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“It’s her,” Rodney said, and Bones’s tension popped like an exploded balloon. “She’s alone,” Rodney added. “No tail yet.”
Moments later, Bones’s cell vibrated with an incoming text from the burner mobile he’d given Cat.See you at the place.
Bones vaulted up. “Thanks, Charles! Ring you later.”
“Go get her,” his mate said.
Bones didn’t bother retrieving his Ducati. He was too keyed up. So, he flew. Before Cat had left, they’d arranged to meet at an old drive-in theater that was only one additional turn from her usual route home, so with that and the abandoned theater’s privacy, it was perfect.
Cat left her car running when she exited it near the former outdoor movie screen that was now rippled in so many places you could hardly read the graffiti across it. The old concession stand was thirty meters away from it, and only a metal shell with sparse bits of plaster stubbornly clinging to it.
Bones stepped out in front of it.
Cat smiled when she saw him, and then gasped when he was suddenly crushing her to him.
“Sometimes, I forget how fast you are,” she said with a choked laugh.
Bones forced himself to let her go. It was that, or hold her even tighter because right now, he couldn’t touch her andnotclutch her to him. Fretting about what Don would do to her had brought back too many memories of being helpless while she was in constant danger these past years.
“I missed you,” he said simply.
She gave a lopsided smile. “Me, too, but it went pretty well. Don was thrown when I didn’t deny or apologize for dating a vampire. Then, he accused you of using me to infiltrate his operation. I told him I’d met youbeforeI joined the team since Tate didn’t recognize you, but Don still went on about how ‘fraternizing’ was a serious security breach. I had to point out that no one else on the team had ever gotten interrogated over who they dated. Hell, Juan admitted to sleeping with over two hundred women these past four years, and any one of them could’ve been a vampire or a vamp operative.”
“True,” Bones said. Very. The last woman Juan had been with had cloned Juan’s mobile on Bones’s instructions, not that he shared that with Cat.
“After I said that, Don got all sputtery about how the team was worth more than my sex life, so I told him if he didn’t think I cared about my team, too, then he could fire me. Oh, and I told them you were only a hundred years old and weaker than me, so if youwerescamming me for information, I’d kill you.”
“That was enough for them, then?” Bones asked while tampering down his regret that Don hadn’t merely fired her.
“No.” She slanted a look at him. “Don insisted that I get tested to prove I hadn’t been drinking vampire blood.”
Bones snorted. “Theydoknow what runs through your veins, don’t they?”
Cat waved that away. “Don’s extra paranoid about me or anyone else amping up their abilities with vampire blood. Someone Don knew way back when did that and then went all dark afterward, apparently. Don wouldn’t say who, though.”
Bones had a very good idea, but he held his tongue.Not until it’s confirmed.
“Yes, well, Don doesn’t trust easily,” was what Bones said. “Children who come from abusive homes usually don’t.”
Her eyes widened. “I didn’t know Don was abused as a child. How’d you find that out?”
Bones shrugged. “He covered his tracks very well, but not everything Don tried to erase about himself stayed erased.”
Especially from someone sending out dozens of vampires to do in-person interviews as well as comb through old photos on non-computerized library microfiche. People were so reliant on the internet nowadays that they forgot there were other ways to keep records.
“And the rest of your team?” Bones said to distract Cat from asking more about Don.
She grunted. “Juan was worried about me, but he took it okay. Tate called me a necrophiliac, which is very hypocritical considering he tried to sleep with me once before.”
Bones didn’t let his jealousy show.Of course he had. Cat’s picture by Tate’s bedside had already told him that.
“Don’s going to start surveilling me again,” Cat said with a sigh. “Hidden bugs in the house, phone tapping, car tapping, shadowing, the works. If he wasn’t so committed to avenging people who’ve been victimized by the undead, I wouldn’t put up with it, but maybe Don needs to see for himself that I’m not going to betray the mission regardless of who I date.”
Sadly not, Bones thought. Don didn’t deserve her loyalty. He certainly hadn’t shown her the same.
“But,” Cat said in a brighter tone. “I still have vacation days left, so I’m going to try forgetting about that. I know our dinner plans were ruined, but…want to try something else?”
Yes. Just not now. Bones had to prep to implement his other, far less favorable option of keeping her safe: manipulating Don versus killing him.
