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Cain’s knee stilled. “Yeah?”
My mouth twisted. It went against the grain to use my son as a pawn. If Eden ever found out, she’d never forgive me. But Esposito had backed us into a corner.
“My spawn,” I said.
27
Eden
The man behind the wheel wasn’t Mr. Jones, it was a stranger, a little younger than Mr. Jones, with thick brown hair.
Wariness sheeted up my spine. I leaned forward. “Where’s Mr. Jones?”
The driver’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “He had a family emergency. They sent me instead. That okay?”
Something about the way he was acting made me uncomfortable. He was too casual, trying too hard to reassure me.
“Of course it is.” I slid the phone from my jacket pocket, careful to keep it out of sight of the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry about Mr. Jones, though. Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” the driver replied, his eyes on the road again. “I’ll tell him you asked, though.”
I nodded and flashed what I hoped was an unconcerned smile, then turned sideways and pretended to look out the window, trying to open the phone without the driver seeing.
In the window, I glimpsed a dark shimmer. It took me a beat to realize it was a reflection, that the shimmer wasn’t outside the SUV, it was inside.
With me.
My heart kicked into overdrive. A vampire, coming out of the shadows. I jerked around in time to see a man in a pinstriped suit and a short hipster ponytail appear on the backseat.
Forget hiding that I was texting. I shoved the phone in front of my face and it opened. I desperately typed a short text to Talon.
EDEN: Help. Vampir—
I never pressed Send.
With superhuman speed, the ponytailed man plucked the phone from my hand, deleted the text, and powered it off.
My lungs compressed. I lunged for the door handle, then halted. We were going at least thirty-five miles an hour.
The baby. You can’t jump. Not at this speed.
I swallowed sickly. Why hadn’t I kept that freaking switchblade with me? It was still in the bottom of my sewing box. But I hadn’t wanted to give Talon another reason not to trust me. I’d even wondered if it could be some kind of a test.
The vampire or dhampir—I didn’t know which—produced a syringe from his suit pocket.
What the—? Panicked, I worked frantically at the handle, but the child lock had been activated and the door wouldn’t open.
“Let go of the door.” He spoke in Québécois-accented English, low and stern.
I released the handle, my eyes on the fluid-filled syringe. “What’s that?”
“Something to put you to sleep.”
Every hair on my body lifted. My heart battered at my chest with small, terrified fists.
“No! You can’t.” My fingers fumbled with the seatbelt buckle, trying to disengage it. “Please—I’m pregnant. You could hurt the baby.”
“This won’t hurt your spawn.” Cool fingers pried mine from the buckle.
