Unspoken (Shadow Falls: After Dark #3)(88)

Chase’s fury rose higher. “You’re protecting him, even knowing what he is?”

“We’re not protecting him,” Kirk said. “Stopping him. Killing him isn’t a problem. But you can’t take him in to the FRU.”

“Why not?” Chase asked.

*

As soon as Steve left, Della went inside. When Miranda and Kylie walked in from their last class three minutes later, Della sat at the kitchen table. She had three Diet Cokes waiting in the fridge and an apology resting on the tip of her tongue.

“Looks like the vamp has finally decided to talk,” Miranda said.

Kylie elbowed her. “Yes, and being her friends, we’re here to listen.”

“I’m sorry.” Della stood up and got the three Diet Cokes out. “I was a real shit, wasn’t I?”

“Yup.” Then Miranda ran over, throwing her arms around Della in one of those bear hugs that just about hurt. “But like Kylie said, we forgive you. We will always forgive you. But I hate it when I see you’re hurting and you won’t talk to us!” Her hug actually got tighter. “So can you please not do that anymore?”

“I’ll try really hard,” Della managed to say. “But, speaking of hurting, can you stop hugging me now?”

Miranda released her.

They all sat down in their designated places.

“Who’s going first?” Kylie asked.

“I think Della should,” Miranda announced. “She’s the one who is worse off.”

Della didn’t like to go first, but she put that aside. “My life is effed up.”

“We’re gonna need more than that,” Miranda said.

“Every time we think we have a lead on Douglas Stone, the guy who probably killed my aunt, it goes away. Now, not only is he responsible for killing my aunt but his gang is the one who killed Mr. and Mrs. Chi. My mom is losing it. My sister hates me. I’m pretty sure my dad thinks I’m a monster—of course I told you that, right?”

Kylie nodded.

Della inhaled and continued, “Chase thinks the Vampire Council knows something about Stone and he left to go there this morning and we haven’t heard a peep from him. I’m worried sick something has happened. And you might think things couldn’t get worse, but they do! I told Steve I love him.”





Chapter Thirty-seven

“Why can’t Stone be handed over to the FRU?” Chase asked, his patience waning, and waning fast. “Someone better start explaining.”

“Eddie had been with us for almost a month,” Powell started talking. “We were helping him look for a man named Douglas Stone. It wasn’t until I saw the sketch that I became worried, but it wasn’t a perfect match for my son’s likeness. I confronted him. He swore it wasn’t him. I believed him. His mother lives in France. He went to live with her. But four years later, he came back to the States. Some old friends of his showed up. One of them mentioned a gang that they had belonged to. It was the gang Eddie had joined. That’s when I knew for sure.”

The old man had to stop to catch his breath. If Chase hadn’t personally seen what a monster his son was, he might have felt sorry for him.

“I told him that he needed to turn himself in. That I would go to Eddie and maybe he would find it in his heart to ask the rest of the council to go easy on him.”

The old man closed his eyes. “He called me a fool. Told me that I would never turn him in. He said to go check the files and see what had been taken.”

“What files?” Chase asked.

Kirk stepped forward. “All of them, Chase. Every job the council had done for over fifty years had been cataloged in those files. Powell’s son swore that if anything ever happened to him he would leak the information to the FRU.”

“But you never told Eddie?” Chase asked.

“No. Stone left the country. We actually thought he’d been killed. But a few months ago, he came back. We got the files, but Powell’s son got away.”

“But he knows things, Chase,” Powell said. “If the FRU got him, he could bring us all down.”

“If you’re guilty of things like he did, then maybe you need to go down,” Chase snapped.

Kirk shook his head. “It’s not like that, Chase. The things we did wrong were justified. It was war. We were protecting what we believed in.”

“Then why are you so worried?” he asked.

“Because it wouldn’t look like that to the FRU or the government,” Kirk insisted.

“Tell him everything,” the elderly Powell said.

“What?” Chase insisted, staring at the oldest of the councilmen.

Powell looked at Kirk, who nodded, then the old man started talking. “It wasn’t just us. It was Eddie, too.”

Chase curled his hand into a fist. “He wasn’t an agent, why would he be in there?”

“Kirsha,” Kirk said. “Eddie’s wife. She was killed by an FRU agent.”

Chase recalled the stories Eddie had told him. “No, she died in an explosion at the medical lab. Eddie told me.”

“Yes,” Kirk said. “But it was intentionally set by the FRU. Eddie had just discovered the treatment for AIDS. He was about to release it. They didn’t want the council getting credit, so they stole his work, and then, afraid we would claim rights to the work, they put the bomb in the lab.”