Whiteout (Aurora Sky (33 page)

“That still doesn't explain what you're doing out here on your own.” Fane folded his arms across his chest.

“We were going to come back to Anchorage after diverting the agency's attention on a sighting of us in Fairbanks.
We wanted to team up with you and Noel, but after we realized we'd kidnapped an informant, Dante saw it as a new opportunity. I wasn't ready to give up on the first plan. I wanted to get back home. I wanted to get back to you.” My eyes glistened.

Fane's a
rms relaxed to his sides. “Come on,” he said. “You can tell me the rest on the way. Where are Dante and Agent Scott?”

“They're at a fishing lodge that's closed for the winter. It's about ten miles up,” I said, matching Fane's pace. “Giselle's there too.”

“
Giselle?” Fane asked.

“Yeah, she's been traveling with us the whole time.”

Fane had left his Range Rover running on the shoulder of the highway.

“What about Agent Scott's car?” I asked when we reached the shoulder.

Fane walked around it to the driver's sid
e, turned off the ignition, and pocketed the keys.

“I'll inform the agency of its location tomorrow so they can have it towed,” he said.

It still sounded totally
Twilight Zone
to hear him talk about the agency as though he was part of the team.

“Let's go,”
he said.

I was just headed to the passenger door of the Range Rover when I remembered the walkie-talkie.

“Hold on just a minute,” I said, jogging to Agent Scott's car. I opened the door and reached inside for the radio. Once I had it in hand, I jogged ba
ck to Fane's vehicle and got inside. When Fane had the car turned around, heading north, I asked, “Where's the
Tank
?” referring to his gray hunk of metal on wheels.

“Back in Anchorage,” Fane answered.

“And Joss?” I asked hopefully. “Did you get him back fr
om the agency?”

“Joss is fine.”

I released a great big sigh of relief. “Thank goodness. Now please tell me how in the world you managed to take control of the agency
.
”

After our time locked inside the music room together, I'd learned a lot more about Fane'
s past, including his life of privilege and wealth in Italy, and that he had stayed in contact with his family throughout the generations. That was impressive all on its own, but to have gained access to the agency would have required help from up high.

F
ane Donado had done the impossible. If anyone could, it was Fane.

As he drove, Fane filled me in on the private search he'd conducted the moment I disappeared from town. He told me about Senator Davis and the contributions his family had made to his campai
gn for the past eight months—ever since he'd become aware of what I was, what all agents were, when he tasted Noel's blood.

Fane navigated the road carefully. The conditions were about medium high on the nightmare-o-meter. There were patches of ice and the
visibility was poor without any lights other than our own. It could have been worse. It could have been dark AND snowing. And at least we were the only ones on the road and could temper our speed as Fane did now. He must have floored it to get this far, t
his quick.

As fond as I was of the
Tank
, I was glad he'd come in more reliable transportation.

“Is this vehicle agency issued?” I asked, looking over the dashboard.

“It's my cousin's rental. He let me borrow it as soon as I got word of your location.”

“Your cousin?”

“Alfonso,” Fane said. “He accompanied me to the senator's office and on base. Now he's looking after Joss.”

“That's nice of him,” I said.

“He'll be happy to hear I found you,” Fane said. “You really lucked out that I was the one to spot you
.”

“No kidding
,”
I huffed. “I suppose it was Melcher's bright idea to hand out wanted
flyer
s of Dante and me to vampires?”

Fane's grip on the wheel tightened. “You know about those? That wasn't Melcher. That was Jared. When he heard that the senator was ap
pointing someone to oversee agency operations, he took off, but not before getting your photos out of the database and making up
flyer
s.”

I shot up in my seat, nearly hitting my head on the ceiling. “Wait a minute? Jared's the one behind the
flyer
s?”

Fane
met my eyes briefly. “Jared's now a rogue agent,” he said, returning his attention to the road.

“Son of a bitch!” I bellowed. “We thought the agency put out the
flyer
s
,
so we grabbed a vampire at the same club Agent Scott saw us in and told him to report a
sighting. We gave him a copy of the
flyer
we got off a vampire we came across on the way up so he could call the number on it.”

Fane
whipped his gaze toward me
. “Tell me you didn't.”

I pursed my lips. What more could I say? I just did.

“Damn it,” Fane sai
d when I didn't answer. “Now Jared knows what area to start searching. Bad move, Aurora.”

The hair on the back of my neck stiffened. Easy for Fane to say when he had money and resources at his fingertips. He wasn't the one who'd been cut off from the world
, hiding in cabins without running water or electricity for
over
a month.

Bad
,
Aurora. That's essentially what he'd said. I hated how much his opinion twisted inside my gut.

“Yeah, well, if we hadn't gone to that club, you wouldn't have found me,” I said,
my jaw tightening as my voice deepened.

“That's true,” Fane acknowledged.

“And it doesn't really matter, does it?” I asked. “We're getting Dante and getting out of here.”

“I still don't like that maniac knowing where you were last seen,” Fane said. “For al
l we know, he's headed up as we speak—same as me.”

I fiddled with the zipper on my coat. “I don't like it either,” I said, voice wavering.

Fane reached over and placed a hand on my thigh. “We're almost out of the woods. I won't let anyone stop us now.”

I s
wallowed and said, “Okay.” My eyes drifted down to the hand on my thigh. It warmed the skin beneath it and tingled down my leg.

Fane pulled it away to join his left hand on the steering wheel. He leaned forward. “Looks like we're entering town. Is the turn
off much farther?”

I looked up. “Oh shoot. We passed it.”

“Aurora...”

“I was distracted,” I said.

Fane offered
an
amused
smile before pulling
into a single-pump gas station that was closed for the night and turned the SUV around.

“How much farther?” he
asked back on the road.

“Not far,” I answered, eyes glued to the road. This time I knew right where to go, given I'd been
there
less than an hour ago. “It's the next turn on the right,” I said, spotting the familiar road off the highway.

Fane slowed and to
ok the turn gently. His headlights lit up my tire tracks from earlier. He followed them until they stopped.

“The road to the lodge is snowed in. It took Dante about twenty-five minutes to get there by snowmachine in the dark.”

“Luckily we're far enough dow
n the road not to be seen from the highway,” Fane said. “But you should still tell him to hurry and bring Agent Scott.”

“What about Giselle?” I asked. “She wasn't happy when Dante and I started talking about agency reform. She won't want to go back.”

Fane
stiffened. “Tell her to come down too. I will talk to her, tell her Jared is searching for you in Fairbanks. She wants him, she can go get him. It will save the agency the headache of hunting him down if she succeeds in finding him. But he will have to be
dealt with. It's no longer just your safety on the line.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Fane fingered the keys dangling from the ignition. “Jared knows the identities and locations of hundreds of agents,” he said.

My stomach bottomed out when I realized wha
t that meant. He could go after agents and informants one by one—even faster if he got help from enemy vampires. Jared had been a recruiter. He could gather his own renegade army to go after undercover informants and hunters. Getting revenge on the agency
would be child's play

Fane turned the SUV's headlights off, followed by the ignition and with it, the heat, pitching us in darkness.

My breath came out
startled in the darkness.

“Conserving gas,” Fane said.

“Right,” I said, sitting upright. Time to get do
wn to business and get going. I jammed my thumb over the radio's “talk” button. “Dante, this is Aurora. Come in. Over.” I lifted my thumb and waited for Dante's response, one I imagined in mixed tones of distemper and relief.

Fane tapped his fingers on the
steering wheel.

I waited a good twenty seconds before trying again. “Dante, come in. This is Aurora. Over.”

When no response came, I tried radioing a third and fourth time. On the fifth try, Fane stopped tapping the wheel and put his hand on my arm.

“He's
probably turned it off,” he said.

Or threw it against the wall and broke it in frustration
, I thought remorsefully.

“Then we'll have to walk in,” I said.

“Not in the dark we won't,” Fane shot back.

“We can't just leave him up there.”

“We'll find a place t
o spend the night. At daylight, we'll see if there's a snowmobile we can rent in town and then head up the road.” Fane pulled a phone out of his pocket. “I'll call my cousin and give him a quick update.”

My heart jammed up my throat. “What about Melcher?”
I asked.

“He doesn't need to know where I am or that I found you just yet. I'll never trust that man.”

My breathing resumed a steady rhythm as Fane placed his call. I was overjoyed that he'd found a way to get a foothold in the agency, but still cautious.
While he spoke to his cousin on the phone in Italian, I thought about my mom and Gran and what this meant for them. They could come out of hiding. They might not even have to flee the country. I wished I could call my mom as soon as Fane got off the phone
and let her know I was okay—that everything was going to be okay. I'd memorized the number of the neighbor Dante had gotten from my mom to leave a message when the time came. I knew that number as well as my own birthdate. I'd had plenty of time to commit
it to memory and dreamed of the day I could dial it. But I wasn't about to wake
up
some poor woman at 3
:00
a.m. in Florida.

Now that the excitement had died down—along with the heat—my body began shivering.