Dylan (Bowen Boys, #3)(51)

“It’s not fresh, but it is panther.” He touched her mind and sent her his love. “You can do this, I know you can.”

Going to the only door on the floor, she leaned her head against it. There were no sounds coming from inside, so she used the passkey to get into the room. The smell there was stronger, much stronger than she’d found in the hall. Moving to the two rooms, she went to the one to the back of the hotel suite and opened the door quietly, then shut it again when she saw how dark it was.

“You sure you can see him?” Dylan had been joined by Khan, and they both nodded. “Go in and get him out then. Don’t make a sound. If you wake him before I get in there, shift and run like hell.”

Dylan pulled her to him and kissed her. She felt his desperation, and she knew that he’d felt hers. Closing the room’s curtains, they went back to the bedroom door and opened it. Someone was sitting in a chair, slumped over. She went in first, Then they each took an arm to the chair and picked him up and took him out of the room without a sound. She moved out of the room with them and watched as Walker checked him out. With a short nod, Khan and Walker took Reed out of the room and to the elevator. She picked up a chair similar to the one Reed had been in.

“You ready?” She nodded as he handed her the swords. When he shifted and moved into the room in front of her, she closed the door behind them. They were caged with a monster and hoped to Christ they could get out again.





Chapter Sixteen


Dylan watched her. She sat in the chair as if she had not a care in the world. He, however, was terrified out of his mind. They were actually going to question a vampire in his own den, then kill him. He looked out the window and knew that the sun was going down. Only a couple of hours to go now before Lucius woke. Dylan felt her touch his mind and waited for her to tell him that she’d made a mistake in doing this, hoping that was what she would say.

“When I was nineteen, I was a sophomore in college and this man approached me. He said that he had a job for me to do. He said that if I did it and I lived he had a job for me and that the firm he worked for would pay my student loans and help me get set up in a nicer apartment. Would have had to have been better, I was living in my friend’s garage at the time.”

He lay down and tried to relax to the sound of her voice. “What did he want you to do? I’m assuming that he wanted you to do something you were good at.”

She laughed, and he found himself smiling. He knew that she was talking to him to calm him. He didn’t want her there, but he also knew that of all the people he knew, she was the best suited for his job.

“No, not back then anyway. I was trying my best to go on the straight and narrow. I’d never killed anyone before that, but he knew my background and everything else about me, including my record. He said that this would be my first test of many.” She laughed through their link. “It was a test all right. I was arrested when I went to the police to report him.”

He waited for her to continue, knowing that it would be a good one. When she shifted on the chair, he tensed, waiting for the vampire on the bed to rise. But when she continued with her story, he relaxed again.

“That was the test, you see. He’d given me all the information and the gun I needed to carry out the job. I was to go into a house, kill the man on the bed, and leave without setting off any of the alarms. When I went to the police and told them my side of the story, I was arrested, and when he found out, he had them put me in a cell. He showed up an hour later.” She was quiet for a little while. “They put me in this small room with a mirror. I’d done enough stupid stuff in my short life as a criminal that I knew there was someone on the other side, so I sat there and closed my eyes. When someone kicked my chair out from under me, I leapt up, tossed the man to the floor, and put his gun to his head. Do you know what he did?”

Dylan laughed when she did. “He kicked your ass. Or did he laugh at you? I’m guessing that he was a cop or something like that. Who was he?” Dylan would bet that the younger Jack was much more volatile than this one.

“His name was Wilton Guzman and yes, he was something of a cop. He was an agent for the CIA, and they were doing some recruiting in the area, and my foster father had told him about me. He told me if I let him up without hurting him, he’d have something to offer me. Guzman told me that if I could get into the house just like he told me to and get out, he’d not press charges for me assaulting an agent for the United States government.” She laughed again. “I knew the neighborhood and the house, you see, so I had a little information about where he wanted me to go. I’d even gone there before going to the police just to see where it was. But this time I had to get in and had to get out. He wasn’t going to help me if I got caught, either, he said.”

Moving closer to her when she moved her arm to her lap, he put his head close enough so that she could pet him from his position on the floor. Dylan doubted that she realized what she was doing so lost in thought, but he did. And it was all he could do not to purr loudly at her. She continued with her story while she stroked his fur.

“The house was a large two-story that had lots of windows and a great deal of landscaping around them. I’d broken into houses before to find a place to sleep sometimes and had learned to be careful. Dogs, wild ones, are very territorial and have no problem running you from what they considered theirs. I’d spent plenty of nights on the cold ground while a stupid mutt lay in a dry building. Also, I had to be careful of some homeless people. They can be mean when you cross their path.” Dylan had known that she had lived a less than perfect life, but not this badly. “Anyway, I had dressed all in black and wore a mask over my face, and entered the yard to the back of the property then got down on my belly to move in. I saw three men in the yard and slid past them without any trouble. When I got to the house, I knew there was a motion sensor light in the backyard, so I avoided it by going to the front of the house.” She paused in her petting and he waited. She seemed to have gotten lost for a few seconds in a memory and it appeared to be a good one from her smile. He waited for her to continue.