Jackson lowered his weapon with only a slight tremble in his hand. “There is. I’ve got special transport waiting, too. I’ll radio them to pull up out front, but you’ll have to come down to book her in.”
Saber nodded and began marching Laurel toward the front door, grasping the back of her jacket in his left hand, his semiautomatic pointed at her back in the other. Jackson covered Saber, but there was no need. The more steps Laurel took away from them, the more the vamps at the table relaxed.
A cop near the door held it open. Through the opening, I saw the cop car pull up to the curb. Saber propelled Laurel over the threshold to the sidewalk and toward the cruiser, everything under control.
Until two steps later.
A whoosh of movement too fast to track, a back breeze through the door, and Laurel and Saber were gone.
SEVENTEEN
022
The club echoed with my feral cry, terror for Saber crushing every coherent thought save one. If Laurel had hurt him, I would kill her.
I found myself outside, but she was gone. Vanished. Saber sprawled on the sidewalk against the building, pale and still. I moved in a fog of fear, fell to my knees at his side. I ran my hands over his face, down the buttons of his shirt, across his chest. An inhale, an exhale. Thank the deities, he lived, but how badly was he hurt? When I picked up his left hand, he moaned.
“Saber, how bad is it?”
A very brown hand covered mine and held me still.
“It will be best,” Ray said, “if you do not pull on his wrist. I am fairly certain it is broken.”
“Oh, Saber, I’m sorry,” I whispered, tearing up as I sensed Jackson standing over us. Ray cradled Saber’s lower arm and laid it on his chest, then probed his head and collarbone with gentle fingers. Saber’s eyes snapped open. He gazed blankly at me, then at Ray.
“What the hell?” he ground out, struggling to sit.
Ray restrained him with a touch.
“Saber, be still, please.” I said. “You were body slammed into the wall.”
“It’s just my wrist, and a bump on the head,” he said irritably. “Damn it, Laurel got away, didn’t she?”
“More like she was whisked away.” I patted his thigh, more to comfort me than him. “You couldn’t have stopped it.”
“A hit like that,” Jackson said from behind me, “you’re lucky you didn’t break your back.”
“Be better than the paperwork I’ll have to fill out for losing a prisoner.”
Ray snorted. “He will live.”
I gave him a grateful smile. “I need to get him to the ER.”
“I’ve called for another ambulance,” Jackson said.
But Saber insisted on standing, and Ray carefully hoisted Saber to his feet. I tucked myself into his good side, or what I thought was the one less injured. Since he groaned and shuffled sideways a step, I figured his ribs had suffered from meeting the cinder block wall. Did he have internal injuries? Damn, where was that EVAC unit?
Saber gripped my shoulder, then looked at Ray and Jackson. “Any clue who snatched Laurel?”
The cop and the vamp shook their heads.
“Cesca?”
“Other than it had to be a vampire, just one. You smell like an orange.”
“I do?” He let go of me to lift his shirt by the buttons and sniff. “Shit. Who the hell is this?”
Saber insisted that Jackson try to get evidence from his shirt. When Ray helped remove the shirt, I’d bitten my lip to keep from crying over the bruises and scrapes on Saber’s back and arms.
Jackson had patted my shoulder in comfort—huge points to him for touching me. As soon as the EMTs had loaded Saber into the ambulance, I’d taken off at a dead run for Saber’s SUV to meet him at the hospital. Pandora sat on the hood of Saber’s car.
I will stay on the scent while you see to your man.
“The orange scent?” I asked, clicking the unlock button.
Yes, and I will alert Triton to the trouble.
“Well, bring reinforcements, will you? We’ll be at Saber’s place.”
She hopped to the pavement. Keep wearing the charm. I will find you.
Three hours later, Saber’s arm was in a cast from his hand to the middle of his forearm, the cast in a blue and white sling. We’d filled Saber’s prescription at a twenty-four-hour Wal greens. Next stop, his condo, where I’d help him clean up, give him a pain pill, and tuck him into bed.
“Nice place,” I said when he told me to turn into the driveway of a building near the Intracoastal. A very nice building. Five stories, balconies on every floor, built in the 1970s or ’80s.
“I bought the place a long time ago. Cheap,” he muttered as he hit the button of a remote control device. The security gate slid open, and my tight-lipped-with-pain darling guided me to an under-the-building parking place, pointing out the location of the elevator we passed. With his pain meds in hand, I helped him into the elevator.
“Hit five,” he said.