Bitter Blood (Blood and Moonlight Book 3)(39)

“Uh, Detective Hart?” Mason called. “Are we—are we going to contact the owners?”

She headed straight to the front door. A chain was in place there, and sure, she wasn’t at her full vamp strength but…

Jane jerked the chain, a quick, hard tug that she hid with her body. “No need, it’s open.”

“B-but a search warrant—”

“You’re right.” Jane looked over at him and nodded once, decisively. “You don’t have a search warrant. Stay outside.”

He blinked. “Wait—what?”

“Stay outside.” Her hand went to her holster. “I’ll be right back.” Her instincts were screaming at her. That video camera, perched so perfectly in order to catch the comings and goings at Hathway…

Someone has been watching me. Testing me. Is that same someone keeping an eye on my brother?

Jane had her gun drawn as she hurried up the steps. The building was deserted, as quiet as a tomb inside. Her heartbeat raced in her chest, and she kept thinking about Aidan and Garrison and Paris. They’d been searching an apartment, looking for her mysterious watcher.

And the place had been booby trapped for them. That’s why I told Mason to stay outside. I don’t want him getting pulled into this mess. I don’t want him getting blown to hell and back because he’s following my lead.

When she reached the top of the stairs, three doors waited…but all of them were wide open. Jane peered inside the first door and saw nothing. An empty office space. The second door also led to a vacant room, one covered with a layer of dust. But the third room…

Jane walked inside. And her breath froze in her lungs.

The floor of the third room was covered in spray paint—a big, looping design. A red paint image of the Greek letter Omega.

The same symbol that had been burned into her right side so many years before.

Jane crept into that room, her gaze darting from the spray paint design to the surveillance camera that was attached to the window.

The watcher did this. He was keeping an eye on me and on my brother.

But why? Why the hell was she so important to him? And who the hell was he? Jane paced closer to the window. No green light glowed from that camera. It was off now…because there was nothing left to watch? She needed that camera bagged and tagged. Maybe the crime scene techs could find some evidence on it, something that she could use. Something that…

A phone was ringing.

Jane stilled. Her gaze darted to the right, to the far corner of the room, and she saw a small phone on the floor. It vibrated, shaking against the wooden floor as it rang again.

Her breath blew slowly from her lungs. Was this another trap? She inched toward the phone. If she picked it up, was the place going to blow up? Would she blow up? For all she knew, the whole building could be wired to explode and the cell phone was some sort of detonation trigger. Just in case…

Jane raced toward the phone, moving with her vamp speed—or as much of it as she could muster right then. She snatched it up and rushed out of that building in mere seconds. When she left—she slammed into Mason because he’d been lurking far too close to the building’s entrance. She drove the breath from him with that impact. Jane heard the loud oof he gave as he slammed to the ground.

She jerked him up and hauled him away from the building, her hand still tight around the phone. Jane glanced back. The place hadn’t blown…yet.

“You were, um, sure moving fast,” Mason blurted.

The phone had stopped ringing.

“Get some techs out here,” Jane ordered him. “And some bomb sniffing dogs, too.”

His eyes widened. He nodded once, then whirled away as he ran back to the patrol car.

The phone in her hand began to ring again. Since she was clear of the building, Jane answered. “Who the hell is this?”

Laughter. Deep. Rumbling. “Are you missing something, Detective Hart? Or maybe…someone?”

She nearly shattered that phone in her tight grip. “Yeah, I’m missing you. Some jerk who thinks it is funny to play with people’s lives.”

“You’re not a person. We both know that.”

Her shoulders hunched as she paced away from Mason. “I get it. You think I’m some unholy beast that needs to be put down, right? Some big, bad monster that has to be stopped, huh? Then come out—stop me. Stop me.”

“I know where your brother is.”

Jane stilled.

“And I’m going to tell you…because I do like to watch you work.”

You are a sick bastard and I will end you.

“It’s not you he hates so much, is it? It’s your lover.” A sigh slipped over the line. “Poor Jane. You thought you’d found a happy ending. You don’t even realize what you’ve done.”

Jane spun around, her gaze searching the street. “Are you watching me right now?” Because she thought he was. After all, that phone had rang right on cue, just as she’d entered that room upstairs and then again—right when she’d cleared the building. He’d left her a burner phone—one that she was sure was going to prove untraceable—and the SOB was hiding in the shadows. Watching her.

“I’ve discovered that I rather like watching you, Jane. More than a job, it’s a downright passion now.”