She removed her bra, pulled the tank top back on, then turned to face him as she began working on her braid. “When it comes to women, men are easily distracted,” she said absently, as she threaded her fingers through her now unbraided hair and shook her head to loosen it over her shoulders.
Vincent straightened next to her, at least partly to ease the sudden tightness of his groin at the sight of her breasts pressing against the thin shirt. They weren’t large, but they were round and firm, with dusky nipples that were in plain sight beneath the nearly transparent fabric. He realized with a start that he’d just proved her point about easily-distracted men.
“Lana,” he said, her display also proving his point. “I won’t let you—”
“You’re not my master, Vincent. We’re partners. I don’t need your permission. Besides, this is the only thing that will work. You need inside that house and I can get you there.”
Vincent glowered down at her. It was much easier working with his vampires. They did what they were told.
“You’ll need to stay close,” she told him, crouching down to check the position of the hidden knife in her boot. Her hair fell forward in a wave of black silk, sliding along her bare arms and curling over her unfettered breasts, which did nothing for the growing pressure in his groin. “I’m going to be the ultimate helpless female,” she explained, adding her bra and hair tie to the pile of gear on top of her jacket. “My friend and I have been walking for hours. Our car broke down, we’re lost in the desert, and blah blah blah.” She tied everything into a neat bundle with the sleeves of her jacket.
“And if it doesn’t work?”
She paused in her preparations to give him an impatient look. “Well, I don’t know, Vincent. Why don’t you think of something? Or better yet, wish me good luck and carry my stuff so I can get dressed once we’re inside.” She shoved the jacket-covered bundle at him.
“You’re supposed to be helpless, querida, not bitchy.”
Her eyes widened in outrage, then narrowed. “You’re trying to make me angry so I won’t be scared. But I’m not scared. I’ve done this before. Not exactly like this because I wasn’t dealing with vampires, but close enough, when I’ve wanted to get inside a house where I thought my skip might be hiding.”
“The many layers of Lana Arnold,” Vincent said thoughtfully, accepting the jacket from her. “All right. We can’t see the entrance Poncio used, but there’s probably a courtyard through that gate, with the door to the house on the other side.”
Vincent started off across the yard, not bothering with concealment. He’d know if anyone was watching, and no one was. They approached the wide, wrought-iron gate that Poncio and the guard had used earlier. He opened it slowly, wary of making the kind of noise that would alert the guard. But it moved on near-silent hinges, admitting them to a narrow walkway surrounded by sweet-smelling plants. There were big leafy ferns, low crawling vines with tiny star-shaped flowers, and latticed stalks with big trumpet blooms that climbed both walls. It was probably a welcome respite from the hot desert sun during the day, but at night, it created a wealth of possible hiding places.
He and Lana paused at the far end of the passage, using the thick foliage for cover when they finally caught sight of the entrance to the house, along with more evidence that someone was inside. Now that they were closer, the shutter outline was bright enough to cast a dim yellow glow on the narrow courtyard, and there was an additional lamp burning behind the drawn shade in a window next to the door. As they watched, the narrow bars of light from the upstairs shutter blinked off and on as someone passed by the window and moved around the room.
“You think that’s Poncio upstairs?” Lana whispered.
Vincent nodded. “Likely. The guard probably stays downstairs.” He paused for a moment, concentrating. “There are no vampires inside, and only the two humans. But we don’t know how many are in the basement with Salvio. They could show up at any minute.”
“Then I better get started.”
Vincent stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Lana, remember, you can’t lie. If you get him to invite your girlfriend inside, it won’t work.”
She nodded. “But I can just call you a friend, right? Even though I don’t like you?”
Vincent grinned and cupped his hand over the back of her neck, tangling his fingers in her loose hair. “You like me, querida.” He kissed her mouth, holding it longer than he should have given their time constraints, but not as long as he would have liked. “Be careful.”
She licked her lips slowly, her eyes bright in the moonlight. “I will,” she whispered. “Stay close, okay?”
“Count on it,” he said and then stepped back, clenching his fists as he watched her move across the courtyard.
LANA DREW A DEEP breath through her nose, then tugged her tank top low on her breasts and crossed the open courtyard, stumbling slightly for effect, boots scuffing on the paving stones as if she was too exhausted to lift her feet properly. She searched her memories and called up the death of her friend Gretchen’s mother last year. She filled her mind with the image of Gretchen sobbing in her husband’s arms, of Gretchen’s three-year-old daughter crying, tears rolling down her soft cheeks, because her mother was sad and she didn’t know why. Lana had cried too, for her friend’s grief and for her own. Gretchen’s mom had been a warm and loving human being who’d always treated the motherless Lana as one of her own. The funeral had been the saddest day of Lana’s life, even including the day her mother had flown off to California and left her behind. And now she used that memory to bring tears to her eyes for a performance that would maybe save the life of a vampire she didn’t even know.
Tears swelled and spilled over as she forced herself to hyperventilate, taking fast and shallow breaths until she had to lean against the wall next to the door for support. Reaching out with one hand, she knocked on the door, using regular pressure first, then harder and more frantic until she was pounding with her fist.
The door flew open without warning and she nearly fell into the man who stood there. As soon as she saw him, she knew he wasn’t Poncio, which meant they’d been right about their target being the guy in the shuttered room upstairs. The guard facing her had a 9mm holstered at his hip and a shotgun in his hand. He was backlit by the interior light which was much brighter with the door open, but she could see that his hair and eyes were dark, and he appeared to be somewhere around forty. Vincent had said the man was human, and Lana had no reason to doubt him.
“Thank God you’re home,” she gasped, using her worst, broken Spanish. She bent forward to rest her hands on her thighs, looking up at him with tear-filled eyes and letting the top of her tank gap slightly to give him a better view of her braless breasts. “Please, sir, we need your help. My friend and I were almost out of gas, and we turned off the main road thinking we could find a station but we must have read the map wrong or something because there was nothing there and then we tried to turn around but . . .” Her breathless spiel ran out as she choked on her sobs, leaning weakly against the doorjamb as she struggled to catch her breath.
“Please help us. If we could just use your phone, we can call . . . Oh my God, is there even an auto club out here?” she wailed and began crying harder, daring to reach out with one hand to grip his arm. “Please . . .” She managed to squeeze the word out in between sobs, all the while watching the guard, who was so focused on her breasts that she doubted he was hearing a word she said. His gaze dropped briefly to her hips and belly, went even more briefly to her face, then right back to her breasts which were clearly outlined beneath the white tank top.
“Relax, chica,” the guard said in accented English, his gaze growing calculated as he reached out and lifted a lock of hair from her breast and wrapped it around his finger. “I’ll take care of you.”
“You speak English,” Lana said, her voice breaking with relie
ved emotion. “Oh thank God.”
“Come inside,” the guard said smoothly, taking her bare arm and stepping back. “Your skin is so cold, you must be freezing and thirsty too, yes?”
She started to follow him. “Water? Oh God, yes, I’d love—” She stopped abruptly and made as if to turn back, freeing her arm. “But I can’t,” she said, pretending to be torn between going inside and going back for her “friend.”
“I can’t leave my friend . . .”
“Your friend can come inside too. You can both rest for a while, and then we’ll find your car and—”
“Thank you,” she interrupted breathlessly. “Let me just . . .” She started to walk away, then turned back. “We’ll be right back. Please, don’t leave.”
“Of course, not,” he said. “I’ll start the fire. You go and get your friend and we’ll warm both of you right up.” He turned away, going off supposedly to light the fire—although who knew what he was really doing, preparing a roofied drink for her most likely, and maybe one for her “friend” too. Hell, maybe he’d invite Poncio downstairs and the two of them would have a private party with the stupid Americans.
Lana turned away before she gave in to temptation and punched the bastard in the face. His intent had been so obvious that she was amazed he thought he was fooling anyone. She wanted to scrub her arm where he’d touched her. If he’d been any more blatantly predatory, he’d have been rubbing his hands together like an old-time movie villain. But then, she’d played the harebrained ninny before and it always worked. So maybe it wasn’t much of a stretch for someone to believe that she was so stupid as to have gotten lost and ended up at this hacienda in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Vincent grabbed her before she’d taken three steps away from the open doorway, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into the heat of his big body.
“Are you okay?” he murmured.
Lana shivered, grateful he was there, letting herself enjoy a moment of comfort before pushing away from his embrace. “I’m fine. It was just an act.”
Vincent studied her briefly, then nodded and stripped off his jacket. “Put this on,” he ordered, sliding it over her shoulders.
She wanted to argue. She had her own jacket, she didn’t need his. But she really was cold and she could feel the heat from his body still warming the material.
“Thanks.” She pulled it on and had to force herself not to wiggle happily. It was just as warm as she’d thought it would be, and it smelled like him, too. That shouldn’t have affected her as much as it did. Hell, it shouldn’t have affected her at all. But she couldn’t deny the reassuring effect of his scent, and she knew he’d been right. She did like him, more than a little.
“Your things,” Vincent said, snapping her back to the reality of their situation. This wasn’t the time to be mooning like a schoolgirl.
“Thanks,” she said again. Not wanting to give up the warmth of his jacket, she set the pile of her things on the ground, then bent to retrieve her Sig. Sliding it out of its holster, she worked the slide to be certain of her load, then kept it in her hand, holding it down against her thigh. “We’d better get inside before lover boy comes looking for me.”
“Right. We’ll take them both out. We can leave the guard alive if you’re squeamish, but Poncio has to die. Just like Camarillo and for the same reasons.”
“No argument from me,” she said. “How do we do this?”
Vincent grinned. “That part you can leave to me.”
Lana entered the house first, looking over her shoulder nervously, still worried about Vincent. But he crossed the threshold with no problem, giving her a playful wink as he did so.
“It’s good to have friends,” he whispered, but an instant later, he was scanning the house, his expression deadly serious.
Lana heard a thump from the direction of what looked like the kitchen. Gun in hand, she slid around the dividing wall and found lover boy slumped on the floor, a glass of water spilled next to him. She stepped closer, saw the plastic bottle of pills on the counter, and knew she’d been right. The label was in Spanish, but the drug name was the same. Flunitrazepam, the generic for Rohypnol, known on the street as a date rape drug. Nice guy. Maybe she’d let Vincent kill him. On the other hand, the best death for him might be when his cartel masters discovered that he’d failed to protect Poncio and lost the vampire, to boot.
“Lana.” Vincent’s voice was soft but urgent, and she hurried back to the foot of the stairs where he was waiting for her.
“Did you do that?” she asked him, jerking her head in the unconscious guard’s direction.
“Child’s play,” Vincent said absently and put one foot on the stairs before pausing. “Poncio’s up there,” he told her. “No one else. Are you coming?”
She knew why he was asking, knew what he was really asking. Camarillo’s death had been horrific, grotesque in its violence and gore. Poncio’s would be the same. Vincent was giving her an out.
“I’m coming,” she said. “We’re in this together.”
Vincent took her hand, squeezing it tightly before bringing it to his lips. “Thank you, querida.”
Lana flushed with a combination of pleasure and embarrassment, not sure what she’d done to deserve his thanks. She only knew there was no way she was going to leave him alone in this. They were in this house because of a mission that she’d brought to him. She wasn’t going to hide downstairs while he did the dirty work so that she could pretend it never happened.
Besides, there was that whole liking thing. She wasn’t going to send him off into danger with a kiss and leave it at that. Not as long as she could fight by his side.
“Are you going to do to him what you did to Camarillo?” she whispered as they climbed the stairs.
“That would be rather boring, wouldn’t it? Do I strike you as an unimaginative kind of man?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.
Lana rolled her eyes, but only half-heartedly. He was cute. Granted, he was devastatingly handsome, but also cute in a clever sort of way. But then it occurred to her that he was about to use that cleverness to improvise a particularly bloody way of killing someone, and it didn’t seem quite as charming anymore.
Vincent turned left at the top of the stairs, seeming to know exactly where to find Poncio. A week ago, that would have surprised her, but she’d learned a lot about vampires in that time. He was probably following the sound of Poncio’s heartbeat, or something equally impossible.
They followed the hallway to a room at the far end, away from the kitchen and on the backside of the house where it would face the desert. Vincent gave her a questioning look, and she nodded to say she was ready. He opened the door without warning and stepped inside, standing in the open doorway a second longer than he had to. Lana knew he’d done it on purpose, making sure it was safe before exposing her to whatever waited inside.
When Vincent did move out of the way, however, she discovered that what waited inside was just an overweight, middle-aged man in his underwear who was currently snorting cocaine. He straightened, staring in shock as they entered the room, a porcelain snort straw in one hand, his nostrils still bearing the telltale trace of white powder.
Lana’s first thought was that Vincent was going to be disappointed, because if Poncio was flying high on coke, he might not be as susceptible to pain. But then it occurred to her that it might actually be worse for him. Not the pain, but the mind games that Vincent could use against him instead. And then she wondered what the hell had happened to her that she could even approach the subject as though it was nothing but a problem to solve.
“¿Y tú, quién chingados eres?” Poncio demanded, his eyes glazed and blinking stupidly. Who the fuck are you? Belatedly, he seemed to recognize his danger and made a grab for the 9mm Glock sitting on the bureau next to the mirror which sti
ll bore three neat lines of coke. But Vincent was there before Poncio came anywhere near the gun, fisting his hand in the man’s thick hair and bending him backward until he squealed in pain.
“My name is Vincent, and you have something that belongs to me.”
“SOY VICENTE, Y TU tienes algo que me pertenece,” Vincent growled, drawing in the scent of the human’s fear, more intoxicating than any drug the humans could conjure up.
“¿Qué?” Poncio asked. His voice was a plaintive whine, and Vincent marveled that such a weakling could gain so much power in the human world.
“Salvio,” Vincent replied to the man’s question, and then he grinned, letting his fangs emerge from his gums with a slow glide, watching the terror build in Poncio’s gaze. He tightened his grip on the man’s hair and dragged him to the huge bed. Poncio was whimpering all the way, pleading, explaining, insisting that Salvio had been a gift from el gran jefe, el gran vampiro. That if Vincent would only call Enrique, he would see . . .
His begging was cut off abruptly when Vincent lifted him by his hair and threw him onto the bed. Poncio screamed like a woman, and immediately tried to crawl away. Vincent stripped the covers away, grabbing the flat sheet—black satin, how original—and tearing it into four strips.
Poncio had shoved himself up against the headboard, trying to put distance between himself and Vincent, and was now scrambling for the far side, trying to escape. He was gibbering in fear and making very little sense. If he’d had a working cell left in his brain, he’d have skipped the flight to the headboard and simply rolled off the side in the first place and made a run for the door. He had a much better chance against Lana than he did Vincent, which was to say, no chance at all. Vincent was certain Lana could have stopped the terrified man’s escape, too. She was a bounty hunter; she had to know how to take a man down. If nothing else, she’d probably have shot him. She hadn’t said a word about Camarillo’s death, hadn’t blinked an eye when Vincent had made it clear that he had the same fate planned for Poncio. No, Lana wouldn’t have let him out the door.
Vincent (Vampires in America Book 8) Page 21
