Blood Assassin (The Sentinels #2)(56)

“I find it interesting that whoever tried to kill you already knew they would be dealing with a psychic.”

She held Bas’s gaze. “Yeah, me too.”

He waved off her implication that he could have been involved. “It means that it couldn’t have been my client.”

“Why not?” she demanded, not nearly so convinced. “It was his property.”

“He couldn’t possibly have known you would be there tonight.”

“Not unless you tipped him off,” she pointed out. “Or someone in your merry band of misfits did.”

Bas’s jaw tightened as the limo swept out of the gated neighborhood and picked up speed.

Expecting an angry response to her continued implication he was somehow responsible, she felt a prickle of premonition as he gave a slow shake of his head, his expression unreadable. She didn’t have a clairvoyant’s ability to peek into the future, but she knew that she wasn’t going to like Bas’s explanation.

“No. Not one of mine,” he said.

“Then who?”

“The kidnapper.”

Her breath hissed through her teeth. Yep. She’d been right. She didn’t like the explanation at all.

She had a lethal toxin flowing through her blood, just waiting to kill her. Like a ticking time bomb.

Now she had to worry about being stalked by a stranger who was ruthless enough to kidnap a little girl for profit?

“Why would he try to kill me?”

Bas shrugged. “I told him that I had to delay his payoff until you left St. Louis.”

Of course he did. The . . . creep.

“Thanks a lot.”

“It was the only way to buy time for Molly.” He shrugged, blatantly lacking any hint of regret in throwing Serra into the firing line. “Obviously the kidnapper has decided to take matters into his own hands.”

Fane’s hand clenched her fingers, his temperature ratcheting up several more degrees in reaction to Bas’s confession.

She returned the squeeze, a silent reminder to concentrate on healing his body. This was one battle she didn’t need him to fight for her.

Leaning over Fane’s massive chest, she sent Bas a pissed-off glare. “Just what I need. Another psychopathic lunatic trying to kill me.”

Another shrug. “Unfortunate, but his ill-fated attack might be a blessing.”

Her lips curved into a humorless smile. “Unless you want me to kick you in the nuts you’ll stop talking.”

He ignored her warning, reaching into his pocket to remove his phone. “I assume that the two attackers are dead?”

She scowled. “Yes.”

“Good.” He punched in a speed-dial number on his phone, waiting only seconds before he started barking orders. “I have a double stiff pickup. I’ll send the coordinates. Make sure the necro is with you. Also, have a ghost keep a watch on the estate. I want to know everyone who comes in or out.”

Serra watched as Bas returned the phone to his pocket, squashing a brief hope that necros would arrive in time to read the last memories of the corpses. It would bring an end to the entire situation if they could dig out the name of the kidnapper.

But a man capable of stealing Bas’s child from beneath his nose wasn’t stupid.

He’d make damn sure that he didn’t jeopardize his ultimate goal.

“The kidnapper would have to be an idiot to hire killers who could be traced back to him,” she pointed out.

Bas tapped an impatient finger on his knee. “We might get lucky.”

“Yeah, because our luck has been running so great,” she muttered.

He glanced out the window as the limo turned onto the street leading to the hotel. “Did you have the opportunity to search for Molly?”

Serra grimaced. She didn’t need to see his tight expression to know the cost of trying to keep his voice calm.

The man might be all kinds of a villain, but he adored his daughter. And the fact that she was out there in the hands of some twisted stranger was slowly destroying him.

“She wasn’t there,” she softly admitted.

His tense shoulders abruptly slumped. “Shit.”

Serra rested her head on Fane’s chest, taking comfort in the steady beat of his heart. “For once we can agree.”

Chapter Thirteen

Fane wasn’t blind to his faults.

He could be stubborn. Or pigheaded, as Serra preferred to refer to his ingrained knowledge that he was always right. And he didn’t take orders from anyone but Wolfe, and only then if he agreed with them.

But his determination to return to the hotel had nothing to do with stubbornness. Well, at least not everything to do with his stubbornness.

As long as he was wounded and Serra was without her powers they were utterly vulnerable.

There was no way he was going to return to the office penthouse where they could easily be imprisoned by Bas and his cohorts.

The hotel might belong to the assassin, but it was public enough that it would be difficult to keep out a horde of furious Sentinels if he sent out the signal for the cavalry to charge.

So ignoring the searing pain in his shoulder and the lingering weakness from his blood loss, he forced himself out of the limo as it came to a halt in the underground parking lot.

His one concession was allowing Serra to pull his arm over her shoulders as she wrapped her own arm around his waist. He didn’t need her to hold him upright, but she helped to stabilize his balance.