Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Evan shifted his feet under his butt, and as he pushed his weight upright, he braced himself for stiffness. There was none. He might as well have been doing yoga for the last twelve hours instead of sitting in the same position on the hard floor.
Standing over the woman and her chair, he focused on her wedding ring. It was simple and gold, a symbol of the life she had had before. He wondered again if she had ID on her. He hadn’t looked. That seemed like an invasion of her privacy, although now that he thought about it, he felt an obligation to let her people know.
Goddamn Mickey, putting him in this position.
He glanced over to the duffle bag full of weapons. No way she was going to fit in that, not without him butchering her, and that was a no-go for so many reasons. Messy, for one, plus he didn’t want to see her without her clothes on.
Protecting the dignity of his dead was important.
“I can’t keep you.” He shook his head. “You’re going to…”
Well, the whole rot thing seemed an indelicate subject to bring up to her.
The car, he thought. Start by getting the car.
With a sense of sad resolution, he pushed his hand into the front pocket of his stolen pants and took out Mickey’s keys. Three nights ago—God, had it really only been seventy-two hours? It felt like twelve years—he’d driven back from that property in the sticks and parked on Market to go tell Uncle what the enforcer had done to Mickey.
He wasn’t sure whether the shitty beater was even going to be where he’d left it, and if it wasn’t?
Guess he was going to have another thing to work through.
“I’ll be back in a little bit.”
He almost blew her a kiss. But that gold band was a reminder she wasn’t his to do that kind of goodbye for.
At best, she was nothing more than an office wife to him, someone whose connection to him was work-based—and yeah, sure, the mind might wander from time to time into other areas, but ultimately, the boundaries of their relationship were established and immutable.
As he slipped out of the apartment, he congratulated himself on his mental maturity. Mickey couldn’t have defined such lines, much less stuck to them. His cousin would have fucked a tree if he could have found a knothole.
Descending the building’s common stairwell, he actually smelled the remnants of some people’s dinners, and the fact that the vague aromas didn’t stimulate his stomach in any way was a reminder of how long it had been since he’d used the bathroom. The stuff going on with his body wasn’t natural, it wasn’t normal.
Just like carrying on a one-sided conversation with a stiff and thinking they were a candidate for best friends with benefits.
But this was his life now, wasn’t it.
Down on the street, he looked both ways, and tried to remember where he needed to go. Oh, right. Market.
God, he hoped the car was where he’d left it.
Out of habit, he burrowed into the coat that concealed the weapons he’d hid at his waistband and under one arm, thanks to the female soldier’s holster collection. But the cold didn’t register on his skin, and as he passed a lamppost, he imagined himself just like the metal stalk of the fixture, impervious to freeze or fire.
He wanted to go find Uncle right now, and he started fashioning an if-this-then-that series of choices for murdering the man. He’d been a little sloppy the night before, popping shots at that car all crazy and off his rocker. He’d have done better to wait until Uncle had gotten out and started walking toward that side door.
Except the vampire had been coming at him, and that—
Ping!
That was the closest thing he could approximate to the sensation that struck him in the chest: It was similar to what had driven him to the bridges the night before, a sudden registry on an air traffic controller’s radar screen.
Stopping on the sidewalk, his head cranked to the right.
His body was next, following the direction of his eyes, a missile directed by a target in its sights.
There was no question, no choice.
Evan changed directions and just had to go with it.
* * *
Technically, Shuli was out of a job.
So, yeah, he probably shouldn’t have been in the field.
But come on, people walked the streets of Caldwell after dark for a whole host of reasons. They were going somewhere, like a club—or maybe home after having been out. They were leaving somewhere, like a date that hadn’t ended well, or a hookup that had. They had a broken-down car, a lost dog, a kid who was rebelling.
And he wasn’t in combat dress or anything.
Okay, fine. His hard-core footwear didn’t exactly go with his silk suit or his Alexander McQueen full-length coat—the one that he and the Brother Butch had each sprung for during their last buying trip to Manhattan. There also might have been some click-click-bang-bang accessories that were judiciously hidden because, hey, there was no reason to cause alarm to civilians of either the vampire or the human variety. Plus, he was allowed to protect himself!