AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Silver Lake,” he said, referring to the information on Caris’s whereabouts that Nick sent to his phone.
She hurried to keep up with him as he rushed toward her car. “Why?”
“She’s there,” he said tightly.
“Tasha?”
“Caris,” he said. “And with any luck, Tasha, too.”
“Then we need the team. We need—”
He stopped, taking her arm. “I need your car, Sara. I do not need the team. And I can’t have you accompanying me.”
“I don’t care what you need. I’m going with you.”
“She is dangerous.”
“So are you,” Sara countered.
“I’ll not argue about this.”
“Good. But you’re going to be wasting a lot of time if you don’t take me with you.”
He stopped, his focus utterly on her. “Why?”
It was a question she couldn’t answer, because she hadn’t been thinking, only reacting. She knew why he was going—what he would do to Caris if he found her. But she couldn’t fight him on this. “It’s Tasha,” she said, simply. “And she’s important to you.”
As she watched, he closed his eyes, then swallowed. When he looked at her again, he was all steel. “You come,” he said. “But you stay in the car.”
Even in the middle of the night, it took them twenty minutes to get from North Hollywood to Silver Lake, and Luke was cursing when he ran the car up over the curb and plowed to a stop in front of the house. He aimed a single finger at her. “Stay,” he said, and she swore that she would, a promise she immediately found hard to keep.
She knew almost nothing about Caris other than the brief dossier Blair had run for her after Luke had first mentioned the name. There’d been little information. She was a former lover of Tiberius, but they’d had a falling out a few years prior. Rumors were thick, but the most likely suggestion was that she’d hooked up with a werewolf, which screamed of the political intrigue that Luke had told her about. The bottom line, though, was that Caris was a vampire, and she’d apparently aligned herself with scum like Stemmons. She was killing, and she was dangerous, and she wasn’t constrained by hematite bands.
So, yeah, Sara was worried.
She waited, her eyes on the house. The quiet house. The way-too-quiet house.
Hell.
She opened the door, not at all sure what she was going to do. She knew she had to see what was going on in there. And as soon as she did, the front windows shattered, and she saw Luke silhouetted in the void.
“Luke!” She raced toward him, not thinking of the danger until she’d burst through the front door. But there was no danger. There was only Luke in a fury, a chair thrust high over his head as he hurled it through the darkened room at the far wall, where it shattered into pieces. “Luke, stop!”
He turned, eyes wild, his face contorted. She stopped, eyeing him warily, realizing quickly that the house was empty. Tasha wasn’t here. Neither was Caris.
He’d run out of hope, and the serpent inside was furious.
“We’ll find her,” she said, moving toward him, this man who had once held her so tenderly, who now burned with the loss of one he loved. She understood the depth of his rage; she felt it herself every time she thought of the order that had stolen her father from her. Tasha, however, wasn’t yet gone. “We’ll find her,” she repeated, and this time she moved in close, ignoring the prickling of fear to cup his face in her hands, letting him know that she was there, and, yes, that she understood.
Slowly, she felt the tension ease from him, and as he collapsed to his knees on the floor, she went down with him, cradling his head against her chest. “Sara,” he whispered. “I thought she would be here.”
“We’ll find her. I bet Division has a lead. We’ll follow it up. Luke,” she said, her heart breaking for him, “we’ll do whatever it takes.”
She tipped his face up to hers and waited until he met her gaze. The beast was there, trembling beneath the surface, but Luke was in control now. Barely. Sara felt a shiver of fear but didn’t release him. She stroked her fingers over his cheek.
“We will find her,” she promised again. And then, as naturally as breathing, she bent forward and kissed him.
She felt the tension ease from his body. Felt his fingers twine in her hair as he deepened the kiss, wanting more.
