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I grinned and squeezed his hands. The next thing I knew, I had him backed against the desk with my lips firmly planted on his. I hadn’t even thought before moving. Oh god, what the hell did I just do?!
Nick seemed damn near frozen in surprise—not exactly kissing me back, but not resisting, either. A small and crazy part of me hoped he’d return the kiss, but the rest wanted to run.
Majority rules. I scrambled back and gave a shaky laugh. “That’ll teach you to be offended.” I knew my statement didn’t make any sense, but neither did me kissing him.
His eyes were wide with bewildered shock, but he recovered enough to give me a mischievous smile. “I think I should be offended more often.”
A snicker escaped me. I needed to leave before I did something stupid. Stupider. “Gotta go. Call me if you need support with your dad. I got your back.”
I didn’t wait for a response, and hit the stairwell at a run.
Chapter 28
What the hell, Angel?
Outside, I waited for my pulse to return to a normal rhythm and struggled to make sense of what just happened. The obvious suspect was the V12. With it, the slightest emotion or impulse could turn into action. Annoyance could become rage. A craving might result in me trying to pry someone’s skull open. But what would prompt me to kiss Nick?
Glancing back at the building, I spied him in the window—for the split second before he jerked back as though he hadn’t been watching me. Despite everything, I grinned. I’d have done the exact same thing.
On the street, a car blared twangy country music from open windows as it cruised past. A dog barked in complaint then set
tled as the ballad about the singer’s guitar faded into the distance. Farther away, sirens and the uneven strains of a marching band heralded the start of the parade. Crap. Time to get my ass moving. The Tucker Point PD was great about waiting until the first float was within spitting distance before barricading cross streets, but if I missed the window I’d have to wait over an hour for the parade to pass or backtrack halfway across town.
As I hurried to my car, a man wearing a plastic half-mask and a green satin Krewe of Chiron shirt wandered unsteadily into the parking lot. Drunk as a skunk, I decided. Dude must’ve missed getting on his float in time, and now he was trying to cut across the block to intercept the parade. Too bad the idiot was going the wrong way to catch it.
My this-ain’t-right senses tingled, and though the man was still a good twenty feet from me, I angled to give him an even wider berth. Why did he have his mask on when he wasn’t on a float?
Alarm bells sounded in my head. The barking dog. I shot a quick look toward the street, saw a silver Ford Explorer parked so that the corner of the building shielded it from the view of anyone exiting the morgue. In the back seat, Marla glared at me through the open window.
And it was Dante Rosario behind the mask, a Taser in his hand.
My heart slammed against my ribs. He wanted to capture me for Saberton and would likely succeed unless I came up with a brilliant plan real damn fast. No way could I beat him to my car or the morgue door. If I tried to flee in any other direction, Marla would be out that window and after me in a heartbeat. I was hungry enough that my parasite probably wouldn’t be much help against his Taser. At least he didn’t have a zombie-tranq gun. I’d have no chance against—
Tranq.
I sprinted toward Nick’s car, leaped up onto the hood and over to the passenger side. The tranq gun still rested on the seat, behind a locked door. A quick glance told me I only had seconds before Rosario reached me.
Don’t think, just do! With the help of my almost-one-hundred pounds of mass, I smashed my elbow through the window. Pain shot up my arm, fierce and hot, but I pushed through it and grabbed the gun. Rosario rounded the front of the car. Glass grated against bone in my arm as I jerked the gun up and at him.
He skidded to an awkward stop barely five feet away, hands spread. “Whoa whoa whoa. No need to shoot that thing.”
My finger hooked onto the trigger. “Yeah, well you don’t need that joy buzzer of yours. Drop it and back the fuck off.”
Rosario went still for several seconds, no doubt wondering if the tranqs in my gun were zombie-grade—lethal to humans. I could survive a Taser jolt, but if he guessed wrong and I got a shot off, he’d be dead.
To my relief, he apparently came to the same conclusion and slowly placed the Taser on the ground.
“Kick it away,” I ordered. Jaw tight, he grudgingly complied, even as a soft thud reached me from the street. Still covering him, I shifted position to see the dog out of the vehicle and loping toward us. “Keep her back, or I drop you both!”
“Easy, Angel,” he said in the same tone he used with Marla and made a small motion with one hand. The dog stopped and sat, but her eyes stayed glued on me. “No harm, no foul. We can both back off.”
“I don’t think so,” I snapped, mind racing. I’d wanted Tribe security to grab Rosario, and here I literally had the asshole in my sights. But how could I possibly take him prisoner—and keep him that way—all by my lonesome? Especially with Marla poised to have herself a juicy Angel-snack.
Frustrated and on edge, I punched the tranq gun toward Rosario, pleased to get a tiny flinch out of him. “How about you tell me why a Saberton security fuckwad helped Kristi Charish escape the Dallas lab, and then went on to leak sensitive company videos.”
His split-second jaw drop confirmed that my suspicion was dead-on. Damn it, I needed answers, and this was a lousy place for an interrogation. Maybe I could force him into the trunk of my car and . . .
The thought trailed off as a breeze wrapped his brain-scent around me. My stress woke the hunger. If I tranq the dog first, I can tackle Rosario and crack his skull open on the asphalt, then—
