by Lara Adrian
Her mood instantly lightened, Gabrielle laughed along as her friends continued trading outlandish ideas about who the mysterious collector might actually be, and what it could mean to her future and by association, theirs as well. They were still at it after the table was cleared and the bill was paid, and the three of them exited the restaurant to the sunlit street outside.
“I have to dash,” Megan said, giving Gabrielle and Jamie each a quick hug. “See you guys soon?”
“Yes,” the two replied in unison, waving as Megan started up the sidewalk toward the office building where she worked.
Jamie raised his hand to hail a cab. “You heading right home, Gabby?”
“No, not yet.” She patted the camera case that hung from her shoulder. “I thought I’d walk over to the Common, maybe burn a little film for a while. You?”
“David’s due back from Atlanta in about an hour,” he said, smiling. “I’m playing hooky for the rest of the day. Maybe tomorrow, too.”
Gabrielle laughed. “Give him my best.”
“I will.” He leaned in and bussed her cheek. “It’s good to see you smiling again. I was really worried about you after last weekend. I’ve never seen you so shook up. You’re gonna be all right, right?”
“Yes. I’m fine, really.”
“And you have Detective Dark-and-Sexy looking after you now, so that’s not half bad.”
“No. That’s not bad at all,” she admitted, warmed again just thinking about him.
Jamie embraced her in a brotherly hug. “Well, honey, if there’s anything you need that he can’t give you—which I highly doubt—you just give me a call, you understand? I love you, sweetie.”
“Love you, too.” They separated as a taxi pulled up to the curb. “Have fun with David.” She lifted her hand to wave goodbye as Jamie climbed into the cab and the car eased back into the busy lunchtime traffic.
It took only a few minutes to walk the handful of blocks from Chinatown to the park at Boston Common. Strolling along the expansive grounds, Gabrielle snapped off a few photographs, then paused to observe a group of children playing blindman’s bluff in a grassy picnic area. She watched the girl in the center of the game, eyes covered with a blindfold, her blond pigtails bouncing as she spun first one way, then another, her hands outstretched as she tried to tag her dodging friends.
Gabrielle lifted her camera and lined up a shot of the darting, giggling kids. She zoomed in, following the fair-haired girl’s blindfolded face with her lens, hearing the peals of laughter that fell from the children’s lips and carried across the park. She didn’t take any pictures, just watched the carefree play from behind her camera and tried to remember a time when she might have felt so content and secure.
God, had she ever?
One of the adults supervising the kids from nearby summoned them to lunch, breaking up their raucous game. As the children dashed over to the picnic blanket to eat, Gabrielle swung her camera’s focus back across the Common. In the blur of movement through the lens, she glimpsed someone looking back at her from within the shade of a large tree.
She brought her camera away from her face and glanced to where a young man stood, partially concealed by the trunk of the old oak.
He was an unremarkable presence in the busy park, albeit a vaguely familiar one. Gabrielle noted his mop of ashy brown hair, his drab button-down shirt and standard-issue khaki pants. He was the type of person who’d blend in easily in a crowd, but she was certain she’d seen him somewhere recently.
Hadn’t he been at the police station last weekend when she’d given her statement?
Whoever he was, he must have realized she’d spotted him because he pulled back suddenly and ducked around the back of the tree to begin heading out of the park toward Charles Street. He dug a cell phone out of his pants pocket, then threw a glance over his shoulder at her as he strode at a fast clip toward the street.
The back of Gabrielle’s neck tingled with suspicion and a sinking feeling of alarm.
He had been watching her—but why?
What the hell was going on here? Something was definitely up, but she wasn’t about to stand around and guess at it any longer.
With her eyes trained on the guy in khakis, Gabrielle started after him, stuffing her camera back into its case and shrugging the straps of the small padded backpack up onto her shoulders as she walked. The kid was ahead of her about a block by the time she cleared the park’s wide lawn and stepped onto Charles.
“Hey!” she called after him, breaking into a jog.
Still on his phone, he pivoted his head to look at her. He said something urgent into the receiver, then flipped the cell closed and fisted it in his hand. Turning away from her, his quick pace became a full-on sprint.
“Stop!” Gabrielle shouted. She drew the curious attention of other people on the street, but the kid continued to ignore her. “I said stop, damn it! Who are you? Why are you spying on me?”
He tore up crowded Charles Street, vanishing into the sea of strolling pedestrians. Gabrielle followed, dodging tourists and office workers on lunch break, her eyes fixed on the bobbing bulk of the kid’s backpack. He turned down one street, then another, wending deeper into the city, away from the shops and businesses on Charles and back toward the tightly clustered area of Chinatown.
She didn’t know how far she’d tracked the kid, or even where exactly she’d ended up, but all of a sudden she realized she’d lost him.
She spun around near a busy corner, utterly alone, unfamiliar surroundings closing in on her. Shopkeepers stared at her from under shaded awnings and doors left open to welcome the summer air. Passersby threw her annoyed looks as she stood stockstill in the middle of the sidewalk, blocking the flow of foot traffic.
It was then she felt a menacing presence behind her on the street.
Gabrielle glanced over her shoulder and saw a black sedan with dark-tinted windows slowly moving between the other cars. It moved gracefully, deliberately, like a shark cutting through a school of minnows in search of better prey.
Was it coming toward her?
Maybe the kid who’d been spying on her was inside. Maybe his appearance, and that of this ominous-looking car, had something to do with whomever had purchased her photographs from Jamie.
Or maybe it was something worse.
Something to do with the horrific attack she had witnessed last weekend. Her report to the police. Maybe it had been a gang slaying she stumbled upon after all. Maybe those vicious creatures—she couldn’t quite convince herself that they were men—had decided she was their next target.
Icy fear lanced through her as the vehicle veered into the near lane, which hugged the sidewalk where she still stood.
She started walking. Picked up her pace.
Behind her, the car’s accelerator roared.
Oh, God.
It was coming after her!
Gabrielle didn’t wait to hear the peal of rubber being laid behind her. She screamed, and took off in a blind run, her legs pumping as fast as they could.
There were too many people around. Too many obstacles in her direct path. She dodged the milling pedestrians, too rattled to offer apologies as some of them clucked their tongues and swore at her in reproach.
She didn’t care, certain this was life or death.
A quick look behind her would prove to be disastrous. The car was still roaring through the traffic, hot on her heels. Gabrielle put her head down and dug in harder, praying she could make it off the street before the vehicle plowed into her.
In her haste, her ankle twisted beneath her.
She stumbled, losing balance. The ground came up and she fell hard onto the rough concrete. Her bare knees and palms broke the worst of her tumble, both getting chewed up in the process. The searing burn of torn flesh brought tears to her eyes, but she ignored it. Gabrielle surged to her feet. She was hardly up off the ground before she felt the hard clamp of a stranger’s hand gripping her at the elbow.
She sucked in a sharp gasp, panic pouring through her.
“You okay, lady?” The grizzled face of a municipal worker swung into her line of vision. His wrinkled blue eyes flicked down at her abrasions. “Aw, jeez. Look at that, you’re bleedin’.”
“Let go of me!”
“Didn’t you see those pylons right there?” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder at the orange cones she’d blown right past. “I got this section of sidewalk all torn up here.”
“Please, it’s okay. I’m fine.”
Caught in his helpful but hindering grasp, Gabrielle looked just in time to see the dark sedan pull up to the corner where she’d been standing only a moment ago. It rocked to an abrupt halt at the curb. The driver’s door opened and a broadly built, towering man stepped out.
“Oh, God. Let go!” Gabrielle yanked her arm away from the man who was trying to assist her, her gaze rooted on that monstrous black car and the danger that was crawling out of it. “You don’t understand, they’re after me!”
“Who is?” The muni worker’s voice was incredulous. He looked to where she was gaping and let out a laugh. “You mean that guy? Lady, that’s the friggin’ mayor of Boston.”
“Wha—”
It was true. Her eyes were wild as she watched the activity at the corner with new understanding. The black sedan wasn’t after her at all. It had pulled up to the curb and the driver now waited, holding open the back door. The mayor himself came out of a restaurant, flanked by suited bodyguards. They all climbed into the backseat of the vehicle.
Gabrielle closed her eyes. Her raw palms were burning. Her knees, too. Her pulse was still pounding, but all the blood seemed to have drained from her head.
She felt like a complete fool.
“I thought … ” she murmured as the driver closed the door, got in the front, then eased the official’s car back into traffic.
The worker let go of her arm. He walked away from her, back to his sack lunch and coffee, shaking his head. “What’s a matter with you? You crazy or somethin’?”
Shit.
She wasn’t supposed to see him. His orders had been to observe the Maxwell woman. Note her activities. Determine her habits. Report everything back to his Master. Above all, he was to avoid detection.
The Minion spat another curse from where he was hiding, his spine flat against the inside of a nondescript door in a nondescript building, one of many such places nestled among the Chinatown markets and restaurants. Carefully, he drew open the door and peered around it to see if he could spot the woman somewhere outside.
There she was, right across the busy street from him.
And he was pleased to see that she was leaving the area. He could just make out her coppery hair as she wended through the traffic on the sidewalk, her head down, her pace agitated.
He waited there, watched her until she was well out of sight. Then he slipped back onto the street and headed in the opposite direction. He’d blown more than an hour on lunch break. He’d better get back to the police station before he was missed.
CHAPTER
Ten
Gabrielle ran another paper towel under the cold water running in her kitchen sink. Several others lay discarded in the basin already, sopping wet, stained pink with her blood and gray with grime from the sidewalk grit she’d washed out of her palms and bare knees. Standing there in her bra and panties, she squirted some liquid soap onto the wad of damp toweling, then gingerly scrubbed at the abrasions on each of her palms.
“Ow,” she gasped, wincing as she ran over a sharp little stone embedded in the wound. She dug it out and tossed it into the sink with the other shards of gravel she’d recovered in her cleanup.
God, she was a mess.
Her new skirt was torn and ruined. The hem of her sweater was frayed from scraping the pavement. Her hands and knees looked like they belonged to a clumsy tomboy.
And she’d make a public, total ass of herself besides.
What the hell was wrong with her, freaking out like she had?
The mayor, for chrissake. And she had run from his car like she feared he was a…
A what? Some kind of monster?
Vampire.
Gabrielle’s hand went still.
She heard the word in her mind, even if she refused to speak it. It was the same word that had been nipping at the edge of her consciousness since the murder she’d witnessed. A word she would not acknowledge, even alone, in the silence of her empty apartment.
Vampires were her crazy birth mother’s obsession, not hers.
The teenaged Jane Doe had been deeply delusional when the police recovered her from the street all those years ago. She spoke of being pursued by demons who wanted to drink her blood—had, in fact, already tried, as was her explanation for the strange lacerations on her throat. The court documents Gabrielle had been given were peppered with wild references to bloodthirsty fiends running loose in the city.
Impossible.
That was crazy thinking, and Gabrielle knew it.
She was letting her imagination, and her fears that she might one day come unhinged like her mother, get the best of her. She was smarter than this. More sane, at least.
God, she had to be.
Seeing that kid from the police station today—on top of everything else she’d been through the past several days—just set something off in her. Although, now that she was thinking about it, she couldn’t even be sure the guy she saw in the park actually was the clerk she’d seen at the precinct house.
And so what if he was? Maybe he was out in the Common having lunch, enjoying the weather like she was. No crime in that. If he was staring at her, maybe he thought she looked familiar, too. Maybe he would have come over and said hi to her, if she hadn’t charged after him like some paranoid psycho, accusing him of spying on her.
Oh, and wouldn’t that be lovely, if he went back to the station and told them all how she’d chased him several blocks into Chinatown?
If Lucan were to hear about that, she would absolutely die of humiliation.
Gabrielle resumed cleansing her scraped palms, trying to put the whole day out of her head. Her anxiety was still at a peak, her heart still drumming hard. She dabbed at her surface wounds, watching the thin trickle of blood run down her wrist.
The sight of it soothed her in some strange way. Always had.
When she was younger, when feelings and pressures built up inside of her until there was nowhere for them to go, often all it took to ease her was a tiny cut.
The first one had been an accident. Gabrielle had been paring an apple at one of her foster homes when the knife slipped and cut into the fleshy pad at the base of her thumb. It hurt a little, but as her blood pumped out, a rivulet of glossy bright crimson, Gabrielle hadn’t felt panic or fear.
She’d felt fascination.
She’d felt an incredible sort of … peace.
A few months after that surprising discovery, Gabrielle cut herself again. She did it deliberately, secretly, never with the intent to harm herself. Over time, she did it frequently, whenever she needed to feel that same profound sense of calm.
She needed it now, when she was anxious and jumpy as a cat, her ears picking up every slight noise in the apartment and outside. Her head was pounding. Her breath was shallow, coming rapidly through her teeth.
Her thoughts were careening from the flash-bright memories of the night outside the club to the creepy asylum she’d taken pictures of the other morning, to the confusing, irrational, bone-deep fear she’d experienced this afternoon.
She needed a little peace from all of it.
Even just a spare few minutes of calm.
Gabrielle’s gaze slid to the wooden block of knives sitting on the counter nearby. She reached over, took one in her hand. It had been years since she’d done this. She’d worked so hard to master the strange, shameful compulsion.
Had it truly ever gone away?
Her state-appointed psychologists and social workers eventual
ly had been convinced that it had. The Maxwells, too.
Now, Gabrielle wondered as she brought the knife over to her bare arm and felt a surge of dark anticipation wash over her. She pressed the tip of the blade into the fleshy part of her forearm, though not yet firm enough to break the skin.
This was her private demon—something she had never openly shared with anyone, not even Jamie, her dearest friend.
No one would understand.
She hardly understood it herself.
Gabrielle tipped her head back and took a deep breath. As she brought her chin back down on the slow exhale, she caught her reflection in the window over the sink. The face staring back at her was drawn and sorrowful, the eyes haunted and weary.
“Who are you?” she whispered to that ghostly image in the glass. She had to choke back a sob. “What’s wrong with you?”
Miserable with herself, she threw the knife into the sink and backed away as it clattered against the stainless basin.
The steady percussion of helicopter rotors chopped through the quiet of the night sky above the old asylum. From out of the low cloud cover, a black Colibri EC120 descended, coming to a soft touchdown on a flat expanse of rooftop.
“Cut the engine,” the leader of the Rogues instructed his Minion pilot after the craft had settled on its makeshift helipad. “Wait here for me until I return.”
He climbed out of the cockpit, greeted at once by his lieutenant, a rather nasty individual he’d recruited out of the West Coast.
“Everything is in order, sire.” The Rogue’s thick brow bunched over his feral yellow eyes. His large bald head still bore the scars from electrical burns inflicted during a bout of Breed interrogation he’d undergone about a half a year ago. However, amid the rest of his hideous features, the numerous scorch marks were merely a footnote. The Rogue grinned, baring huge fangs. “Your gifts tonight have been very well-received, sire. Everyone eagerly awaits your arrival.”
Eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, the leader of the Rogues gave a slight nod, strolling at an easy pace as he was led into the building’s top floor, then on toward an elevator that would take him into the heart of the facility. They went deep below the ground-level floor, getting off the elevator to travel a network of curving, tunneled walk-ways that comprised part of the general garrison of the Rogue lair.