Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(128)

Throe bowed at the waist. “I so swear.”

The cuff came off . . . and then the pair of them disappeared into thin air just as flashing blue lights announced the arrival of the human police.

Xcor was not one for mercy on any occasion. But if he had been, he would have offered no pity unto that human defiler—who was now Throe’s target . . . and soon to be prey.





FORTY-FOUR


“Dr. Manello?”

At the sound of his name, Manny snapped back into reality and found that, yes, in fact he was still at Tricounty, out on the lawn. Damn ironic that the security guard had had a mind job done on him, and yet he was the guy who had the focus.

“Ah . . . yeah. Sorry. What did you say?”

“You okay?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Well, you got jumped—I can’t believe how you handled him. One minute he was all up in your face . . . the next you had the gun and he was . . . flying. ’Course you’d be out of it.”

“Yeah. That’s it. Exactly.”

The cops showed up two seconds later and then it was a flurry of questions and answers. And it was amazing. The security guard never mentioned Payne. It was as if she had never been there.

Shouldn’t have been a news flash, considering what Manny had been through not only with her but with Jane. Still was, though.

He just didn’t understand so much of it all: how Payne had disappeared into thin air in front of him; how there had been nothing of her, at least as far as the security guard knew, but the guy remembered Manny just fine; how she had been so calm and in control in a deadly situation.

Actually, that last bit had been erotic as hell. Watching her pummel the f*ck out of that guy had been an incredible turn-on—Manny wasn’t sure what that said about him, but there you go.

And she was so going to lie, he thought. Tell her people that he was scrubbed. Say that she’d taken care of things.

Payne had found the solution that worked: He had his mind, she had her legs, and no one was the wiser among her brother and his ilk.

Yup, everything was taken care of. All he had to do now was spend the rest of his life pining after a female he should never have met. Piece of f*cking cake.

An hour later, he got into his Porsche and headed back for Caldwell. Driving by himself, the car seemed not just empty but a wasteland, and he found himself putting the windows up and down. Wasn’t the same.

She didn’t know where he lived, he thought. But that didn’t matter, did it. She wasn’t coming back.

God, it was tough to decide what would have been harder: A long protracted good-bye where he looked into her eyes and bit his tongue to keep from talking too much? Or that short, rip-the-Band-Aid shit?

Sucked either way.

At the Commodore, he went underground, parked in his spot, and got out. Hit the elevator. Went up to his apartment. Walked in. Let the door close.

As his cell phone went off, he fumbled to take it out of his pocket, and when he saw the number, he cursed. Goldberg from the medical center.

He answered without any enthusiasm. “Hey.”

“You picked up,” the guy said with relief. “How are you?”

Right. So not going there. “I’m okay.” When there was a pause, he said, “And you?”

“I’m good. Things have been . . .” Hospital. Hospital. Hospital hospital, hospitalh ospit alhosp. Ital hospit alhospital . . .

In one ear, out the other. Manny did get busy, however. He went to the bar in the kitchen, took out the Lag, and felt like he’d been punched in the head when he saw how little was in the bottle. Leaning into the cabinet, he took out some Jack from the back that had in there so long there was dust on the cap.

Sometime later, he hung up the phone and got serious about the drinking. Lag first. Jack next. And then it was a case of the two bottles of wine that were in the fridge. And what was left of a six-pack of Coronas—that had been left in the pantry and weren’t cooled.

His synapses, however, didn’t recognize any difference between alcohol that was lukewarm and the shit that was chilly-chilly.

All told, the festival of consumption took him a good hour. Maybe longer. And it was highly effective. When he grabbed the last beer and started for the bedroom, he walked like he was on the bridge of the Enterprise, shuffling left and right . . . and then listing back again. And even though he could see well enough with the city’s ambient light, he ran into a lot of stuff: By some inconvenient miracle, his furniture had become animated and the shit was determined to get in his way—everything from the stuffed leather chairs to the—

“Fuck!”

—coffee table.

Annnnnnnnnd the fact that he now was rubbing his shin as he went along was like adding a set of roller skates to the party.

When he got to his room, he took a slug from the Corona to celebrate and stumbled into the bath. Water on. Clothes off. Stepped right in. No reason to wait for the hot stuff; he couldn’t feel anything anyway, and that was the point.

He didn’t bother to dry off. Just walked over to the bed with the water dripping off his body, and he finished off the beer as he sat down. Then . . . whole lot of nothing. His alkie meter was spiking really frickin’ high, but it had yet to reach critical mass and knock him the f*ck out.

Consciousness was a relative term, however. Although he was arguably awake, he was utterly unplugged—and not just because of the alcohol/blood count he was sporting. He was out of gas on the inside in the most curious way.