Levi turned to reach over the bench seat, his ass going up in the air. “So you don’t have any other questions for me?”
Harper aimed a slap across his backside, catching him hard enough that her hand stung. It didn’t change anything, but it somehow made her feel better. He jerked back around, pants in hand, with such an expression of outrage that she burst out laughing, a slightly manic edge in her voice.
“Questions? Do I have questions for the guy who magically healed from a bullet wound and then, right after screwing my brains out, changed into a great freaking dog so fast that the condom didn’t even have time to hit the dirt? The guy who ripped a dude’s throat out with his teeth right after he blew up a barn door? Now, why would you think I have questions for you?”
Levi sat and fished the coin purse from his pants pocket, opening it and checking the SD card inside its plastic bag before dragging his underwear and pants on together. “I warned you it was dangerous.”
“And I told you I could take care of myself,” she snapped. “If I hadn’t been there, what do you think would have happened to you? I saved your ass.”
“Without you, I wouldn’t have been caught off guard,” he returned. At her scornful expression, he added, “Probably. And you shot somebody. You don’t even know why they’re after me. Why the hell would you do that?”
“I figured that anyone who went around blowing up barn doors like that was definitely the bad guy,” she said. “That was a big tip-off, see. And I had a pretty good feeling that they weren’t the sort of people to leave witnesses.”
His expression softened suddenly. “Was that the first person you’ve killed?” he asked gently.
She bit her lip. Saying it aloud somehow made it so much more real. She answered, blinking hard. “Why’d you even ask a question like that? Do I look like a killer?”
“Do I?” he returned.
She looked over at him, sitting in the seat next to her, hard muscles and harder eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, you do. Even when you’re not a wolf.”
“We didn’t get the last one,” he said.
“He’ll have my license plate. Or at least the description of my car,” she said steadily, turning her gaze back to the road.
He reached back, snagging his shirt. “Yeah.”
“So they’ll know who I am,” she said. “They’ll find out my name. They’ll find out about my family. They’ll find my friends.”
“Pretty soon, yeah,” he agreed, dragging the tee over his head.
“Then they’ll all be in danger,” she concluded. “Unless they get what they want.”
“Or until I get this data into the right hands,” Levi said.
“Really?” She looked at him sideways.
“Really. Once the right people have this, it all goes away. Every threat. Forever.”
She let out a puff of air. “You’d better tell me about this thing you have. I’m in it up to my neck. It’s only fair.”
“Accounts,” he said shortly. “Books—the real ones, not the ones turned into the IRS every year. Financial information.”
“That’s not very exciting,” Harper said. “They’re willing to kill for that?”
“It’s enough to sink a billion-dollar enterprise, so yeah. Money and knowledge, and a lot of it’s related to illegal stuff. Those are keys that open any door.” He gave her his raffish, lopsided smile.
Harper thought about that for a moment. He was mind-blowingly hot and great in the sack, and it seemed pretty likely that even if he wasn’t a white knight, he was at least off-white, and maybe his cause was important and just and all that.
But his cause wasn’t her cause, and anyway, there were other fish in the sea. Probably even other wolves in the sea...or woods or whatever. Harper had the car, and she had both guns, tucked between the seat and the door. She could kick him out, keep going, and hope that the bad guys, whoever they were, would ignore her. That would be the smart thing, wouldn’t it?
Harper remembered how the barn door had blown up and the hail of bullets that had followed. Yeah, not likely.
Did werewolves really require silver bullets? She bet not. The guys with the grenade launcher didn’t seem to bother with them, and Levi had bled when she struck him. But if she drew on him, he might disarm her as handily as he’d done the first time, unless she was willing to shoot him somewhere that he couldn’t heal fast enough. Which she didn’t think she was, anymore.
And anyway, aside from the whole actual-people-dying thing, he was pretty much the total package, as far as she was concerned, and she was honest enough with herself to admit that the man-on-the-run thing added to his attractiveness. Since he appeared to be on the side of justice and truth and all that...well, it might be the only time in her life that she had a chance to join up with someone like that, after her string of losers and two-bit hustlers. She found the change heady and somewhat frightening. She’d always steered clear of good guys before because she’d always wondered what they were hiding, underneath it all.
At that moment, Harper Bailey was probably the biggest dumbass in the world. And she didn’t care.
“Okay. I’m in,” she said.
“It’s not like I’d let you opt out at this point,” Levi said.
Harper bristled. “I don’t think it’s up to you.”
“Look, if I let you go off now, you probably won’t last the night,” he said. “You’re with me until I know you’re safe.”
Harper started to argue reflexively, then stopped. She’d just agreed to it, after all. Instead, she said, “Before we do anything else, we’ve got to get another car and stash my Baby somewhere safe, where no one will find it.”
“Before we do anything else, we’ve got to get you dressed,” he said.
Oh. Right. He wasn’t the only one who’d been nearly naked when the men had burst in.
“I’ll take the wheel. Climb into the back,” he said.
Harper hesitated. The guns were still there, out of sight but in arm’s reach of the driver. But she was either going to trust him or not. And if she trusted him, he should probably get his gun back. Eventually.
“You sure you’ve got it?” she asked instead of any of that.
He gave her a look with an edge of contempt. Okay, yeah, on the scale of things he’d done, taking a steering wheel wasn’t very impressive. “It’s safer than stopping.”
Harper rolled her eyes. “Okay, then.” She grabbed her .38 special from beside the door. “But I’m taking my gun.”
“Fine.” Levi reached over to grab the steering wheel, and she slithered over the back of the seat into the rear of the car as quickly as she could while the car coasted forward. By the time she was upright again and sitting on the rear bench seat, he’d slid over to take her place and had his foot on the gas.
She dragged on her shirt first, just in case the driver of one of the cars they occasionally passed going the other way looked in, then pulled on her boy shorts and pants. She’d managed to lose a sock somehow in the chaos. She made a face and slipped the boots onto her bare feet.
“So, what’s the plan?” she asked. The sun was already sloping down toward the horizon.
“We need to change cars, like you said,” Levi said. “And we need to find a micro USB reader that’s compatible with my phone and see if we can get the data off it that way.”
We. So he really meant to take her offer for help. “And if we can?”
“Then we’re done. Finished. I’ll send the info to my friend, he’ll do what he needs to do with it, and we’ll have everything we need to get the bad guys off our tail.”
Harper gave a small, snorting giggle as she levered a leg up over the front bench to slide into the passenger seat.
“What?” Levi said, blinking at her with his amber eyes.
Another giggle slipped out as she settled into the seat. “You said tail. You’re a wolf, see, and you said tail....”
He glared at her, but that only made her laugh harder.
“You
’re enjoying this, I see,” he said.
“Look, I just had sex with a wolfman,” Harper said, wiping her watering eyes with one hand as she fished around for her purse with the other. “That’s the kind of surprise that a girl doesn’t take so well. One minute, you’re screwing me, and the next, you’re knocking me to the floor and turning into a big, furry dog, almost on top of me. I’m not really in the habit of jumping in bed—or onto the hood of a car—with anybody that fast, so of course there had to be some crazy catch, right? Anyway, I think I’ve earned the right to have a bit of a laugh when you talk about your tail.”
“Keep that up, and you’ll find out just what my tail can do,” he said.
Harper shoved her .38 back into its holster inside her purse. “You’ve got a lot to make up for, mister. You’ll need to use more than your tail to get you out of hot water with me.”
His grin was toothy. “We’ll see about that.”
She smiled back at him, sweetly. “Now, get your butt out of the driver’s seat and tell me where you want to go. Ain’t nobody driving my Baby but me.”
Chapter Two
Levi looked at Harper narrowly. She was still smiling, but her jaw—with the adorable tiny cleft in her chin—was set with determination.
She couldn’t really make him do anything. She had to realize that. Even if she was behind the wheel, and even if she was the one with the guns, he’d already proven that he was perfectly able to force her do whatever he wanted.
But she might be an asset. She’d proven herself already, back in the barn. And a happy Harper would be far more likely to help him out than an angry one.
And that was the sum total of his reasons for going along with her demand. His decision had absolutely nothing to do with how much he already liked her smile.
“All right, then. Take the wheel,” he said.
She reached across and grabbed it. He unbuckled and turned in the seat, slipping over the back of it and into the rear. Harper scooted over quickly and replaced her foot on the gas.
“Thanks,” she said.
“No problem.”
Levi took the opportunity to grab his pocket knife and the jewel-encrusted dagger from the floor of the car. The pocket knife went in his pants, and the dagger went in the pocket of his jacket opposite his all-purpose kit. Forgery or no, between the gold and gemstones, it was worth a solid ten grand. That was not to be sneezed at, especially since it could be turned into ready money more quickly than the stuff on the card. He tossed his jacket into the front seat and squeezed back over into the passenger’s seat and buckled up.
Levi cast a sidelong glance at Harper as he ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing it from its usual post-shift chaos to merely tousled. He was still a little staggered at what she’d done. It was hard to believe that such an ordinary girl had managed it. Okay, physically, she was as far from ordinary as a woman could be, sure, but when push came to shove, she was still merely human, and not even a trained one.
Yet there weren’t many aethers he knew who were so quick on their feet. She’d planned out each move, retrieving their clothes, weapons, and the dagger before hunkering down behind the car with the Luger—his gun, rather than her own, because it had the larger caliber and held more bullets.
And that was why he really wanted to keep her at his side, he told himself, that and the danger she was now in.
Yeah. Totally. Because he’d never fallen for a human before, and he definitely wasn’t falling for one now, at the most inconvenient moment possible.
“So, where are we headed?” she asked.
“Got a smart phone?” he returned.
She glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “You don’t?”
“I’ve got one. I’m just not sure they don’t know about it. It’s a secret line, but they know my name, and I didn’t think they knew that, either, so I’d rather not gamble on it.” The memory of Kowalski calling out his name still rankled. Levi wasn’t that sloppy. A bit reckless, sure, but never sloppy. Something had happened—and he was going to find out what it was, one way or another.
“Yeah. In my purse,” she said, finally answering the question. “Don’t go taking my gun, though, or I’ll have something to say about that.”
“Won’t touch it.” He snagged the pink bag, which was large enough for a weekend getaway. He opened it. “Wow. Is there anything you don’t have in here?”
“Dinner,” she said. “A change of clothes. Toothbrush and toothpaste. A jacket, if we’re going to be hiding out anywhere else, because it still gets chilly after dark.”
“They’d probably all fit.” He fished around for a while before coming up with an iPhone. He hit the button to wake it up, and the lock screen appeared. He passed it over.
She tapped the code in and handed it back. “So what are you looking for?”
“Some place to stop. Maybe get a bite to eat, ’cause you’re not the only one who’s hungry.” He navigated over to the map app, then began searching.
“There’s not going to be much out here,” Harper said. “I grew up not too far away. You’ll have to go a distance before you find more than a gas station convenience store.”
“That’s what it looks like,” Levi agreed, paging along the highway. After a moment, he gave up and switched over to the browser.
Harper’s glossy lips formed a pout of annoyance. “Who is this mysterious ‘they?’ You seriously can’t go around not telling me who’s shooting at me. That’s not cool.”
Levi looked up from the phone, considering exactly how much to tell her. Well, she’d taken the fact that he was a shifter more or less in stride. She might believe the truth. Maybe.
It’d be worth a try, at any rate.
“So, you know how I’m more than human?” he said.
She cocked her head to the side. “Better than us, huh?”
“Really, that’s what you’re going to focus on? The fact that I used the word ‘more?’ Look, when you can get shot point-blank and walk away, you can quibble about my word choice.”
“Okay. Point taken.” Her mouth twitched, as if despite herself.
“So, I’m a shifter. A werewolf.”
“Yeah, I caught that. My first clue was the fact that you changed into a great freaking wolf, see. Took lots of brains to figure that one out.”
He ignored her sarcasm. “Well, shifters aren’t the only more-than-human kinds of people out there.”
“Let me guess. Vampires. It’s always vampires, isn’t it?” She gave a tiny giggle, then adopted an exaggeratedly serious tone, as if she were doing a movie voiceover. “The werewolves and the vampires have battled over centuries—”
Levi glared at her. “It isn’t funny. And it’s not like that. It’s...complicated,” he said. “I’ll explain later, but that’s not the point right now. Some vampires are okay. Others are really nasty SOBs, and they think shifters exist to do their dirty work. It’s hard enough to hold down a job as a shifter—”
“What, do you turn into a wolf every full moon?” she interrupted.
Ah, yes. The other reason he didn’t tell women about his nature. If they didn’t freak out, they asked him questions like that. “No. But sometimes, the other form needs to...come out, so you have to take a break from being human for a while. It’s not predictable, so this doesn’t work well with a nine-to-five kind of lifestyle.”
“I could see that,” she said.
“Anyway, this particular vampire, Mortensen, he’s one of the worst. He’s been throwing his weight around all up and down the East Coast, paying off shifters to do some of his nastier bits of business, and if they don’t agree to payment, threatening them until they do it for free. I was tired of it. I started paying attention to the various strings he was pulling, and I figured out that he was smuggling something back and forth from Europe. I dug into it until I was sure that it was his account books—his real books—that cover his international operations, including smuggling at several major American and European ports
.”
Levi’s double life as an art investigator was not only a role excellently suited to the vagaries that being a werewolf demanded, it had also uniquely positioned him to recognize Mortensen’s crude gambit for what it was. Once a quarter, a forgery would appear in a Sotheby’s auction, a forgery that Sotheby’s would never ordinarily miss. And once a quarter, one of Mortensen’s pawns would buy the forgery at auction, no matter how high the bid was run up. Not that it mattered, since he was selling them to himself....
And that was how Levi had discovered how Mortensen’s international interests were transporting copies of the real books—the ones with the real transactions, every bribe, every extortion, every theft, everything that would damn him in the courts of a dozen countries. When all his enemies, vampiric or otherwise, were busy tapping his computers and cellphones, he was shipping his books physically, on storage cards hidden inside forgeries commissioned for the purpose, as closely guarded by Sotheby’s as if they were the priceless piece of art they pretended to be.
Paranoid bastard.
“What good will that do you?” Harper asked.
Levi gave her a toothy smile, savoring his plan. “First, it’s evidence that can put him behind bars for a very long time. Sure, his cronies can influence the judge and jury, but he’s got vampires among his enemies who’d be just as happy to flip them the other way. And vampires don’t like weakness or exposure, so he might not even survive long enough to get to trial. Second, there should be account information on the card that we can use right away.”
Harper still looked skeptical. “Stealing from a vampire doesn’t seem like a good way to get him to leave us alone.”
“If we take just a little from his accounts, he’ll know that we have him, but he won’t know how much more we could get. Sure, he can change accounts, but he’ll never know how many of them we’re able to trace—how many we can take over at a moment’s notice. And because the books will give a very detailed view of his operations, they’ll let us track any changes he makes. So if we’re good enough, we’ll have a gun pointed at his head pretty much forever.”
Voracious Vixens, 13 Novels of Sexy Horror and Hot Paranormal Romance Page 124