Zane’s Redemption (21 page)

“Okay then,” Oliver finally agreed.

“Just let me talk. And don’t volunteer any information that’s not asked for.”

Oliver trotted next to him up the five steps to Samson’s house. Quinn rang the door bell and was surprised when the door was opened almost instantly.

Samson had his cell glued to his ear. When he noticed Oliver, he pointed at him.

“Hold on, Thomas, it’s Oliver.” Then he almost glared at the young human bodyguard. “Where’s your charge?”

Oliver flinched. “She tricked me and got away.”

Quinn shoved his colleague into the foyer and shut the door behind him.

“Fuck!” Samson cursed. “Thomas, I’m putting you on loudspeaker.” He pressed a button and held his phone out on his palm.

“When Thomas got to the house at the end of your shift, the house was empty. What happened?” Samson demanded from Oliver.

“Why would Thomas take over from Oliver? It was Zane’s shift,” Quinn interrupted.

Samson glared at Quinn. “Zane fucked up. I suspended him and assigned Thomas instead.”

“Ah, shit, no wonder he’s gone,” Quinn responded.

“What?” Samson shifted his gaze between Quinn and Oliver.

“Zane is gone. He took the Hummer and the dog,” Quinn replied.

Oliver nodded. “And most likely Portia.”

“He took Portia?” Samson yelled.

“Zane called me an hour or so before sunset. He kept me on the phone so Portia could get out the back.”

“How do you know that?”

“Her window was open, and I found footprints in the back yard. He must have been waiting for her.”

“Shit!” Samson cursed.

“I’ll see if I can get a lock on the GPS in his cell or his Hummer,” Thomas’ voice came through the phone.

“Do it now,” Samson instructed.

“Call you back in a few.”

Samson looked up from the phone and stared at Quinn. “Did you not realize he was leaving the house during the day? I thought you were keeping an eye on him.”

Quinn shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “You know yourself how stealthily he moves. Didn’t hear a thing. Not even that damn dog barked. When did you suspend him?”

“Around four this afternoon.”

“That’s probably what ticked him off.”

“Ticked him off? You don’t get it, Quinn. He was getting involved with his charge! That’s not only against Scanguards’ rules, it’s against her father’s—our client’s—orders. She’s a minor!”

“She’s twenty,” Oliver chimed in.

Samson lashed a glare as his once trusted assistant. “In our world that makes her a minor. God knows what he told her so she’d go with him.”

Quinn raised his hand. “Samson, it takes two to tango. From what I hear about this girl, she’s rather headstrong. I don’t see her being manipulated by Zane. I think she knows very well what she’s doing.”

“Zane is dangerous. He killed a man in cold blood only a few days ago. Have you already forgotten?”

Make that two
, Quinn thought to himself and was instantly glad, that Samson had no idea about the assassin. He would keep it that way. “He had a reason. The guy was a rapist.”

“Zane should have let the authorities deal with him. Fuck, Quinn.” Samson raised his arm and pointed at the door. “Zane is out there with the girl. Do you have any idea what he’s going to do with her?”

Fuck her senseless
, if he’d read Zane right when he’d seen the two together. Yet, Quinn kept his mouth shut. There were times when it was better not to answer a question, particularly when it was clearly rhetorical.

Samson’s cell rang. He answered it instantly, pressing the speaker button. “Yes?”

“The GPS on his Hummer is disabled, and I can’t get a location from his cell either. We’re blind.”

“Shit! Call Gabriel and have him reach out to all our vampire contacts in Northern California. Get them a picture of Zane as well as the Hummer’s license plate. Nobody is to approach him. Just get me his location.”

“I’m on it.” Thomas clicked off.

“Oliver, you’re going over to Lauren’s house. I’ll notify the mayor to expect you. Interrogate her and check her cell phone to see if she’s had any contact with Portia in the last few hours: calls, text messages, voicemails. Check her email account too.”

Oliver nodded dutifully. “I know she spoke to Lauren only a few minutes before …” Suddenly he scratched his head. “Ah, shit, that was probably Zane calling her. I thought the conversation sounded a little stilted, but …”

Quinn cupped Oliver’s elbow, reminding him silently not to volunteer any information like they’d discussed. He’d only get himself in trouble if he did. Samson was mad enough, and with good reason. If they didn’t find Portia soon, they’d have to decide what to tell her father. It was a conversation nobody looked forward to.

“Talk to Lauren now. We need to know what she knows.”

“Yes, Samson.” Oliver turned to the door and left.

“Quinn, this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Quinn nodded and took a deep breath. “He won’t hurt her.”

Samson shook his head. “You don’t know the whole story. He came to speak to me last night. Claimed that Portia’s father is deliberately keeping her a virgin even though her twenty-first birthday is in five weeks. Apparently she told him all that.”

“Is it true?”

“I don’t believe so. Her father warned us ahead of time that it’s one of the stories she uses to gain sympathy. She’s lying to him.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“Of course I did. I showed him the file. But I don’t think he was convinced.”

“How could he?” Quinn murmured under his breath.

“What?” Suspicion flared in Samson’s eyes.

“I’m saying knowing Zane, he won’t believe it just because it’s written in a file. You know him: he’ll investigate himself to find the truth.”

His mind went back to the night before when he’d seen them together. Their interactions had indicated that while there was clearly something between them, they hadn’t been intimate yet—despite the fact that Portia had been in Zane’s bed.

“That’s exactly what I can’t have him do. In either case it would be wrong: if she’s not a virgin, he’ll be furious about being duped by her, and who knows what he’ll do then.”

Quinn raised an eyebrow. “And if she
is
a virgin?”

Samson blinked. “If her father is really intent on keeping her a virgin until her final turning, he’ll kill Zane for robbing her of her virginity.”

“If he finds him,” Quinn added.

“We have to find him first and stop him before he does something that can’t be reversed.”

Quinn gave his boss a long look, wondering whether to ask his next question or keep his mouth shut. This time though his sense of justice won out. “What about the girl?”

“What about her?”

“If she’s really a virgin, we can’t allow her father to prevent her from losing her virginity before she turns twenty-one.” His own conscience wouldn’t allow him to stand idly by and do nothing, when somebody was clearly doing the girl wrong.

“I know that, and it’s bothered me all day. I just hope for all our sakes that she lied to Zane. Because fighting her father on this issue is not a fight I look forward to.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Zane pulled into the garage underneath his mountain cabin and brought the car to a complete stop, the chains he’d put on the wheels before reaching the mountains clacking loudly against the concrete floor. The moment he killed the engine, Portia stirred and opened her eyes. She’d nodded off only a half hour earlier with Z curled into a ball at her feet. The picture was so utterly unfamiliar, yet it warmed his heart.

“Are we there?” Her eyes darted around the garage then back to him.

“I’ll get the bags. Why don’t you and Z go in already?”

Portia opened the door, and Z jumped out, excitedly sniffing his surroundings.

“I can’t believe you have a cabin in Tahoe!”

Zane rounded the Hummer, Portia’s backpack in hand, and opened the trunk. For emergencies, he always kept a bag in his car that was stocked with everything he needed for a few nights.

“It’s not big, but it’s all I need. I always come here alone.” He stopped himself.

This was his sanctuary. He’d never brought a woman here. Not even his friends and colleagues at Scanguards knew about this place. He’d even made sure not to ask for Amaury’s real estate expertise when he’d purchased the house, wanting this to be his own little getaway that nobody knew about.

Zane grabbed his bag and shut the trunk. Portia was still waiting next to the passenger door for him. Their eyes met.

“I don’t need much space,” she whispered and licked her lower lip. “We only need one bed. As long as you have that …”

Her cheeks colored a pretty pink. Zane dropped the bags and crossed the distance between them with two large strides, stopping only inches from her. “Go inside now, Portia, and do me a favor: don’t mention words like ‘bed’ until we’re inside the house or your first time will happen right here in this garage with your back against the car.”

He kept all menace out of his voice, but he couldn’t suppress the lust that coursed through him. It made him sound hoarse. During the entire drive he’d fought with himself, fought against the need to stop the car and pull her onto the back seat to take her right there and then. Because now that he’d made up his mind to make love to Portia, he couldn’t wait a minute longer.

Her lashes crashed against her eyelids as she raised them in one smooth move. “Don’t make me wait.” Then she turned and ushered the dog through the door to the interior.

Wait? That word had just been expelled from his vocabulary and been replaced by the only possible replacement: now. Zane’s heart beat a violent staccato against his ribcage, and his cock, which had been semi-hard during the entire ride, surged to a full erection.

Picking up the bags once more, he charged after her. Inside, he dropped the luggage onto the floor and straightened. As always, a sense of tranquility poured over him when he entered the great room of his cabin. The vaulted ceiling and its wooden beams added an air of space to the small house, belying its size of less than a thousand square feet. The décor was rustic and not something he’d first thought he’d like, but it had grown on him.

“There’s a fire in the fireplace,” Portia noted, her voice tinged with a sliver of alarm. “Is somebody living here?”

Zane shook his head. “I texted my caretaker before I picked you up to prepare the place for us. Check the fridge. It should be stocked with human food for you.” He would have to go out hunting for blood later, unless … He quickly pushed away the thought before it could form in his mind. One thing at a time: first sex, then maybe later he could—

“The fridge is chock-f with food. Who does your caretaker think I am? A three hundred pound gorilla?” She laughed and turned to him, her hair falling in her face.

“I didn’t know what you liked, so I had him get a bit of everything.”

It was so much easier with blood. There were only eight varietals, four positive and four negative. And he liked them all.

“That’s sweet of you.”

Sweet? Nobody had ever said that anything he’d ever done was sweet. Slowly, but with purpose Zane walked toward her and noticed how she stood completely motionless with only her eyes moving as he approached. He stopped a foot away from her and reached for the strand of hair that had caught on her cheek, brushing it away from her face.

“Don’t make the mistake of seeing me for something that I’m not. I don’t have a sweet or gentle bone in my body, and if that’s what you’re looking for, I should take you back now.”

As soon as the words were out, he knew that if she wanted to leave, he couldn’t allow it. She was in his secret lair, and the only way she would leave this place was as a real woman, her virginity a memory.

Portia raised her hand and slid it to the back of his neck, shaking her head as if to reprimand him. “Don’t even think about it.”

He liked that about her: she never backed down from a challenge.

“You could have chosen anybody you wanted. Why me, baby girl?”

Did she not know how desirable she was, that any man with eyes in his head would see the passionate woman that was ready to burst to the surface?

She leaned closer, her mouth hovering opposite his. “Because when you kiss me, I feel something.”

With her free hand, she took his and led it to her chest where her heart beat in a rapid rhythm.

“Here.” She pressed his hand against her heart, then pushed it lower past the waistband of her jeans before he could enjoy the softness of her flesh. But she rewarded him by guiding his hand to cup her sex.

Raising her lids, Portia gazed into his eyes. “And here.”

Warmth radiated into his palm as he pressed against her pussy, any closer contact impeded by the thick fabric of her pants. Nevertheless, his cock rejoiced.

He groaned, unable to hold back the lust that barreled through him. “Since we’re honest here,” he husked and drank in the green of her eyes, “I think you should know where I feel something when you kiss me.”

Zane took her hand and guided it to his cock, letting her glide it over his entire length and feel the hardness that dug into his zipper. “Here.”

She squeezed his shaft, making him clench his jaw to fight off his imminent release.

“Woof, woof!”

Z’s barking made him shift his attention away from Portia and her tempting hands.

“That’s really bad timing, Z.”

Portia dropped her hands from him and turned toward the dog. “I think he needs to go outside.”

Zane frowned, but knowing what kind of mess his dog could make, he realized there was no way around this. “I’ll take him. Why don’t you make yourself comfortable in the meantime? I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

Or maybe in five: for sure the little pup had never experienced snow. The mountain was covered with a fresh snow pack, and the temperature, now that it was dark, was below freezing. He bet that Z would be freezing his ass off in three minutes tops and wanting to return to the warmth in front of the fireplace.

***

Portia’s eyes followed Zane as he escorted the dog out into the snowy wilderness. Darn, that man filled out a pair of jeans just the right way despite his lean body. His muscles shifted with every step, and she wondered what it would feel like when they were finally both naked, his skin sliding against hers.