Chapter 41
Minutes pa.s.sed in tense silence as he and Quinn worked side by side.
"I think we got them all," Quinn whispered.
Zane looked at him. "Now tell me what happened."
"Is anybody injured?" Portia's voice came from behind him.
Zane whirled around and glared at her. "I told you to stay in the car."
She planted her hands on her hips. "I wanted to see if I could help."
Portia craned her neck to look past him, but he simply grabbed her elbow and led her outside. He could sense Quinn behind him and cringed, hoping that his friends wouldn't be able to connect Portia to the smell of his visitor from the day before.
"Hey, Zane, don't you wanna introduce us?" Quinn planted himself next to Zane and smiled at Portia.
"Portia, that's Quinn," he grunted reluctantly.
When Quinn shook her hand and inhaled, Zane noticed his nostril flaring. A sideways glance confirmed that Quinn indeed recognized her scent as that of the woman in his bed the day before. Well, maybe all could still be saved. Quinn never needed to know who she was.
"Nice to meet you, Quinn. Are you a bodyguard like Zane?"
He nodded. "One of the best. And you?"
Portia opened her mouth to respond.
"Quinn, can we talk about the explosion?" Zane tried to steer the conversation into another direction.
"Oh, I'm Zane's a.s.signment," Portia talked over him.
s.h.i.+t, he shouldn't have risked taking her along.
"a.s.signment?" Quinn's head turned slowly and his gaze crashed into Zane's glare. He lowered his voice. "This is your charge?"
The warning was clear in the tone of Quinn's voice. After what he'd seen last night, he would a.s.sume the worst. "It's not what it looks like."
"Where have I heard that before?"
"Can we talk about the explosion now?" Zane gritted between his teeth.
Quinn narrowed his eyes. "Fine. But this discussion isn't over."
Police sirens blared in the distance.
"Let's get out of here before the police arrive," Quinn suggested.
Zane couldn't agree more and pointed toward his Hummer. "Get in."
As soon as they'd all climbed in the car, Zane started the engine and drove down the Embarcadero. At a quiet spot, he parked the car and turned in his seat, looking at Quinn who occupied the back seat.
"Now give me the lowdown. What happened?"
"The locker was rigged with an explosive device. I smelled it, but that stupid station agent pulled the handle before I could stop him and the whole thing blew apart. We were lucky n.o.body got injured. I think your a.s.sa.s.sin planned for every eventuality."
"a.s.sa.s.sin?" Portia echoed. "Somebody is trying to kill you?"
Zane turned his attention to her. He shouldn't have brought her. There was no reason for her to know all this. Yet, at the same time he wanted her to know what his life was like, the dangers he faced daily, the dangers she would face if she were with him. Was it so she would run the other way, or was he trying to gather sympathy from her? What the f.u.c.k was he trying to do?
He shrugged. "There's always somebody out there who wants to kill me. What else is new?"
"But, that's terrible." Her hand clamped over his forearm. s.h.i.+t, she was offering sympathy. He should have known that this kind of news wouldn't make her shy away from him.
"It's not all," Quinn added, undeterred. "Somebody was watching. I saw him just after the explosion."
"Human or vampire?" Zane asked.
"Vampire, possibly Hybrid. I couldn't tell from that distance. But he saw me, and he knew I was trying to get at the contents of the locker."
Zane clenched his jaw. "Do you think they sent him after Brandt didn't come back?"
"Very possible. They probably knew what he was planning and had instructions to come look for him if he didn't come back."
Zane was afraid that Quinn was right. "Then they know now that we're onto them. They're warned."
"Who are they?" Portia interrupted.
She already knew too much. He wasn't going to tell her anything else. "You don't need to know." Then he looked back at Quinn. "Anything salvageable from the locker?"
"I lifted a cell phone. It's all mangled and melted."
Zane twisted his lips. "If he left his cell phone in the locker, I'm guessing he rigged the locker himself."
"Could have been the vampire I saw after the explosion."
"We both know how these things work: you go on a mission, but you don't want to be traced in case things don't work out. So you stash away any items that could identify you or where you came from, and you protect them."
"With
"Right. If everything goes well, you disable the bomb and get your stuff back. If it doesn't, you make sure your enemies get blown to bits if they find the locker." Zane made a movement with his hands, indicating an explosion.
"I would tend to agree with you. Unfortunately, there's no way to know now if the bomb he planted could be easily disabled by Brandt. Therefore, we can't rule out the possibility that the vampire I saw planted the cell phone and the bomb so we'd get a false lead."
"In either case, we need to follow this lead."
Quinn nodded in agreement. "I'll give the cell to Thomas. Maybe he can get some info from the chip, if he can pry if out of that mess."
"It's worth a try. Can you have him look at it without telling him what it's for?" All he needed right now was Scanguards finding out what s.h.i.+t he was in right now. Besides, this was private. It had nothing to do with Scanguards.
"He owes me a favor. He won't ask any questions."
"Then do it." Zane started the engine.
Even after Zane had dropped Quinn off, Portia's head was still spinning. She realized how much of a sheltered life she'd really lived so far, because while she was certain that her father, like any vampire, probably had enemies, or had to hide from people, she'd never felt the kind of danger that Quinn had just escaped. And that Zane might still be facing.
"Somebody is trying to kill you?"
Zane gave her a sideways glance before training his eyes back on the street, driving much slower than before. "Wouldn't be a first."
"But why? What did you do?"
"Why does it have to be something I did?"
Portia let the words sink in. "Oh. Then what do they want from you?"
"You don't want to know."
"I do."
"Let me rephrase that: it's none of your business." Despite the reprimand, his voice was even.
"What happened to the a.s.sa.s.sin Quinn mentioned?"
"I shouldn't have brought you with me."
"That's not an answer. So, what happened to him? Did he get away?" She wouldn't rest until she found out what was going on.
"What do you think?" he challenged.
A s.h.i.+ver ran down her arms, creating goose b.u.mps under the sleeves of her sweater. Instinct answered the question for her. "You killed him."
"Does that shock you?"
She swallowed and contemplated her next words. Was she shocked? Disgusted? Afraid? "No."
Zane turned his gaze toward her, clearly stunned. "I killed him without a second thought. And I would do it again."
"If you're trying to scare me, it's not working." h.e.l.l, why wasn't it? Why was she not afraid that if Zane could so easily kill somebody, he wouldn't hurt her? Hadn't she p.i.s.sed him off often enough to warrant his wrath? Wasn't that reason enough why she should be careful around him now?
When he simply grunted to himself and concentrated on traffic, she slid her palm onto his thigh. Instantly, his muscles s.h.i.+fted under her touch.
"s.h.i.+t, Portia, stop that."
She couldn't. Her body was on fire, the knowledge that he was in danger making her quest to have him even more urgent. "Are you gonna hurt me if I don't?"
She noticed how tightly he clenched his jaw together as if to ward off some invisible pain.
"You could pull over somewhere and lock the doors. n.o.body will see us. The windows are tinted. n.o.body would ever know what we did."
Zane slammed on the breaks and yanked the car to the curb. His eyes glaring red, he grasped her hand and pulled it off his thigh. "You're playing with fire, Portia. Can't you get that into your head? I'm a killer, I'm brutal, and I can't be controlled. You don't want me."
"I do," she whispered, ignoring her thundering heart and her galloping pulse. More than ever, she wanted to scream, but the last remaining shred of pride she had wouldn't let her.
"You shouldn't, baby girl. I'm no good."
The sad look he gave her tore her heart in two. And whenever he called her 'baby girl', something inside her just melted, even if he didn't mean it as an endearment but derogatorily, as a way to put her in her place.
Instinctively, she raised her palm and reached for his face, wanting to stroke his cheek and show him that he too deserved love. But he was too quick; he pulled back and slipped the Hummer in gear.
She was crazy, but now that she knew he was in danger, she felt this inexplicable urge to protect him. It was stupid, of course. After all, he was a bodyguard and there to protect her, not the other way around. Besides, he didn't want her help. His abrasive behavior was clear indication that he wanted to keep his distance from her.
"Can we go for a drive?"
"Why?" he retorted.
"I don't want to go home yet. I feel cooped up there."
"I understand."
Surprised at his response she looked at his profile. Maybe they weren't that different after all. They were both essentially alone. And while she didn't have an a.s.sa.s.sin gunning for her, she had a deadline looming over her head that felt just as urgent. Five weeks to her birthday and the day her body would set into its final form, never to change again. She had choices to make: how long she wanted to keep her hair, whether she should lose a pound or two before, things that seemed trivial all of a sudden.
"What's it like to be turned?" She'd been born into it, but for a vampire like Zane, who'd been human once, it had to have been a different experience.
The knuckles of Zane's hands grew white as he gripped the steering wheel tighter. "It's h.e.l.l."
Her heart clenched instinctively. "I'm sorry."
"Why?"
"Ever heard of compa.s.sion?" Could he not even accept that she was sorry for the pain he'd gone through? That she wished so much to be able to soothe it?
Zane ignored her remark. "I survived. But they've paid for it."
"Paid?" She held her breath, not sure whether she wanted to know or not.
He graced her with a sideways glance. "The men who turned me."
"There was more than one?" She didn't quite understand.
"There was a group of them. They're dead now, all but one of them." Then he sought her eyes, locked his gaze with hers, and continued, "I killed them, one by one, slowly and painfully."
Portia gasped, her heart stuttering to a complete halt. She wanted to say something, but no words came over her lips. He'd killed the men who'd turned him. Men? "I don't understand. Did several vampires turn you?"
He shook his head and looked back at traffic. They were driving through a golf course now, but Portia didn't look out the window to enjoy the view.
"There were five of them. And they were human."
"But-"