16
The four-story building was built of bricks, and it looked just as foreboding as it had the night she’d escaped its walls. A chill ran down Ursula’s spine just looking at it. Fear tightened her throat, making her unable to say anything else.
“The brick building?” Zane asked over the loudspeaker.
“Yes,” Oliver confirmed.
“Looks dark. There are no cars in the vicinity, no movement I can detect. Nothing. I say it’s deserted. I wouldn’t normally do this tonight, but let’s not waste any time and check it out now.”
“No! No, they’ll catch you. You’ll need more people,” Ursula warned, overtaken by panic. If they went in there just the four of them, they could easily be overpowered. And then she wouldn’t be any further than before: her kidnappers would recapture her.
“Cain, stay with the girl. The rest of us, let’s go.”
Before she could stop Oliver, he opened the car door and got out. She saw how the two other vampires, Zane and Amaury, left the Hummer.
Oliver had described Zane to her earlier while they’d been waiting for him and Amaury. But even his comment that Zane only looked tough because of his bald head, couldn’t have prepared her for what she saw. He was tall and lean. When he briefly turned his head to look in her direction, his ice-cold gaze chilled her to the bone. His mouth was pressed into a thin line. His gait was determined, purposeful, and she knew instinctively that those long legs could chase down their prey in seconds. She never wanted to be caught on Zane’s wrong side.
Amaury seemed different. Compared to Zane, he looked like a cuddly bear, but she wasn’t fooled. He was just as deadly, and with more mass than his colleague, he could crush any human or vampire without effort. Those two were dangerous, deadly vampires.
She watched as they joined Oliver and marched toward the building. When they passed a streetlight, she noticed that all three of them carried guns. She pulled in a quick breath: she hadn’t noticed that Oliver had been armed when he’d left the car.
“Don’t worry, they know what they’re doing,” Cain said from the driver’s seat.
She shrieked. She hadn’t seen that he’d also exited the van and taken Oliver’s spot while she’d watched the three vampires walk toward her former prison.
Cain shrugged. “Just in case we need to make a quick getaway.”
Ursula wrapped her arms around her torso, feeling cold and scared. The vampire next to her wasn’t like Oliver. Yes, he seemed friendly on the surface. He didn’t carry his hostility on his sleeve like Zane—even seeing Zane only from the distance she’d felt that—but there was something unreadable about him. It made her feel uneasy around him. Oliver, on the other hand, unleashed an entirely different feeling in her. She felt drawn to him in the most primal way she had ever felt. Was it the fact that he was the first man who’d kissed her in over three years? Was it because she was so starved for physical intimacy that she had temporarily pushed aside her disgust for vampires when he’d pressed his lips onto hers?
Whatever it was, the intensity of it scared her. Because she knew that if it happened again, it would be as impossible for her to push him away as it had been to refuse his demand to touch him.
Wanting to silence her thoughts, she searched for a topic of conversation. “How long have you been working for Scanguards?”
Cain’s eyes narrowed, suspicion rolling off him. “Why are you asking?”
“No reason.”
She looked out the window. Oliver and his colleagues had disappeared. Had they entered the building or walked around it? “Where are they?”
“Inside.”
At his nonchalant voice, she glared at him. “Aren’t you worried?”
“They know what they’re doing. Amaury and Zane are the best.”
Her legs trembled. She pressed her palms onto her thighs to hide the fact that she was full of fear. “And Oliver?” Why hadn’t Cain said that Oliver was one of the best too?
Cain hesitated. “He’s still . . . young.”
“But he can defend himself, right?”
“Of course he can. You worry about him?”
Ursula pressed herself back into the seat. “No.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
“Then stop fidgeting. If what you say is true, and those vampires run some sort of blood brothel, my colleagues will pose as clients to get the lay of the land. They won’t start a fight tonight.”
Why hadn’t Oliver told her that? Was he afraid she’d find a way of warning her kidnappers? Did he still not believe her?
“And the guns?”
“You’ve got good eyesight.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” she shot back.
“Maybe I’m not in the mood to answer questions.” He looked at her, his eyes hard and unyielding. “I’ve read your file cover to cover. The police reports, the newspaper articles. Add to that what you told us yourself. The fact that you escaped from that place.” He motioned his head toward the building. “Looks like a pretty hard thing to do, particularly if there are as many vampires on the premises as you claim. Something about your story stinks. And just because you managed to wrap Oliver around your little finger, doesn’t mean you’ll have as easy a time with the rest of us. I, for one, don’t think with my dick!”
Ursula huffed angrily. She opened her mouth, but he cut her off.
“Save your breath!”
She folded her arms over her chest and looked out the window, watching the building intently. It was dark, but that didn’t have to mean anything. All windows were either painted black from the inside or boarded up, or in some cases hung with heavy drapes, so that no light could penetrate. Likewise, no light could escape to the outside. She was certain her captors had done this on purpose so that nobody would be drawn to the building and start asking questions.
How they attracted clients, she could only guess. Word-of-Mouth most likely. They couldn’t very well advertise that they had blood whores with special blood for hire.
Time seemed to stand still. Nervously, Ursula chewed on her fingernails, when she finally saw a movement at the door to the building. The entrance door opened, and one-by-one the three vampires stepped out, then walked straight toward the van.
Anxiously she waited. All three walked to her side of the van, but Zane was the first to reach it. He opened her door, lashing an angry glare at her.
“What that f*ck was that about?” he asked.
Jolted by his harsh tone, she shrunk back from him. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened! Absolutely nothing!” Zane ground out. “Waste of my f*cking time!”
Ursula’s gaze darted past him, searching Oliver. When he met her eyes, she saw something akin to disappointment in them.
“Oliver,” she begged.
Oliver hesitated a second before he spoke. “The place was empty.”
Automatically she shook her head. “No, no, that’s not possible.” She pointed her hand toward the building. “That’s the house. I’m absolutely sure. That’s where they imprisoned me.”
Oliver cast his eyes down as if trying to avoid her. Behind him, Amaury’s face was set in stone.
“There’s nothing in there,” Amaury added. “No vampire, no human, no furniture.”
In disbelief, she shook her head. “No, you’re lying! They’re in there. They have to be!”
“We have no reason so lie!” Zane snarled. “You, on the other hand, have been leading us on a wild goose chase. I don’t know what your game is, but honestly, at this point I don’t care. Because it ends here.”
Equally shocked and frightened by Zane’s words, she felt her hands tremble. What was he planning to do to her?
“Please, I can prove it! I’ll show you where I carved my name into the wall of my cell. I can—”
Zane leaned in, his face half a foot from hers, interrupting her. “I don’t care for your lies. Whatever your game is, I’m not playing it.”
Then he turned toward Oliver.
“Wipe her memory, and then you and Cain will put her on a plane to Washington DC. Send an anonymous message to her parents to pick her up from the airport. If anything goes wrong, I’ll make you responsible. Are we clear on that, Oliver?”
No! she wanted to scream, but fear of what Zane would do if she did clamped down her vocal cords.
Oliver stared at Zane. “Listen, there must be another way.”
His bald-headed friend glared at him. “Do as I say!” He pointed back toward the building. “You’ve been in there. It was empty.”
“Yes, too empty. And it smelled clean too, as if a cleaning crew had been through there just recently. Don’t you think that’s suspicious?”
“Doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“I think we should wait until Gabriel is back from New York.”
Zane narrowed his eyes. “What for?”
Oliver motioned him farther away from the car and lowered his voice, not wanting Ursula to overhear his suggestion. “He could look into her memories and tell us what she’s seen.”
“That won’t help if somebody planted false memories in her.”
“I disagree. Gabriel was able to see in Maya’s memories where they had been altered by a vampire. He would recognize it if somebody had tampered with her memories. I think we should wait.”
Zane shook his head almost instantly. “Listen, Oliver. There was nothing in there. If she really escaped from that building last night, why didn’t we find any traces of anything in there? I tell you why: because they were never there in the first place. My order stands. You can either take care of it together with Cain, or Cain will do it on his own!”
“No!” Oliver protested. He didn’t want anybody manhandling her. “I’ll do it.” And he already hated himself for it. But he couldn’t dispute their findings: the property was empty and there was no trace of any other vampires or of the girls Ursula had mentioned. She had lied to him again, and as much as he wished he were wrong, he couldn’t simply set aside the evidence.
Zane nodded, but before he could walk away, his cell phone rang.
“Yes?” he answered it with a bark.
Oliver’s sensitive hearing picked up the voice on the other end, Thomas’s.
“A couple of crazy vamps were spotted in a nightclub downtown! I need all available men! Now!”
“Shit!” Zane cursed, waved Amaury toward the Hummer, then looked to Cain, who still sat in the minivan. “Change of plans: Cain, we need you. We have a lead on those vamps going berserk.”
“F*ck!” Cain cursed as he jumped out of the van.
“If we hurry, I think we can get them this time!” Zane answered, tossing a look back at Oliver and pointing his finger at him. “You have your orders. I don’t like sending you on your own. Don’t make me regret it!”
Then he and his two colleagues jumped into the Hummer and sped off.
When Oliver looked back at Ursula, he noticed her pleading look. Her brown eyes looked like saucers, a rim of wetness around them. He shut the passenger door without a word and averted his gaze.
Oliver got into the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut. Without looking at Ursula, he turned the key in the ignition and put the car in drive. Then he turned the van around and watched how the building disappeared from the rear-view mirror when he turned at the next intersection.
He headed toward the freeway that led to the airport which was located a half hour south of San Francisco. Traffic was light.
“Please don’t do this,” she pleaded, her voice sounding choked up.
He kept his eyes on the road, afraid that he would falter if he looked at her. “I have no choice.”
Without Scanguards’ backing, he couldn’t do anything else for her. His trust in her was shaken. He’d actually believed her when she’d told him about her imprisonment, even more so when he’d seen her break after hearing the news that her parents believed her to be dead. What a fool he’d been to allow a pretty woman to cloud his judgment.
“You always have a choice,” she claimed. “You just don’t want to believe me.”
He spun his head to stare at her. “I did believe you! But you lied to me and my colleagues. You led us around by our noses.” And me by my dick, he should have added. “I’m afraid, I’m all done with believing in lies for tonight.”
“They’re not lies!” she cried out, glaring back at him.
God, how her cheeks flared with anger, and how beautiful it made her look. And her lips, so plump and inviting despite the lies that rolled over them.
Oliver trained his look back on the freeway. “I even gave you the benefit of the doubt when you didn’t want to tell me how you really escaped. I did everything to convince my colleagues to check out your claims. I stuck my neck out for you!”
“Please, don’t give up on me. There are other lives at stake. The other girls—”
“There are no other girls!” he cut her off, gripping the steering wheel more tightly. “You’ve made it all up. And I don’t even want to know anymore why.” Because he didn’t want to hear any more lies. Not out of that pretty mouth she’d kissed him with. Oh damn, why could he not forget that? Would this image haunt him forever?
“You’re the only one who can help us. I would have gone to the police if I believed that they had a chance to defeat those vampires. But they’ll just be slaughtered. You and your colleagues, you’re the only ones who can do this. I need you.”
His heart clenched. She needed him. It was an admission that would have made him rejoice only hours earlier, but after seeing the empty building that she claimed had been her prison, the words made him almost nauseous.
“I don’t care anymore,” he replied, the words cutting deep into his own heart.
“What do I have to do for you to help me?”
He ran his hand through his hair. “You want me to help you?”
“Yes.”
He tossed an angry glare at her. “Then give me something . . . just one piece of information that will help me believe you. Something, so I know you’re telling me the truth.” He kept his eyes on her and noticed her pull in a breath. Her eyelids lowered, and he saw the apprehension in her eyes, the hesitation that made her remain silent.
Disappointed, he tore his gaze away from her. “I knew it. You’ve never had any intention of telling me the truth.” He shook his head and gave a bitter laugh. “How stupid I’ve been. To think that I actually liked you. And not just because I wanted to sleep with you.”
“And now, you don’t want that anymore?” Her voice was suddenly calm and sounded almost resigned.
“No,” he lied. Because if he touched her now, he would never be able to wipe her memory and put her on that plane.
“Liar,” she said softly.
“I don’t care what you believe.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw her nod. “Fine. I’ll tell you everything. But only you. None of your colleagues can ever find out. If you don’t believe me after that, then put me on a plane home. But if you believe me, then help me and those girls.”
He glanced at her, trying to figure out what she was up to.
“Take the next exit and pull over, please, so we can talk.”
He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “If you think you can get your way by seducing me, think again. I’m not that gullible.”
She gave him an unexpected smile. “No, you’re not. Even though you’re very cute—for a vampire.”
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off before he could come back with an answer.
“What have you got to lose? Even if I were trying to seduce you, which I’m not, would it be such a hardship? It’s a win-win situation for you. I’m the one who’s risking everything.”
Oliver instinctively let his eyes travel over her body, then lifted them back to her face. “What are you risking?”
“I risk you draining me once you know what my blood is capable of.”