby's help to solve the case, since the bar was the last place the victim was seen. He thinks he's looking for a vicious psycho. 

     

    Abby knows he's looking for a vampire. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSorin Rising
    Release dateApr 13, 2020
    ISBN9781393545316
    Sundown
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    Author

    Linda Winstead Jones

    New York Times bestselling author Linda Winstead Jones has written more than seventy romance books in several subgenres—historical, fairy tale, paranormal, contemporary and romantic suspense. She is also a six-time RITA® Award finalist and winner of the 2004 RITA® Award for paranormal romance. Linda lives in north Alabama with her husband of forty-two years. She can be reached via www.Harlequin.com or her own website, www.lindawinsteadjones.com.

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      Book preview

      Sundown - Linda Winstead Jones

      CHAPTER ONE

      The underlying thrum of heartbeats. Tempting scents and primitive urges denied. It was a night like thousands—tens of thousands—of others.

      Abby stood behind the long, polished bar of her place, wiping down a beer mug until it shone like the row of gleaming glasses lined up behind her. She studied the customers, subtly keeping an eye on them in the way a mother hen might, though no one who knew her well would mistake her for such a caring creature. On the other side of the room a number of round tables arranged around a small dance floor were populated by a mixture of vampires and humans, regulars for the most part. Things were quiet tonight, as Tuesdays often were. Friday and Saturday would be another story; weekends around here were rarely what anyone would call quiet.

      The vampires present were, of course, acutely aware of the humans in their midst. Thirsty as they were, tempted as they might be by the scent of fresh blood and living flesh and the gentle, steady thudding of a dozen heartbeats beneath warm skin, they were not allowed to hunt within ten miles of Abby’s place, and they were expressly forbidden to ever take the life of one of her customers. She was the oldest in town, and they respected—and even feared—the strength that came with centuries of survival in an unfriendly world. There was no official hierarchy, no appointed position. She was the strongest among those who gathered here, and so she led.

      Abby did her best to show those of her kind, those who would listen, that it wasn’t necessary to take lives in order to survive. She wasn’t tenderhearted and she didn’t have any special fondness for humans, but logic drove her to be cautious and to convince others of the necessity. The existence of vampires was best served if there wasn’t a constant stream of dead, bloodless humans to explain away. Besides, why kill when you could drink your fill, touch a weak mind and make your donor forget, and continue to live in one place for many years without fear of being discovered? Only the stupidest, the most out of control, killed their prey.

      The humans who imbibed and talked and laughed in Abby’s bar had no idea that they drank next to monsters, the stuff of fantastical nightmares. That was as it should be. Most of them lived in this small town, mortals blind to the fact that some of the other customers in their favorite bar never actually drank the whiskey or beer placed before them. They didn’t think it odd that the two groups never mingled, that there was an invisible but impenetrable wall between them. Instinct kept them from making friendly gestures toward the vampires; innate self-preservation prevented them from asking too many questions. They drank, sometimes too much. They paid, they laughed, they left the day’s troubles behind. And they listened to Remy’s music.

      Remy played piano on the raised stage, his fingers moving with the ease brought on by more than two hundred years of practice. The piano itself was nothing special—it had been bought at a discount from a retiring piano teacher—but in Remy’s hands the beat-up upright became special. Jazz was his favorite style, but in the hours the Sundown Bar was open to the public—to the living—he played to the crowd. Country and classic rock, for the most part, but always with a touch of the jazz he loved. No one played Blue quite like Remy, and he could bring the house down with Sweet Home Alabama. At the moment he was using the surname Zeringue, but like Abby, he changed his last name often.

      Abby had lived in a lot of different places over the years. Big cities, small towns and villages, mountaintop cabins, a cave—though not for very long—and an isolated farm or two. Budding Corner, Alabama, was a midsize town, large enough to keep her business profitable, small enough that the place wasn’t overrun with rogue vamps, who usually preferred the anonymity and massive feeding ground of a large city. Here the air was clean, which was a comfort for her sensitive nose. The days were quiet and the residents were into easy living and minding their own business. What more could she ask for?

      When the door to the windowless bar opened, almost every head in the room turned to see who was entering—no different from any other time that door swung in. Abby cursed beneath her breath, though the man who entered was a regular himself and she should be used to seeing him by now. Since Stryker had moved to Budding Corner a few short months back he’d stopped by her place almost every night, sometimes for a few minutes, other nights for hours. Abby wasn’t bothered by cops. She paid her bills; she adhered to health codes and ABC regulations to the letter; she was very careful to do nothing that might call attention to her.

      But this particular cop had been hanging around too often. Detective Leo Stryker was observant, unlike the other humans in the room, unlike the large majority of the humans Abby met. There was something about him that made her nervous. Nothing and no one made her nervous!

      And he kept asking her out. On a date.

      As Stryker approached the bar Abby grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Jack and Coke was his drink, and he never had more than one. Two on a really bad night a couple of months ago, but for the most part when his one drink was done and she turned down his always-charming offer of a date, he headed out the door. Leo left alone every time, even though more than one female customer had made it clear that he didn’t have to go home without a companion. He could get lucky in the parking lot night after night. But he didn’t.

      She placed a glass on the bar where Leo always sat, but he waved her off. Nothing for me tonight, he said, taking his badge out and unnecessarily flashing it for her. I’m here on official business.

      Abby didn’t allow her concern to show. Official business could be as simple as a patron parking their car where they shouldn’t, or a sign improperly displayed, or maybe one of her human customers was up to no good and he wanted to ask questions about that human. She smiled at him; he did not smile back as he normally did.

      Leo took his usual bar stool and leaned onto the bar. If she was warm-blooded and into dating, she’d definitely accept his invitations. For a mortal he was quite handsome and well built, with medium-dark blond hair cut fairly short but not severely so, expressive blue eyes, and a strong jaw. His neck was thick and muscled and she could smell it from where she stood, a good four feet away. He had to be at least six foot two, a good twelve inches taller than she was, and he was a big guy with big arms, broad shoulders, and large hands. Her mouth watered. It was the scent that got to her most strongly. She clenched her fists behind the bar, so he couldn’t see her reaction. She was rarely so tempted, and it bothered her that this human had become something akin to a weakness.

      It was past time for her to feed from a living, breathing human being with a heartbeat and deliciously warm skin, but she’d be an idiot to drink from an overly observant cop no matter how tasty he smelled, no matter how pleasing he was to the eye. Besides, it wasn’t as if she was about to break her own rules about tasting the customers.

      Do you know a girl by the name of Marisa Blackwell?

      Sure, Abby said, momentarily relieved. What on earth could Marisa Blackwell have done to get herself into trouble? Marisa was a regular, a

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