by V M Black
And then his whole business would be exposed as the house of cards that it was and would come crashing down around his ears. Even his nameplate didn’t have his own, actual name on it. Connor L. Voss, it read, of Voss Antiquities. A bit of a joke—Connor meant a friend of hounds or wolves, while Voss meant fox. But it was as close as he dared to even hint at his real identity.
It was Levi Harris who rented the crappy studio apartment in Alexandria and owned the tumbledown farmhouse in Augusta County—werewolves, even broke-ass werewolves without two pennies to rub together to keep warm, never really felt right without a piece of land out in the country somewhere with their name on it. And though Voss’ bank account had plenty of zeroes in it, he’d waited four years before even adding indoor plumbing to the farmhouse because Levi Harris couldn’t afford to attract attention. Levi Harris couldn’t afford to let anyone know that he was also Connor Voss.
And now he’d come to Mortensen’s attention, not as any werewolf who’d stolen from him but specifically as Levi Harris. And his secrets, if he had any left, wouldn’t stay secret for long.
The strokes of his oars were getting faster, angrier.
“So why don’t you?” Harper asked, breaking into his thoughts. “Start a gallery, I mean. Money?”
“Galleries have employees. Overhead. Inventory,” he said in a clipped voice. “They tie you to one place. And when a vampire can come in, throwing his weight around and threatening to take everything away, that’s not cool. Right now, I’ve got a couple of old shipping containers sitting on an acre of land that no one knows about out in the boonies. One call, and I can have it picked up and shipped anywhere in the world. I’ve got twenty acres in Virginia, too, but that’s owned free and clear, and if I have to sell it and get another patch of land somewhere else, I can—maybe Saskatchewan, maybe Laos, wherever.”
“Rootless, then,” she said. “Sorta.”
“Pretty much,” he agreed.
“But you don’t want to be. That’s…kind of sad.”
“That’s why the SD card matters so much,” he said. “Well, that’s why it mattered so much when I first stole it. Now it mostly matters because if I don’t get the data off it, my life isn’t worth anything—but my death definitely will be.”
“Mine, too,” she reminded him. “Thanks for that, by the way.”
She didn’t sound particularly bitter, but his pang of guilt was worse for that.
“Sorry about…everything,” Levi said. “If your car can be fixed, I’ll get it fixed. And I’ll move around enough ones and zeroes that you won’t have to worry about waiting tables or restaurant management for a few years, at least.”
“Thanks. But that’s not the reason I’m still here.” She wrinkled her nose at him. It was, he decided, a very cute nose, but it was almost certainly going to be a sunburnt one by tomorrow. “The fact that I’ll probably be shot isn’t why I’m here, either.”
“Look, I like you a lot, but—”
“If you’re trying to ‘dear John’ me in the middle of the river after what you did to me last night, I will push you over the side,” she said with absolute calm. “That’s not the reason I’m here, either, though you sure have a high opinion of yourself. Or at least not the only reason I’m here.”
“Okay,” he said. “So what is it?”
“Because it’s interesting.” She brushed her hair out of her face. “Is that too stupid of a reason? It seems like what you’re doing will matter, not just to you but to a number of people. And it seems like it’s the right thing to do. So I just want to…help it along and see what happens next. Even if you are either a bastard of a user or an emotional coward—or both.”
Ouch. Well, it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve that. “Let’s just hope the story has a happy ending, for both our sakes.”
There was a buzzing sound that just started to register at the edge of Levi’s hearing, like the angry whine of a mosquito. He realized that he’d been hearing it for several seconds, but it had just occurred to him that the noise had a mechanical edge.
It was a long river that went through a lot of people’s land, he told himself. Though the trees running down to the edge made it seem like they were in the middle of nowhere, there were few places in this part of Pennsylvania that weren’t a short distance from a building or a fenced field. It could be anyone on the river, just like the canoers and men fishing at the end of the dock.
But Levi knew he wasn’t going to be so lucky. Not this time.
Chapter Six
“Give me your purse,” Levi said, raising the oars and putting them into the boat.
“What?” Harper straightened suddenly at his tone, looking around sharply as she slid her purse across to him with her foot.
“It’s got my gun in it.” He dug through until his hand encountered the cool metal grip of the Walther.
“It’s got my gun in it, too,” she said, pulling the purse back as soon as he released it. “If you need a gun, so do I.”
Levi ‘s only response was to ease off the safety of his nine mil.
Harper’s silver .38 special flashed in the sunlight as she gave it a quick inspection. Seven bullets, ready to fire. She just had to hope that they were made well enough not to be ruined by the water.
“What did you see?” she asked as soon as she was satisfied that everything was in order.
“I didn’t see anything,” Levi said. “I heard something. A motor.”
“It could be anyone,” Harper said dubiously, squinting down the river.
“Yeah, it could.”
“But you don’t think it is.” She didn’t, either.
“Call it a sixth sense. We’ve been lucky. Really lucky. I don’t think we should be counting on our luck any longer.”
Levi hunched low so that his body was mostly hidden below the edge of the boat, and Harper copied him. She sat on the shallow bottom, her elbows on the back bench seat, scanning the river behind them.
And then Harper saw it, around the last bend in the river—an airboat, fan blades spinning, sliding across the surface of the water.
Maybe in Florida airboats were an everyday sort of sight, but on the Juniata, most people used small electric trolling motors or occasionally regular gas motors.
Then she made out the figure in the front of the boat, and the hairs rose up on the back of her neck. She couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t need to. She’d know that arrogant line of his back anywhere, now, and the imperious way that he waved to the others in the boat.
“It’s him,” she said. “The vampire. But you shot him in the head, Levi—”
“I know,” he said shortly. “I told you their healing’s even better than mine.”
“Great,” she muttered, readying her gun.
There were five men on the airboat, and Harper knew they’d already spotted her uncle’s jon boat lying still on the water. It was impossible to miss, the dark green boat on the brown river. They were sitting ducks, exposed on every side. There was nowhere to hide in the middle of the river—and they couldn’t even move except for drifting with the current with the trolling motor dead, not without putting Levi in their line of fire.
The men had long guns, the shapes unmistakable even from the distance. Harper watched as the vampire gestured, and the men started to raise their weapons. Her entire body hummed with awareness, as if she could keep the bullets from going through her by sheer force of will. They were still too far out for her snub-nosed little revolver to have a chance—
Beside her, Levi’s semi-auto barked twice, the sound smashing into her ears like a blow. One of the men with the guns tottered, then fell into the water with a splash.
The vampire was shouting now, gesticulating, and the remaining men hurried to aim. Harper heard the sigh of the bullet in the water inches from the boat at the same instant that the report echoed across the water, and she squeezed the trigger in the .38 on reflex. Her bullet swung wide—she had no accuracy at this distance with her gun.
Levi was firing again next to her, squeezing off three more rounds. Another man fell, this time back into the boat. Another three rounds, and the third shooter was down, only the boat’s driver and the vampire left.
At the vampire’s order, the driver stood from the lever of the fan boat and started to pull one of the rifles off the neck of one of his fallen companions. Levi’s gun went off again, once, twice. The man yelled, throwing himself to the open flat deck of the boat. Two more shots, and he was still.
“Well, that’s a problem,” Levi said conversationally. Harper looked over, and to her horror, she saw that his mag was in his hand as he slotted bullets into it from the baggie. He was out of rounds. “I hope you have good aim because vampires rarely miss.”
Harper jerked back around to look at the airboat. It had veered off course, and the vampire had grabbed the rudder lever to steer it back. Too far—it was still too far for her short-barreled gun to have a chance. But the vampire was reaching inside his jacket, and Harper knew he’d come out with a gun, so aiming at the center of his mass, she squeezed off another round.
The vampire didn’t seem to even notice—a miss. Harper fired again, feeling the stiff trigger dig into her finger, hoping to distract him long enough that Levi could get his gun reloaded before the vampire could start shooting.
At her fourth shot, the vampire flinched. Harper couldn’t see a sign of a wound on his black turtleneck, but she squeezed again, and again he jerked in response. His weapon was free now, a massive handgun with a long, ugly snout.
Whatever she was doing to him, it was far from lethal.
“Hurry,” she urged Levi. “I’ve only got two rounds left.”
She fired again as the vampire raised his gun, and he didn’t even twitch. Her heart in her throat, she squeezed off the last round.
And the vampire’s gun steadied, aimed straight at her.
Harper threw herself flat on the bottom of the boat as Levi pushed up to his knees beside her. There were two shots, so close that she couldn’t tell whose came first, then another and another and another, all from Levi.
Then there was a long, ringing silence as her ears still sang with the reports of the guns.
“Are you all right down there?”
It was Levi’s voice, tinged with concern.
“Is it safe?” Harper asked, then immediately chided herself for the stupid question. Of course it wasn’t safe. It wouldn’t be safe until the data on the SD card was in the right hands.
As for the more immediate danger—if that wasn’t past, they’d be dead already.
“We’re okay for now,” Levi said.
Harper pushed herself up and peered over the edge of the boat. The airboat was still running, going at an angle now toward the shore. The bodies on it were unnaturally still, and the vampire was nowhere to be seen. One man’s arm dragged lifelessly in the water.
“God,” she said. “We’re like mass murderers or something.”
“They were trying to kill us,” Levi pointed out. He released the mag and began to reload it systematically.
Sluggishly, moving mechanically, Harper pushed open the revolver’s cylinder and slotted seven fresh rounds inside.
“But you said that vampires control people. Maybe they didn’t want to do it,” Harper said. “Maybe he made them.”
“Keep asking yourself questions like that, and you’ll go crazy. Mortensen used them without thought or mercy, just like he ordered them to kill us.” He looked up at her, amber eyes unusually sober. “And what we’re doing here means that he’ll be weaker forever and less able to do that to anybody else.”
“If you say so,” Harper said dubiously. She closed the revolver’s cylinder and shoved it back into the holster inside her purse.
“Believe it,” he said.
But Harper wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was straightening on the bench, peering at the bridge that had just appeared around another bend. A road appeared out of the trees on one bank, crossed the river, and disappeared back into the woods.
“There’s a bridge ahead. Just past that is where we get out,” she said.
Levi glanced over his shoulder.
“We’ve got to find some place to stow the boat where no one will run across it,” she continued, her brain running on automatic. “And I’ll text Christina about it. She can tell Aunt Tiff if—if I can’t get it back to her,” she finished, pulling out her phone.
“You’re worried about what will happen to your aunt’s boat if you die,” Levi said, pulling the oars in another long stroke.
“Don’t put it like that,” she snapped, frowning as she tapped out the message. He might think it was stupid, but it was still her cousins’ boat, and she didn’t just go taking things that weren’t hers. Especially from family.
In another ten minutes, they were past the bridge. Levi found a spot where the mud banks were particularly shallow and rowed the boat up until it grounded in the muck.
Harper watched him rolling up his pant legs and then step down into the water. They really did have to get him shoes soon. He made a damned conspicuous sight without them. Levi pulled the boat farther up the river bank, his shoulders bunching under his tee.
“Coming?” He held out his hands to Harper.
She slung her purse crosswise across her body and stood. “Sure thing.”
Levi’s hands were strong on her waist, lifting her easily from boat to shore. Not many men could have done that, since she was the first to admit that she was a substantial kind of girl. She tried not to think about exactly how good it felt to be in his arms.
Her feet hit the grass, and for a moment, he held on, looking down at her without blinking. The stubble on his chin, she noticed, was even longer than the day before.
She cleared her throat.
“Thanks,” she said. “I mean for the lift. My boots just dried out ten minutes ago.”
“You’re welcome,” his mouth said, but eyes held a very different message.
All she had to do was push up on her toes, and she could reach that delicious mouth….
Instead, Harper shifted the purse on her shoulder and stepped back, out of his arms. She didn’t need complications in her life. And whatever he’d told her in the shower—well, it was clear that even if he meant it in that moment, he didn’t mean it enough for it to matter.
Levi turned his back to her too quickly and set to work pulling the boat high onto the shore and tilting it up on one side so that he could hoist it onto his back.
Harper stepped clear of his path.
“That doesn’t even look right,” she said lightly, as much to distract herself as anything. “Are you sure you’re not going to slip a disk?”
“Unlikely,” he said.
He passed her, squeezing between the trees that grew down to the water’s edge. She followed him a dozen yards up the slope, where he slid the boat off his back and propped it against a tree trunk.
“Maybe we should cover it up,” Harper fretted.
“If they’re going to find it, they’re going to find it,” Levi said.
“I don’t mean the guys who are after us,” Harper snapped. “I meant like anybody. Anybody could stumble across it here, and they might take it.”
“There’d have to be at least a couple of them, and they’d need a new battery or a trailer or both,” Levi pointed out. “Look, forget the boat. It’s going to be fine—as long as you’re fine, and the best way for you to be fine is to get out of here as soon as possible.”
Harper frowned at him, not completely convinced. It seemed wrong to leave it there. “If you say so.”
“I do,” he said firmly. “Let’s go.”
With a last, guilty look at the boat, Harper followed.
“Travel plaza time,” he prodded. “I don’t know where it is, so get out your phone and lead the way.”
Chapter Seven
Harper turned her phone back on and pulled up her map app.
“It won’t pl
ot a course because we’re not on the road or trail, but it’s about a mile this way.” She set off in the direction that the phone indicated. “You’ve got to let me go in alone this time, okay? No shirt, no shoes, no service, and you don’t have any shoes—and really, Levi, at some point, someone’s going to have enough guts to throw out the huge wolf that is incredibly obviously not a service dog.”
“All right,” he said. “But I’m watching the store, and if I see trouble, I’m going in.”
“You’ll need to have your wolf on, anyway,” she continued. “Try to stay out of sight until I get an agreement out of somebody so you don’t freak them out until they’re committed. But wolf is better than man. I’m not going to be able to bum a ride with a hot guy breathing down the back of my neck.”
Levi smirked. “You think I’m hot?”
Harper glared at him. “Oh, shut up. You know you’re hot.”
She followed the map app as best as she could through the trees, and after several minutes, they reached the edge of the field, across which was the travel plaza, a broad, low block of a building in the middle of a vast concrete parking lot and filling station.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Harper said, grinning at Levi.
“Nice work, Shackleton,” he said.
She frowned. “Who?”
“Doesn’t matter. You ready to go?” he asked.
“Nope. Got to get the look down first.” She dropped her purse to the ground and dug out her .38 special and shoved it in her front pocket, then pawed through the purse until she found her mirror and brush.
Levi snorted.
“You can keep your comments to yourself,” she said. “I know what I’m doing. If you want to bum a ride, it works a whole lot better if the guy’s interested in having you in his passenger seat.”