Her lips pressed together. Shit. She didn’t need to be thinking about that time now. There was more than enough crap to deal with at the moment without—
Cain’s fingers wrapped around her chin and she realized that she’d turned her face away from him.
To better hide the memories.
“Miranda?” Worry. For her.
She licked her lips. “I’d really like to get…out of here.” The smile she sent him felt terrible on her mouth. “I’m not much for hospitals.”
He just stared at her, waited. “Why?”
“The smells.” Bleach and death. God, but she hated that stench. “I just—I don’t like ’em.”
A calm stare that waited, so patiently.
Ah, damn. “My-my mom had cancer. I was ten when she was brought to St. Vincent’s. I didn’t know what was happening. She went from being this warm, laughing woman to this person who was so pale and thin that-that”—and this was one of the parts that pained her the most—“I was afraid to touch her, afraid that I would hurt her even more than she was already hurting.” And her mom had been hurting, so very badly.
She could still remember when Dr. Bradley had come to tell her that her mother had passed away. His face had been blank, his eyes watchful. He hadn’t softened the words, just said, “Your mother passed, Miranda. Someone will be coming to pick you up soon.”
And she hadn’t understood. Not a word he’d said. Where had she passed to? Why hadn’t her mother taken Miranda with her?
She’d begged to see her mother, but Dr. Bradley had refused.
Since then, well, she’d pretty much hated hospitals, and she hadn’t exactly been filled with wild love for the doctors.
“She died?”
His rough voice pulled her back to the present, partially. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.” And he sounded like he truly meant those words.
“Thanks.” Her fingers were toying with the sheet. Pulling out a piece of thread. “I just…don’t like these places much, okay?” Intellectually, she knew the hospital hadn’t caused her mother’s death. She knew hospitals saved thousands of lives every day.
But they smelled of death.
And she wanted out of there.
“Did your father raise you, then?”
Her gaze jerked to his face, and for a moment, she almost forgot about hating the hospital. “What? Are you kidding me? He ran off when he found out that my mom was pregnant.” She shook her head. “No, I’ve never met the guy and probably never will.” She was fine with that. Had been for years.
“Then who—”
“Grandma Belle.” Not her real grandmother. “My foster mom. The sweetest lady in the county. She took me in, me and Sam. Raised us both.” And gave them a good home when they so desperately needed one.
Sam. The first time she’d seen him, he’d been a thin boy with bruises all over him. She’d never asked about the bruises and he’d never talked about them. But he’d become close to her. So close.
Even though he often annoyed the hell out of her.
Yeah, they were just like a real family.
She exhaled heavily. “So, now you know all about me. My weird fears, my past—”
“And you learned more last night than you probably ever hoped to know about me.” His hand fell away.
No. Her fingers reached out, caught his.
Cain stilled. “I didn’t want you to see me like that.”
But he’d been beautiful. Ferocious. Strong. Deadly.
Absolutely terrifying.
But the most amazing creature she’d ever seen. “I wanted to see. All of you.” She wasn’t going to turn away from him because of what she’d seen. He needed to know that.
She’d made love with Cain because she wanted him. Every bit of him. Good and bad.
“Miranda…”
The door flew open and Sam sauntered in, pushing a wheelchair. “All right, cuz, I know you’ve got to be going nuts in here, so it’s time you got sprung—” He caught sight of Cain and his brows jerked up. “Hell. Are you still here?”
Cain’s face tightened and he stood. “I’m here for Miranda. Got a problem with that?”
“Look, Lawson, this shit with the killer might be all fun and games to you FBI guys—”
“I’m ex-FBI.”
“Bull. You’re running the case; that means you’re active. And this blood-and-guts crap is all in a day’s work to you, but it is not Miranda’s life.” He moved to the bed, standing protectively over her. “Is it, cuz?”
Cuz. He’d started calling her that on her thirteenth birthday. Told her then it connected them. Made them a real family.
Their last names were different, so folks knew they weren’t real brother and sister. So they’d pretended to be cousins. Pretended to be family, and, well, they’d become family.
“I checked up on you,” Sam said, directing his words to Cain before Miranda could answer him.
“Good.” Cain didn’t budge from his position beside her bed. The men were less than two feet apart.
“Called Atlanta. Wanted to talk to some folks other than those Bureau assholes.”
Sam had always had a thing against the suits, as he called them. She didn’t really know why. He’d just told her, after working a few cases with them, that the Bureau boys “didn’t like to get their hands dirty.”
“Um.” Cain didn’t seem particularly concerned with Sam’s dislike of the FBI. “And did Santiago tell you to call the Atlanta PD?”
“Yeah, he told me you walked the beat there when you were first in uniform. Got your street cred before you joined the FBI.”
A slow nod.
Sam’s lips pursed, then he admitted. “I talked to Captain Danny McNeal.”
Cain raised a brow. “And what did McNeal have to say?”
“That you were a tough bastard who wouldn’t stop until you brought your man down.”
Yes, that sounded about right.
“I don’t.” Simple. Direct.
“Miranda’s not like that,” Sam growled. “She’s not used to this crap, she—”
“—is right here,” Miranda snapped, glaring up at him. She appreciated that he was worried about her. She knew he was scared, she could see the fear in his eyes. Sam might not be perfect, often he was far, far from perfect, but he cared about her. She’d always known that, so she refrained from screaming at him. Instead she said, “I’m right here, Sam, and I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“Getting shot. Getting assaulted. That’s what you’re doing!”
Okay. He had a point there, but—“I’m going to help Cain. I will find Paul, because if I don’t, if we don’t, the guy will just keep killing.”
“Look, Miranda, I get that the guy faked his death and he’s been preying on women—”
Ah, so that was the story he’d been told while she’d been stuck in the hospital.
“—but you can just leave this alone. This isn’t a job for you. You work with kids, for God’s sake. You don’t chase criminals.”
She hadn’t, not until this criminal had literally walked right through her living room door and come after her. “This time I do.”
Cain watched the exchange between them, eyes intense.
“Let the Bureau gang handle it. They can afford a little spilled blood. You can’t.”
Well, not much more, anyway. She opened her mouth to reply—
But Cain beat her to the punch, saying, “You’re looking for him, Deputy Michaels. You started searching after the first attack, and you’ve been working nonstop to find Roberts.”
Her eyes widened at Cain’s statement, but she wasn’t particularly surprised. Beneath his I-don’t-give-a-damn persona, she’d found the real man sometimes cared too much. “Sam?” He was a good deputy, a little too lax with the pretty women, a little too slow to break up the occasional bar fight at Pete’s, but he didn’t let abusers walk. Killers he took down, and men who hurt women and children, well, he’d always seemed to ma
ke a special point of putting them away. For as long as he could.
His gaze didn’t meet hers. “I don’t want you gettin’ hurt, Miranda.”
The bastard. Her lips parted in surprise. He’d been deliberately downplaying his concern, telling her she had nothing to worry about, when he’d been out there tracking the vampire.
Of course, he didn’t know Paul was a vampire, but…
“Those deputies sure got to the scene fast last night,” Cain murmured.
Her eyes narrowed. Yeah, they had.
A small shrug from Sam. “Some of ’em might have been stationed in the area.” To keep an eye on her. His gaze lifted, finally held hers. “But even with my men and the Bureau boys and girls, you weren’t safe. This is way out of your league, and you need to pull out of this mess before you wind up with something one hell of a lot more serious than just a flesh wound.”
“I know you’re worried”—her voice was calm, a serious effort that—“but I’m not just going to back off this thing and go hide—”
“You’re a damn computer teacher, not—”
“I’m one of the women he chose. He came looking for me, tried to kill me. And he’ll do the same to others.” She shook her head. “I’m not going to stick my head in the sand and pretend I’m not involved. I will help Cain stop him.”
She saw the fury that hardened Sam’s expression. He jabbed his index finger into Cain’s chest. “Then you damn well need to keep a better watch on her, ’cause if she gets hurt again, I’m coming after your ass.”
Cain didn’t look particularly worried. One black brow rose.
Sam grunted. “Now let’s get the hell out of here—”
“Because we’ve got a killer to catch,” Cain finished softly.
They’d just left the hospital when Cain got the call from Santiago. Apparently, Paul Roberts hadn’t just snuck off into the night to lick his wounds.
He’d stopped at Pete’s, the busiest of the local bars, picked up a visiting co-ed named Christie, and killed her in the back alley.
Sonofabitch. The news of the woman’s death hit Cain like a punch in the gut.
His fault.
He should have known. The vampire had lost a lot of blood the night before. He would have needed to restock, and a psychotic like Paul wouldn’t be satisfied with a stop by the hospital and a few bags from the blood bank. No, he’d like his food fresh.
And fighting.
Dammit.
If he hadn’t been so worried about Miranda, he might have been able to think straight. To realize that Paul was like any wounded animal, a shitload more dangerous when he was hurt.
“We’re on our way,” Cain muttered, then snapped the cell phone shut. Miranda sat beside him in the car, now clad in a pair of jeans and a loose button-up shirt. She was still too pale, and the bruises on her throat were too dark. He should stop by the station, let her out, and—
“He killed another woman, didn’t he?”
He jerked his head in agreement and heard the soft sigh that passed her lips.
“Did he hurt her very much?”
Probably. The bastard sure seemed to enjoy hurting women. “Santiago says he drained her nearly dry. Then cut her throat.” Vamps usually did that, to throw the humans off track.
“I-I thought he hunted women over the Internet, picked out his prey.”
His fingers tightened around the wheel. “He was desperate last night. He’d lost too much blood, had gotten too weak—”
“So he fed on the first poor woman he found.” He could hear the painful sound of her swallow.
He caught her hand in his. Tightened his fingers around hers. “We’re gonna get him.” He didn’t tell her that there were dozens, hundreds, more twisted vampires out there like Roberts.
She’d figure that out on her own, later.
Right now, he was focused on taking care of the monster who’d made the mistake of stumbling into his backyard and threatening the woman he was coming to need.
Besides, the world would be a damn sight better once Roberts was eliminated from it.
Then he could always start hunting the next supernatural who crossed the line.
There were always others waiting. He’d learned that lesson early in his FBI career.
And the true monsters, well, they weren’t always Other.
Six
A week later, Miranda sat at the computer in Sam’s temporary office. The sheriff was still fishing, somewhere in Louisiana now, so Sam continued to run the show in Cherryville. She typed quickly on the machine, vaguely aware of the hum of activity just beyond the door. The stitches were gone now, but every few moments, her arm would ache as she punched on the keyboard. Other than those mild twinges, she was doing pretty well.
Okay, except for the nightmares she’d been having. Those were a bit of a bitch.
There had been no sign of Paul Roberts for the past seven days or nights. The man had gone underground, perhaps literally.
So it was time for her to take some action.
Cain was out with Santiago, interviewing some of the folks who had been at Pete’s the night Christie Hill was murdered. God, that poor woman’s funeral had been hell. Her mother had just stood there, shaking and weeping, while Christie’s younger sister, a kid who’d just graduated and had been one of Miranda’s best students at Cherryville High, had stared at the coffin with dry but desperate eyes.
Yes, definitely time for stage two.
And she wasn’t going to wait for Cain and his FBI buddies to give her permission.
A woman from the FBI had confiscated Miranda’s computer three days ago, and the systems at the school were locked up for the summer, but, luckily, good old Sam never secured his temporary office.
Her fingers tapped faster and faster as she created her profile. No, not her profile. The perfect profile to catch Paul’s interest. Because she knew he was out there, just looking for the right woman.
She’d been that woman once, and she’d be the unlucky one again.
Miranda was back on the site where she’d originally met Paul, but this time, she was a brunette named Angie Phillips. A woman who lived about forty minutes away, right near the beach. A woman who was thirty-three. Divorced. No children. An artist. And a serious lover of antiques.
Paul had talked about his antiques on their date. Damn, but he’d talked about them a lot. Particularly, his collection of ancient knives. He’d been collecting them all his life. He had knives dating back to ancient Egypt. Knives from the Middle Ages. The Victorian era. The Civil War.
Since he loved to cut his prey, the fascination made a sick sense to Miranda.
Now she just had to set a nice lure in her trap and wait for the knife-freak to show.
“What are you doing?”
Cain’s voice. She jerked, startled. Jesus, but the man moved like some kind of, um, cat.
He closed the door behind him. Lowered the blinds. Then turned the lock with a soft click.
His predatory gaze narrowed as he stalked toward her. “Miranda? Why do I have the feeling you aren’t just checking Sam’s e-mail?”
Her fingers stilled above the keyboard. “Because I’m not.” No sense denying it. Her chin lifted. “I’m doing a bit of hunting on my own.”
He grunted at that and continued to cross the room in those long, strong strides. He’d been keeping his distance from her since the shooting. No touches. No kisses. She’d caught him staring at her a few times, the same raw lust lurking in his eyes that she’d seen before Paul had screwed things to hell and back.
But the man had been holding on to a steel chain of control. And she was getting damn tired of it.
And tired of having both him and Santiago bunking on her couch.
There was more than enough room in her queen-size bed for Cain, and the man knew it.
So why the standoff? Miranda’s patience was long gone, and she’d never pretended to have the control that the man before her possessed.
Time to clear
the air.
She stood quickly, sending the chair rolling back behind her. “What the hell is your deal lately?” Grandma Belle had been a woman used to speaking her mind, and Miranda thought it was long past time she did the same.
Cain blinked, then lowered those glittering eyes of his to her throat. “Your bruises are gone.”
“What?” Her hand lifted automatically and touched the no-longer-tender flesh. “Yeah, so—”
“The stitches came out this morning, didn’t they?”
A stiff nod.
He smiled then, the smile of one very pleased cat. And his dimple curved. “Good.”
The lust was in his eyes again. That need that had her breasts swelling and a ball of fire churning in her gut. She marched around the desk, angry he could arouse her with just a stare, angry that she’d wanted him all week while he’d kept that cold space between them.
Just angry, dammit.
Her arms crossed over her chest and the backs of her legs pressed against the desk. “What kind of game are you trying to play with me, Lawson?” Sam had told her about the background check he’d run on Cain. Until he was eighteen, her shifter had lived in Dallas, Texas. Then he and his mother had moved to Atlanta. He’d bounced around with the Bureau a bit after that, eventually winding up in Miami before he took his little retirement and headed to Cherryville.
Lots of big cities. And she was sure there had been lots of women in those cities. Cain was far too sexy not to have attracted more than his share of lovers. Hell, maybe the guy was too used to big-city life and the games that men and women played there.
Emotional games weren’t for her. Her ex-fiancés could tell him that.
He stepped closer to her and lifted a hand to trail over her arm. “I’m not playing.”
She swallowed, liking that touch far too much. And when the backs of his fingers rubbed lightly against her breast, she sucked in a quick pull of air. “Then—then what is this hot-and-cold mood? One day, you’re acting wild”—good word there—“for me, the next—” He’d been completely hands-off.
And it had hurt. When she sure hadn’t been expecting pain. She’d been rejected before. She was thirty-two, for heaven’s sake. Of course she’d been rejected.
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