Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood #8)(134)

For a moment, she regretted their discretion. Hard to knee the busy—

bodies in the balls when they were in their ghosting form.

"No hugs?" Trez murmured while he searched her face. "Been a lifetime since we saw you."

Answering him back on a frequency the humans and any lessers

wouldn't be able to hear, she muttered, "I'm not a hugger."

Except then she cursed and wrapped her arms around the two steak—

heads anyway. The Shadows were notoriously private with their emotions and harder to infiltrate than humans or even vampires, but she could feel their pain over what she had been through.

As she went to pull back, Trez tightened his hold and shuddered.

"I'm . . . Jesus Christ, Xhex . . . we didn't think we were ever going to see you again--"

She shook her head. "Stop. Please. There's never a good time for that and here is certainly not the place. I love you both, okay, and I'm tight. So let's drop it."

Well, sort of tight. As long as she didn't think about John stuck back at that mansion, no doubt going insane. Thanks to her.

Ah, how history repeated itself.

"I'll stop before we get morbid." Trez smiled, his fangs showing bright white against his ebony face. "We're just glad you're all right."

"Stipulated. Or I wouldn't be here."

"Not sure about that," he said under his breath as he and his brother 344

J. R.Ward

looked through the window. "Wow. Someone had fun in there."

A stiff breeze whiffled through, bringing a fresh blast of baby powder from a new direction, and all three of their heads turned.

Out on the dirt lane in front of the house, a car rolled by that had no business anywhere near cornfields. The thing was all Fast & Furious, a Honda Civic that had been to the automotive plastic surgeon's and gotten a Play-boy makeover: With a whale tail and an air dam that left about a three-inch ground clearance as well as a paint job that was gray and pink and a retina-burning yellow, it was like a Midwestern girl who'd fallen into porn.

And what do you know . . . the lesser behind the wheel had an expression that didn't match the juice he was driving. Unless someone had just pissed in his gas tank.

"I will bet my forties that's the new Fore-lesser," Xhex said. "No way Lash would allow a second in command that kind of ride. I spent four weeks with that f*cker and everything was all about him."

"Switch at the top." Trez nodded. "Happens a lot with them."

"You've got to follow that car," she said. "Quick, get on him--"

"Can't leave you. Orders from the boss."

"Are you f*cking kidding me?" Xhex looked from the Civic to the crime scene, then back to the departing whale tail. "Go! We need to track him--"

"Nope. Unless you want to . . . and then we'll hit it with you, right, iAm."

As the other Shadow nodded once, Xhex felt like punching the

aluminum siding she'd been leaning against. "This is f*cking ridiculous."

"Hardly. You're waiting for Lash to show up here and I know you're not going to want to just talk to him. So no way we're leaving you--and don't bother hitting me with the you're-not-the-boss-of-me shit. I have selective deafness." iAm actually spoke up. "He really does."

Xhex locked eyes on the license plate of that ridiculous Honda,

thinking, Oh, for f*ck's sake . . . Then again, if the two Shadows weren't here, she would have stayed put; just taken the numbers down and stayed right where she was. She could always trace them later.

"Make yourself useful," she snapped. "And give me your cell phone."

"You calling in a pizza? I'm hungry." Trez flipped her his BlackBerry.

"I like a lot of meat on mine. My brother prefers the cheese."

Xhex called Rehv out of contacts and hit him up because it was the

fastest way to get to the Brothers. When voice mail kicked in, she left the specs and the tag on that car and asked for Vishous to track them.

Then she hung up and fired the phone back to Trez.

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J. R.Ward

"No Domino's then?" he muttered. "They deliver, you know."

Swallowing a curse, she frowned and remembered that V had given

her a phone. Shit . . . she was not as sharp as she should be in this situation--

"And another department is heard from . . ." iAm said.

Her eyes shot to the road as an unmarked came to a stop in front of the house. The homicide detective who got out was someone she knew. Jose de la Cruz.

At least the humans had sent in a good man. Then again, maybe that

kind of competence wasn't great news. The less involvement of that other race in a situation like this, the better, and de la Cruz had the instincts and follow-through of a bloodhound.

Man . . . it was going to be a loooooong frickin' day. A very, very long frickin' day.

As she watched the humans mill about and spin their wheels, and felt

the collective weight of her bodyguards pressing down on her head, her right hand began to move, her fingers forming the curves and straightaways John had taught her.

A . . .

B . . .

C . . .

Lash woke up to the sound of moaning. And not the good kind.