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Chloe clamped her mouth shut. He might be Action Man, but this went beyond physical rough and tumble. Without meaning to, her eyes went back to that muscular chest. Rough and tumble, huh?
He raised an eyebrow, still waiting for her response.
She shrugged. “I thought it was interesting that Jack knew someone in the fashion world who was connected with the princess.”
His expression said it wasn’t very interesting at all. “Jack knew a lot of skinny women with big bank accounts. They were kind of a hobby of his.”
Chloe’s hand itched to smack him, except that there was a grain of truth in his words. Thanks, Jack. “What about the dress? What if Jessica Lark was the one who designed it, diamonds and all?”
“Someone had to. It might have been her.”
Do I have to hand this to you garnished with parsley? “She’s dead now.”
Sam’s eyes flickered as if she’d finally said something worth hearing. Chloe felt a tingle of triumph, but it didn’t last. His expression returned to neutral almost at once.
“You can’t get mixed up in this,” Sam said quietly. “I mean it. You don’t understand the danger involved. Go to bed. It’s going to be dawn soon enough.”
Chloe glanced at the china Bo Peep, wondering if Bo’s sheep were half as dense as Sam.
“It’s not safe to poke around in a murdered man’s affairs.” Sam touched her arm lightly. “We haven’t caught the intruder yet. We will, but in the meantime I don’t want you taking any chances.”
She could feel a flush of hot blood creeping up her cheeks. All her life she’d been on a need-to-know basis. Her parents had never talked about their work or the strange people who came and went from the house. Same with Uncle Jack. Now they were all dead, and Chloe was left to figure things out without enough information to go on. And Sam was doing the same thing. Already he was pushing her away, trying to keep her ignorant. “You’ve got to believe me. I can help you figure this out.”
“You can’t give anyone reason to think you’re still involved.” He leaned closer, bringing his lips within inches of her ear. “Think about it. How did the thieves know you had the dress?”
How indeed? Chloe shivered at the thought, but there was an expanse of tight white T-shirt a mere handspan away. It smelled of clean cotton and Sam, and she had a ridiculous urge to wilt against all those hard, warm muscles.
She took a step back, afraid of losing her perspective. They were having a disagreement. Falling into his arms would confuse things. So would admitting that he had a point.
He stepped with her, gracefully mirroring her movement. Chloe felt a finger of unease tickle down her spine. The movement was predatory, a little too smooth, almost catlike. She raised her hand, instinctively pressing her palm against his chest to keep her distance. What is he doing?
The distance narrowed without her meaning to let it happen. She looked up, meeting his eyes. In the dim light of the bedside lamp, the gray irises had darkened to black, the pupils disappearing into shadowy pools. He was handsome, the face roughly sculpted with square jaw and high cheekbones, but the mouth—that held a promise of sensuality that made Chloe’s chest tighten.
But there was hunger in Sam’s gaze that went beyond a man thinking a woman was pretty. Beyond lust or possession or control. It was as if he wanted to devour her.
Chloe’s mouth grew thick with yearning mixed with the coppery taste of fear. Sweat prickled the small of her back. She tried to swallow, but her throat wasn’t working. Not even her lungs were working right, only pulling in small, shallow gasps of air.
Her fingers began to close on his shirt, gathering up a handful of cotton, fingers sliding over the hard muscle beneath. Her mind flailed, scrambling to make sense of what exactly was going on. He was just standing there, one moment her rescuer, the next...he was something else. For the life of her, she couldn’t explain what had changed. It was like he had pulled back a curtain and someone else was looking through his eyes. A man she wasn’t sure she could handle. Scratch that. A man I know is dangerous.
“Sam,” she whispered.
The moment stretched, apprehension chilling her limbs with a strange cocktail of desire and foreboding. Finally, he blinked. The movement, slight as it was, made her start. Sam drew in a breath that was almost a sigh, his chest heaving under her hand.
As quickly as it had come, the moment ended. The shadows seemed to recede to the corners of the room. That electric charge had come and gone without a word spoken, without either of them making a move.
Chloe hesitated, poised between drawing away and drawing near. It was he who stepped back, gently freeing his shirt and leaving her hand hanging in midair. Regret flitted over his face, followed by a flash of...what? Shame? She couldn’t place it. Most would never have caught it, but she’d grown up around people with secrets. She knew how to catch these slivers of truth.
She looked away before he noticed her scrutiny.
He was backing toward the door. “Go to bed, Chloe.”
“Good night, Sam,” she replied, frustrated and relieved when she heard the rattle of the doorknob. Half of her wanted to grab his arm and beg him to stay. But that would be insane. He frightened her.
And yet, she wanted his lips on her, his hands all over her body. That was insane. They had the long-term prospects of an ice cream cone in Hades. She wasn’t into relationships—however sticky and sweet—that melted away the minute things got hot.
He still hadn’t answered. He just hovered in the doorway, his mouth set in a hard line. If she had to guess, she thought he was angry with himself. On some level, he’d slipped. Their eyes met. His were steady, but there were lingering traces of that fierce heat.
“Good night, Chloe.” The words were clipped. He turned quickly and slipped out of the room.
She took in a long, shuddering breath. Instinctively, she knew she’d made a lucky escape. She jammed a chair under the knob.
* * *
What the hell had he been thinking?
Sam stared at Chloe’s door. The corridor was dark, but his enhanced vision made out the grain of the oak. The thick slab of wood would make a racket if he punched his fist through it. Sam growled deep in his chest. Too bad vampires couldn’t actually turn to smoke and slip through a keyhole. The base part of his nature wanted back in that bedroom. Fool.
He turned away, pacing down the hall and back again, trying to burn off the energy jumping along his nerves.
He’d nearly kissed her. Thank God for that last sliver of self-control. It had been all that kept his beast on a leash. He hadn’t fed properly since arriving at Oakwood, relying on the suitcase of bagged blood that was an agent’s portable kitchen. It just wasn’t the same as the real, live thing. When confronted with Chloe, the combination of hunger and desire gave the world a fuzzy-edged glow, a bit like being drunk. And, like a drunk, he obviously wasn’t thinking straight.
He snarled into the darkness. Biting Chloe was the last thing he wanted on his conscience. Heedless, his fangs descended, sharp against his tongue. He wished he’d caught the thief. He would have been enough of a snack to take the edge off.
That last thought burned in his already overheated brain. How by all the dark powers had that thief escaped? The Horsemen never let that happen.
And here Chloe was, digging into the case rather than staying safely away from it. She’d found an interesting connection to Jack’s designer friend, but Sam couldn’t risk encouraging Chloe in her research. As much as it galled him, the only safe thing to do was shut her down, and as firmly as possible.
He’d seen the hurt in her eyes and hated himself for it.
This ridiculous situation had to end, and that would only happen when the thief was caught. Kenyon might have lost the villain’s trail, but Sam hadn’t had his turn at playing bloodhound.
He pulled out his cell phone, quickly dialing Kenyon. The connection rang and rang.
“H’lo?” the werewolf grunted when he finally answered.
“Get over here. Guard her,” Sam said in a low voice. He didn’t bother to identify which “her” he meant. There was only one that mattered.
“Why? Aren’t you already there?”
“I’m going outside. I need to know who the intruder was.” I need to put miles between me and her, before I slip from bodyguard to predator.
“I’m already all over it.”
“I need to get out.” He couldn’t put it any plainer than that. “You know what I mean.”
There was a significant pause. “Okay. Get one of Jack’s men to babysit.”
“I don’t trust them like I trust you.”
Kenyon grunted with resignation. “I’ll be there.”
“Now.” Sam thumbed off his phone, shoving it back in its belt holster. His shoulders ached from tension, making the movements awkward.
Barely a minute later, an enormous gray wolf came trotting around the corner, tail and ears held high. Kenyon plopped onto his haunches before Sam and lifted his front paws in a classic begging gesture.
Sam stared, huddled in his bad mood. It was hard to keep up in the face of a grinning timber wolf. “Smart-ass. What happens if someone wanders down the hall? I’m tired of bribing animal control officers.”
Kenyon flopped down in front of the door, rolling on his back to expose a hairy belly.
“Whatever.” Sam gave up and went outside. Annoying or not, Kenyon would keep Chloe safe.
He’d meant what he said about a leak. Someone in the household had tipped off the thieves about the dress. Finding out the traitor’s identity was top of his to-do list.
But, right that minute, he needed a break. He was no more domesticated than Kenyon’s wolf. There was a reason he steered clear of jobs that forced him to mix among humans. He was the knife in the dark, the menace lurking on a rooftop. A predator. The only reason he was here was out of respect for Jack.
But somehow, Chloe had touched him. She’d seen a glimpse of the beast tonight and hadn’t known enough to run for it. He’d seen her face, his own darkness reflected back at him through the desire in her eyes. She wanted all of him, even if she didn’t understand what that meant.
That alone meant he owed her protection. He couldn’t articulate why; it was simply a fact. Long ago, when he had been a man, he’d had a wife. He’d adored Amy from childhood, and he kept her memory deep, deep inside where he hid the treasured memories of his human life. But whatever drew him to Chloe was different. It was as primal a response as his hunger for blood.
Sam stood a moment under the night sky, letting the crisp air cool his face. The night smelled of the nearby forest, the scent of pine sharp and clean. Jack’s estate covered around two hundred acres, enough room for even a vampire to feel free for a moment.
He set out for the patch of ground beneath the broken window of Chloe’s old bedroom, passing a rose garden and a patio set with table and chairs. His gaze swept the ground, hunting the shadows for any sign of the intruder.
He looked up, calculating the distance the intruder had jumped. There was a low roof a story above, then another dozen feet to Chloe’s window. A two-part leap to safety—one a trained human could achieve without much trouble. Except this one was wounded. Sam had winged him.
He knelt and examined the grass. This part of the lawn was well trampled. The security guards, once roused, had given enthusiastic chase. Footprints would be hard to track. Blood, however, would not.
Taking a quick look around, he checked to make sure none of the guards still roaming the grounds were in view. Then he crouched until his nose was mere inches from the lawn. A vampire’s sense of smell wasn’t as good as a werewolf’s, but it was better than that of a werewolf stuck in human form. There had been too many people around during the chase for Kenyon to get hairy. Sam might have better luck picking up the trail. Hopefully it wasn’t too late to matter.
There. He caught the scent of blood, memorizing its unique signature. Sam crept forward, following the trace in a diagonal line across the lawn. Now that he knew what he was looking for, the muted glow of lights from the house showed him a particular set of tracks—a medium-sized man wearing soft-soled shoes. Drops of blood dotted the path, keeping the scent strong.
The path led up to a garden wall. It was brick and a good fifteen feet tall. Scuffed dirt at the bottom made it obvious that the intruder had climbed it—no doubt a painful process for a man shot in the shoulder.
Sam took a running step and bounded lightly to the top. He squatted for a moment, scanning the view before dropping to the other side. The wall drew a line between the order of Jack’s gardeners and the wild kingdom beyond. Sam landed in a clump of weeds beside a gravel road. Across the road was untamed forest.
He could see where the intruder had stood. Blood had pooled there, but no trail of drops led away. Sam swore. The intruder must have had enough of a head start on his pursuers to risk stopping to bind his wound. Then, he’d splashed whiskey on the ground, drowning what scent there was in a fog of alcohol. Alcohol mixed with something that made Sam’s nose numb.
That made Sam’s job much, much harder. Was the guy using the smelly substance for disinfectant, or was he expecting tracking dogs? Or did he know there were vampires?
He was willing to bet the latter. Jack’s killers had used silver bullets.
Sam walked up and down the road in ever-widening loops, searching for clues. The gravel was hard packed and dry, giving away nothing. Now that he’d left the protected zone of the walled garden, a freshening breeze was sweeping away any lingering scent. Not that Sam could smell much of anything anymore, after encountering that scent bomb the thief had left.
No wonder Kenyon hadn’t had any luck. Sam stopped, jamming his hands in his pockets. He was coming up empty, too. Come on. Everyone makes mistakes. What clue did this guy leave for me to find?
He had to have escaped somehow. If I were a villain, which way would I run? Outside of a few other estates, there was nothing but ocean to the west. Sam followed the road east.
He’d barely gone a quarter mile before he found what he was looking for. A car had been parked by the side of the road—a small compact, judging by the tire treads in the soft shoulder. They weren’t deep, and human eyes had missed them. The shadows were dense here at the edge of the forest, so Sam pulled a compact flashlight from his pocket, filtering the bright beam with his fingers and using just enough light to see without wrecking his night vision.
There weren’t any obvious clues—no lost buttons or dropped wallets. Just a few spots of blood that probably fell when he climbed into the car.
Sam narrowed his eyes. If he was reading the tracks right, there were two sets of footprints in the soft dirt. It looked as though the intruder got in the passenger side. Had someone been waiting for him?
Instinct made Sam follow the road about a mile to the first bend. The wind was starting to smell damp with a rain that would wash away any remaining clues once it fell. He was running on pure intuition now, all hunter, the beast in him adding its predatory cunning to his human intelligence.
Just around the bend he found the car. It was nose-first into the ditch, the front bumper crunched against a tree. The passenger door was partially open but jammed into the ground, as if the accident had happened when the door was ajar. Had someone bailed out partway through the crash?
Sam wrinkled his nose. Despite his deadened senses, a new banquet of smells, both revolting and enticing, pulled him toward the scene. He approached cautiously.
The driver was slumped over the wheel, obviously dead. Air bags hung like deflated balloons. Sam felt a wave of cold nausea as he circled toward the windshield, peering through the glass to catch a glimpse of the man’s face.
A good deal of the man’s head was splattered over the side window glass. The bullet had come from the passenger seat. Sam mentally reconstructed the events. Bang, pop the door, jump out just before the car swerves into the ditch and smashes the tree.
Risky, shooting the driver. Then again, he would have been slowing the car for the turn. A cold, calculated chance. Not for beginners.
Sam looked long and hard at the ruined face, finally placing it. One of Jack’s security guards. Here, perhaps, was an answer. Gossip traveled through household staff like wildfire. News of the dress, however hard they’d tried to keep it quiet, would have been a particularly juicy tidbit. If this guard was in league with Jack’s killers, that would explain how he came to be in this car. It also would explain how the thief got into the house. The question was, who were his contacts?
Sam circled around to the open door, covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve to filter the stench of carnage. Blood was one thing, but there were plenty of substances inside a human body that should definitely stay inside.
Digging his feet into the soft dirt, he pushed the car upright enough to free the passenger door. It was a fruitless effort; the hinges were bent. Bracing the car with his shoulder, he gave the door a solid jerk. It came off in his hands. Sam tossed it into the ditch and let the car settle back into the mud.
Now that he could get inside, he looked for a bullet casing, but found none. Either the shooter had somehow retrieved it or it had flown out of the car during the crash. He searched the glove compartment only to discover the car came from a cheap rental place that specialized in older, practical runabouts. Perfect for getaway cars.
Sam would lay good money the name on the rental papers was fake. Whoever the intruder was, he was an ice-cold professional. He would call Winspear, have him send one of the Company’s crime scene experts, but he didn’t expect that they’d find much.
Whoever this guy was, he was good.
Sam pulled his head out of the car, sucking in clean, sweet air. His head snapped toward Oakwood, where the lights glinted through the trees. He had found what he could for now. Time to get back. Kenyon was guarding Chloe, but that wasn’t enough to stop the tsunami of Sam’s protective instincts.
Chloe.
Then, as if on cue, a scream tore the night.
Chapter 7
Vampires moved fast, but at the sound of the scream Sam moved demon-fast, feet barely grazing the ground as he sprinted. The cry had come from the house. No human would have heard it at that distance, but a vampire could—especially one tuned to that particular voice. Within minutes he pushed through the side door of Jack’s house.
He skidded to a stop, swearing explosively. The door was unguarded. Sure, the larger part of the security staff was searching the grounds for the thief, but an appropriate number had been assigned to watch the house. Had all of them run off to find the source of the cry? It made no sense. That was a beginner’s mistake, and Jack hired only experts. Why would he have idiots watching his back?
He hadn’t. This was simple, pure betrayal. Sam growled, remembering the twisted wreck of Jack’s car, the attacker in Chloe’s bedroom. Who else might be creeping around Oakwood’s halls? He cursed again, this time long and low.
Sam bounded up the stairs, feet silent despite his size. He reached the second floor of Jack’s house, then the third. As he reached the landing, he froze, listening. Chloe? Was that her voice he’d heard? He ghosted forward, eyes searching the shadows for her door. It was shut, but where was Kenyon? A curse on that flea-ridden mutt!
* * *
After she’d locked Sam out of her bedroom, Chloe had tried to go to sleep. If she’d let herself analyze her thoughts, she would have realized she was too scared to sleep—but she couldn’t go there.
If she did, she’d feel like a victim, and she’d felt that too many times before. When her parents died. When she’d been abandoned on what should have been the happiest day of her life—there was a special place in hell for grooms that backed out minutes before it was time to walk down the aisle. No, she wasn’t adding this episode to that box of extra-special horrific memories. She flatly refused.
Instead, maybe she’d blame her insomnia on Sam for putting her hormones in overdrive. What girl could sleep after an eyeful of that white T-shirt and all the smoldering manly goodness underneath? And that sculpted mouth... The thought of Sam made her skin feel itchy in that so-good-it-hurt kind of way.
He was just outside, watching over her. He was scary, but he was on her side.
And he was panting. The sound was faint, muffled by the thick door, but in the absolute silence of the middle of the night she heard—something very weird.
What on earth? Chloe sprang off the bed and raced to the door, pressing her ear to the heavy oak panel. She definitely heard heavy breathing, just outside. A chill crept over her skin as her imagination painted bizarre explanations for the sound. The more bizarre the better, because she was full up on real-life horror.
What on earth could make that noise? Sam gasping his last breath as he was strangled by a giant squid? Zombie Sam slavering at the keyhole, hungry for her brains? Now I’m never going to sleep. Ever.
Cautiously, she dragged the chair from under the knob and cracked the door open. She peered into the hallway, but it was too dark to make anything out. This was so weird. No one was watching her door. Irritation niggled around the edges of her fear. Now that she wanted Sam to be lurking outside, where the blazes was he?
“Hello?” she said tentatively, clutching the thick folds of her terry cloth robe around her.
She thought she heard a clicking sound and stared hard at the darkness. There was only one thing that made that sound—animal toenails. Panting plus clicking equaled dog, not squids or zombies. Boring, but a relief.
But what dog? Jack had owned many pets over the years, but there were none at Oakwood right now. He’d been gone too much these past few years to look after one. Did the dog belong to the security guys? If so, why hadn’t she heard the footsteps of its handler?
Maybe a stray was wandering the halls. After the intruder incident, the security guards were extra-jumpy. If the dog wasn’t theirs, they’d probably shoot it on sight. That thought wasn’t bearable. She had to be sure the animal was okay.
Chloe quietly thumped her head on the edge of the door. This so wasn’t her night.
Silently, not quite sure if she was being bold or stupid, Chloe crept into the hallway and glided for the staircase landing. She flicked on the light switch, the glow from the row of overhead chandeliers banishing the shadows. She looked down the hall, lit by a pool of light every few yards all the way to the end of the corridor. No one—with two or four feet—was in sight.
In the cold, clear sixty-watt light, Chloe felt tired and a bit ridiculous. She had to be hearing things. Surely, after the attack earlier that night, security had been drawn too tight for a mouse to get through, let alone something big enough to pant like that.
But the guy who jumped you got in. She’d forced the event away from her imagination. Just a tiny bit. Just enough to function. But now the feel of her attacker’s hands forcing her into the mattress flooded back to her, and she shuddered violently.
Suddenly, the noise she’d heard seemed far more sinister.
“Sam!” This time she said it with a lot more force. “Sam?”
Silence.
She took a few steps down the hall where she thought she’d heard the clicking toenails. Then she saw it: a gray tail disappearing around the corner. So there is a dog! Pulling her robe closer, she hurried after it. It was headed toward one of the big third-floor bathrooms. The good news was, if she managed to herd the dog in there, it should be easy to shut the door and call someone to deal with it.