Midnight Awakening (45 page)

Her answer was long in coming. “No. I wasn’t attacked.”

“You want to explain all that blood on your coat over there?”

She held her head in her hands, her voice a rough whisper. “I don’t want to explain anything. Please, Tegan. I wish you hadn’t come here. Just, please…you have to leave now.”

He exhaled a sharp laugh. “I just saved your sweet little ass, female. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you tell me why I had to.”

“I didn’t mean to be out past dark. I know the dangers. Things just took…a little longer than I anticipated.”

“Things,” he repeated, not liking where this seemed to be heading. “We’re not talking about shopping or coffee with friends, are we?”

Tegan’s gaze went back to the kitchen counter, to the familiar design of the cell phone that lay there.

“Where’d you get this, Elise?”

“I think you know,” she replied, her voice quiet but defiant.

He turned to face her. “You took it off a Minion? By yourself? Jesus Christ…how?”

She shrugged, rubbing the side of her head as if it pained her. “I tracked him from the train station. I followed him, and when the chance was there, I killed him.”

It wasn’t often that Tegan was taken by surprise, but hearing those words coming out of the petite female hit him like a brick to the back of his head. “You can’t be serious.”

But she was. The level look she gave him left no doubt whatsoever.

Tegan dropped his ass onto the futon and raked his fingers through his hair. “Holy hell, woman. Have you lost your mind?”

Also by Lara Adrian

KISS OF MIDNIGHT

KISS OF CRIMSON

MIDNIGHT AWAKENING

A Dell Book / December 2007

Published by Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2007 by Lara Adrian, LLC

Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-440-33758-4

www.bantamdell.com

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