“Then how was he injured?”
“No idea.”
Wyatt knocked on the door to give the all clear, and Jesse and I went out onto the front step. Wyatt handed Jesse the new seal, and he spent a lot of time putting it up, very focused on getting the lines exactly right. I edged sideways a little so I could see his face in the dim lights from the street. He looked . . . distraught. I was missing something.
“Jesse . . . what else did you see, in your dream?”
He flinched away from me, as though I’d struck him across the face, but didn’t answer. Shit, I’d been right.
Wyatt looked back and forth between us for a moment, and then wandered into the tiny side yard, pretending to be interested in the creepy-ass plants.
“You said they were rifling through your memory,” I said softly to Jesse. “But not where you were or what you saw. I’m sorry. I should have asked.”
For a moment, Jesse looked like he was going to answer, but then he just shook his head tightly.
Impulsively, I stepped forward and hugged him, breathing in his scent. Stupid baby hormones. Jesse hesitated for a second, and then his arms went around me. We stayed like that for a long moment. I hoped that the shadows would hide us from the occasional car driving past.
When he finally stepped back toward the door, his eyes were just a tiny bit pink. “What now?” he said. He obviously didn’t want to talk about the Luparii’s attack anymore.
I pushed out a breath, increasing the space between us a little. A car turned onto the street, and I realized we needed to get out of there before someone called the police. “I’ll make that call to Kirsten, just to cover our bases. Then we can check in with Dashiell and—”
“Scarlett!” Wyatt was suddenly running toward me with a wild look on his face. He slowed down when he hit my radius and then abruptly changed direction, heading across the yard instead of toward me. I stared at him, confused, until I finally registered that the car on the street had slowed down, and the window was lowering.
Jesse had put it together a half-second before I did, and was already pushing me down, but not fast enough. A quick pop-pop of gunshots rang out in the night.
Chapter 20
I instinctively tried to reach for the knives in my boots just as Jesse was shoving me toward the ground, and the two of us ended up going down in a tangle, my shoulder scraping hard against one of the narrow pillars framing the front door. Jesse drew his gun from a side holster, propped himself on his elbow, and began firing at the car’s open passenger window, causing the driver to peel away down the street. The noise of Jesse’s gun seemed deafening.
When he was sure the car wasn’t coming back, Jesse put the gun back in his holster and turned to me, yelling, “Are you hit? Are you hit?”
“I think I’m okay,” I mumbled, trying to disentangle my arms and legs. Then I saw Wyatt lying on the front lawn.
He was on his back, his eyes closed, holding what looked like exit wounds in his stomach. That was when I realized he had changed his trajectory across the yard so he would be between the bullets and me. “Wyatt!”
I fought the natural urge to run to him and instead began scooting away on my butt. I could still feel him in my radius, which meant he wasn’t dead . . . but he would be if he stayed human.
My response had been too quiet, so Jesse was still yelling at me, but I cut him off. “I’m fine! Wyatt jumped in front of the bullets. Help him.”
So he stumbled to his feet and staggered toward Wyatt, pulling his jacket off along the way. I backed all the way off the front step and into the side yard, until the birds-of-paradise leaves began pricking at the backs of my bare arms. Then I hugged my knees to my chest, closed my eyes, and concentrated as hard as I could on shrinking my radius away from Wyatt.
It was more difficult than it should have been. When I’m overwhelmed by emotion—a.k.a. anytime I totally lose my shit—my radius flares outward. Getting shot at certainly qualified as overwhelming. On top of that, the nausea was flaring back to life, but I could not throw up at a crime scene. I just couldn’t. I tried to slow down my breathing.
Think it through, Scarlett. I had no doubt that the attack had been intended for me—Jesse had been behind me, closer to the house. If Wyatt hadn’t gotten in between me and the car, I’d be the one bleeding out on the grass. I shivered.
Okay, so someone had tried to kill me. I was protected in Los Angeles by Dashiell, so it was probably the Luparii . . . which meant they were still in town. Which meant Jesse had been right about them being committed to killing me. I just didn’t really know why. Yeah, I had helped kidnap Shadow from them, but plenty of others had helped me do it. Why not take a run at Dashiell, or kill Jesse properly? Why was killing me worth the risk of sticking around now that they had Shadow?
They’d found me at the crime scene . . . which meant they’d known I’d be coming. So they were involved with Karl Schmidt’s murder, but why? Had they set up a random weird crime scene just to lay a trap for me? That seemed ridiculous—there were plenty of easier ways to trap me. They could have just pretended to be an animal shelter that had found Shadow, and I would have raced over without thinking.
At the same time, though, I couldn’t see any other reason for them to attack some elderly human in Long Beach who had no ties to any of us. I didn’t get it . . . but I’d be willing to bet if we went and talked to Gloria Sherman in person, we’d find that a vampire had pressed her to call Jesse. Or a vampire had pressed someone at the coroner’s office to call in Gloria, knowing she would call Jesse and me. Vampires were working for the Luparii now, and the Luparii wanted to kill me; therefore, non-Jesse humans couldn’t be trusted.
“Scar?” Jesse yelled from the front walkway.
I stood up so he could see me, still holding in my radius. “Is he okay?”
“I’ll be fine, Miss Scarlett,” Wyatt called back. “But do you hear that?”
My ears were still ringing, but when I focused on listening, I heard it too: the sound of sirens in the distance. The damn neighbors must have called the police.
I groaned. Between Wyatt pressing humans and Dashiell’s influence with the LAPD, we could get out of this fairly easily, but it would take forever. I reached for my phone to call Dashiell—but it wasn’t in my pocket. I’d been so pleased to see Wyatt that I’d forgotten to take it off the charger in the van when we arrived. Goddammit. What a rookie mistake.
Jesse had stood up and was hurriedly unbuttoning his shirt, which was stained with blood. I started toward the yard to get the phone, but there was no way to get down the walkway and through the metal gate without getting close to Wyatt, who was only now struggling to his feet. I stopped ten feet away from him, my radius clenched tightly around me. “I left my cell in the van,” I told them, in a voice that was probably louder than it needed to be. “I need to call Dashiell and get us some help.”
“Here, use mine,” Wyatt offered, and tossed me a slim black iPhone. “I’ll fetch yours while you make the call.”
I wanted to protest that he was still healing from a bullet wound, but we didn’t have time, so I shrugged to myself and tossed my van keys at him, pointing left down the street toward the White Whale. He turned to go. “And Wyatt?”
He looked over his shoulder. “Thank you,” I said. “I know you moved into the path of those bullets.”
The cowboy grinned. “You do keep things interesting, don’t you, Miss Scarlett?”
As Wyatt took off at light jog—slow for a vampire, damned fast for a vampire healing from bullet wounds—Jesse wadded up his bloody shirt and put his jacket back on over his undershirt. He looked like he was about to audition for a mob movie in the early nineties. “That was Killian shooting at us,” Jesse said grimly. “I saw his face. Sabine was probably driving.”
“Shit.” I turned my attention to Wyatt’s unlocked cell phone. Dashiell’s number was one of only a handful in the contacts folder. I touched the number and held the phone to my ear, waiting for
him to answer. Wyatt was far enough ahead now for me to wander down the little walkway toward the sidewalk. I looked idly in the direction of the van, parked about half a block away.
“Hello?” Dashiell said.
The sirens were very close now. “It’s me!” I practically yelled, but I was distracted by the van. If the cops saw Wyatt, they might stop to talk to him first.
But they never had the chance, because as he opened the driver’s door, it exploded outward in a dazzling burst of fire.
Chapter 21
When the van door exploded outward, I instinctively dropped to the ground, feeling the rush of escaping heat. It wasn’t as big or colorful as a movie explosion, but that somehow made it even worse, more real and terrifying. As soon as I could, I staggered upright. “Wyatt!” I screamed, lurching toward the van. It looked like a giant had wrapped one enormous hand around it and squeezed. Bright orange flames were rising from the shattered windows, and I couldn’t see any sign of Wyatt.
I ran into the street, vaguely aware of Jesse shouting something right behind me, trying to get me to stop. Neighbors were running out of their houses, many of them holding cell phones. Shit. Any second someone was going to start taping, if they hadn’t already.
But I still had to know.
When I circled the van, I saw the body right away. Wyatt was lying facedown in the street, his body blackened, his right leg completely missing. My searching eyes found it a few feet away, the pants leg still on fire. I skidded to a stop and closed my eyes, forcing myself to feel for Wyatt in my radius.
“Scarlett!” Jesse came panting up behind me. “We have to—”
“Shh!” I held out a flat hand to silence him.
There.
My eyes popped open as I felt the little spark of vampire magic. “We have to run,” I said, dazed. I was too upset; I couldn’t rein in my radius. I needed to get farther away from Wyatt if he had any hope of making it.
Jesse came around to my front, looking exasperated. “That’s what I’ve been saying!” Grabbing my hand, he practically dragged me back toward the Schmidt house. There was a tiny amount of space between it and the building next to it, and he led me through the side yard, around to the next street. None of the neighbors were watching us—to them, we probably looked like two more spectators who’d run out after the explosion; their attention was focused on the van and the body.
Oh, God, Wyatt’s body.
When we were two streets away, Jesse slowed down and put his arm around me like we were just any couple out for a stroll. Now and then he would crane his head to see if we were being followed. I had dropped Wyatt’s phone in the yard, and my own cell had exploded in the van, but Jesse still had his. When he was sure no one was tracking us, he called Dashiell.
It probably should have been me, but I was too . . . Poor Wyatt, he’d gone through so much just to protect me, and now I had no idea if he was going to survive the next few hours, much less whether he’d be able to grow his leg back. Werewolves could do it, I knew, but why had I never thought to ask about vampire limbs? And what if Dashiell treated him and he did survive? After losing his wife, Wyatt had wanted to die. Would he be angry if we didn’t let him move on?
And there was also my van. God, I loved that stupid van. I’d paid it off myself, one of the first adult things I’d ever done. I’d taken such pains with it, and now it barely qualified as scrap metal.
“Okay,” Jesse was saying into the phone. “I do . . . I will . . . Well, where do you suggest?”
After a couple more minutes, he hung up the phone and looked down at me. “We’re going to a hotel,” he announced. “Dashiell will send Molly over with some clothes. And he said you already have an extra phone at your place.”
I nodded numbly. I’d trashed so many cell phones over the last few years that Abby had started buying them for me in bulk. Dashiell insisted on getting good ones—I’d once tried buying my own older model, but he insisted on good phones with GPS tracking. Dashiell was very big on GPS tracking.
“Does he have people at the scene?” I managed to say.
Jesse nodded. “When he heard Schmidt’s house was in Long Beach, Dashiell put a couple of the vampires at the Copper Room on standby. They’re already there talking to the cops. And they’ll recover Wyatt . . .” Jesse hesitated for a moment, then added softly, “Either way.”
The Copper Room was a vampire hangout in Long Beach, only a couple of miles away. It was popular among the younger, newer vampires. “Okay,” I mumbled. “That’s good, I guess. What does he want us to do?”
“Nothing for the next few hours,” Jesse said. “He said he’ll be busy making sure everyone who witnessed it gets pressed to think the car fire was an accident. He wants to meet an hour before dawn. Meanwhile, we should get some rest.”
Rest. It seemed like I’d been doing so much of that lately, but then I never seemed to get more than a couple of hours. It was taking its toll. Also, didn’t pregnancy make women more tired than usual? I should have asked Molly for more of her What to Expect knowledge before Lex pressed her.
My thoughts wandered around like that for a few more minutes as we strolled along the sidewalk. Then a dark red Lexus pulled up alongside us, and Jesse steered me toward it. “I think this is our ride.”
To my surprise, the car’s driver was Beatrice, Dashiell’s wife. She was wearing tight jeans and a blousy white shirt, which was about the most casual I’d ever seen her at night. She still had five-inch stiletto heels, though, which clicked on the pavement as she came around the car and tossed Jesse the keys. “Hi, Bea,” I said. My voice came out woozy. “You got here fast.”
“I was at the harbor on business,” she said as she strode up to us. She paused, gave me a critical look, and took me by the shoulders. “You can’t go into shock right now, Scarlett,” she said sternly. “Someone is trying to kill you. You must keep it together.”
I blinked hard. “Someone is trying to kill me,” I repeated. “And Wyatt might die. My van is gone. My home isn’t safe.”
“And you look terrible and smell like smoke,” she added, “but this list isn’t helping you stay alive.” She pressed a rectangle of black plastic into my hand. Curious, I looked down and saw a very fancy-looking credit card.
“It’s a corporate card for a shell company,” she said. “For the hotel. Call Molly when you’re settled. She can bring your things. Don’t give her your room number over the phone; she’ll call up from the lobby.”
I had lost the thread of the conversation by then, but Beatrice looked at Jesse. “Get her out of here. Keep her safe.”
“How will you—” Jesse began, but then a second Lexus, this one black, pulled up behind Beatrice’s car. She’d had a security team with her, of course. I couldn’t see the driver through the tinted glass, but Beatrice was already waving us on. “Go now.”
Jesse drove us to the biggest hotel nearby, the Long Beach Hyatt. I don’t remember anything about checking in or getting up to the room. The next thing I really registered was Jesse handing me a robe and pushing me into a bathroom with shiny new fixtures.
I showered and washed my hair, letting the hot spray blast me in the face, and by the time I stepped out, I felt almost like myself again.
Well, a really, really exhausted and worried version of myself, anyway.
When I finally emerged, Jesse stood up from the side of the bed, where he’d been staring down at his phone. He looked tired and grubby, and there was a smudge of dirt or ash on one cheek. He’d thrown the button-down shirt in the garbage can outside before we came in, and the muscles in his chest stood out against his gray tee shirt. He stood right in front of me, assessing me with worried eyes.
It kind of took my breath away.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Not really. Any word on Wyatt?”
Jesse shook his head.
There was a moment of painfully awkward silence, and then I blurted, “There’s, um, only one bed.” I immediately felt s
tupid. We’d shared a bed the night before, but that had been sort of an accident. This was a choice.
“Yeah,” Jesse said, one hand lifting to scrub his palm through his hair. “They have some kind of convention here this weekend; there wasn’t a double queen room. But I can take the pullout couch. Scarlett—” He stepped forward and grasped me around the waist, steadying me, and I realized I’d been swaying. “You should sleep,” he said huskily. He sort of danced me over to the edge of the bed. When the back of my legs hit it, all the remaining strength seemed to leave my body. Jesse started pulling back the covers to tuck me in.
“Why do they want to kill me?” I said, to no one in particular.
“Best guess? Because you can stop whatever they’re about to do,” Jesse said, and his words chilled me. “But not without some rest. I’m going to take a shower now, okay?”
“Jesse.” I caught his wrist, and he turned to look down at me, surprised. I tried to figure out what I wanted to say, but all that came out was, “Sleep in the bed.”
He looked at me for a long moment, the light from the hallway casting a shadow on half his face. “I don’t know if that’s—”
Oh, God, how I didn’t want to hear the end of that sentence. “Please?”
He bent and kissed my forehead, creating a spot of warmth that spread down to my stomach. “Okay.”
Chapter 22
It was only a little after nine, but by the time Jesse came out of the shower, Scarlett was fast asleep at the edge of the bed. She hadn’t moved.
The hotel phone rang, and Jesse hurried around the bed to answer it, although he doubted there was much that would wake Scarlett just then. It was Molly, as he’d expected. He gave her the room number, and a few minutes later, there was a soft knock on the door.
“Nice robe,” she said as soon as he opened the door. She wore jeans and a tight tank top, her blonde curls bouncing against the large designer backpack on her shoulders. She moved past Jesse into the room before he could respond. “How is she?”
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