by Adrian, Lara
Knox swatted the poker away, then leapt fluidly to his feet.
No sooner than he had, the big male wrestled him into a headlock. Knox fought the relentless hold with all he had, finally managing to break loose. On a snarl, he shoved his opponent across the room.
The vampire flew backward a few feet, then skidded to a halt on his boot heels. Panting, his eyes on fire with animal rage, he lowered his head like a bull and came at Knox on a feral, unearthly cry.
Knox scrabbled for the poker on the floor beside him. As soon as his fingers closed around the handle, he drew it back. Then he drove the weapon right through the center of the charging Hunter’s skull.
The blow was catastrophic, even for the most powerful of his kind. The big male crumpled to his knees, dead even before his body hit the floor.
CHAPTER 25
Leni stood rooted to the same spot, her arm still wrapped tightly around Riley and holding him close to her, after Knox removed the body of the slain Breed male and took it outside.
“The sun will do the rest in the morning,” he told her when he came back into the house.
She nodded, not yet able to find her voice.
Riley clung to her, his little body shaking nearly uncontrollably. The poor child was obviously in shock, terrorized by what he had witnessed. Leni didn’t feel all that stable herself.
She didn’t think she would ever be able to purge the memory of staring into the Breed assassin’s cold eyes while he pulled the trigger on the pistol he’d aimed point-blank at her face. Even though she had been secure in the power of her gift to protect herself from injury, it hadn’t lessened the horror of the attack.
And she was still trying to reconcile how she had been able to shield Riley at the same time.
In spite of her terror, Leni had felt a new strength surge within her. She felt it now too. It lived inside her, thrumming with energy, even at rest.
She felt the incredible presence of the blood bond she shared with Knox. That hadn’t left her for a second, not during the attack or now. Knox’s strength fed her own. His love galvanized her. Tonight, it had saved her life.
He had saved all their lives.
As remarkable as her ability was, how long could she have held out against a relentless killer with the brute force and lethal skills of ten mortal men?
Knox closed the damaged front door, then strode toward her. “It should be secure enough until the Order arrives.” Drying blood and dark, swollen bruises marred his handsome face. One of his brows was split open, his eyes still smoldering with banked fire. Behind his torn upper lip, his extended fangs gleamed long and sharp from the depth of his battle rage.
But his touch was infinitely gentle as he gathered her to him, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “Are you all right?”
“I am.” Her reply was a choked whisper. She lifted her head, her heart breaking as she took in the awfulness of his injuries. “I’m fine, Knox. Riley and I are both unharmed. But you—”
Frowning, he shook his head. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll heal soon enough.”
And so he was, she realized. The lacerations and shattered bones of his cheeks and jaw were mending before her eyes.
“That’s the power of your blood inside me, Leni.” He brushed his mouth over hers. “My blood will make you stronger too.”
“It already is. That’s how I was able to shield Riley with my ability, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “And thank God you did.”
The gravity of his deep voice only confirmed just how close they’d come to losing the boy.
They all had come terribly close to losing everything tonight.
In a dread-filled corner of her heart, she knew the worst of it wasn’t over yet.
Knox crouched down onto his haunches in front of Riley. “How’re you holding up, buddy?”
Instead of answering, the boy sidled around to the back of Leni’s legs, his small hands clutching the loose fabric of her pajama bottoms.
“Hey,” Leni said, reaching around to coax him out of hiding. “You don’t have to be afraid of Knox, honey. He’s not going to hurt us.”
“Never,” Knox vowed. “No one means more to me than both of you. You believe me, don’t you, Riley?”
His pale blond head bobbed in mute agreement. He stared at Knox for a long moment, then stepped forward and wrapped the big male in a tight hug.
Relief washed over Leni as she watched the tender exchange between them. But it didn’t diminish the panic that had taken up residence in her breast.
When Knox rose, she saw the same bleakness reflected in his grave stare.
“What if there are more of them?” she asked woodenly.
He gave a grim shake of his head. “There was only the one. The Parrishes hired him. I read it in the bastard the instant I touched him.”
It didn’t shock her to hear Travis’s family would send an assassin out to kill them. She was fresh out of shock after what happened in this room tonight. But confusion gnawed at her.
Confusion and a cold, dawning realization she didn’t want to acknowledge.
“How did they know where we are? How could they know how to find—” The words jammed in her throat, trapped there by a knot of anguish.
Oh, God. Carla.
She didn’t have to say her friend’s name out loud. If she had, it only would have added to Riley’s trauma. Knox’s bleak expression confirmed what she couldn’t bear to say.
Carla was dead.
“You’re sure?” she asked, her voice breaking with grief.
Knox acknowledged with a sober nod. “The Parrishes sent the Hunter there first. She didn’t volunteer anything, Leni. But it wouldn’t have mattered if she had.”
Leni didn’t want to believe it, but the truth was there in Knox’s solemn gaze.
Her friend was gone.
“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have said anything to her this morning. If I hadn’t—”
Knox shook his head. “It wouldn’t have changed a thing. Hunters hunt, Leni. All that matters to them is eliminating their target. They don’t give a thought to the carnage they leave in their wake.”
She didn’t have to ask how he could be so certain. It was impossible to think of him in the same cold business as the Breed male he’d killed tonight, but she knew Knox was lethal. Now, she had seen it firsthand.
And while she loathed the sick madman who’d kept her mate a prisoner of his brutal program for so many years, she had never been more grateful for Knox’s deadly talents than she was right now.
If only there had been some way to protect her friend too. Leni wanted to crumble as he drew her into his tender embrace, but she had to hold herself together. For Riley. For Knox.
She had to hold it together for Carla, too, because Leni knew her best friend would demand it of her.
Inhaling a fortifying breath, she drew out of the comfort of Knox’s arms. “What are we going to do?”
“The Order should be here in three to four hours. I need you to stay put with Riley and wait for them. I’m going to leave you my phone. There’s a number stored in it that will put you in touch with my brother Razor in Florida. If you need to reach the Order’s team before they get here, he can make that happen.”
Leni didn’t like the way this was sounding. “What about you?”
A tendon jerked in his healing jaw. “I’m taking this war to the Parrishes’ doorstep. And I’m going to end it, once and for all.”
CHAPTER 26
It would have been faster to make the trek back to Parrish Falls on foot, but far less satisfying than rolling up to the Parrishes’ property in the black SUV that belonged to the killer they’d hired.
Knox had made the drive in record time. Fury seethed in his veins as the miles fell away between the hidden safe house where he’d left Leni with Riley and the Parrishes’ compound estate on the edge of town.
Before leaving Leni, he’d taken Riley aside and erased the boy’s memory of the attack. Mi
nd-scrubbing was an ability all of the Breed had, though Knox used it sparingly. It felt invasive to him, stealing a piece of someone’s past, but in Riley’s case there was no question it was a mercy. No one should have to live with a reminder of the ugly brutality that existed in the world, least of all an innocent child.
Knox only wished he could have done the same for Leni.
If it were in his power, he’d remove every pain she had ever endured and shield her from any in the future.
Tonight, however, he’d have to make do with cold vengeance.
He slowed the vehicle, tires crunching in the rutted snow and ice as he approached the closed gate in front of the Parrishes’ home and business. The big house glowed peacefully in the winter darkness, warm yellow light spilling out from behind curtained windows.
One of the Parrishes—a man too young to be the family’s patriarch and too short and thin to be Dwight—worked outside near the adjacent lumberyard. He stood on the broad side of a tractor trailer loaded with fresh-cut timber, evidently checking that the cargo was secure. His breath steamed under the pool of illumination pouring down from a pair of flood lights mounted on the outbuilding.
He glanced over his shoulder, peering through the distance at the SUV now waiting at the gate. The man’s hand went up, a welcoming wave for what he apparently presumed was the lethal Hunter returned from his mission.
Well, he was half-right.
Knox smiled behind the dark-tinted glass of the windshield. He flashed the high-beams in reply, then watched as Travis Parrish’s brother jogged into the outbuilding and hit a button that operated the gate remotely.
The metal grate slowly swung open.
Knox drove through, a growl rumbling in his chest.
As skilled and experienced as he was, he had never particularly relished the act of killing.
Tonight he would make an exception.
CHAPTER 27
Knox had barely been gone an hour, but the waiting felt like an eternity.
The fact that Riley had no memory of the attack made the entire ordeal somewhat more bearable for Leni, but nothing would ever erase her grief over Carla’s death.
Or her worry for Knox.
He had to be back in Parrish Falls by now. She knew he was alive. She felt his vitality like a balm through their bond. She also felt the coldness of his fury, and Leni almost pitied the men who’d found themselves on the receiving end of it tonight.
Almost.
The Parrishes had earned every bit of Knox’s wrath for what they did to Carla.
Leni’s veins boiled when she thought of her friend’s final moments of fear and suffering. Carla had lost her life simply for being Leni’s friend. Despite Knox’s effort to assuage her guilt, she didn’t know how she would ever forgive herself for putting her friend in the crosshairs of her war with the Parrishes.
As for Riley, he was still at the center of that battle.
Now more than ever, after Travis’s murder.
And when she considered the possibility that the innocent little boy might have fallen into that family’s hands tonight, her blood seethed with outrage. If not for Knox’s lethal skills and the enhanced strength of her ability thanks to the bond she shared with him, Riley would be long gone.
Instead, he sat on the large sectional playing with Fred and a shoebox of action figures he’d found in one of the bedrooms.
Leni had hurriedly cleaned up the great room while Riley slept off the effects of the mind scrub Knox gave him before he left the safe house. The bloodied rug was rolled up and stashed in another room. The broken debris from the smashed coffee table was swept away.
Riley had lost interest in the movie they’d been watching before the attack, so Leni had turned on a local news station instead. She kept the volume low, just enough to chase away the silence of the big, empty Darkhaven.
Sitting beside him while he played, she couldn’t resist reaching out to brush some of the pale blond hair from his brow. He was so much like Shannon. Bright and funny, a charming little imp with her sister’s big blue eyes and silky hair.
It hurt to see him growing up without her.
And as much as she grieved for Carla, part of her heart would always mourn Shannon too.
All the things her sister would never see, never know about her wonderful son.
Leni cleared her throat. “You’ve been playing for a couple of hours, kiddo. Why don’t you take a little break and I’ll make you a sandwich?”
“Okay.” He blinked up at her with wide, innocent eyes. “Do you think they got peanut butter here?”
Leni smiled. “Oh, I imagine they do.”
“And grape jelly?”
“Why don’t we go find out?”
She got up from the sofa and started walking toward the kitchen. She went a few paces before she realized Riley wasn’t following her. Alarmed, she glanced back and saw his attention was rooted to the TV over the fireplace.
“Rye?”
She drifted back to him, her own gaze drawn to the news coverage playing on the big screen. It was from the local station, a breaking story about a young girl who’d apparently gone missing from Quebec almost two weeks ago. A snapshot of a preteen girl with light-brown hair and a shy smile dominated the display.
“That’s her,” Riley said, turning to look at Leni.
“That’s who, honey?”
“My friend. The one Fred and me met in the woods down by the river.”
A chill moved through Leni’s bloodstream. “What do you mean, you met her? Are you talking about the imaginary friend you mentioned that morning you left the house without telling me?”
He frowned, shaking his head. “Not ‘maginary. She’s real. But I don’t know her name, cause—”
“Because she ran away when you tried to talk to her,” Leni replied, her voice wooden as she recalled what the boy had told her that day. The report she had dismissed as fiction because she was upset and scared and had no patience to play games with him.
Had there been a missing girl on the run in the woods in Parrish Falls?
If so, how on earth had she gotten so far away from her home?
Leni grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. The photo of the shy child was replaced with recent video file footage of law enforcement officers cordoning off a stretch of woods above the river outside Parrish Falls while a coroner’s van waited on the snow-covered road.
“Authorities in Canada say the girl, whose body was found in the Penobscot River yesterday, was last reported seen at the rest stop near St. Zacharie. It is believed the twelve-year-old French-speaking victim may have been at risk for trafficking,” the female anchor reported soberly. “If anyone has further information, you’re asked to please contact law enforcement.”
“What’s trafficking?” Riley asked.
Leni couldn’t answer. Her head filled with a sick suspicion—and a cold, niggling sense of alarm.
What was a child who’d gone missing from the border at St. Zacharie doing in Parrish Falls?
As she considered it, Knox’s account of what he’d discovered when he read Travis Parrish’s sins came back to her with terrible clarity.
Travis had arranged to send Shannon away. No, not sent away.
Taken.
Abducted across the Canadian border into Quebec.
Travis, who had a habit of hurting women, Knox had said.
And young girls.
She thought back to the odd reaction that passed between Travis and his father in the diner Sunday afternoon, when Enoch had mentioned Dwight and Jeb had a delivery to run to St. Zacharie. An urgent delivery made on the worst road conditions of the season.
Money doesn’t wait for good weather.
Enoch Parrish’s remark, and the strange look he’d exchanged with Travis suddenly took on a sinister new meaning.
Could the Parrishes be involved in something so heinous?
After everything she’d learned about them these past few days, nothing was ben
eath them.
Knox needed to be warned.
With the Order still hours away from the Darkhaven safe house, they would arrive too late to help him. Knox’s brother Razor was even farther away than that. Her only other option was to report her suspicions to the county sheriff’s department.
Muting the TV, she ran to retrieve her phone and tapped the number she saw every day on a fridge magnet in the diner.
The dispatcher answered and Leni took the call out of Riley’s earshot. She hastily relayed everything she knew and suspected, from the girl Riley had seen in the woods and the strangely urgent trip the Parrishes had made to the border. Then she told the operator what had been done to her sister.
“There’s more,” she said to the silence on the other end. “The Parrishes tried to kill me tonight. They hired a Breed assassin. They murdered my friend Carla Hansen and then—”
There was an odd click on the line before a familiar voice intercepted the call.
“Lenora?” Sheriff Barstow’s smooth baritone skated into her ear. He sounded concerned, but she didn’t miss the edge of surprise in his voice. “Are you all right? I’ve got the whole damn department looking for you.”
“What for?”
“What for? Haven’t you heard? Travis Parrish was murdered in cold blood last night. We’ve got witnesses who’ve ID’d his killer, Leni. It was that homicidal vampire that’s been sniffing around your skirt lately.”
She cringed at the vulgar expression, coming from a law officer she’d known since she was a child. “Knox is my mate. All he’s done is protect Riley and me.”
“He’s a killer, plain and simple. The way you and the boy vanished from town, I’ve been afraid the son of a bitch might’ve left you both for dead somewhere too.”
“No, Amos. Knox isn’t the dangerous one. The Parrishes are. They sent a Breed assassin out to kill Knox and me and take Riley. My friend Carla’s dead now because of them too. The Hunter they sent after me killed her first to find out where I am.”
The old sheriff went quiet for a long moment on the recorded line. “These are very serious charges, Lenora.”
