“It’s all right, Kitten,” Bones said. “He won’t shoot.”
Tate lowered his gun even as the sudden dizziness from blood loss made me sway. Bones took my gun and casually handed it to Juan, who gaped at him in amazement.
“You called her Kitten? And she let you? She put me in a coma for three days when I called her that! My balls never recovered from her smashing them into my spine!”
“And well she should have,” Bones agreed. “She’s my Kitten, and no one else’s.”
I poked him in the chest. “Do you mind? I’m a little woozy here.”
“Apologies, luv.”
He lifted me off my feet as his fangs cut into his tongue with a snap of his jaws. There were so many other ways for me to get blood from him, but I was figuring he’d chosen this one because of his comment to Tate. I kissed him back while swallowing those needed drops. How like Bones to kill two birds with one stone—both staking his claim and replenishing my strength at the same time.
Don picked that moment to come striding through the throngs of stunned spectators just in time to see me curled inside a vampire’s arms with my feet dangling off the ground.
“What the hell is going on?”
Bones set me down and went to my boss in a blink of speed. To Don’s credit, he didn’t try to run.
“You must be very determined to kill me to go to such lengths,” he flatly commented, squaring his shoulders.
“I’m not here for you, old chap,” Bones said, looking him up and down thoroughly. “I’m here to find out what rat you’ve got in your garden. But first we’re going to have a chat, the three of us. You’ve kept her in the dark long enough.”
“Tate, Juan, make sure no one comes through that door and no one tries to get frisky. The place is secured, but someone could pull a weapon. Keep sharp.”
I inclined my head toward Don’s office. “After you, boss.”
Don took his seat like it was any other visit and not a hostage situation, and we sat across from him.
“Don, I’d like to introduce you to Bones. The real Bones, not the impostor on ice in the fridge. You’ll remember him from Ohio, where he gave the highway a whole new look.”
“All these years, Cat,” Don said with sadness. “You’ve been working the other side this whole time. Bravo, I was totally fooled.”
My mouth opened in outrage, but Bones beat me to it. “You ungrateful sod, the only reason I’m not picking you out of my teeth now is because of her. She fancies you a decent man, not that I agree, and has in no way betrayed your trust. You can hardly say the same.”
I rolled my eyes. A death threat, gee, great way to start out a talk.
“I haven’t played you at all, Don,” I said. “When I left Ohio, I thought I was leaving Bones behind for good. He tracked me down and found me only two weeks ago, and I have never done anything to betray this operation.”
Don shook his head in self-rebuke. “I should have sensed a trap. No vampire ever surrenders. How did you get your mother to play along?”
“She didn’t,” I said grimly. “Bones told her he wanted to meet without my knowledge. We knew what she’d do.”
Bones snorted. “When I got to her house, she’d already blacked both her eyes and knocked over every stick of furniture in the place. But back to you, Don. For most of my years, I’ve had a trade. I find people, and I’m right good at it. So imagine my surprise when I had such a devil of a time tracking her, and then also my inability to find much out about her father. Now, failure to locate one I could see, but two? Both hidden so carefully, it was almost as if they were concealed... by the same person.”
A foreboding sensation crept up my spine. Bones squeezed my hand.
“Two things always struck me as strange when she disappeared into the smoke. The first was how you found her so quickly. You showed up with all of her facts and figures the day she was arrested. Too pat, that. Such research takes time. You’d have to have been keeping tabs on her for a while, and how would you have known to do that? Only one way. You already knew what she was.”
“What?” I shot out of my seat with a shout. “Don, what have you been hiding?”
“Sit down, luv.” Bones gripped me when I would have sprinted across the desk to throttle Don. For his part, Don had turned a fine shade of parchment.
“The second thing that stumped me was how there were no records of any recent deaths matching her father’s description at the time her mother was raped. Not even any John Does. Ian’s the one who solved that riddle. You know him as Liam Flannery, Don, and you sent her after him, but he wasn’t her usual target, was he?”
“No,” I answered for Don, whose mouth was sealed in a tight line. “He wasn’t. Get to the point, Bones.”
“I’d rather hoped Don would step up and finish it for me, but he’s staying quiet. Probably hoping like blazes I’m only fishing, aren’t you?”