Strangely, there was no pain. When the fire finally reached her, its flames licking her body from head to toe, it was with detached fascination that she watched her skin melt and stick to the floor like tar. As the stench of burning flesh choked her, she wondered dimly if she would asphyxiate or burn to death. And it seemed apt somehow to be dying in a fire now when her last death had been in water.
Mostly, she couldn’t think at all. The eyes of the young, human girl that her maker had brought home before setting this fire haunted her. What she’d seen swirling in those brown depths was terror and innocence and blessed ignorance. The girl did not know what horrors awaited her—such things were still beyond her imagination.
But not for long.
Hope had still glowed inside of the girl. Hope that her parents would find her. Hope that she would find a way to break free from the frighteningly beautiful, black-eyed man. Hope that she would still be able to grow up and fall in love and have both children and a career—the new American dream—and be happy. She was still naive enough to believe that good triumphs over evil and horrible things did not happen to young girls like her.
But not for long.
She would soon learn the unspeakable cruelty of life. How it felt to have your body torn in two. To be used and desecrated—laid to waste with no chance of escape. To beg for a death that would never come and to be the one who denied that mercy to others. She would soon learn what savagery she was capable of wielding in order to survive.
Alexandra knew, because she had been that girl once. If she sifted through all of the memories of rape and torture, all of the blood, all of the screams, all of the ecstasy and the agony...somewhere beneath was the hazy memory of the innocent human girl she’d been before her maker had pulled her under the water. She remembered being the petrified child praying for someone to rescue her. She remembered her desperate attempts to run from him, in body and mind. She remembered fighting tooth and nail, even if it was in vain. Even if it only caused her more pain in the end. She remembered clinging to scraps of faith that she would some day be free of him.
Instead, she had become him.
As the flames engulfed her, she felt something inside of her awaken. A force. An instinct. It gave her impossible strength as it took control of her limbs, demanding that she run from the fire. That she survive. It was as if the fire was exorcizing the monster inside of her and it was fighting for its life.
She battled it. Her body writhed on the floor as the monster ordered it to flee and she forced it to remain. Her arms thrashed. Her legs kicked. Her nails dug into the fiery floorboards.
As she finally started to lose consciousness and her body gave out, the monster roared. It would not be put down. It would not be cast aside. It would persevere. She would never escape. Never be free.
It owned her. He owned her, body and soul.
Don’t try to escape. I will always find you.
Alexandra woke to the sound of a shrill scream filling the small, enclosed area inside the car. Her ears were ringing and her eyes snapped open to find the long, dark highway stretching out before her. The sound vibrated around her, thin and piercing, and it seemed to warp the fabric of reality. She could almost see the waves flowing away from her and reflecting off of the windshield to return in a frontal assault. It wasn't until someone clamped a cool hand over her mouth that she realized the scream was her own.
Even knowing that, Lex couldn't control the sound. The scream felt like a living thing as it exploded from her throat, launching itself against the hand that covered her mouth, refusing to be contained. It burned through her breath and choked her, not caring if it killed her so long as it escaped.
Then there was a voice inside of her head, shouting her name. She knew that it was meant to startle her into silence, but it only fueled the scream further as it grew even more desperate.
No one was allowed in her mind. Never again.
The voice became louder and so did the scream, but rather than obliterating each other, the two forces fused together, magnifying one another. It felt like a tidal wave was building inside of her and Lex knew that when it crested and crashed, she would be swallowed whole.
After her dream, part of her didn’t care. Tired of the battle, she longed for the quiet. And yet she found herself instinctively digging her nails into her palms, breaking the skin and drawing blood. There was a moment of blinding pain as the energy, seizing the opportunity, rushed out of her in a blast of brilliant blue heat.
The scream died on her lips as the windows in the car shattered. A gust of icy wind blew her hair back and Lex squeezed her eyes shut against the onslaught. Tires screeched and she was suddenly jerked to the right. A moment later, she was thrust forward into the seatbelt as the car slammed to a stop.
The brutal wind was almost still, but Alexandra’s teeth were still chattering as she trembled violently. She kept her eyes tightly shut as she felt a pair of hands unbuckling her seatbelt and running over her face and hair.
“Are you okay?” someone asked her aloud. “Lex!”
Tentatively, she opened her eyes to find Aiden cupping her face in his hands. His gray eyes were soft as he gazed at her and one of his thumbs caressed her cheekbone. He was being so careful, so gentle, and she couldn’t bear it.
She cringed back from him and slapped his hands away from her face. “I’m okay,” she said hoarsely.
Aiden nodded once and then pulled away. “Is this screaming a normal thing for you?” he asked.
It used to be. For three years, Lex had often woken up screaming as dreams of her maker chased her into the waking world. After she met Reece, however, the dreams had faded to the point where weeks passed between them. Sometimes, even months. Now she had had three of them in two days, and this last one was so bad that it had incited the blue fire within her.
Dear god, she was coming apart.
Alexandra Harper knew fear. She knew the way that it crawled over your skin like a swarm of insects creeping up to the back of your neck. Once there, it burrowed its way into your bloodstream, spreading through your body with each thunderous beat of your heart. It displaced the oxygen in your cells and your breaths became quick and shallow. It plundered every organ, one by one, before finally infecting your nervous system, locking your muscles into a state of contraction until your jaw ached and your body was racked with tremors. It urged you to run, even as it left you paralyzed. And when the fear ultimately seeped into your brain, it drove you mad. It became your closest friend, your constant companion. Your filter. Your savior. Given enough time, you believe that you cannot survive without it.
You are very wrong—even someone as damaged as Lex could learn that.
But as time and space pulled her and Reece further and further apart, her conviction wavered. As the soulmate link stretched and thinned, the fear that she had learned to control over the past year and a half was breaking free.
She realized at that moment that she’d never actually overcome it. Whatever strength she’d believed she gained recently had been Reece’s all along. She had sucked it through the link between them like a parasite, leaving him with nothing.
To torment her, Angie Catellini had once given Lex the moniker “Soul Stealer.” Right now, it seemed now that her taunts had actually been rather close to the truth.
The fear had known. It had retreated into the back of her mind, letting her believe that she had defeated it. It had bided its time while she leeched off of Reece’s strength. Now that she and Reece were truly over, it had come to collect what rightfully belonged to it.
If she was getting worse, though, then maybe Reece was getting better. Maybe while she woke up screaming, he woke up feeling invigorated. Revitalized. Maybe he was feeling like himself for the first time in ages.
It was what she had wanted. It was the reason she left. But suddenly she found that the thought didn’t bring her much comfort. She knew from experience that there was only one thing that could.
She looked at Aiden, who had slouched down in the driver’s seat, his long legs crossed at the ankles near the gas pedal. His head was back against the headrest as he smoked a cigarette, waiting for her to calm down. If she were to throw herself on him now, he would be only too willing to give her what she needed. But the softness that she’d seen in his eyes a moment ago gave her pause. And the memory of the way he’d held her close in the back seat after the last time made her decide against it.
Besides, even though he seemed completely relaxed as he smoked, Alexandra could feel a strange, frenetic energy pulsing through the link between them. There was something very wrong with him.
The corner of his mouth turned up. “Or maybe there’s something right. Finally.”
Lex shuddered. “Don’t read my thoughts.” She meant it as a plea, but it came out as a hiss. “I can’t take it right now.”
Aiden just nodded and took a long drag from his cigarette.
“How bad was it?” she asked him. “The blast.”
He shrugged. “Bad enough to blow the windows out. But since we’re talking about blue fire, I’d say that it had to have been pretty small to do that little damage.”
Alexandra swallowed as relief flooded her. Then she licked her lips. “I’m sorry about your car.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he replied as he reached for the door handle and pushed his door open. “It was on its last leg anyways.”
She frowned a little as he got out of the car, but then she followed him.
They had pulled over on the side of a four-lane highway. She struggled to keep up with Aiden’s long strides as he headed toward a thin line of trees. Just beyond there, Lex could see the lights of a few high-rise apartment buildings.
“Where are we?” she asked.
The vampire gave her a curious look. “You don’t recognize it?”
She started to shake her head, but as they made it through the trees and stepped out onto a narrow one-way street, she spotted the license plate of a parked car. Then she froze.
Washington, D.C.
No, that was impossible. Washington was only two hours away from northern Maryland, where they had stopped at the gas station. There was no way that her nightmare could have been that short.
Aiden gave her a smile over his shoulder as he kept walking. “Home sweet home.”
Lex ran up to him and grabbed his arm. “Are you crazy? We have to get out of here. It’s not safe.”
Languidly, he took another drag from his cigarette before throwing it on the ground. “It’s not that bad. In fact, I think Detroit overtook D.C. as America’s most dangerous city a few years ago. Besides,” he made a sweeping gesture, “we’re in the northwest.”
Her temper flared. “It’s not safe for me, Aiden.”
“The Night World doesn’t know about you,” he assured her. “The people that stormed the Daybreak compound with Angie either died or were captured and had their memories altered. As far as the Night World is concerned, Eve is still alive and well.”
Reece had told Lex as much, but it was good to hear it from someone who knew the Night World more intimately. Still, it wasn’t enough to ease her anxiety. “Some of the Daybreakers here know.”
“They only know that you exist. They don’t know your name or your face, Lex.”
“Fine,” she replied with exasperation. “But they know yours. And so does the Night World. This is the most dangerous place for you to be right now.”
Aiden’s smile broadened. “You think so?”
She let go of him and stepped back so that she could see his face. “Do you have a death wish?”
“I could ask you the same question,” he replied. “You’re the Wild Power who was releasing blue fire in an uncontrolled environment. If the blast had been any bigger, you’d have every Daybreaker and Night Person in the city hunting you down.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose.”
The vampire raised his eyebrows in response to that, as if to say, Oh no? Then he sighed wearily. “We need a car, Lex.”
“Can’t we steal one of these?” she asked, pointing to the cars parked along the street.
He threw her an amused glance. “You want me to steal?”
“To get us out of here? Yes.”
Aiden laughed. “You really are everything Eve’s not.”
“And vice versa,” Lex replied, as she had done earlier. She still wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by it. Maybe she just didn’t want him thinking more of her than of his own soulmate. She couldn’t really explain it, but Genevieve meant something to her. The witch’s blood ran through her veins. Some of her memories lived on in Alexandra’s mind. They had shared something when the witch had given her life to Lex—something special that she had never experienced before or since. No matter what Aiden wanted to believe, she knew that she couldn’t compare to Genevieve. And she didn’t want to.
“No,” Aiden suddenly said.
Lex looked at him, puzzled. “No, what?”
“You wanted to know if I missed her. My answer is no.”
It was a lie, Alexandra was certain. She just wasn’t sure if he actually believed it. “You don’t have to say that for my sake.”
“I didn’t. I knew it the moment I looked at you when I came out of that gas station. You saw what I’d done—you felt what I’d done—and you didn’t care.”
How could she have cared? When she had looked into his eyes at that moment, she was swept away—caught by the high he had been riding after his kill.
Still, she doubted that she would have cared if she’d been in her right mind anyway. After all of the things she’d seen and done in her life, she was in no position to judge anyone. She left that up to people like Reece.
Aiden started walking again and Lex fell into step with him.
“When was the last time you fed?” he asked after they had turned out onto a busier street.
“Before I left,” she replied with an automatic wince. Reece was always chiding her about not feeding enough.
“From another person, I mean.”
“The day I met Reece,” Lex said. Then she added softly, “The day that I met you.”
He turned his head sharply, his eyes betraying some emotion that his bland expression fought to conceal. Even without searching his mind, she knew what he was thinking: his soulmate was Lex’s last kill.
All he said was, “Those two humans at the gas station were the first for me since that day, too.”
Now that was a surprise. It wasn’t that she’d expected him to go on slaughtering sprees after what had happened last year, but he was still Aiden St. Helen for god’s sake.
“Don’t you miss it?” he pressed.
A few hours ago she might have said no, but after sharing Aiden’s high through the soulmate link, she knew that that would be a lie. “Sometimes.”
“I do,” he admitted. “I’ve spent the last nineteen months trying to be what Eve wanted. What she deserved. But when I killed those humans, I realized that there is no way I can be that person. And it’s pointless anyway. She’s dead.” His mouth twisted bitterly. “She’s dead and I’m alive and I know what I am.”
Lex looked up at him, wondering if he could possibly know just how similar his struggle was to hers. She had tried so hard to be good for Reece, but no matter what she’d done, it had only hurt him in the end. She was toxic.
“What are you?” she asked him softly.
He smiled at her, his silvery eyes glinting in the moonlight. “Come with me, angel, and I’ll show you.”
“You find anything yet?” Nick asked her.
“No,” Karissa replied impatiently. “And if you don’t stop asking me that every three minutes, I’m going to bitch-slap you.”
“Baby,” he said slowly, “it’s been an hour since I last asked.”
She drew her eyes away from the computer to argue with him, but she could barely make him out through the afterimage of the screen that stained her vision. Rubbing her gritty eyes, Karissa realized that he was right. Time was slipping by her at a frightening pace and she still couldn’t find any sign of Lex.
“Sorry,” she grumbled. “I’m just frustrated.”
Nick came up behind her and rubbed her shoulders. As his fingers and thumbs worked out the knots, Karissa moaned and let her head fall back.
“Better?” he murmured with a smile.
She smiled back dreamily. “Mm. Have I ever told you how much I love your hands?”
“Several times.” His slid his thumbs lower and pressed them into her shoulder blades. “I’m starting to think you’re only dating me for the massages.”
“No, I’m in it for the sex, too,” Karissa replied dryly.
Nick leaned down and let his lips graze her ear. “Is that right?” he purred.
Leaning back in her chair, she lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck, holding his lips against her. “Mmhmm.”
“Well, in that case, how about you take a break from this?” he whispered. “I want make sure I’m keeping you satisfied.”
“Aw, baby,” she whined. “You know I’d be up for it if Cahill weren’t in the room.”
Nick laughed softly. “He won’t be waking up any time soon. I promise you that.”
“No, but it would still be very, very wrong.”
He nibbled her earlobe. “To the bedroom, then?”
“Lindsay,” Karissa reminded him.
With a long-suffering sigh, he straightened up and resumed rubbing her shoulders. “Damn. When did our place turn into a hotel?”
“When our boss went crazy with the need for vengeance and wound up pushing his soulmate away in the process?” she offered. Then she let out a sigh of her own. “I still can’t believe it.”
“I know,” Nick replied grimly. “I never would have thought Cahill would be capable of it.”
“No, not that. I just can’t believe that I knew Lex for a year and a half and I never even suspected that she was lying about her past. I mean, looking back on it, there were plenty of signs, but I just never paid attention to them.”
“No one did. Honestly...I never paid much attention to Lex at all.”
The vampire girl had wanted it that way, Karissa realized. She had deliberately made herself invisible. Of course, with how loud and raucous Reece’s team could be, it probably hadn’t been too hard of a task. While they had been laughing and arguing and taking down the Night World, Lex quietly slipped into the background.
“Twenty-seven years,” Karissa breathed. “I guess it’s just a wonder that she’s still sane.”
“Yeah,” Nick agreed. “Goddess knows that Cahill isn’t. And he’s only lived it second-hand for a few months.”
Glancing at the witch who was still in a deep sleep on the couch, she realized that it had been a very long time since she’d last looked at him—really looked. He had lost weight, Karissa could see that now. His pale skin was pulled taut over his cheekbones. Even in sleep, his expression seemed strained. And she was startled to notice a few strands of gray hair woven into his auburn spikes. Jesus, he was only twenty-four years old...
It was amazing, the kinds of things people did to themselves for the sake of love.
“It’s kind of romantic,” she found herself saying. “Don’t you think?”
“What is?” her boyfriend asked. “What Cahill did?”
“Yeah. He worked so hard to defend his soulmate’s honor. It’s like some sort of knight’s tale, you know?” She clicked her tongue. “And they say chivalry is dead.”
Nick abruptly let go of her shoulders and came around to the side of the desk. His hazel eyes burned into hers. “Kar, what he did was stupid and selfish and wrong. There’s no excuse for vengeance. Not for him or for anyone else.”
In response to his hard stare, she tilted her head slightly and gave him a soft smile.
He frowned at her. “What does that look mean?”
Karissa reached out and put her hand on top of his on the desk. “I was just thinking how lucky you are to have the luxury of having that opinion.”
The witch recoiled from her as if she’d struck him. “Having a moral principle isn’t a luxury,” he snapped.
“Sometimes it is,” she said, keeping her voice gentle. “You can’t even imagine what Reece is feeling because nothing like what happened to Lex has ever happened to someone you love.”
Nick’s eyes widened in anger. “How can you say that? I lost my own sister.”
“Yes,” Karissa agreed. “And I find it telling that you never wanted to know anything about her death. How would you feel if you found out that she was tortured? How would you feel if the person who did it would never be caught?”
A muscle leapt in Nick’s throat and his nostrils flared. “That was below the belt, Kar,” he said heatedly.
Her witch could be scary. He didn’t have the reputation of being the team’s best interrogator for nothing. She knew that he was trying to intimidate her into backing down now, but she got up from her chair, instead, and went over to him. Placing her hands on his chest, she looked into his eyes. “What if it were me, Nick?” she asked softly. “Don’t you remember how worried you were about me last night? What if I never came home? What if you found out that someone had raped me, strangled me, cut my heart out, or burned me alive? And what if they forced you to watch it over and over again? How do you think you’d feel?”
Pain cracked his stony expression. There was a glimmer of tears in his eyes as he opened his mouth to answer.
Karissa placed a finger on his lips to stop him. “You can’t know. That kind of pain, you can’t imagine it. You can’t know what you would or wouldn’t do until it happens to you. So why don’t you cut Cahill a break?”
Nick looked away from her and nodded.
Standing up on her tiptoes, she gave him a peck on his cheek and a bright smile to diffuse the tension between them. As she sat back down, a fluttering warmth spread through her stomach; in spite of his flaws, because of his flaws, she loved this witch so much.
“Are you still stuck at the same spot?” he asked a few moments later.
She looked at her computer screen as her mind turned back to the mission at hand. “Yeah. The bus Lex was on crashed down in the Catskills around 4AM and then she disappears. Over twenty-four hours later, there’s still no hotel, no car rental, no train or bus tickets. Wherever she went after the crash, she must have paid cash, because she’s completely off the grid.”
“And Cahill thought she’d be easy to find,” Nick snorted.
“So did I,” she admitted. “I never would have helped her if I thought she’d be this good.”
“I hate to ask, but do you think Zarek got her already?”
“No. He didn’t find out she was alive until yesterday afternoon. She disappeared before that.” She sighed again, almost growling in frustration. “What about you? Have you found anything?”
Since Nick was computer-incompetent, he had left the internet search up to Karissa while he read through all of the spell books he could find, searching for a spell that would be powerful enough to help them locate Lex from a long distance.
“Maybe. One of my great-grandmother’s books has a section on soulmates.” He picked up a thick book with a dusty, black cover from his pile and flipped to a dog-eared page. “If I’m reading this spell right, we might be able to use it to enhance the soulmate link. If we manage to gather enough power, Reece would be able to feel Lex even if she were on the other side of the world. It wouldn’t give us an exact location, but at least we’d have something to go on.”
“Well, I’m coming up empty-handed,” Karissa said sourly. “So we might as well give it a shot. Wake up Cahill.”
Nick shook his head. “Not yet. It’ll take me a while to gather up the supplies I’ll need, and he needs as much rest as he can get.”
“Okay. Then I guess I’ll get back to work until you’re ready.”
As she was reaching for the computer’s mouse, a phone rang. Her cell phone had a Nelly Fertado ringtone, so she knew the call wasn’t coming from hers. “Is that you?” she asked Nick.
He quickly checked his and shook his head. “No. It must be Cahill’s.” After rummaging through the pockets of Reece’s coat, Nick found the ringing phone. “The number’s blocked.”
She launched out herself out of her chair as excitement bubbled up inside of her. “It might be Lex,” she squealed, grabbing a fistful of Nick’s sleeve. “You’ve got to answer it.”
As soon as he did, Karissa was kicking herself for not ripping the phone out of Nick’s hands and answering it herself. She could barely stand the suspense as she listened to his half of the conversation.
“Hello?”
Pause.
“He’s a little…indisposed at the moment.”
Pause.
“Nick Camden. I’m a member of his team.”
Longer pause.
Then her boyfriend’s eyebrows arched. “Okay,” he said evenly, as if he were trying to mollify someone. “I’ll get him. And who should I say is calling?”
After a brief pause, Nick’s jaw dropped open. Instantly, his voice sounded stiffer. More formal. “Yes, sir. I’ll get him, sir.”
“Who is it?” Karissa asked as soon as he had the mouthpiece of the phone covered.
The witch swallowed. “Thierry Descouedres.”
“Are you shitting me?” she gasped as quietly as possible. “What could he want with Reece?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” He walked over to the witch who was sleeping on the couch. “But we’re about to find out.”
Reece came awake instantly as the spell was lifted. His eyes snapped open to find Nick leaning over him and he had the sudden urge to ram his fist into the witch’s jaw. “You fucking son of a bitch,” he hissed as he sat up. “How dare you cast a spell like that on me—”
“Save it,” Nick replied calmly. “You’ll thank me later.” Then he held out a cell phone and arched an eyebrow at him. “Thierry Descouedres for you.”
Bile immediately burned the back of Reece’s throat. He had to be asleep, still. There was only one reason for Thierry to be calling him now. So he had to be sleeping—had to be—because this was his worst nightmare. This was the moment he had been dreading since the day he had found his soulmate.
Lex was dead.
In a daze, he reached for the phone with a shaking hand. Miraculously, he summoned his voice. “Reece Cahill.”
“Cahill,” Thierry said, “I have you on the line with a rather irate Anton Parish.”
Reece was startled. He had expected Thierry’s first words to be, “I’m sorry,” or “My condolences,” or even something along the lines of, “Thanks for dooming the entire world.” But Thierry actually sounded normal. And what did Lex’s death have to do with Anton Parish?
The leader of the Daybreak compound did, indeed, sound incensed. “Care to tell me why your soulmate is using the blue fire on the bloody Capitol Beltway?”
Reece’s heart damn near stopped.
Is using.
Is.
Present tense.
Lex was still alive.
“What?” he asked as he jumped to his feet.
“We know it wasn’t Jez or Delos or Iliana,” Thierry said. “I have confirmation that none of them are in the D.C. metro area. So that just leaves Alexandra.”
“Wait,” Reece interrupted as he started to pace. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What happened?”
There was a long pause over the line. “You honestly don’t know?” Anton asked. “Aren’t you with her?”
“No,” he answered. “She left town a few days ago.”
“You let her go on her own?”
“I didn’t let her do anything,” Reece said in a thick voice.
Anton sighed. “I should have known.” It was no secret how the lamia felt about Lex. He thought that she was a trouble-maker. A loose cannon. He would never forgive her for murdering Genevieve Harman, even though Gen had forced Lex to do it, and it was really unfair. While Genevieve had been treated like Daybreak’s messiah, Alexandra was treated like a leper.
“Okay, I’ll start from the beginning,” Anton said, sounding as if he was seething with annoyance. “About twenty minutes ago, one of our shifters was driving on the beltway when he witnessed a blast of blue fire originating from a car up ahead of him. It shattered all of the windows. The car then pulled over into the breakdown lane, and the shifter pulled over about a half mile ahead of it to notify me. I called Thierry and we deduced that the source was your soulmate.”
“And then you naturally assumed that she had done it deliberately just for shits and giggles?” Reece couldn’t help snapping.
Anton faltered. “Well, not exactly—”
“Did it even occur to you that she could be in trouble?”
“Is she?” Thierry interjected.
Reece ran his fingers through his hair. He didn’t want to tell them about Zarek, but if her maker did, in fact, have her in his possession, then the Daybreakers would be able to help rescue her.
Then again, at least Zarek would keep Lex alive—there was no fun in torturing a dead body, after all. If Lex’s name and description were given out to the Daybreakers, it would only be a matter of time before the Night World found out as well. Then they would singled-mindedly hunt her down.
“I honestly don’t know,” he finally answered. “How big was the blast? Is the Night World all over this as well?”
“No,” Anton said, sounding a little less hostile. Reece wondered if he’d actually managed to shame the lamia. “Relatively speaking, it was just a blip. None of our witches have picked up on anything, so I think we can assume that no Night World witches caught it either. If our shifter hadn’t been behind them in traffic, we wouldn’t know about this at all.”
“So the only ones who know are the shifter and you two?”
“Right,” Thierry replied.
The relief that flooded Reece was almost painful. “Good. Keep it that way.” Then a thought struck him. “Did you get any information on the car?”
“It was a 1995 Honda Civic,” Anton said. “After his first call to me, the shifter walked down to the car, but it was abandoned. We ran the plates and found out that the car used to belong to a guy up in Buffalo, New York, but he says that he sold it three weeks ago. The buyer paid cash.”
“Buffalo,” he repeated with a significant look at Karissa.
The human girl slowly shook her head and mouthed, “No.” Lex hadn’t been there. And after tracing Zarek’s movements for the past few weeks, Reece was certain that the vampire hadn’t been in Buffalo either. So whose car was it?
“Okay, listen,” he said into the phone, “I’m going to take the next flight out of here. With any luck, I’ll be in D.C. in less than three hours.”
“I can call in an order for a charter flight,” Thierry offered. “It’ll get you here faster.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that, sir.”
“Will you be coming straight to the compound?” Anton asked.
Reece almost shuddered at the thought. He never wanted to see that Daybreak compound again. “No. As soon as I get into the city, I’m going to see if I can feel Lex out.”
“All right. Call me if you have any updates or if you need any help.”
“I will,” Reece promised, but he seriously hoped that it wouldn’t come to that.
When he ended the call, he found Nick and Karissa staring at him. The human girl seemed excited, as if she was a tabloid reporter on the brink of a particularly delicious scoop—she never could resist drama. But Nick had his arms crossed over his chest, his expression hard as he looked at Reece. He was expecting a blow.
“Washington, D.C.?” the witch said evenly.
“Yeah.” Reece paused to take a deep breath. “So...there are a few more things that I haven’t told you about Lex.”
Part 11
Part 13
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