Tentatively, she lifted a hand in good-bye, then left, thanking Jac for watching over her again.
As shaky as she was, Dawn wanted to run. In fact, she was in such a hurry to get out of the Bedford house that she fumbled with her jacket, which was hanging on a coat tree at the entrance. Then she tripped on the steps outside when she put her jacket on, and everything spilled out of the pockets, splaying over the rock driveway. Graceful for a freakin’ stuntwoman.
Dawn mindlessly grasped at what she could and then ran-wobbled the rest of the way to her car.
Plopping into the front seat, she winced. Had she just slept wrong?
Her mind went into overdrive doubting it.
She took out her cell from a jacket pocket, knowing she had to check in with the team first thing. Theoretically she’d be safe in her hunk of precious junk; it’d been outfitted for protection by Breisi. It was even equipped with the same type of concentrated UV lights that blazed outside the Limpet house and Kiko’s place, just in case.
When The Voice picked up, Dawn raised her brows; she’d expected Breisi instead. Obviously, the brain had set her phone on forward to the boss, probably because she was sleeping.
“You sound…Are you all right?” were the first words out of his mouth.
Buzz, hum—her body went through the regular routine at the sound of him. And the fact that he seemed so damned concerned touched her in a different place, somewhere not so easy to get to.
“I’m fine,” she said, not knowing how to deal with all this tenderness he’d shown lately. “At least, I think so.”
She told him all about the party, the stars, the blank spots, the carpet that she’d woken up on in Jac’s living room.
“Jac thought I’d just passed out from exhaustion,” Dawn added. “She acted like she didn’t know if there was anything else going on.”
“And you don’t believe her?”
He said it with stony reserve, giving her yet another reason not to fully trust him. After all, he was the one who’d betrayed her, luring her to L.A. with Frank’s disappearance because he needed her to fulfill that asinine prophecy about triumphing over vampires.
“I don’t know if I believe Jac about anything,” she said, rubbing the aching spot on the side of her neck, once again feeling like a chunk of her was missing.
The Voice sucked in a breath.
“What?” Dawn asked.
Pause. Long, long, long pause.
“Dawn,” he said with his usual calm, although it was sharpened by something more. “I’d like you to come back to the office now.”
“I really am tired. Can’t I get some shut-eye and then—”
“Please.”
He’d said it with such emotion that she just sat there, hand to her neck, the same desire—yet different, too—flooding her.
“Promise me,” he said.
“Okay.”
“I suppose an ‘okay’ will have to do.” She could sense him getting back to business, even over the phone. “Tell me, did you note any differences in Jac tonight?”
“Same cheery girl next door. She did look a little on the pale side, but she said it was because of her eating habits.”
“It’s well-known that starlets struggle with weight and image issues.”
Before he could get too rational and talk Dawn out of her healthy suspicion, she went for it. “Is she my mom?”
Silence.
“Because I can’t help wondering why the hell you would allow me to see her if all the puzzle pieces are fitting together into a picture I don’t like, Jonah.”
More silence. When he came back on, his tone was eerily controlled. “You just answered your own question. Why would I put you in danger?”
“Let me see…Maybe because you did it when you brought me out here in the first place? My first night, as you recall, I found my lucky old self dodging burning vamp spit.”
“As you’ll recall, I wasn’t enthused about the prospect.”
“But you let me go anyway after Kiko talked you into it. It makes me wonder if you’d put me in a bad spot again, is all. Would you?”
He paused, and she knew exactly what he was going to say.
“How far are you willing to go to get him back?”
Frank. At the beginning of all this shit, she’d na?vely told The Voice she would do anything to find Frank. But back then, she hadn’t known what was involved, hadn’t known she’d be putting every part of herself at risk.
When she didn’t answer, he pulled out the big guns.
“Dawn.”
A change, a stirring of the seduction she was so used to. Dark, low, almost irresistible. Her mind misted with the desire for him that she couldn’t contain.
“Don’t,” she said. “Just answer my question. Is she Eva?”
“Dawn…”
Her mind clouded with caresses, thumb tips trailing up her inner thighs, parting her legs, exposing her.
Unable to fight anymore, she weakened, slipping down in the seat at the flash of sexual heat, the bite of agony.
At her limit, she threw a mind block to stop him, to make him answer, goddamnit, to—