Authors: Jenna Black
backpack so it wouldn’t slow me down, but it had my wallet, my gun, and my laptop in it, and I
wasn’t willing to part with it.
I whipped around the nearest corner, sneaking a glance behind me as I turned. One of the
punks punched Blake right on that luscious mouth of his, but it didn’t seem to bother him much.
He shoved the guy away hard enough to send him to the pavement.
I kept running at top speed. There was a parking garage a few yards ahead of me and
another street a few yards past that. If Blake managed to get away from the punks—which I suspected he would soon, if he hadn’t already—he was going to catch up with me quickly. I’m a
relatively fast runner given my size, but at five-two, my stride is pretty short.
I ducked into the garage, hoping Blake would assume I’d run all the way to the corner
before turning.
My breath was coming in frantic gasps, the muscles in my legs burning like hell. There
was a fair amount of activity on the ground level of the garage, people cruising for spaces or
trying to remember where they’d parked. A few of them glanced at me curiously as I blew past,
but no one seemed particularly alarmed.
The muscles in my legs complained even more as I forced them to carry me up the ramp
to the next level of the garage. I was still hoping Blake would run right past the place, but with
my luck these days, I wasn’t counting on it. If he found me, he could use his special power to
force me to go with him, right under the noses of any number of witnesses, and they would never
know anything was wrong. I, however, would need my gun to defend myself, and that meant
getting away from potential witnesses.
There were fewer cars on the second level, but there was still enough activity that I didn’t
dare draw the gun.
My pace wasn’t much faster than a brisk walk as I forced myself onward, climbing the
ramp to the third level. There were only a handful of cars up there, and no people.
Finally allowing myself to slow down, I examined my options as I sucked in air. If Blake
managed to follow me up here, I’d pretty much run myself into a corner, but that wasn’t entirely
by accident. Best to be in a place where I could keep an eye on all the entrances.
There was a bank of elevators to my right, and a stairwell to my left, but other than the
ramp, those appeared to be the only two ways up to this level. If Blake was following me, he’d
have to use the ramp, otherwise it would be too easy for him to go right past me in the enclosed
stairwell or the elevator.
I crossed the garage at a halfhearted trot, my legs feeling like they weighed about ten tons
each. I can jog for miles if I have to, but the all-out sprint with the extra weight of the backpack
had exhausted me.
When I reached the cluster of cars near the stairwell, I ducked down between them and
crept forward until I was crouched between one car’s bumper and the wall. I then quietly
unzipped my pack and pulled out the gun. If Blake cornered me up here, I’d have to find the guts
to shoot him. I didn’t
want
to shoot him, but I doubted I’d have a lot of options if he found me. I couldn’t risk letting him use his nasty special power on me.
I crouched in the shadow of the car for what felt like forever, my body practically
vibrating with tension. The day wasn’t particularly cold, but the air still felt icy against my
sweaty skin. I was finally beginning to catch my breath after the long run, but my heart was still
tripping on adrenaline.
It was all I could do not to groan when I saw Blake’s silhouette as he stalked through a
patch of sunlight. Goddammit! Why couldn’t he have just kept on running? Or better yet, given
up the chase? I should theoretically have had enough of a head start that I could be anywhere by
now, so why was he
here
?
I carefully slid over so that I was in the deepest pool of shadow available. I kept my
entire body hidden behind one front wheel—the driver hadn’t bothered to straighten out once
he’d pulled in, so the wheel gave me a gratifying amount of cover—and peeked from under the
bumper to monitor Blake’s progress as he approached.
He was moving slowly, staring at something in his hand. At first, I had no idea what he
was doing, but when he got closer, I could see he was looking at the screen of a phone. I didn’t
think he was checking his email or surfing the Internet.
I mentally let out a stream of curses as I remembered Jack handing me my pocketbook.
The purse itself had been ruined, but when I’d gotten home, I’d transferred its contents into my
backpack. Evidence suggested there’d been something in that purse that wasn’t mine. Like, say,
some kind of tracking device.
I was sure the jig was up, but even so, I remained stubbornly hidden. Blake was so close
now I could see the thin, angry line of his lips, and the dangerous intensity of his eyes. He stood
at the top of the ramp and turned a full circle, looking back and forth between the phone screen
and his surroundings.
Maybe the smart thing to do would have been to leap to my feet the moment his back was
turned and fire. I would have to take Maggie’s word for it that he was immortal and I couldn’t
kill him by shooting him. I urged myself to do it, picturing myself as an action movie heroine
blasting away, but the mental picture was so absurd it almost made me laugh.
It would have taken at least an hour for me to talk myself into shooting, and I had about
two seconds. Blake had finished his circle before I’d gotten through preliminary arguments. I
thought sure the tracker was going to lead him straight to me, but he just stood there, scowling
and shaking his head in frustration.
Blake hit a button on his phone, then held it to his ear. I took a wild guess that he was
calling Anderson, and that guess was confirmed by the conversation I overheard.
“She’s in here somewhere,” he said into the phone. “Or at least her bag is. The tracker
can’t tell me which floor she’s on. Jack gave you a cell phone number for her, didn’t he?”
Oh, shit! My heart shot into my throat, and I reached for my backpack. I tried to hurry,
but I was hampered by having to hold on to the gun and by having to be quiet. If I just yanked
open the zipper, that sound would give me away just as effectively as the stupid cell phone.
I didn’t make it.
Before I’d even gotten the zipper halfway open, my cell phone played the opening riff of
George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone.” It had been Steph’s idea of a joke, but I kinda liked it.
At least under normal circumstances.
There was no point in hiding anymore, so I stood up and pointed the gun at Blake,
praying that no one else would come along and become an inconvenient witness. I’d be in deep
trouble if I got caught carrying a gun. Blake’s expression was somewhere between a sneer and a
grin. I guess the lighting was kind of dim and he didn’t see the gun at first. When he did, the grin
disappeared.
Half a second later, heat suffused my body. My nipples hardened to aching peaks,
moisture flooded my core, and my eyes started to glaze over.
The effect was almost instantaneous. One moment, I was staring down the barrel of my
gun trying to work up the nerve to pull the trigger, the next, I wanted to fling the gun to the
ground and tear off my clothes. I had only an instant to realize what was happening before I was
under his spell, but that was enough.
Desperation gave me the will I needed, and my finger squeezed the trigger.
The tide of lust stopped as fast as it had started, and my vision cleared as Blake clutched
the bleeding wound in his chest, gave me a wide-eyed look, and fell to the floor of the garage.
SEVEN
To say I was
shocked by what I’d done was an understatement. For a long, breathless
moment, I just stood there and stared, hardly believing I’d actually shot someone. Blake’s face
was squinched in pain, and his hands were stained crimson as he tried to stanch the flow of
blood.
My hands were shaking as I lowered the gun, and I blinked furiously to hold back tears. I
couldn’t afford to wallow. A .38 Special isn’t exactly a quiet gun, and people on the lower levels
of the garage had to have heard the shot. Maybe they’d assume it was just a car backfiring, but I
couldn’t count on it.
I grabbed my backpack and shoved the gun back inside. There was a tracker in my pack
somewhere, but I didn’t have time to look for it now, and all the reasons I’d had previously for
not dropping the backpack still applied.
Heart in my throat, I stepped around the protection of the car, keeping a wary eye on
Blake. His face was still tight with pain, and his skin was a bloodless shade of white, but he was
conscious. I hoped that meant he wasn’t going to die.
“I’m sorry,” I said lamely, then rolled my eyes. What kind of action movie heroine
apologized to the enemy for hurting him? If I was going to play the part of a badass, I was going
to need some serious practice.
I slung the backpack over my shoulder and opened the door to the stairwell. Blake’s eyes
glittered as he glared at me, but when he tried to stand up, his face went even whiter and I
thought he might pass out. I bit my tongue to stave off another apology, then slipped into the
stairwell and let the door slam behind me. The echoing sound made me jump, and it took a
healthy dose of self-control to keep myself from running down the stairs, which would only draw
attention. I had enough people chasing me without adding the police to the list.
I hurried to the nearest Metro station, and got on the first train that arrived, not caring
where it was going as long as it was away from the scene of the crime. Once the train was
moving, I sat down and started examining the contents of my backpack—making sure the gun
stayed safely concealed, naturally.
Eventually I found the tracker. Jack had done an impressive job of hiding it. I’d gone
through everything twice and was beginning to think I’d have to dump the whole backpack after
all, when I finally noticed that my purse-sized package of tissues weighed more than it should. I
pulled out the first few tissues, then found a white, rectangular device, about two inches long,
tucked into the center of the pack.
I left the tracker on the train—that ought to keep Anderson and crew occupied for a
while—then got off at the next stop and took a cab back to my hotel.
Just in case the tracker had allowed Blake to figure out which hotel I was staying in, I
decided to get out of there. My cell phone rang while I was packing. I checked caller ID: Steph. I
groaned. There was no way I could talk to her now without her figuring out something was
wrong, and I couldn’t explain my situation without sounding like a lunatic.
I was going to have to talk to her eventually, but I couldn’t handle Steph now.
Deciding I’d call her in a couple of hours, I checked out of the Holiday Inn and found
myself a new hotel halfway across town. I took a hot bath, hoping that would calm my nerves,
but nothing short of a horse tranquilizer could have done the trick.
I had no idea what my next step should be. Apparently, I had two factions of
Liberi
after
me, and they had the financial and magical resources to make my life really difficult. I couldn’t evade them forever, not unless I decided to run away and make myself disappear.
I’d had enough experience tracking people who didn’t want to be found to cover my own
tracks if I needed to. I could disappear from D.C. and create a new identity for myself
somewhere else. But I’d spent most of my childhood being shuffled from foster home to foster
home, and here in the D.C. area with the Glasses, I’d experienced the only true stability I’d ever
known. I couldn’t face the prospect of digging up my roots and leaving everything and everyone
I’d come to love behind. Not unless it was absolutely the last resort.
Which meant that somehow, I was going to have to find a way to convince both factions
of
Liberi
to leave me alone.
To be perfectly honest, I already had a sinking feeling that life as I had known it was
over. I didn’t have a clue how to get the
Liberi
to back off, and even if I did … Let’s face it, I wasn’t the same person I’d been just twenty-four hours ago. I believed in the supernatural. I’d
become immortal with supernatural powers myself. And I’d shot a man. In cold blood.
I have to admit, I was wallowing. But then, who could possibly argue that I didn’t have
the right?
My phone rang again, and I snapped out of my funk enough to check caller ID. A
nervous shiver ran through me when I saw the name Anderson Kane.
Naturally, my first instinct was to ignore the call, just as I’d ignored Steph’s. I had, after
all, gone to rather extreme lengths to avoid being forced to talk to him. But I was desperately in
need of more information, and my available sources were pretty limited. Anderson couldn’t hurt
me over the phone—at least I hoped not—so I answered.
I’m not much of a badass. Hard to be, when you’re only five-two. In spite of that, I’ve
never been one to let people push me around and I’d had enough pushing already from the
various
Liberi
I’d met, so instead of answering with a pleasant or neutral greeting, I said, “How’s Blake?”
My stomach flip-flopped at the memory of Blake clutching his bleeding chest, at the