Risa was standing across the room from him, her eyes unfocused as she looked at the floor. He had told her that she was targeted for assassination and she hadn’t said anything. Carden wanted to wait for some response from her, but the longer the silence dragged on, the more irritated and impatient he became.
Finally he strode over to her and grabbed her shoulders. “Didn’t you hear me?” he shouted. “Daybreak wants you dead!”
Her eyes snapped up to his face and she looked like she was just waking up, confused and disoriented. “What did you tell them, Carden?” she asked.
At first he couldn’t answer. He just wanted to shake her again. “You think I sold you out?” he asked incredulously.
“Anything for the Daybreak ideals, right? You said you got fired because of me. Did you finally let it slip that you’d screwed a murderer? You knew about me and didn’t turn me in, so that makes you an accessory. Daybreak sure as hell wouldn’t stand for that.”
“You are out of your goddamn mind!” he shouted back at her. “You’re even more paranoid than you were when I left.”
“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean—”
“Doesn’t mean they’re not after you,” Carden finished for her sarcastically. “Spare me your bullshit rhetoric, Risa. If you’d really like to know, I got fired for selling out a Wild Power to protect you from maybe the one person I’ve ever met who is more psychotic than you are. Do you want me to describe exactly what he was planning on doing to you?”
Risa didn’t answer him. He pushed her away in frustration and she stumbled back a few steps.
“Why did you do it?” she asked in a dull voice.
“Why do you think,” he snapped. “Damn it.”
“Is it supposed to be that obvious, Carden? Because it’s not. You betrayed me and you left me. I haven’t seen or heard from you in eight years. You left me alone, all this time.” There was an emptiness in her eyes as she said that. It cut through him like a razor.
“You know why I left.”
Risa snorted. “Ah. Right. You couldn’t stand to be reminded of your blundering mistake. But was it the guilt or the disgust that got to you?”
Carden just looked at her. He could have sworn that she knew. Maybe subconsciously she did, and she was just lying to herself now to escape her share of the responsibility.
She came closer to him, so that he could feel the heat of her body. “Or maybe it was the desire you couldn’t take,” she said in a provocative voice. “Maybe once you’d gotten a taste of me, you just wanted more. Tell me, Carden, how did it feel?”
He shook his head sadly. “You’re pathetic,” he whispered and turned away from her.
For once she didn’t have a retort. She just sat down on the bed and after a minute she laid back, letting her legs dangle off the edge.
“So why is Daybreak after me?” she asked.
Carden stood by the hotel window, peering out from behind the curtain. “I don’t know yet, but someone is working on it for me. All I know is that there was an assassin tailing you last night and there was a camera on your ceiling.”
“You were watching me last night?”
The accusing tone in her voice irritated him. “For a while. And it was a damn good thing that I did or you could be dead by now.”
“I can take care of myself,” she snapped.
“Right. Of course. I forgot.”
“Don’t patronize me like that.”
He turned towards her and saw that she’d propped herself up on her elbow and was glaring at him with those amazing, luminescent eyes. Even when she’d been human, her eyes had been magnetic. With a single look, she’d been able to reduce him to a desperate, licentious shell of a man.
“I don’t want to fight with you, Risa.”
“Then why do you keep baiting me?”
A self-effacing smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Habit, I guess.”
She fell back again and turned over to face the other wall. He supposed that was her way of telling him that she was giving him the silent treatment. It would probably be better that way.
Damn Daybreak. If there wasn’t a contract on Risa, then he might have been back in LA by now. They wouldn’t have fought or hurt each other all over again.
But he wouldn’t have gotten the chance to touch her either. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure that he would trade that for anything. When he’d been lying on top of her, it was the first time that he’d felt whole in eight years.
Fuck, this was not good.
Carden sat down at the desk and rested his forehead against the heel of his hand, as if he were trying to push away a raging headache. He didn’t know how long they stayed that way—him staring down at the desk with his head in his hands and his soulmate lying across the room with her back to him—but he was vaguely aware of the sun setting and the hotel room falling into darkness.
“I can’t stay here much longer,” Risa said quietly. The glow of the streetlights cast an unnatural, yellowish tint on her motionless body.
“Suffering from withdrawal, sweetheart?”
“I’m in the middle of something. I have work to do.”
Of course she did. She always did. “Well,” Carden said coldly, “it can damn well wait.”
“It can’t,” she insisted. “There are two dead girls, killed by a shapeshifter. The evidence won’t be—”
Carden’s cell phone rang and it cut Risa off. The vampire answered it immediately and then stepped out into the hallway to talk. He didn’t want his soulmate to overhear this conversation.
“Cahill, did you get it?” he asked.
“Yes,” the witch replied. “I hacked into the New York City branch’s database and cross-referenced it with— ”
“Okay, okay. What did you find out?”
Cahill didn’t answer right away. “It’s not good.”
“I figured that out when I realized she was being followed by an assassin. Stop trying to soften the blow and spit it out already!”
“Alright. It looks like Risa Sinclair first came to Daybreak’s attention five years ago. The NYPD was investigating the murder of man who was a suspected rapist. They pulled prints from the crime scene, ran them through IAFIS, and got an interesting hit. Risa’s fingerprints had been entered into the state-level database six years earlier when she was arrested for assault, though she was later released due to insufficient evidence. Well, the problem was that the prints they pulled from the rapist crime scene were fresh, but the public records said that Risa Sinclair died the year before.”
The witch paused, as if unsure how to continue. “I’m assuming that that was when she was changed into a vampire,” Cahill finally said. “Is that right?”
Carden could hear the witch’s unspoken question, the one that he was too courteous to ask directly. “Yeah,” he answered hoarsely. “That’s right.”
“Well,” Cahill went on nonchalantly, “Daybreak has a few people in the NYPD for this sort of situation. When they heard about a dead girl somehow being involved in a recent murder, they took over the case. Searching through old evidence, they discovered that Risa could be placed at the scenes of several murders and, as time passed, even more evidence was found against her at new crime scenes. The NYPD Daybreakers eventually managed to track her down. Risa apparently gets her blood supply from three different Daybreak banks around the city and she tends to alternate them. Eventually the cops anticipated which bank she’d go to, staked it out, and tailed her home. Then they passed on the information to the New York headquarters.
“Due to the new policies, an assassin, Ian McCafferty, was assigned to work with an investigator, Hollis Pasquale, to determine what needs to be done about Risa. I’m not going to lie to you; she has a lot working against her. She’s using her powers for vigilante justice and, while it seems that she intends to kill people that she believes are evil, she has mistakenly killed some innocent people over the years. She’s drawing attention to the existence of the Night World by leaving behind evidence and sometimes killing in ways that would be impossible for a human girl. While Daybreak does want humans and the Night World to coexist peacefully, the human world, for the most part, isn’t ready yet. So, not only is Risa drawing attention to something that Daybreak would rather keep hidden for right now, she’s doing it in a very negative way.”
“But what the hell!” Carden raged. “Daybreak is supposed to be passive. Assassinations are supposed to be a last resort. She’s just one vampire. Why aren’t they even thinking about just locking her up?” He couldn’t believe he was saying that now, after years of scoffing at it. He’d always believed that Daybreak was too acquiescent and wasted too much time, money, and lives by trying to avoid taking out people who were obviously a threat.
“Killing still is a last resort, Carden. And it will be up to Ian McCafferty to decide what action to take. Risa is only one vampire, yes, but thanks to Night World infiltration, the word has gotten out about what she’s doing. She has copycats in at least three different cities and the Night World is hailing all of them for slaughtering the worst of the so-called human vermin.”
“Fucking A.”
“I know. To be honest, it seems like Daybreak just wants her out of the picture as quickly and quietly as possible. And the last transmission from the investigation team states that Hollis Pasquale witnessed Risa killing a human man for beating up a teenage kid outside of his building.”
“Fucking A. Fucking A!” Carden punched the wall and his fist plowed straight through the plaster. Damn his soulmate! Damn her to hell for getting herself into this. And damn him as well.
“I’m sorry,” Cahill said. “I really am. I think your best bet is to try to talk to Ian McCafferty. Get Risa to explain her side of the story. Maybe a deal could be worked out.”
“Right,” Carden spat. “The kind of deal that will involve keeping her in a cell for the rest of eternity.”
“She’s killed a lot of people,” the witch said softly.
“I know that! I knew that eight years ago! I couldn’t get her to stop. But most of the people she’s killed were bad, Cahill. Really bad. And either way, locking her up doesn’t bring them back!” He broke off, realizing that the other hotel guests could probably hear him. And he knew that if he didn’t get a grip, he was going to tear this building apart with his bare hands. “Once she knows that she’s killed innocent people…no one can punish her as much as she’ll punish herself.”
“I understand that. But I’m not the one you have to convince. Talk to Ian.” The witch rattled off the address of the Daybreaker’s hotel. It was only a few blocks from the house Risa was living in.
Carden swallowed back his anger. “Okay,” he conceded. “Thanks for your help.”
“Let me know if there’s anything else I can do. Anything, Carden. Understand?”
“Thanks. I will.”
He hung up his phone and tried to take some deep breaths. He’d been hit with too many blows at once and his mind couldn’t get around any of them. Risa being investigated by the NYPD about a slew of murders, Risa responsible for killing innocent people, Risa inspiring copycat killers, Risa being hailed by the Night World, Risa behind bars for centuries as the rest of the world went on without her…
Carden charged back into his hotel room and found her sitting up on the bed with her feet tucked under her. Her long, dark hair fell limply about her face and it made her eyes seem even more haunted. She looked so fragile and vulnerable that he wanted to crush her against him just to keep her safe.
“You found out something?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said numbly. “Something.” More than he’d bargained for, more than he’d wanted to know.
As he watched her work, Ian thought that Hollis was the antithesis of the stereotype. Her skin was slightly pale, but her complexion was perfectly radiant. He’d noticed that she actually kept a small arsenal of cleansers, moisturizers, and other unnamable products lined up around her bathroom sink. Her blond hair was sleek and shining, and when he’d leaned over her shoulder to see the computer screen, he’d been distracted by the scent of peaches. He’d been compelled to lean in closer and breathe in the fragrance of her hair more deeply.
Ian was in trouble and he knew it. He wasn’t sure when it had happened. He and Hollis had only been civil to each other for a few hours, but when he thought about it, Ian realized that this feeling, whatever it was, had been there since the beginning. Maybe that was the reason that being malicious to her had been so easy: he’d acted like a five year-old pushing over the girl he liked in the sandbox.
“Okay,” she said excitedly, rousing him out of his thoughts, “I think I’ve got something.”
He went to stand next to her chair, trying to keep his distance. He’d read in her thoughts that it made her nervous when he stood too close to her. Before, when he nearly smelled her hair, she’d been ready to jump out of her skin.
“According to the police file, Risa Sinclair died in a car accident eight years ago. Her car flipped off a bridge into the river. It happened in Greenwich, Connecticut, where her family still lives, and her body was never found.”
“Convenient.”
“Indeed. Greenwich is pretty close to the city; it’s only a short train ride away. And some of the cold case evidence found by the NYPD places Risa at the crime scenes of a few murders and assaults right here in New York.”
“So we know that our girl was an active vigilante even before she was changed into a vampire.”
“Right. But here’s the interesting thing: Jonas Carden was working for Circle Daybreak in New York City up until eight years ago. He was transferred to Los Angeles the same week that Risa Sinclair supposedly died.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ian whispered. He braced himself on the desk and bowed his head. “He changed her.”
“Maybe,” Hollis agreed. “Or maybe he knew her and was angry or hurt or…whatever after someone else changed her. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence.”
“Why come back here now? How did he know about our camera?”
“I don’t know. It says in his file that he was fired by Anton Parish, the director of the Washington, DC compound. He was on a team that was supposed to transfer a Wild Power to another location. The notes are really vague, but it seems like a lot of things went wrong and Carden was asked to leave do to ‘dangerous lack of judgment’ and ‘irresponsibility.’”
“That doesn’t help us much.”
“No. But as soon as Carden left the compound, he must have hopped a plane to New York. According to the passenger list, there was no Jonas Carden aboard any flight to the city in the last week.”
“Well he’s got to watch his back, even if he isn’t working for Daybreak any more. There are still a lot of people out there who would love to see him dead.”
“Right. Okay. So what do we have so far?” She grabbed a sheet of notebook paper to start a bulleted list. Ian grinned in spite of himself. He was starting to find her obsessive organizational skills cute. He really was in trouble.
“Most likely, Carden and Risa knew each other when he was working here eight years ago. It’s possible that he’s the one who changed her. Whatever happened, it must have been ugly because we haven’t found any evidence that they’ve communicated since then.”
“So in the interim,” Hollis said, picking up the thread, “he works in LA while she stays in New York and continues the killing spree. The records are sketchy, but it looks like she started to escalate, killing more often, over the past eight years.”
“Then Carden heads to DC for that Wild Power job and ends up getting fired. He flies to New York…then we’ve got nothing. We still don’t know how he found out about that camera. We don’t know how much he knows about us. And we don’t know where he took Risa.”
Hollis rubbed her neck, then let her head fall forward and rolled it from side to side. “Are you okay?” Ian asked her.
She lifted her head. “Yeah, I’ve just got a stiff neck. I must have slept funny.”
“No, you didn’t sleep,” Ian told her.
Her face turned bright red almost instantly and she looked away. “Oh yeah,” she said with an awkward laugh. “Maybe it’s from leaning over the computer then.”
Ian shifted his weight. Without meaning to, he’d made her uncomfortable again by reminding her that he’d heard her cry. He’d been told a few times that he lacked tact, but he’d never really been aware of it until now. It seemed like everything he said and did was wrong.
He couldn’t stop thinking about his crass attempt to kiss her. They’d been so close and her full, soft lips had been right there. Ian wasn’t sure what had come over him, but it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to lean in closer and see what it felt like to have his lips pressed against hers. But from her deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression, he had obviously violated some sort of boundary between them.
“I don’t mean to make you nervous,” Ian blurted out. Hollis flushed a deeper shade of red and he knew that he’d said something tactless yet again. Well, it was too late now. He had to finish what he’d started. “I don’t mean to embarrass you.”
“You don’t,” she said weakly.
“We’re trying for honesty now, princess. Remember?”
Hollis bit her lip again and got up out of her chair. Ian watched her walk restlessly across the room and back again. “Fine. You make me nervous,” she said as she kept pacing. “But it’s not you. It’s me. I don’t want to be this uneasy and then just thinking that makes me even more uneasy. And then I look at you and you’re not even doing anything but standing there and I don’t even know why I’m nervous.”
Ian stood, rooted to the floor, while his partner picked up speed. The words tumbled from her mouth faster and faster. He already knew that Hollis had a tendency to ramble, especially when she was flustered, but he’d always cut her off before long. Watching her now, he started to wonder if she was talking to him or if she was just thinking aloud.
“I hated you yesterday,” she went on as she reached one wall and whipped around to walk the other way, “and that was easier because at least then you weren’t trying to kiss me. Not that that was such a horrible thing. I mean, it was a flattering thing because you’re probably the most gorgeous guy that has ever come on to me and I came this close to letting you do it. But you were horrible to me up until a few hours ago and I don’t even know you and I know that you’ve been with a lot of girls and I don’t want to be played and I don’t even know what you want from me. All I know is that you’re always looking at me now and you tried to smell my hair and I want you to respect me. And I don’t think that you’ll respect me if I let you kiss me because I don’t even know if I would respect me if I let you do that. I’m supposed to be working and I have professional standards and we’ve already let our personal business get in the way of our work and it can’t happen again. And what would happen after you kissed me? Are we dating then? Would you want more from me? Would you want to forget it ever happened or are you just trying to get another notch on your belt? And I don’t even know you, Ian! What if—”
He closed the distance between them and reached out to cup the back of her neck. Without hesitation or any sort of finesse, he brought his mouth down over hers, cutting her off mid-sentence.
He’d taken her by surprise and she tried to pull away, but Ian held her still. After another moment, her arms came up around his neck and she pressed herself against him with surge of passion that matched his own.
And then it was all over for Ian. His fingers swept through her hair, down her back, up the sides of her body. Hollis gasped against his mouth and her nails dug into his shoulders.
“This is wrong,” she whispered unsteadily as his lips trailed down her throat.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asked in a husky voice, then flicked his tongue over a sensitive spot on her neck.
“No,” she moaned as he nibbled on her ear lobe. “Mm…maybe.” His fingers skimmed the sides of her breasts. “Ahh…this isn’t me. This isn’t like me.”
Ian kissed her mouth again and her lips opened under his eagerly. “Maybe this is you, princess,” he said, his lips brushing hers as he spoke. “Maybe the rest is just a façade.”
Hollis kneaded his shoulders and raked her nails through his hair. “I hate the façade,” she murmured. “But you won’t respect me without it. You won’t respect me after this.”
His hands ran down her back again and then his left hand trailed down her thigh while his other hand held her against him. His tongue teased her collarbone. “I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t respect you, Hollis,” he whispered with hushed heat.
Her head fell back as he kissed her neck again. “I don’t want to be just another girl to you. Just another amusing way to pass the time.”
Ian gazed into her golden eyes. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me or what you’ve assumed, princess, but I don’t sleep around,” he swore to her. He grasped her thigh and lifted it up over his hip. Hollis moaned and took the initiative to wrap her leg around his back, letting him support her weight. “You’re not just another girl. You drive me crazy. You always have. No other girl has driven me even half as mad as you do.”
She kissed him passionately, in a way that made him ache. “You want me because I’m exasperating?” she whispered between kisses.
He caressed her cheek with his free hand. “I want you because you’re you.”
For once it seemed like he’d said the right thing because Hollis wrapped her arms around his neck again and devoured his mouth. She lifted her other leg and Ian picked her up, so that both of her legs were clasped around his waist. He carried her a few steps over to the bed and laid her down on her back.
Her silky hair was fanned out around her and her catlike eyes were darkened with desire. She hardly resembled the tense, closed-off girl that she tried so hard to be. But didn’t she know how beautiful she was like this, so fiery and self-possessed?
“God, I know this is wrong,” she murmured, even as she let his hands wander over her body. “This is so stupid.”
Suddenly uncertain, Ian looked at her. Maybe she was right. Maybe she was thinking more clearly than he was. “Do you want me to stop?” he asked her.
She pulled him down on top of her and sighed. “No,” she said resolutely. “God, no.”
Ian leaned in to taste her lips again. “Just say the word, princess,” he whispered against her mouth. “Any time, just say it.”
Hollis nodded, but hastily grasped the hem of his shirt, pulling it up over his head. Feeling her cool fingers slide over his back, Ian shuddered. In the next instant, he had ripped her shirt off as well, gasping at the feel of her bare skin against his.
And then there were no more words. Ian simply lost himself in the taste of her skin, the smell of her hair, the sound of her cries, the heat between them.
Part 6
Part 8
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