One of Andi’s eyebrows rose up her forehead. “You mean, like, secret chicken beaks and lizard skin? Old things that we evolved out of?”
“I don’t think so.” David laughed. “I honestly don’t know what their research is. They’re a very tightlipped group. I just know that your DNA is right up their alley.”
“Who is this ‘they?’” Andi asked him.
“Golden Fields Conglomerate. One of our competitors. Bigger overseas than they are here.” David gave her a concerned look. “It makes me glad I thoroughly anonymized my request for search comparisons. They can be…underhanded.”
Andi leaned back, trying to decipher how much was lies, and why, if he knew where Danny was, he was leading her on. “Just because they’re interested in people like me—and presumably Danny—doesn’t mean that they have him, though, right?”
“Seeing as DNA is only half the battle and gene-expression is the other half, they might be interested in a live subject,” David pondered aloud, “but honestly, it’s doubtful.”
“But…possible?” she pressed and watched him nod. Andi knew it wasn’t. Danny had used David’s phone to call her—not anyone else’s. He was just here to try to fill her head with stories about international DNA-thieving gangs to put her off the trail. She squinted at him. How long would he keep this up? “Well, what, then? Can I go to the police and have you talk to them?” she pretended to ask earnestly, sounding a little breathless.
David blanched a little. “It’s just hearsay, Andi. Cops aren’t going to take it seriously unless we have more evidence. And besides, this is all massive conjecture. How would they have ever gotten a sample from Danny in the first place?”
“I don’t know; he donated blood that one time,” Andi muttered, rubbing her hands on her thighs.
“He’s probably fine, and all of this is probably a fluke,” David said, tapping his computer screen.
“So, then, why hasn’t he called me?” she asked, looking directly at David, searching his face for any signs.
“I don’t know, Andi,” David said. He scooted himself closer and put his hand over hers on her thigh. “What can you tell me about your brother?”
Why don’t you ask him yourself! she wanted to shout, but she bit the words back. Why on earth was David or his company or his illegal import/export business as Argento interested in Danny? She shifted, and he released her as she reached for her coffee. She took a long sip, finishing it, and then she set it down to face David with her whole body. She should’ve been afraid of him after everything Julian had told her, but there were some lines that needed to be drawn.
“I can’t tell you much about him, David, but I can tell you about me. As much as my brother’s a jerk and I hate him, if anything bad has happened to him, I will take apart this entire city trying to find his stupid ass.”
David looked electrified and then blinked and laughed. “Andi—”
Whatever he was going to say next was drowned out by two people bursting into the coffee shop, one of them shouting, “Nobody move!” The door let in another burst of cold air.
A girl screamed, and a man ran for the bathroom, as the two men—both dressed in black with masks on, one with a gun, the other carrying a bag—advanced.
“Everybody’s laptops and phones in here!” shouted the man with the bag in a pack-a-day voice.
“Now!” the other man emphasized, waving his gun around.
Andi watched them, suddenly mesmerized, her fears for her brother forgotten under the threat of instant death. The two men approached the people at the table closest to the entrance first, bag open, like they were passing some kind of strange tithe plate to very reluctant parishioners.
Beside her, David was calmly closing and hiding his laptop, not the least bit concerned.
“Do it now!” shouted the man with the gun. “Don’t make me shoot you!” he threatened the people nearby, who were only slow because their hands were shaking.
“Yeah! Don’t make him shoot you!” said the smoker. His voice…sounded so familiar. But she had a lot of patients at work with COPD….
They hit up another table, and by now, several people were crying. The kids behind the counter must’ve been lying on the floor, but Andi figured they were safe, there was no point in taking the till when people here had phones, tablets, and laptops that were easy to flip.
She glanced back at David, wondering what he was making of all this and found him tracking the two men with his eyes. He didn’t look frightened, and his hand was still inside his messenger bag.
“You!” said the man with the gun, coming near. “Give me your phone. And your boyfriend’s laptop. I saw him hide it. Now!”
The other man shook the bag, its contents clunking together. Andi looked into his eyes and thought she saw a flash of recognition. “Gary?”
His eyes widened. “Give me your boyfriend’s laptop, lady,” the bag man repeated.
“First off,” Andi said, rising up slowly, “he’s not my boyfriend. Secondly, what the fuck! I did not eat my lunch in your room and watch Judge Judy reruns all night with you for a week to be treated like this.”
“Who is this bitch, Double G?” the gunman said, swinging his weapon around to aim it at her.
Andi ignored him and stared at the smoker with the mask on. “I’m the bitch who saved his goddamned life last summer.”
“Oh…shit,” Gary muttered. “Andi?”
“Yeah. You and me, that week together…and now this?” Gary Giordino—or apparently Double G to his street friends—had come in with one of the worst cases of sepsis Andi had ever seen, with a lactate of twenty, and, against all odds, recovered. And after he’d been extubated—but a week before they’d managed to get him off Levophed, so he could be transferred to the floor—he’d spent most of his nights with Andi.
The gunman strode up and waved his gun in her face, and while part of her was scared of that, yes—it wasn’t a teleporting-tiger-slash-centipede who hungered for her flesh, so she’d seen worse recently. “She knows your name?”
“Easy,” David murmured from beside her at the situation.
“Yeah,” Andi said. “But if you stop and go, I won’t tell anybody.”
“I don’t believe you,” said the gunman.
“Well, I believe in patient confidentiality,” Andi said like she meant it, staring at Gary, praying that his knowledge of actual legal matters didn’t extend past fake courtrooms on TV.
“Come on, man, let up,” Gary said, pushing his friend’s gun high.
“What the fuck!” His friend fought back.
“We’ve got enough already!” he said, heading for the door.
The gunman, who didn’t have a bag of his own, looked around in frustration at all the loot they hadn’t taken, and for a sharp moment, Andi did fear for her life, worried that he might take his anger out on all of them, that somehow she’d made an already bad moment worse for everyone—when Gary pushed his head back in. “I said, come on!” The gunman shouted in incoherent frustration but then followed him without getting off a shot.
* * *
Mills had arranged the Hunter’s artifacts in a line down the middle of their conference room table: knucklebones on a string, strips of hide with fur attached, a pile of feathers, weapons with hollows for talismans welded on, and small vials of murky colored fluid. Grimalkin paced up and down the table’s length, batting at things and hissing, and as Damian came into the room, his dragon growled.
I will take great pleasure in destroying these, and them.
And although Damian agreed with the sentiment, he said, They died last night, remember?
All the others like them, then, his dragon promised, seething just underneath his human skin.
“I reached out to the other Wardens to see if Hunters had been active in their areas. They all said no that they’d been quiet lately,” Mills said as she sat down. Max and Jamison joined her, one to each side, but Austin and Zach’s seats were empty; the brothers were still sta
king out the hospital. “Mysteriously so,” Mills went on.
“That’s just on this continent, though. Did you ask worldwide?” Damian asked.
She shook her head. “Not yet. Because I didn’t think they’d have the funding—until I started working backward on their car. I worked my way up through several shell corps and eventually wound up at Bright Star Incorporated.”
“And they do?” Damian asked.
“As far as their paperwork shows…nothing. They’re a wall, externally,” Mills said.
“Anything can be hacked,” Jamison said. “Let me at ‘em.” He unscrewed his hand and looked beneath the table for a connection port.
“Hold up,” Damian said, lifting a hand. “I’m not saying you don’t work clean, Jamison, but right now, they don’t know we’re coming. Are there any other avenues we can explore more quietly, first?”
Jamison pondered. “Stella knew they were in town and gunning for her. We could reach out.”
“I did a little more research on her apartment complex—the one she blew up last night. Turns out it was a Starry Sky den,” Mills said.
“Which was how she knew it was empty,” Jamison said.
Mills nodded. “I followed the news feeds today to be sure. No bodies other than a few more men, who I think we can safely assume were Hunters. Which means her pack probably ran.”
“Where’d they go? And why’d they leave her and her brother behind?” Max wondered aloud.
“Because she’s clearly a psycho,” Austin muttered, coming into the room, followed by Zach. “The hospital was a dead end.”
Damian made a thoughtful sound. “I don’t like this. The last time we fought Hunters, they were numerous—but uncoordinated.” Damian frowned at the table littered with the physical proof of Hunters’ avarice in front of him. “Ten years ago, they were just a loose gang. Shell corporations, and funding for that Kriss Vector submachine gun there, sounds more like organized crime to me.”
“Agreed,” Mills said, curtly. “I’ll approach our international brethren to see if they know anything,” she said, and Damian nodded.
“We do at least need to ask Stella. In case anything here is personal to her pack,” Zach said, jerking his chin at the table’s contents.
Grimalkin wove through the table’s contents, talking in the language only Damian could understand. “Dog, dog, dog,” he said, batting certain bones, teeth, and claws aside. “Whale tooth, bird blood, flying pinions, shifted cat skin and a cat jaw,” he shouted certain items in anger, shoving his paw at something which was human sized but clearly had cat teeth in it. He growled, jumping back with his fur Halloween-cat-high, and then calmed himself to continue sorting. “Shard of rhino-shifter horn—that’s freaking rare these days—and none of the rest of this is dog,” he said, making a circle around the lot of it.
“Thank you, Grimalkin,” Damian said. He usually dispatched talismans via dragon fire, it was the most respectful thing he could think of to do to make sure they’d never be used again. But Zach was right—Stella’s pack might have its own traditions to follow.
Austin considered the table. “We always knew we didn’t beat them permanently.”
“They’re like ants,” Zach agreed. “You think you’ve got them, and then they resurface elsewhere.”
“I’m all for launching them and these into the face of the sun,” Damian said. How many deaths was he looking at on the table in front of him? And for what? So humans could live a little longer, be a little faster, a little stronger, have their guns shoot more true?
“I’ll get working on that rocket right away,” Jamison snorted.
Something on Mills’s person beeped. She twisted her watch to look at the screen. Her eyes got big, and then she reached for her phone. “Damian, look here,” Mills said, practically shoving her phone into his lap. “You wanted me to do a background check on Andi—I started and never stopped. This is her, I’m sure of it.”
The video was a bit blurry, but the title of it was not:
GETTING HELD UP AT GUNPOINT AT JONES & SHAH
And in it, someone had their phone held low. The image was upside down, tracking shooters as they came through the room, and there, as the phone swung left, was a stricken-looking Andi on a couch.
“Damian!” Austin warned, sensing his dragon rise as he did, coiling inside him like a trigger.
“I’m taking the Pagani,” Damian growled and ran for the door.
Damian’s sports car flew down the highway, trusting in his superhuman reflexes to keep him and others safe as he made record time dropping into town. The coin Michael had given him rocked from side to side as he made high-speed lane changes, a constant glimmering reminder of the price of failure. He knew where Jones & Shah was—and it was after rush hour, it wouldn’t take him long—but he cursed himself for not bringing Mills’s phone with him.
What if something bad had happened to her?
And he hadn’t been there to protect her?
How could he live with himself?
If you won’t fly, drive faster! his dragon urged, and he stepped his foot on the gas.
When he reached Jones & Shah, he double-parked his car outside and got out, running in past a few jaded looking cops.
“Andi!” he shouted, seeing her there, talking to one of them. She appeared stunned—and then panicked—to see him.
“Damian?” Her eyes went wide. “What’re you…you’ve got to go!”
“Are you okay?” He rushed to her side and then stopped, barely restraining himself from touching her, holding her, just to make sure she was all right.
“I’m fine. But you shouldn’t be here,” she hissed.
“He giving you trouble, miss?” the cop who’d been talking to her and finishing up their paperwork looked over and then blinked. “Young Mr. Blackwood…sorry…I—”
“He was on his way out,” Andi announced, grabbing his arm and pulling him back toward the door. “Get out. Now.”
“What?” Damian let her move him. “What are you talking about, Andi?” Then he smelled it. It was like she’d gone and bathed in the aftershave of another man.
The same one she’d smelled like this morning.
She belongs to us, his dragon growled, despite this evidence to the contrary. He felt its cold reptilian nature rise inside of him, ready to take action without remorse. Whoever he is, kill him.
Damian stared at Andi, taken aback, feeling a vast sense of betrayal like he hadn’t since his childhood when he realized that everyone who he thought he knew, and who he thought cared, were only there because his father was king and he paid them.
She’s our mate, his dragon repeated, its murderous intent growing stronger with each passing second.
“Go. Just go!” She moved to push at him instead, and he stared at the place on his chest where her hands shoved at him. “Go before you ruin this for me!” she whispered harshly, her eyes wild. She was looking up at him, and with his dragon so close, he wondered just which of them she was seeing. “Please, just go,” she begged him.
Let us kill the interloper and take her back, his dragon told him.
Damian snapped back to his right mind. That was the thing. It didn’t matter how many people he did or didn’t murder, or how much any of them deserved it if she still didn’t want him. He swallowed his rage down like a ball of razor blades. “Yes,” he said flatly. “Of course.” He turned on his heel and walked out the door.
Two coffee shop patrons were outside reliving the event for the small crowd that’d gathered.
“I was just out minding my business, drinking my coffee, when two assholes with guns came in to rob the place!” the first one said, as the others gathered around.
Go back and take her! His dragon struggled to regain the footing inside Damian it’d just had.
She’s not a possession, he told it.
She is our destiny! It howled at him inside.
Damian looked back in through the glass and saw Andi shoving her belongings
back into her bag. It seems she doesn’t know that. She pulled glasses out of her bag and put them on.
How come he didn’t know she wore glasses?
There was a lot he didn’t know about her, apparently.
“And then this cold ass bitch here was all, ‘Don’t I know you?’” said the second one, his voice going high in imitation of Andi. “And the fucker with the gun says, ‘Yeah!’”
“It wasn’t the one with the gun, it was the one without the gun,” the first one said, trying to take the story over again.
“Whatever, man! That bitch there just stopped an armed robbery!” He jabbed his finger at Andi through the window. “Where you know him from, girl? Church?” He asked her through the glass, then laughed delightedly at his own joke.
“At least we got to keep our own phones,” said the other man, holding his out in demonstration, as Damian watched Andi wait inside.
For someone that wasn’t him.
“Yo, if someone stole that one from you, they’d have been doing you a favor,” teased the other.
The first one laughed and laughed—and the man Andi’d been waiting for came out of the hallway that led to the bathroom.
“Ready?” Damian read the word upon his lips and then watched Andi give him a smile that hurt Damian worse than anything his dragon had ever done to him.
“Yeah. Let’s go,” she told the other man, shouldering her bag.
Chapter 13
How on earth had Damian known she was here and that a robbery had happened? Was he literally stalking her? Like…how…no! She did not have time to be thinking about him now, because she needed to keep her eyes on the prize—figuring out whatever the fuck David knew about Danny.
Andi pulled her coat on and shoved her wallet back inside her purse—the cops had wanted to see her ID—as David returned from the bathroom.
Dragon Destined: Billionaire Dragon Shifter Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds) Page 13