by Lisa Childs
They’d had too many secrets for too long. Those secrets had destroyed their first marriage. But not their love for each other. That had survived their divorce and would now endure for eternity.
“No, we don’t,” Paige confirmed. “Ben doesn’t think he would hurt her.”
Sebastian shrugged. “Maybe he knows Warrick James better than I do. They’ve spent more time together.”
“With Ben patching him up,” Paige said. “Someone hurt Kate, too, though.”
A muscle twitched along Sebastian’s tightly clenched jaw, and dread filled Paige as she recognized the tension and the fear in her father.
“You know something…”
He shrugged again. “I’ve talked to Warrick’s brother a few times.”
“And you don’t think he’s a danger, either,” she said. He’d admitted as much to Ben, which her husband had also shared with her.
Sebastian cursed again as he realized she already knew what he was willing to admit. It was what he was holding back that she really wanted to learn—that she had to learn.
“So who is a danger to Kate?” she asked. “What have you heard?”
“Paige, it’s better if—”
She slapped his shoulder—albeit gently. “Stop trying to protect me.” He had done that for too long and his protection had inadvertently put her in danger instead. “Just tell me what you know.”
He uttered a ragged sigh of resignation and concern. “Certain members of the society are getting concerned about Kate.”
Fear coursed through Paige, making her gasp. She could imagine who—the vampire who’d nearly taken her life. “Why? Kate isn’t aware of the Secret Vampire Society.”
At least she hoped her friend wasn’t aware of them. It did feel as if she had been avoiding her and their other happy-hour friends, though. Had she discovered the secret and realized that it was Paige’s secret, too?
Was Kate afraid of her?
She nearly chuckled at her ridiculous thought. Kate feared no one, and that fearlessness was what would put her in the most danger.
Sebastian tilted his head in consideration and replied, “She has been investigating more—”
“Because of that werewolf,” Paige said. “Her investigation has nothing to do with the society.”
“But if she learns about him…”
Paige’s fear increased instead of abating. “She’ll be in danger from the pack.” Ben had told her that they had the same rule as the society.
“Not just the pack,” Sebastian said. “She’s poking around. She’s going to see or learn something that she can’t know…”
“And live,” Paige finished for him. She had always worried about Kate finding out too much. Knowing Kate and her inquisitiveness and her determination, Paige should have realized that it was only a matter of time before her friend learned the secret.
That muscle twitched in Sebastian’s cheek again. He knew how much Paige loved her friends. She had inadvertently put them all at risk, like he had with her. Maybe she would have been a better friend if she’d ended their friendship—if she’d found a way to keep Kate away from Club Underground.
“Is there anything we can do?” she asked. “If she finds out…”
Sebastian arched his brows above his blue eyes, and she corrected herself, “When she finds out…”
He shrugged. “You know what the options are,” he said. “What do you think Kate will choose?”
When Paige had found it, the choice for her hadn’t been between death and becoming a vampire. Her choice had been between love and death. Because becoming a vampire had meant that she was able to spend eternity with the man she loved.
But Kate didn’t have that choice. She wasn’t in love with a vampire.
“What do you think is going on between her and the werewolf?” she asked.
Sebastian shook his head. “I am not the person you should be asking,” he said. “She’s your friend.”
“So why don’t I know?” Paige wondered and worried.
Why was Kate keeping secrets? Was she falling for the werewolf and too scared to admit to her feelings? Knowing Kate, she would probably refuse to admit them even to herself let alone her friends.
Paige had known her long enough to know that her friend feared love. She had no idea that there were far greater dangers out there for her. She need not worry about losing her heart; she needed to worry about losing her life.
Chapter 7
She pried her lids open and peered around, but her vision was blurred. Wood and prints blended into a kaleidoscope of colors, and it took her a few moments to recognize her surroundings. She was still in the cabin. She didn’t have to try the doors or windows to confirm that she was still chained inside—still imprisoned like a criminal. A guard had brought her food last night. She shouldn’t have eaten it; it had obviously been drugged.
Sylvia blinked hard and trembled, trying to fight off the grogginess. Her hands slid over her swollen belly. Had whatever drug she’d been given harmed her baby or babies? Tears stung her eyes, welling in them so that she no longer saw the cabin. She no longer saw anything but pain.
If she lost her baby, she would have lost everything. But her belly shifted beneath her palms as a tiny foot kicked out. A sigh of relief slipped through her lips. More kicks and punches followed; she didn’t care about the discomfort. She only cared that her child or children—there were so many kicks and punches that it felt like more than one set of feet and hands—were alive inside her.
A giggle bubbled out. But her happiness was short-lived because she knew that her children might not survive—if she couldn’t escape. She couldn’t eat the food again. She had to take the opportunity instead to overpower the guard and escape. It was her and her children’s only hope.
And Reagan…
Was he beyond hope? No. She could still feel his emotions—his frustration and guilt and fear. He was worried about someone.
She doubted it was her, though, or he would have come back for her. He wouldn’t have left her alone for so long…
But if he and Warrick were dead, she would be dead, too. She was only useful while one or both of them were still alive. The day before she’d searched for a tool to escape; now she searched for a weapon.
She would do whatever was necessary to protect the ones she loved—like Reagan had done. It was just too bad that he hadn’t really loved her.
*
With her hand close to the holster hidden beneath her jacket, Kate moved through the crowd at Club Underground. The dimly lit bar, with its exposed brick, dark wood and polished brass was always crowded—with the most unusual patrons. Most were young, with flawless pale skin and lean bodies. They looked as if they belonged in a club in Hollywood instead of an urban city in western Michigan. It didn’t matter where Club Underground was; Kate didn’t want to be there.
Not because her ex-husband had warned her away from the place but because her own instincts warned her away from Club Underground. But she had no choice tonight. So she maneuvered to the table in the back and settled onto an empty chair.
“Glad you could make happy hour,” Lizzy welcomed her. The dark-eyed brunette clasped her arm around Kate’s shoulders and squeezed.
She relaxed into her friend’s embrace, appreciating her warmth. They were the same age, but Lizzy reminded Kate of her mom, who had always been so loving and supportive. Too bad she and Kate’s dad had died a decade ago when their small plane had crashed into Lake Michigan. The only thing Kate had left of them now was that grandfather clock Kate’s father had bought her mom for their anniversary. It had been his way of telling her that they had all the time in the world. But they hadn’t.
That was why Kate knew how important it was to spend as much time as possible with the people you loved.
“You don’t look very happy, though,” Campbell observed. The assistant district attorney studied Kate through narrowed green eyes.
“What happened to your head?” Renae asked
. The bandage was gone now, the wound nearly healed, but of course the trauma surgeon would notice the injury.
Kate touched it. “It’s nothing,” she lied, “just more banging my head against the wall.” That was what it had been like trying to get through to Warrick, to let the authorities handle justice instead of his seeking his own vigilante brand of an eye for an eye, a life for a life. Whose life had the man taken that Warrick was so determined to avenge the death?
The surgeon’s eyes narrowed in skepticism. “Looks like blunt-force trauma to me.”
Lizzy sighed. “Dr. Grabill, it’s happy hour. Let’s talk about happy things.” Considering she spent most of her day with clients bickering over their divorce settlement and most of her night with teenagers bickering over the remote and the computer, Lizzy really needed happy hour.
Tonight, so did Kate.
She had done it again. Despite knowing better, she had gotten involved with another violent man. Warrick wasn’t just into assault and battery, though. He was determined to kill. And no matter what she said to him, she couldn’t stop him.
She should have arrested him instead of making love with him. Why hadn’t she? Sure, she’d been both physically and mentally exhausted, but she had summoned the energy to move over him and beneath him, to meet his thrusts, to spiral out of control with passion.
“Looks like you all can use a drink,” Paige said as the club owner, clad in a slinky red dress, approached their table. The blonde looked younger and happier every time Kate saw her. Paige had many reasons for her happiness: her successful business, the reunion with her ex-husband and their adoption of an orphaned patient of Ben’s. Finally, Paige had everything she deserved.
Would Kate look like Paige, that happy and carefree, if she fell that deeply in love? Kate knew only the painful side of love: the loss and helplessness. It was no wonder that she never chose the right men.
“Make mine a double,” she murmured. No matter how much she drank, though, she wouldn’t be able to forget what she’d done and what she’d felt…with Warrick James.
“You better order fast,” Paige suggested. “Sebastian’s pouring tonight, and the place is filling up.”
Lizzy glanced toward the bar. “With pretty girls. We’ll be lucky to get our drinks at all.”
“Come on,” Campbell said with a wink. “He’ll serve us. We’re the prettiest girls in the club.”
Kate chuckled. “I haven’t been a girl in a while.”
“Me, either,” Lizzy added with a laugh. “But that man at the bar has me blushing like one, and I’m not even the one he’s staring at…”
Campbell followed their friend’s gaze and whistled in appreciation. “I haven’t seen him around before.”
“There are always strangers in this place,” Kate remarked. That was partly what made her so suspicious of the club. If she didn’t know Paige better, she might have considered that it was a front for drugs or something even more nefarious. But Paige, as a former attorney, was all about law and order, too.
“He’s not looking at you like you’re a stranger,” the assistant district attorney told Kate, her voice rising with excitement and curiosity.
Finally, Kate turned toward the bar, and her heart constricted as she met that eerie topaz gaze. He stared at her for several moments, and it was as if everyone else disappeared from the overcrowded club— leaving just the two of them. Alone and naked like they had been just a couple of days before—all tangled up in her bed.
All tangled up in each other.
It was as if she could feel him moving inside her, filling her. Heat rushed through her, and her skin tingled as if he was touching her again. And he was but with just his gaze. She wanted his big hands on her again—cupping her breasts, stroking her nipples and her clit…making her scream his name as she came apart in his arms. She was burning up and it wasn’t because the club was crowded. It was because of him and that intensity of the passion he brought out in her—a passion she hadn’t even known she possessed.
“Who is he?” Campbell asked. She pressed a meticulously manicured hand to her chest. “And if you tell me a suspect, it’s going to break my heart.”
Kate was more worried about Warrick breaking hers. She drew in a deep, shaky breath, bracing herself before she shook her head and severed that strange connection between them. Then she turned back to her friends and lied. “I don’t know who he is.”
Maybe that wasn’t a lie, though.
While she knew his name, it was pretty much all she knew about him and that was only if he had actually given her his true identity. He hadn’t shown her any proof that he was who he claimed: no driver’s license or passport. She hadn’t been able to run his prints. Maybe she should have dusted her bedroom or her body and processed him that way, but she hadn’t.
Even if he had told her the truth about his identity, it was really all he’d told her. He kept too many other secrets for her to really know him at all.
“If I were you, I’d get to know him,” Campbell said with a lustful sigh. “That is some good-looking man.”
And her friend hadn’t even seen him naked like Kate had. He was better than good-looking; he was magnificent. Lust filled Kate now with the urge to see him that way again—to pull off his black sweater and his jeans and expose all that hair-roughened skin stretched taut over hard muscles.
“Kate’s all about work,” Renae said.
“You are two of a kind,” Lizzy teased the surgeon.
No. Renae was too smart to make the mistakes that Kate had. The young surgeon had never been married and seemed to focus only on her job.
If only Kate had done the same…
She would have missed out on the most exciting sexual experience of her life.
“What are you working on now?” Paige asked.
Something in her tone drew Kate’s attention. She was more than curious; she was worried. But then she and Paige had always been close. That was why Kate had been keeping her distance—because Paige knew her too well to miss all the conflicting feelings Kate was fighting. Instead of drinking with her friends and ignoring Warrick, she should be arresting him. But no one had sworn out a complaint against him.
“No,” Campbell said, waving her hands like a referee at a fight. “No shop talk. You know the rule, Paige.”
Yes, she knew the rule. She’d made it herself. So why had she asked? What did she know?
*
Warrick forced himself to look away from Kate. She had already turned away from him, just as she had at her apartment after they’d made love those couple of long days ago. He hadn’t slept since then. He hadn’t been able to get her taste and touch from his lips or his skin. Not even when he turned at midnight. Hell, it had seemed to intensify then, especially when he stood vigil outside her apartment—making sure no one tried to hurt her again.
Someone had been there—that night he’d left her bed and dropped from her fire escape. Various scents had assaulted him when he’d wanted only hers in his head, on his skin. But he’d smelled others.
Reagan.
His hadn’t been the only scent. There had been others. But it hadn’t been the scents as much as the intensity of the emotion emanating from them. Hatred. And so he’d led them away from her—or he had tried. When he hadn’t caught anyone following him, he’d sought out Sebastian instead. He’d asked him to protect her, so that she didn’t wind up like that homeless man in the alley.
But he hadn’t trusted Sebastian with her protection every night. He’d had to make certain for himself that nothing happened to Kate.
His Kate…
He started at his possessive thought and at a sharp noise. His watch alarm sounded the warning that midnight was nearing. The pitch was at a frequency he could hear despite the heavy throb of the low bass of the live band and the loud rumble of conversation. He had adjusted the alarm to give him a fifteen-minute warning.
Sebastian leaned across the bar and told him, “You should go now.”
/> Warrick doubted the vampire had heard the alarm; he just wanted him gone because Kate was here. The bartender kept staring at her table, too.
As if he’d read his mind and picked up on the jealousy, Sebastian lifted his hands to ward him off. “Hey, you told me to watch her.”
So maybe Sebastian had an excuse. But every other man in the place stared at her table, too; she was so beautiful. Her silky black hair skimmed her delicate jaw. Thick lashes fringed her eyes, which shone that startling, pale blue even in the dim lighting of the club. She wore a jacket over a sweater, but her breasts strained beneath them, as if begging him to free them.
Kate ignored him, never turning toward him again, while her friends continued to stare at him. They were all attractive women of various ages and coloring, but Kate was the one who held all of his attention. And they all knew it. He forced himself to look away— because they might not have been the only ones who’d noticed his interest in Detective Wever.
Although if Reagan was the one who’d attacked her the night Warrick had found her in the alley, then he already knew that Warrick was interested in her. That must have been his reason for hurting her—to hurt Warrick. Reagan actually owed her; if not for her shooting Warrick that night, he would have torn his brother apart.
“So you can leave,” the bartender told him.
“I will leave,” he assured Sebastian, “once you tell me what else you’ve heard about him.”
The vampire bartender shook his head. “Nothing about him. Nobody’s talking about anything but that body that Kate found in the alley behind here.”
Was that why she had come to the club tonight—to continue her damn investigation? If she wouldn’t let it go, she might wind up like that body in the Dumpster. He had to make certain that didn’t happen, though. And there was only one way to do that—by eliminating the threat against her.
“Come on,” Warrick persisted, suspecting that Sebastian was holding something back, “you’ve had to have heard something else…”
“Just speculation,” Sebastian admitted.
“About him?”
