Then he leaned forward. The smile on his face was cruel, cold. “She’d be taken away from you. And that’s just the best case scenario. Things I could do . . . things much, much worse. Your sister is a pretty girl. She still has that look of innocence—so young, so fresh. She might even be a virgin.”
Fear wrapped a cold fist around her heart. She crossed her arms over her chest, fisting her hands so tight her nails bit into her palms and drew blood. “Don’t even think about it,” Morgan murmured. “Don’t.”
Satisfied that he’d made his point, Peter pointed to the chair across from his. “Have a seat, Morgan. We’ll talk business.”
CHAPTER 13
“
Y
ou can’t be serious.”
Morgan stood in front of the bathroom mirror as she finished weaving her hair into a tight braid. She’d taken a nap, but she still felt groggy, half-sick, completely exhausted.
She definitely didn’t feel up to facing Peter Sanders again.
In the back of her mind, she heard a voice murmur,
Walk away
.
Just walk away.
Disoriented, she shoved it aside and looked at the mirror, meeting her sister’s gaze in the reflection. Jazzy stood behind her, a worried, angry look on her face.
“Look, I know you don’t remember a lot of things. Or
anything
,” she mumbled under her breath. “So you’re going to have to trust me on this. Peter Sanders is bad news. Very. Bad. News.”
Jazzy took a deep, unsteady breath. “We have to leave.
Now.
The bastard has people all over the place who feed him information, but if we get out now, we might have half a chance.”
“We’re not leaving,” Morgan said.
“Damn it, Morgan. You can’t work for him.”
Ignoring the cold slippery ball of fear in her belly, Morgan said, “I’m not working for him. I’m working with him. We have similar goals. This is more a partnership than anything else.”
Jazzy shook her head. “Yeah, I can just guess what sort of similar goals you have. Sanders wants to get rid of all the dealers who don’t work for him. And he thinks you can do it.”
That cold, slippery ball expanded.
“What the hell happened today?” Jazzy demanded. “You need to tell me.”
Morgan reached up, stroked a hand down Jazzy’s hair. “Honey, please don’t worry about this. I’m going to take care of you.”
Jazzy knocked Morgan’s hand away. Fury glinted in her eyes and her voice all but shook as she said, “I’m not the one who needs to be taken care of right now. I’ve been taking care of myself ever since you left. You just disappeared, remember? Disappeared and left me alone. You don’t actually think our mother gave a damn, do you? I wanted to eat, then I had to find food, had to buy it or steal it. I needed clothes? It was up to me to get them. I don’t
need
to be taken care of. Hell, I’m not the one getting ready to go work
with
Sanders.” She said it so scathingly, it almost hurt to hear the words. “You’re the one who needs a damn caretaker.”
Morgan closed her eyes. The pain in her head exploded, lancing throughout her body, spiraling through her chest.
Remnants of a forgotten dream whispered to her from her subconscious.
You don’t know what you’re getting into.
You have to stop now before it’s too late.
A low, warm voice, masculine and rough, familiar but not. Hands stroking over her body. Dark velvet eyes, full of concern and worry.
Forcing her eyes to open, she stared at her sister. Haltingly, she said, “Jazzy, I’m sorry, but I don’t have a choice.” She licked her lips and shifted restlessly on her feet. Finally, she took a deep breath and made herself look her sister square in the eyes. “You were right to have a bad feeling about Hedges. I did kill him. And I don’t know how, but Sanders saw me. He didn’t say outright just what he saw, but he saw too much. Now he knows what I can do. I have to work with him. He’s not giving me a choice.”
Jazzy blinked. The warm flush of anger faded from her face, leaving her pale. Under her breath, she muttered, “I knew it.” She backed out of the bathroom, but she didn’t leave. Instead, she paced the narrow hallway, her hands jammed in her back pockets. “Damn it. I knew it.”
A minute passed, and then she stopped. Her face was still ashen, and there was fear in her eyes, but her face was set in stubborn lines. “We’ll leave. That’s all there is to it—we will just leave. Yeah, he’ll be looking for that, but it’s not like we can’t give him the slip. He doesn’t know what all we can do. We can get away.”
“If I try to leave, he’s going to hurt you. I’m not risking you.” She caught her sister’s arm, tugged her close. Slinging an arm over her sister’s narrow shoulders, she touched her brow to Jazzy’s. “We’ll be okay. I’ll figure a way out of this. But you have to trust me.”
Jazzy backed away. She stared at Morgan with cold, distrusting eyes. “I already knew a way out of this—we don’t get into trouble to begin with. If you had listened to me, if you had trusted me, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
The bitch of it all? Jazzy was completely right.
I
T was late. After one. The streets of St. Augustine, Florida, were mostly empty.
Dominic was exhausted—bone-deep exhaustion, the kind brought on by stress, heartache and worry.
Where was she?
In another few hours, he’d have to call it a night. There was a Hunter safe house in St. Augustine and he’d be bunking there for however long he was here. No more hotels, thank God. At least not for a few days.
The good news about the safe house—he’d been able to arrange to have his bike brought in, too. It had been waiting for him when he got into town late last night—or rather, early this morning. He’d traded the car Malachi had loaned him for his bike. Lindsey had taken the car off his hands. He had his bike and he’d fed.
He should have been good to go, but he was drained and dragging and so damned frustrated.
As tired as he was, though, he wasn’t turning in yet. Not yet. Had to keep his mind busy, had to keep from thinking. Worrying. Wanting.
He kept to the shadows as he prowled the streets. Some of the bars were still open, the smells of tobacco smoke and alcohol mingling with the night air. He blocked those out, relying on his ears and instincts for now.
Those instincts were screaming at him right now, clawing. He felt as though he was being jerked in a dozen directions all at once. He just couldn’t figure out which was the right way to go. So he walked. Gradually the sounds of the night life faded, the pulsing rhythm of music slowly replaced by the sounds of the night.
He could hear breathing. The occasional snore. The soft buzz of music coming from a radio. And infomercials—the cure for insomniacs everywhere.
The air cleared as well, the stink of cigarette smoke replaced by the salty tang of the ocean.
He breathed it in, checking.
He scented no blood, no fear, no violence.
Nothing.
And still, he felt something calling him. Pulling at him.
He was so focused on that, at first he didn’t recognize the familiar roar of the motorcycle cruising down the street.
His
motorcycle—son of a bitch. His bike—that bike he’d put together himself, over a period of three damn years, and somebody was trying to steal it?
He took off at a quick run, swearing under his breath. He caught sight of black paint, silver chrome—and a petite form perched upon his bike, waiting nonchalantly at a stoplight, like she hadn’t a care in the world.
You’re about to have a fucking care
, he thought. The signal turned green and he put on an extra burst of speed, closing his hand around the leather collar of her jacket just before she could take off. She whipped around—fast.
But she wasn’t vampire fast. He caught her fist in his hand and focused the weight of his gaze on her face.
She wore his helmet—a safety-conscious little thief. It was too damned big for her. Behind the visor he glimpsed blue green eyes, now wide with terror.
Young eyes. Young kid, he realized.
Just a scared kid.
A scared kid who stole my bike.
Then he caught a familiar scent on her skin.
Very familiar.
His instincts, already kicked into overdrive, went on red alert, screaming.
It took less than a second for him to make a decision.
“You’re going to scoot back,” he ordered, flatly.
Those blue green eyes took on a glazed, glassy appearance. Docile as a lamb, she scooted back.
Dominic mounted the bike in front of her and took off.
Low in his gut, anticipation began to bloom.
Anticipation that bled away into apprehension.
He smelled something in the air now . . . blood. Death.
And power.
T
HE blood.
Thick and slick.
The power of it sang in her veins and Morgan almost went to her knees, sick with the knowledge of what she’d done. It hadn’t been intentional . . . but it didn’t matter.
His energy, his life force now buzzed inside her. No remnant of her lingering weakness remained. Physically, she felt strong—invincible.
She also felt like a murderer.
The door opened. She didn’t have to look up to know who it was.
Morgan stared at the blood staining her hands and then looked up at Sanders. “I thought I was supposed to be helping you take care of ‘business’ competitors.”
The man who lay dead at her feet wasn’t a competitor. He’d worked for Sanders, too.
And his blood was on her hands, her soul. Literally. Figuratively as well.
Standing in the doorway, Peter tried to look surprised. Tried, but failed. There was satisfaction in his eyes. “That was our agreement, yes.” He eyed the broken, bloodied body and then shifted his gaze to her. “What happened?”
As if you don’t know
, she thought bitterly. Shouldering past him, she walked down the narrow, dimly lit hallway until she came to the bathroom. She’d taken the time to walk around earlier, after she’d “reported” for her first day on the job.
She knew every exit in the building, although at the time, she hadn’t been sure she’d be able to make it out of this dirty hell, even if she had to.
She could do it now. Hell, with all the energy churning inside her, she could
make
her own exit. If it came to it, that was exactly what she’d do, once she knew Sanders didn’t have any sort of contingency plan that involved Jazzy.
Jazzy . . . the girl was the only thing keeping her here now. Were there men watching the girl even know? Possibly. Hell.
Likely
, knowing that bastard Sanders. Jazzy—she had to think about Jazzy, make sure she was safe. Whatever that took, and then they’d get the hell out of this place, away from here.
She wished she’d listened to her. Man, she really, really wished she’d listened.
She scrubbed the blood from her hands, and even when it was gone, she kept scrubbing. She might have scrubbed her hands raw if Sanders hadn’t come into the little bathroom behind her. Turning off the water, she whirled around and narrowed her eyes at him. “So did you get your rocks off, watching that?”
His thin-lipped mouth curled into a smile.
If a snake could smile, it would look like that, she decided. Sanders was a snake from head to toe.
A snake . . . idly, she wondered if snakes could smell fear, taste it. Looking into his flat, lifeless gaze, she decided
this
snake could. Throttling down the nausea, Morgan returned his stare without flinching. Deep inside, she felt sick at what she’d done. She was terrified of the line she had crossed. Horrified.
But she didn’t let it show. She couldn’t. Sanders already knew her biggest weakness—Jazzy. She wasn’t going to give him any more ammunition to use against her.
Giving him a cold smile, she asked, “So. Are you going to tell me what that was about?”
“I was about to ask you the very same question. You killed one of my men.”
“If you didn’t want him dead, you wouldn’t have sent him after me. Or maybe I should say, if you cared whether he lived or died, you wouldn’t have sent him after me.”
“What makes you think I sent him after you? What purpose would that serve?”
“You did it. I know,” she told him, her voice flat, emotionless. She studied his face, the cunning, measuring look in his eyes. “You were testing me.”
Sanders inclined his head. “A wise man knows his tools, his weapons.”
Tools. Weapons
—
She’d been fucking
used
. . . And even though she’d suspected it, it pissed her off. As she stared at Sanders, the rage inside her began to pulse, growing and throbbing, burning away the lingering cobwebs left by weeks of exhaustion and weakness.