by D. Laine
I positioned my camera and zoomed in. My finger hesitated over the shutter button. Was he looking at me? Again, the shades covering his eyes made it impossible to know for certain, but I could almost feel the warmth of his gaze through the lens.
I pushed the shutter, capturing the picture, before lowering my camera. My skin tingled, and I shook my head at my own girlishness. Since when was I the blushing type?
“Have time for another one?”
My spine stiffened at the familiar voice behind me, and I slowly turned to find Kyle’s eyes on me. In his hand was a rock sample.
“Sure,” I answered stiffly and pulled out the paper I would need him to fill out for my records.
He took it wordlessly and scribbled his information down while I took the photograph. I waited patiently, and handed him the specimen once he was finished. It was the most civil exchange we had experienced since our breakup. That changed when Kyle returned the paper to me, and his hand snatched mine before I could move away.
“We need to talk,” he told me in a low voice.
“No, Kyle, we don’t.” I tried to yank my hand free, but couldn’t move with the grip he had on me.
His gaze flicked over my shoulder to make sure no one was near. I already knew he had me alone.
“You have no idea what you’re doing, Thea,” he sneered.
“I dumped you, Kyle. That’s all. Just move on and—”
“Move on?” He barked a bitter laugh. “You think that’s all—”
His eyes drifted over my head at the same time I felt the arrival of someone behind me. I didn’t need to look to know who it was. I felt Dylan’s presence like an unmovable rock at my back, holding me steady when instinct screamed at me to run.
The two quietly gauged each other as I wobbled between them. Finally, Dylan’s voice rumbled from over my shoulder. “You really don’t want to go at this again, do you, preppy?”
Kyle smirked as his hard gaze slid back to me. “This guy? Really going for the downgrade with this one, Thea.”
I opened my mouth to correct him on what he wrongfully assumed when Dylan’s arm brushed against my shoulder. My mouth stayed firmly shut as he stepped around me.
“Not that her extracurricular activities are any of your business now,” Dylan growled, “but I can assure you that anyone would be an upgrade from an abusive, self-entitled prick like yourself.”
Damn. I had to bite my lip to fight the smile threatening to spread across my face. Over Dylan’s shoulder, I watched Kyle’s face turn an unfortunate shade of purple. The vein in his forehead pulsed from barely contained rage. His hands fisted at his sides and I was certain that had Dylan not manhandled him twice already, he would have taken a swing by now. Only his warranted fear of Dylan held him back.
Hell, Dylan was standing up for me and even I was intimidated by him right now.
It was no wonder Professor Thompson spotted the tension growing between the two of them from across the clearing. Still neither of them backed down as the professor forced his way into the danger zone.
His large, calloused hand came down on Kyle’s shoulder. “Take a walk, son.” Turning authoritative eyes on Dylan, he added, “I believe you have some samples that need to be bagged and documented.”
He waited until Dylan responded with a curt nod before he glanced at me. “I believe we’re done for the day, Miss Collier. I thank you for your willingness to assist us again. Please don’t let the misguided actions of a couple of knuckleheads sway you from participating in future field studies.”
“No, sir,” I laughed softly. My humor dried up quickly when I spotted the dark look on Kyle’s face as he backed away. Looking at him, I answered the professor, “No one can keep me from doing what I want to do.”
“Good.” The professor nodded, clearly not catching the hidden meaning behind my words to Kyle. Turning away, he shouted out to the rest of the class, “Van leaves in five minutes!”
Beside me, Dylan wiggled his fingers at Kyle. My ex darted a glance at the professor. Then, possibly for the first time in his life, he turned his back.
I breathed a sigh—half relief and half surprise—as he walked away. “Wow. Never thought I’d ever see that happen.”
“What? See him get put in his place?”
I tried unsuccessfully to contain a laugh. “Well, there is that, but I’ve never seen him walk away from an altercation before. It’s got to be a first.”
“Yeah, well, I’m notorious for making people do the unexpected.”
My lips curved into a reluctant smile as I slowly turned to face Dylan. “Was that an innuendo?”
He flashed me a crooked grin. “It’s whatever you want it to be.”
Was he really flirting with me? I tried to study his face for a hint, but couldn’t gauge anything without seeing his eyes.
“Take your shades off,” I ordered.
His head tilted slightly to the side. “Why?”
“Because I can’t see your eyes.”
“And you need to see my eyes because . . .”
“Because I haven’t figured out how to read you yet.” I reached out, slowly inching my fingers toward the rim of his glasses, while giving him time to register my intentions.
“Go ahead, Thea.” He gave me his permission. “I’m an open book.”
I plucked the shades from his face and earned an up close look at his eyes. Rather, into his eyes. In an instant, I was transfixed. They were a bright, almost crystalline-green. The contrast to his dark hair and tanned complexion made them more pronounced, and I wondered how I’d never noticed them before.
Because this was the first I had seen him in daylight, I quickly answered my own question. My gaze flicked over the details of his face, the things the sun permitted me to notice for the first time. The faint scar on his left cheekbone. Another one on his jaw, barely visible through the hint of dark stubble. Smooth, supple lips twisted into a grin that had grown familiar to me by now.
“Well?” His voice passed his slightly parted lips as a low rumble. “What do you see, Thea?”
A night of endless passion. Vivian’s words raced through my mind, causing a current of heat to shoot through me. It settled in the most uncomfortable of places—especially when I was in a public location, and still held captive under Dylan’s penetrating gaze.
Instead of admitting anything resembling the truth, I said, “I don’t know yet.”
His grin broadened like he knew I was lying, and dammit if that didn’t make me even hotter. The sultriness behind his next words nearly buckled my knees. “Anything I can do to help you with that?”
Jesus. It was like he knew what he was doing to me. Was that another innuendo? I was pretty sure it was. He knew my body was on fire just from standing in front of him.
He probably lit entire rooms on fire when he walked in.
I was in way over my head, but for some reason I couldn’t understand, I wanted to know what it would be like to experience something that intense. I wanted to yank him behind the closest tree, wrap my legs around his waist and . . . live.
“I, um . . .” I stammered. “I have to, um . . .”
“You have to go?” he guessed.
My finger flicked in the direction I thought my car was parked. “Yeah. And you . . .”
“Have to go,” he finished with a chuckle. “Right. I heard something about that.”
“Yeah.” I brushed past him, fully intending to get in my car and drive away. My camera flung over my shoulder, I hurried past him.
“Hey, Thea,” he called from behind me.
“Huh?” I breathed when I turned.
He wagged his finger over his shoulder. “Your car is that way.”
I looked in the direction he pointed, and spotted the trail that led to the parking lot. Where I had parked my car behind the university van. In the opposite direction I had been walking. Great.
Way to look like an even bigger spaz.
“Right,” I muttered before gathering all the bravado I
could muster to march past him again.
I made it two steps before he called to me again. “Hey, Thea?”
I stopped and turned with expectation.
His lips parted, then a shrill dinging noise came from his jeans pocket. Holding a finger up to me, he dug his phone out and glanced at the screen. A frown caught his lips before he looked back up at me. Whatever playfulness had been there a moment ago was gone. Along with whatever he had been about to ask me. “I’ll see you around, okay?”
“Yeah.” I smiled and turned to hurry back to my car. The pang of disappointment worsened with every step I took.
I didn’t have a lot of experience with guys. My entire college romantic life consisted of one disastrous date as a freshman, frat parties with sloppy drunks trying to cop a feel, and Kyle. But I knew some things, and I was pretty sure Dylan had been about to ask me out.
So why hadn’t he?
9
“You know, Dylan, if I didn’t know any better, I would think you weren’t all that happy to see me.”
With my head bowed, I stared at my old friend’s sneakers as she leaned against the cool brick wall beside me. Hidden in the shadows of a dark and narrow—and smelly—alley, we stood shoulder to shoulder. With my other arm pressed against the metal of a dumpster, I didn’t really have many options for escape.
I hadn’t had a chance to escape since I got back from Yellowstone earlier this afternoon, and found Maria and Marcus Chavez in my hotel room with Jake. The agency had promised another team, and while the help was needed, it would have been nice to have a little warning on which team they were sending.
I might not have a bloody nose right now had I been prepared.
“I wonder what gave you that impression,” I grumbled as I pushed a lonely pebble with my toe.
Beside me, Maria blew out a heavy breath. “Jesus, Dylan. Since when do you pussy out after hooking up with—”
“Since the brother of the girl I hooked up with caught her creeping out of my room in the middle of the night,” I promptly answered. “We used to be friends, you know, and now he wants to kill me.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Maria groaned. “He’s just upset that you skipped town right after, instead of talking to him.”
“Talk to him about how I hooked up with his sister?” I laughed. “Yeah. I’m sure that’s what he wanted. Besides, I didn’t skip town. I got sent on an assignment.” Waving my hands in front of me as wide as I could get them to go in the cramped space, I added, “Obviously, because here I am.”
Maria flashed me a smile. “And here I am.”
“Don’t remind me,” I muttered.
“No?” Maria turned to curl her slender fingers around my bicep. “I know I wouldn’t mind another—”
“Dylan, come in.” Jake’s voice over the two-way radio in my hand fortunately cut off the tail end of Maria’s statement.
“Here. Whatcha got?”
“You all set? What’s your location?”
“Ready. We’re on the corner of Main and Seventh.”
“We’re pushing him in your direction,” Jake relayed breathlessly. “He’s fast. Be on your toes.”
“Oh, we’re ready.” Maria pushed away from the wall and withdrew her gun.
“Copy that,” I responded. “He won’t get by us.”
“Sure about that, Romero?” a second voice taunted over the radio. “Seemed to me your reflexes were a little slow tonight.”
“Walking through a door and straight into a fist I didn’t know would be waiting for me doesn’t count, Chavez,” I returned. “All that means is that you were too pussy to face me like a man.”
A cold laugh crackled through the connection. “Me? I’m not the one who ran like a chicken shit the morning after—”
“Enough!” Maria yanked the radio out of my hands and bellowed at her brother on the other end. “In case you’ve forgotten, we have a vessel to kill.”
“Yeah,” Marcus grumbled. “Heads up. Watch your six. He’s turning up Seventh now. We’re on his heels.”
I straightened as the sound of feet slapping the blacktop drew closer. Putting my back to Maria’s, I watched my end of the alley while she watched hers. We waited. The sounds of the chase were funneled to us between the two buildings that sandwiched us. Close. Closer. Then . . .
“Shit!” Jake cursed over the radio.
“What is it?” I asked.
“We lost him.”
“You lost him? How in the hell do you—”
“Shhh.” Maria drove a pointy elbow into my ribs, silencing me. With her other arm, she pointed her gun into the deep shadows of the alley. Over her shoulder, she whispered, “Get your light.”
“What do you—”
“You remember they have night vision, right?” she whispered harshly. “Which means he can see us right now. I feel his eyes on me, but I can’t see him. So get your goddamn light out, and shine it into the alley so I can see this motherfucker!”
I dove my hand into the cargo pocket of my pants, and withdrew the small but powerful agency-issued flashlight. “Ready?” I asked Maria quietly.
“Now.”
I flicked on the high-powered light, chasing the shadows from the alley instantly. At the far end, two man-shaped silhouettes lifted their hands, signaling that they were not the enemy.
Maria heaved a breath. “Jesus. I almost shot my own brother.”
“I won’t tell him if you don’t tell Jake I almost just shot him, too.”
Maria snorted. “Where is he, Dylan?”
“I don’t know.” I swung the light up, moving it off of Jake and Marcus as they walked toward us. Light danced across the brick walls of the buildings, over painted-shut windows, over the edge of the roof towering two stories above us before finding the ferocious eyes of . . .
Not our target.
“Shit,” I muttered at the same time Maria screeched, “What the hell is that?”
“Tag,” I told her. Into the radio, I warned Jake and Marcus, “We’ve got a tag moving on the roof!”
And move this thing did. Outside, in the open without restrictions, it showed us what tags were capable of as it bounced from one roof to the other, disappearing from sight before popping back up closer.
“I thought you said it was a vessel!” I bellowed into the radio. In the distance, Jake and Marcus upped the pace, but they were still twenty yards out.
“It was! One vessel. No tag,” Jake told me.
I grunted. Either they were fooled, or we had a vessel somewhere in the alley too. I would take a vessel over a tag any day. Not that they were easy to kill. They weren’t, but tags were harder. And vessels simply wanted you dead. Tags wanted to make a meal out of you.
“If you take a shot, make sure you get the head,” I reminded Maria.
“I would if I could see the damn thing!” She turned to wrench the light out of my hands. She held it out in front of her, slowly sweeping it from one side of the alley to the other. Her other hand held her gun under the light, poised and ready to fire.
I split my attention between Jake and Marcus—now ten yards out—and the roof. It was quiet.
“I don’t like this,” I muttered.
“Will you shut the hell—”
Maria and I spun simultaneously toward the loud bang behind us. I registered the sight of a female tag perched on top of the dumpster, her mouth dropped open as she shrieked directly in my face. Maria fired a round over my shoulder, and if it weren’t for the silencer placed on the barrel, I would have been deaf in one ear.
The bullet hit the tag in the chest, prompting it to shift its focus to Maria.
“Head!” I reminded her as I lifted my own gun.
Too late. The tag launched itself off the dumpster and slammed into Maria, driving her to the ground. Over the sound of Maria’s shrieks and the frenzied snarls of the tag, I heard Jake yell, “Vessel on your six!”
I glanced up long enough to spot Jake and Marcus sprinting the remaining dist
ance between us. Then something big and powerful plowed into me from behind. I rolled, off-balance, into the tangle of wailing arms and legs and gnashing teeth on the ground. As my momentum propelled me over Maria and the tag, I wrapped my arms around the tag’s neck and yanked it off Maria.
I didn’t have time to check her condition before the tag’s flesh-shredding teeth zeroed in on my face. I needed both hands to hold it at bay. I heard Jake’s and Marcus’s footsteps behind me and yelled, “A little fucking help here!”
Two muffled shots whistled over my head.
“Vessel down,” I heard Marcus announce.
The tag hissed, spitting a gag-inducing combination of saliva and blood on my face. Two feet stomped the ground directly behind me. The tag’s head whipped up, then snapped back from the force of the bullet that penetrated her skull. Blood and mangled pieces of flesh splattered my face as a soul-splintering screech died on her lips. Then her body collapsed on top of me. It weighed me down, only for a second before Jake rolled it off of me.
“You alright?”
“Yeah.” I sat up to wipe at the thick fluids that covered my face and neck. My hands came away covered in blood. Looking over my crimson-covered fingers, I spotted Maria with her head in her hands. “You okay, Maria?”
She nodded vaguely, and Marcus looked up from his sister. “That was a tag?”
“Second one I’ve encountered in this town,” I informed him.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
Jake squatted next to the tag’s body. His light flicked on to illuminate something in his hand. “Another college student,” he told us. “Twenty-one years old. Lives at the University Heights Apartments.”
“Same as the last tag,” I supplied.
Behind me, Marcus scoffed. “Is there a colony living there?”
“Don’t know,” Jake muttered. He shifted to pat down the vessel.
“There are normal students there, too,” I informed Marcus before he got it into his head that the apartment complex needed to be taken out.
I wouldn’t put it past him to come up with some wild idea, and I couldn’t have that. Thea lived in that apartment complex. Yeah, other students too, but mostly Thea. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her until I knew for sure if she was tagged or not. And then, well, I would do what I was trained to do.