Tall, Silent and Lethal

by R. L. Mathewson

  “Now, that wasn’t very nice,” the bastard that she was going to kill with her bare hands said as he opened the basement door and leaned against the doorframe.

  Eyes narrowing, she quickly looked him over, hoping to find her purse, but there was nothing in his hands. That was fine with her, she thought as she pushed past him, half-expecting him to stop her. When he simply stepped aside and let her walk past him, she decided that she could just as easily ransack his room as she could kick his ass.

  “You’ll never find it,” he said, chuckling as he followed her downstairs.

  “Uh huh,” she said, pausing at the foot of the stairs as she surveyed the large finished basement.

  Unlike the rest of the house that looked like it was stuck back in the 1950s, this room looked modern. It looked more comfortable and it definitely was more guy friendly. The loveseat by the back wall was large and looked comfortable, as did the bed, which was neatly made. That shocked her, but not as much as the fact that the rest of the room was clean and tidy. Given how much Christofer seemed to hate doing household chores, she’d assumed that his room would have resembled something out of a frat house.

  Instead his room was clean and everything seemed to have a place. There were no posters of scantily clad women on the walls, empty beer cans littering the floor or the smell of food rotting away somewhere in the corner. Then again, there wasn’t much to leave on the floor, she realized as she looked around the room and noted that besides the laptop computer, some art supplies and an insane amount of books lined up against the walls, there wasn’t anything personal in the room.

  The only furniture in the room was the bed, a small dresser, a large refrigerator in the corner and a few bookshelves that were crammed full of books. She’d seen hotel rooms that looked homier than this room. As far as she knew, he’d been living here all of his life, but it didn’t show. It looked more like he was just passing through. It made her heart break a little more for him.

  He was living in a town where he was obviously not wanted, had no friends, hid out in the barn most of the time working, and spent whatever free time that he had making sure that his sister was taken care of. Well, his version of taking care of her, she amended, pursing up her lips in thought as she looked the room over again.

  “How exactly do you plan on finding it?” he asked, walking past her as he pulled off his shirt, revealing the incredible torso that she may have enjoyed snuggling up against last night.

  “By tearing your room apart piece by piece until I find my purse. Then I’m going to beat you with it, say goodbye to Marta, kick your ass again and then leave,” she said, somehow managing to look away when all she wanted to do was to walk up to him, wrap her arms around him, and soak in the comfort that only he could give her one last time before she left for good.

  “That sounds like fun,” he said around a yawn as he flopped down across the bed on his stomach. “Just try not to wake me up, okay, mein Schatz?” he said, sounding amused when he should be frightened.

  And what the hell did mein Schatz mean anyway? She considered asking him, but she didn’t want to take a chance giving him something else to torment her with. Sending one last scowl in his direction, she made her way to what she assumed was his bathroom. After a quick check, she decided that her purse wasn’t in there so she moved on to his closet with no luck.

  Fifteen minutes later she was ready to kill the bastard. She’d searched everywhere with absolutely no luck. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, she thought as her gaze narrowed on the refrigerator in the corner, the refrigerator that was currently locked and no doubt held her purse.

  “Open the fridge,” she demanded as she walked over to the bed.

  “No,” he said, shifting onto his back with a sigh as he settled in once again for a nap.

  “Just give me my purse so that I can leave,” she bit through clenched teeth, praying that he cut the shit and just let her go, because she seriously didn’t know how much longer it would be until she snapped and did something that would require her to apologize to Marta and probably face a little jail time.

  “Let me think about it for a minute,” he said, folding his arms behind his head, not even bothering to open his eyes as he added, “No,” with a little smirk that had her eyes narrowing to slits and her hands twitching with the need to grab a pillow and smother the bastard.

  “Christofer,” she said, pausing to close her eyes and take a deep breath before she continued, “I’m seconds away from killing you with my bare hands. Just give me my purse so that I can be on my way and you can continue breathing.”

  “No,” he simply said, leaving her with no choice but to kill him.

  Furious, she stormed over to the bed, grabbed a pillow and climbed onto the bed. She straddled his thighs just as she shoved the pillow down on his face. She held it over his face for a good thirty seconds or so before she asked, “Are you going to give me my purse?”

  “No,” came the muffled reply and God help the bastard, but it sounded like he was laughing.

  “Last chance,” she warned, giving the pillow a slight shake to show him that she meant business.

  With a sigh, Christofer pulled his arms out from behind his head and grabbed the pillow. Before she could stop him, he flipped the pillow back and raised his head as he settled back more comfortably against it. When she went to grab the pillow away from him and finish the job, he grabbed her hands and carefully entwined their fingers.

  “Let go,” she demanded as she tried to pull her hands free, admittedly not trying very hard and hating herself for it.

  She liked where she was a little too much, which was just a reminder that she really needed to leave before she did something stupid like let herself fall for the jerk. As it was, she was already too close to liking him. It probably wouldn’t take much to push her over the edge and make her come up with a lame excuse to stay.

  “No,” he said, gently caressing his thumb over the back of her hands.

  “I need to go, Christofer,” she said, feeling herself soften as she looked down into his beautiful baby blue eyes.

  “No, you really don’t,” he said with a simple shake of his head as he continued to caress his thumbs across the back of her hands.

  “Yes, I really do,” she snapped in aggravation as she sat back on his thighs and glanced around the room again.

  “Then leave,” he said with a careless shrug that she really didn’t care for, not one bit.

  “I can’t,” she ground out even as she wondered if he’d snuck out of the house and hid the purse somewhere else.

  “You could if you really wanted to,” he explained before adding, “Clearly you don’t want to leave,” just to piss her off.

  “Really?” she asked, looking back down at him and cocking a brow. “Why don’t we put your little theory to the test then?”

  “And how do you propose that we do that?”

  “Give me back my purse,” she suggested in a challenging tone.

  “And what would that prove exactly?” he asked as his gaze slowly left her face to do a slow perusal of her body and she swore that she could actually feel it moving down her body.

  “Well, after I kick your ass and take off, I think it will prove that I wanted to leave,” she explained, noting the way her voice started to tremble at the end even as she prayed that he’d missed it.

  Why did he have this affect on her? It wasn’t right. It sure as hell wasn’t normal. No man had ever made her feel like this, like she’d die if she had to go another minute without touching him. She liked men, loved sex, and enjoyed spending time with men and the excitement that led to jumping into bed with them, but this was different.

  She loved the way Christofer looked at her, the way he touched her without any hesitation like it was the most natural thing in the world. She loved the way she felt when she was near him, like she was safe and nothing bad could touch her as long as she was with him. She even loved how he could set her body on fire with one simple l
ook even while she hated the fact that he had that much power over her.

  “It would only prove just how badly you wanted to stay,” Christofer said, voicing her fears.

  “I need to go, Christofer,” she said, pointedly ignoring him as she moved to climb off him and search the room one more time before she tried to come up with a plan B.

  “No, you need to stay, Cloe,” he said, giving her hands a gentle tug that had her ass landing back on his thighs.

  She sighed, long and heavy, as she shot another glance around the room, hoping that her purse would suddenly appear. When her gaze landed on the small alarm clock by the bed she felt her stomach drop. It was after five o’clock, which meant that even if she managed to find her keys tonight, she’d be forced to drive well into the morning to put any real distance between herself and another bad memory.

  Maybe she should-

  “Shit!” Christofer snapped as her cellphone rang loud and clear right above her head.

  Smiling in triumph, Cloe stood up, making sure to put one foot on his stomach and one on his thigh in the process, loving the little pained grunt he made as she put all of her weight on the leg currently getting its support from his stomach. “Looks like someone forgot to shut the ringer off,” she pointed out with a relieved sigh as she reached up and pushed the aged ceiling tile aside. She spotted her purse hanging just over the edge and grabbed it before the bastard seething beneath her could knock her on her ass and take it away from her.

  Making sure to earn another one of those pained grunts that she was beginning to love, she ground her foot in his stomach one last time as she stepped off him and jumped off the bed. As she pulled her phone out of her purse, she ignored the glare that he was sending her way. She didn’t know him well, but she knew by the expression on his face that he was already thinking up another bullshit plan to keep her here. Knowing that it was probably best to leave before he had a chance to stop her, she headed for the door as she looked down at her phone and nearly sagged with relief.

  It was Marta calling, most likely looking for a ride home. Perfect timing. This phone call provided her with the opportunity that she needed to say goodbye and put this nightmare, and the overbearing bastard coming after her, behind her once and for all. Then she could-

  Let out an embarrassingly high squeal as the bastard that she was going to kill with her bare hands took her by surprise and swept her off her feet.

  Chapter 16

  Williams Mansion

  “Please tell me that you’re fucking kidding me,” Kale said, sounding frustrated as he rubbed his hands down his face.

  If she’d been anyone else delivering the bad news to the shifter, she knew that he would have probably sent her screaming from the room. Instead, he was forcing himself to stand where he was and take a deep breath. It was something that she definitely appreciated about their close friendship, she mused as she opened the bag of peanut butter cups she kept hidden in her desk where her overbearing mate couldn’t find them.

  She wasn’t too surprised when the bag was suddenly snatched away from her or when she looked up to find Kale tearing into the bag, sending her a look that dared her to bitch. Normally she would have snatched the bag back from him, but she just didn’t have the energy today.

  For the last week she’d been working day and night on Tattletale, teaching it how to decipher the Sentinel blood supply system. It had broken into the system and grabbed all the information that she’d requested, quickly fitting it into categories within the first hour, which was what she’d expected it to do. What she hadn’t expected, and she really should have, was that all the information was fake.

  Well, the drop off locations, the amount of blood ordered and delivered, and the deposits made to cover the blood delivery orders were real, but that wasn’t really helpful when the rest of the information was fake. Not only that, but it seemed that once a customer moved out of an area they apparently would set up a new account with a new fake name and contact information.

  Was the Council surprised when she’d informed them of the problem? Not at all. They’d set it up like this. They wanted to make sure that vampires, demons and all the lovely creatures that relied on human blood had easy access to bagged blood to keep them from attacking humans. It was something that she understood and normally would have fully supported, but not now, not when she was depending on their information to weed out the Pytes.

  “Are there any descriptions? Notes? Anything to clue us in on the identity of the customers?” Kale demanded as he unwrapped a peanut butter cup and shoved it in his mouth.

  Izzy shook her head, biting back a wince when the movement sent sharp pain shooting through her throbbing hip. Ignoring it, because it was either that or break down and cry, she focused on the large monitor in front of her. “No, there aren’t any notes. No clue into their species, nothing.”

  Kale growled out something unintelligible as he shoved another peanut butter cup in his mouth. He’d been on edge all week, eager to start this job only to discover that it wasn’t going to be that easy. Every attempt they’d made to hunt down Pytes had been met with roadblocks. First, he’d been denied access to the files that the Vatican held on suspected Pytes, because the Council refused to agree on just how much information Kale should have access to.

  Then they’d discovered that all those files that the Council were protecting were hand written, kept in an underground tomb where they were protected by a security system. Tattletale could have shut it down, but that wouldn’t have helped since there was no record of the location of the tombs in the files. Until the Council could come to an agreement over the files, they had to use what they had, which wasn’t a hell of a lot.

  “Vampires can’t smell Pytes,” Kale suddenly announced, sounding thoughtful.

  “True, but they also can’t smell most demons,” she felt the need to point out, wondering where he was going with this.

  “We need the delivery personnel to start identifying the species of every customer,” Kale said, dropping the now-empty bag of peanut butter cups on the desk. He grabbed a chair and pulled it up to her workstation and settled in.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, even as she hacked into the Sentinel blood supply system and added a new column in the database and labeled it, “Species.”

  “If we can start eliminating vampires off our list, we can narrow it down,” Kale said, opening the mini-fridge that she kept beneath her workstation.

  “Vampires can’t distinguish between most demons and Pytes,” she pointed out, again.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kale said, pulling out two bottles of orange juice and handed her one. “If we can manage to shorten the list, we’ll have something that we can work with.”

  Izzy pursed her lips up in thought as she looked back at the database. After a moment, she added another category, “Special Notes.”

  “What’s that for?” Kale asked, taking her orange juice back so that he could open it for her.

  “We might be able to cut the list down further if we get clues that will help us sort through the rest of the list.”

  “Good idea,” Kale agreed with an approving nod.

  “I’m going to break into the message center and send out a general message requesting the deliverers to identify the species of their customers and take note of anything unusual about the customer,” she explained even as she did it.

  “We don’t want them cluing anyone in on our plans,” Kale warned.

  She shook her head. “I’m going to make sure that they know that this is observation only, no questions asked.”

  “What if they don’t comply?” Kale asked, but she could tell by his tone that he already had an idea or two to make sure that they complied.

  “I’m going to give them some bullshit administrative excuse to get the job done. If I offer them information, an incentive or make a big deal out of this in any way, it will tip them off and make them curious.”

  “Curious is bad,” Kale ag
reed with a nod.

  “Exactly.”

  “Are you going to be able to filter out Pyte abilities?” he asked, getting to his feet.

  “I should be able to as long as I get decent information,” she said, wondering if perhaps she should set up a form for the deliverers to check off for each customer, something mixed with Pyte and demon abilities so that the deliverers were kept in the dark about their real intentions.

  “Let me know when you have something concrete,” he said, heading to the door.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, keeping her attention on her monitor as she readjusted the database.

  “To get my team together.”

  *-*-*-*-*

  Orlando, Florida

  “She’s definitely left the state,” Brock, his beta, said in way of greeting as he stepped into the office and shut the door behind him, blocking out the noise from the busy kitchen.