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“Mark is fine.” He reached over, stilling her hands. The bones felt delicate beneath his fingers. “I’ll be honest. I still don’t have a diagnosis for you, but I’ve sent some blood samples to an excellent laboratory in Los Angeles. They’ll run whatever tests I ask for and not ask any questions.”
Her eyebrows lifted, expressing skepticism and hope in one gesture. “Really?”
“Yes. It’s a start. Depending on what those tell us, there are some other things we will probably want to do—we just don’t know yet.”
Her eyes clouded and she pulled her hands away. “We can’t stay here. Those men who were following me—they’ll check hospitals.”
Again, Mark wondered if they’d been shooting at him or at her. “Who are they?”
She looked down. “Like I said, I don’t have names. I’m really sorry you got caught up in this. You’re kind. You don’t deserve it.”
“You said you witnessed a murder.”
She shifted in the chair. “You don’t understand how powerful they are.”
You don’t understand how powerful I am. “Tell me.”
She bent her head, avoiding his eyes. “It’s been like this all along, from one coast to the other. And there have been close calls. Jonathan and I got cornered in the Chicago airport. They stuck both of us with needles full of some sort of sleeping drug. The only thing that saved us was that they got the dosage wrong. They didn’t give me enough. I woke up in the back of a van and managed to get out with Jonathan. I was so scared.” She covered her face with her hands. “He didn’t wake up for ages. I started to wonder if he would.”
Fury washed through him in a hot tide, followed by hard suspicion. Why drug Bree and Jonathan and not just kill them?
Her expression was bitter. “They’re getting closer every time they strike. One day we won’t get away.”
“You need a bigger city.”
“Maybe.” She looked away. “I’ve been through most of them.”
“I could take you to Los Angeles.”
She shuddered slightly. “No, I— No. Not Los Angeles.”
Clearly, something bad had happened there. “Seattle?”
She chewed her lip. “Maybe. For a while.”
The implication being that it wouldn’t work indefinitely. No hiding place would. What does she have—or know—that someone wants so desperately?
“I’ll take you there,” he said, almost before he had made a conscious decision. “I need to catch a plane, anyway. I can do it from there.” He’d just miss the one Raphael was sending for him and Larson. Oh well.
“You’re going away? And here I was getting used to personal service.” Her tone was careless, but a lift in her voice betrayed a hint of dismay. Then she laughed, shaking her head as if to clear away unwelcome thoughts. “No, I travel alone.”
“So do I.” He gave a slight smile. “But it’s just to Seattle. A couple hours, then I’m on a plane and out of your life. I can leave you a contact number so you can call me to get the results of the tests. No matter what, I’m still your son’s doctor.”
She was silent.
“Are you okay with that?” Mark asked. “Am I being too pushy?”
“Of course you’re not. I’m sorry. I’m not really this antisocial,” she said, flushing.
“But the men with guns totally ruin cocktail hour. I get it. Take the ride, no strings attached.”
“You’re a kind man.” She lowered her eyes. “Okay.”
Then she looked up from under her lashes. Her gaze caught his, holding it while his gut squeezed with guilt. Fiery hells, she’s beautiful. And she had no idea what he was. She was running away from one kind of killer and accepting help from another.
And right when Nicholas Ferrel was back in the picture. It was like Mark’s nightmare was unfolding again, and he was helpless to stop it.
Well, he’d get her settled in Seattle, and that would be it. There were other agents there who’d keep an eye on her if he asked. This didn’t need to be complicated. It couldn’t be.
Just then, Jonathan ran over, flopping into his mother’s knees with a giggle. Bree laughed, too, her waves of honey-gold hair swinging with her as she scooped her son into her lap. The sound eased the tension in Mark’s gut. If she could still laugh and Jonathan could still play, there was hope for them.
His cell phone rang. Mark rose, walking out of the playroom to get away from all that domestic bliss. He thumbed it to life. “Winspear.”
“Hey.” It was Kenyon.
“You have something?”
“I’ve just gotten started, but before I go any further, I have a photo for you to look at. Is this your girl?”
Mark’s phone pinged. He tapped the photo and it filled the screen. He felt his eyes going wide. It was Bree, but looking very different. Her hair was the same, but she wore a lot of makeup and a very tiny sequined dress. He was tempted to head back to the playroom for a detailed comparison of all that smooth, white flesh. What would she feel like, warm and alive, half-naked and in his hands? He felt his fangs descending, his mouth suddenly filled with saliva.
He sucked in a deep breath, crushing those thoughts. “Yes, that’s her.”
“Holy hair balls,” Kenyon groaned.
“Why?”
“You pick ’em, Winspear.”
“I don’t pick anyone. What are you talking about?”
“If there’s a train wreck within a million miles, you’ll put yourself on the scene.”
“Stop talking and say something,” Mark growled in icy tones. “Who is Bree?”
“Brianna Meadows. Daughter of Hank, also known as Henry Meadows of Henry Meadows Films.”
Mark knew the man’s work. Gorgeous sets, huge budgets, historical epics of doomed courage and noble sacrifice. Genius stuff, if you liked that sort of thing. Having lived the real deal, Mark didn’t.
“And of course that’s only the half of it.”
Mark waited through a beat of silence. “Which means what?”
“Don’t you ever watch Gossip Quest TV News Magazine? She’s the ex-mistress of Crown Prince Kyle of Vidon. That kid of hers is rumored to be his illegitimate son. She’s unofficially on the Vidonese most-wanted list.”
Chapter 6
Vampires were not made for road trips.
The red Lexus IS F Sport luxury sedan had specially tinted windows to block the sun, climate control, a V-8 engine that did zero to sixty miles in five seconds and a sound system calibrated to please extrasensitive hearing, but it was still a metal box on wheels. Mark needed to be outside, with the wind and sky. Free. Alone. He’d lost a good deal of patience along with his humanity, and what remained had been whittled away by the centuries that followed his Turning.
Speed was his only consolation, and the 416 horsepower motor of the Lexus was begging to give it. Except there were humans in the car, too fragile to risk on the twisting roads. Bree was dozing in the passenger seat next to him. Jonathan, wide-awake but silent in the back, clutched a stuffed duck.
Mark hadn’t let on how much he knew, or that he was taking them straight to the Company safe house in Seattle, where they could be protected. Explaining about the Company without revealing the existence of the supernatural was a delicate business, and he wanted the right environment to do it. Bree had to be convinced the safe house, with its guns and rules and guards, wasn’t a jail. If he got it wrong, she might bolt at the first gas station they stopped at, her ailing child in tow.
Mark cast a glance in the rearview mirror. The booster seat—pilfered out of the hospital lost and found—brought Jonathan just into view. The child met his eyes in the mirror. Mark was struck again by the watchful intelligence in that gaze. The kid didn’t miss a thing.
He tried to see Prince Kyle in the boy’s face. The dark hair and brown eyes were similar, but that was inconclusive. Maybe the shape of the eyes was the same, or the way his hair fell across his face, but he didn’t exactly have a poster of the Crown Prince of Vidon taped to his locker door. He couldn’t remember every feature.
Mark made himself smile at the boy and turned his attention back to the road. The sun was up but it was still early, the world fresh and tipped by frost. The rolling land was a rumpled blanket of evergreens patched with gold. The sky was a rich autumn-blue. It was going to be one of those fall days that seemed a parting gift from summer—and all that sun was giving him a splitting headache.
Mark had used the night to get Larson ready for his flight to Los Angeles and to attend to the files on his desk. Larson would be fine—at least from the bullet wound—but the hospital administration might perish from shock when they saw the completed paperwork the next morning.
The wait had served two other purposes. It gave Bree and Jonathan a real night’s sleep, and surveillance teams were less likely to see them leave during the morning shift change. Mark had remained on the alert, but had seen nothing suspicious. If their pursuers were watching the hospital, hopefully they’d given them the slip.
Bree opened her eyes, stifling a yawn. She was still pale with fatigue, the freckles across her nose standing out. “Where are we?”
“We just passed through Sequim.” He focused his attention on the ribbon of highway, ignoring her soft, female smell. Or trying to. He was getting horny and hungry, and wasn’t sure which impulse was in the lead.
She turned around in her seat, checking on her son. “We should find a drive-through for breakfast.”
The scent of woman was one thing. Tantalizing, dangerous, but good. Mark imagined the stench of human food trapped inside the car, and nearly shuddered. “No.”
“Kids need to eat.”
“Kids are sticky.”
“He’ll be hungry.”
“I’m the driver.”
Bree gave him a sharp glance that reproached him and acknowledged his position of power at the same time. “Fine. It’s your car.”
It was. With a dove-gray leather interior. And she’d managed to make him, a centuries-old monster, feel bad about it. He winced. “We can stop at the Gleeford Ferry. There’s better food in town than just drive-through.”
She sank back, turning her face to the side window until all he could see was her long, waving hair. Even it looked disgruntled. “This road we’re on is barely a highway. Wouldn’t it be faster to pick up the I-5?”
“Someone put Puget Sound in the way.”
She made a small noise of impatience. “I guess we’re farther out than I expected.”
“We’ve only been driving an hour.”
“It feels longer.”
He realized she was nervous, but it was coming across as demanding. He stifled a growl. Being alone on his island was much easier. “There are fewer cars here. I can spot someone following us on this route.”
With no further comments, Bree pulled a magazine out of her backpack and started flipping through it. From the corner of his eye, he saw it was one of those thick fashion rags. Each page turn was a sigh of impatience.
Flip. Flip. Flip.
Mark gripped the steering wheel, trying to ignore the sound. To make matters worse, Jonathan was humming tunelessly, thumping his stuffed duck against the car door. He clenched his teeth, summoning inner strength. You are the lion. The hunter that strikes in the night. You have the patience of the leopard in the tree.
Thump. Thump. Flip. La-la-la.
I’m not a thrice-damned cab driver. Another few hours, and he’d be alone again. Breathe deeply. No, then he smelled tasty woman. Open a window. Yeah, that was it.
This was his nightmare. Once before, he had been responsible for a woman and her young. The Knights of Vidon had destroyed them. And I tore the first Nicholas Ferrel and his animals to pieces in retribution. The centuries that followed had been a bloodbath, an endless feud of vampire against slayer as one act of violence demanded payback, then another.
But Mark had taken a different path since then, one of healing instead of death. He desperately wanted to stay on it.
Bree stopped turning pages, gazing out the window again. Her long fingers gripped the magazine so hard the tendons stood out along the backs of her hands. “You don’t think anyone’s following us now, do you?”
Mark cleared his throat. “Not that I’ve seen.”
“What have you seen?”
“Two logging trucks and a pickup full of produce. Unless the gunmen are disguised as squash, we’re safe for the time being.”
“Good.” The word was as packed full of meaning as her glance had been. “It’s been a while since I had a few hours.”
He looked over at her. He was wearing dark glasses despite the tinted windshield, and they washed the color out of her, leaving her in shades of gray. “You mean a few hours to not worry?”
She gave a quick, rueful smile. “To worry about one thing at a time. To focus on normal mom things, like breakfast. Clean clothes. I’ve been carrying this magazine around for weeks and haven’t got past the first ten pages. Getting to read it feels like a scandalous luxury.”
Something made Mark glance in the rearview mirror. Jonathan was watching his mother, picking up every word. Mark wondered how much of it he understood. Probably everything. Kids in trouble grew up fast. Maybe princelings on the lam grew even faster.
“Where’s Jonathan’s father in all this?” he asked.
“Nowhere.” Bree said it quickly, opening up the magazine again. The word was the next best thing to a slamming door.
Mark watched the road, keeping his face turned straight ahead. They were getting near the ferry that would take them to Seattle. He should start laying a little groundwork to prepare Bree for the safe house. “It’s a lot, raising a child on your own.”
“Sure it is. But you do it, whether you’re ready or not.” Her voice was quietly matter-of-fact.
“The guy’s a prince. He can afford child support.”
Her hands froze midflip. “You know who I am.”
Got you. Mark shifted his hands on the steering wheel, as if closing his grip on more than the car. “I figured it out.”
“How?” She pulled herself straighter in the seat. “How did you know?”
“I have a good memory for faces.” Which was true, though he’d made no connection between this woman and the celebutante who’d graced Crown Prince Kyle’s arm four years ago. But now that he’d met Bree, there was no chance he’d ever forget her.
She slumped. “Sue me. I had my fifteen minutes of fame.”
“You weren’t the last girl Kyle showed a good time.” There had been others, including the infamous Brandi Snap, who had nearly wrecked Prince Kyle’s engagement to the much-beloved Princess Amelie of Marcari. “Does Kyle know about Jonathan?”
