“Shit.” Lucas laughed. “Those were some big women, Nick. You’re lucky they didn’t drain you dry.”
“Who says they didn’t? Worth every minute of it, though.” He grinned, then asked carefully, “You thinking about the FBI agent, my lord?”
Lucas tapped a finger idly on the chair of his arm. “Pretty lady. Great legs, world class ass, too. Must be a runner.”
“Yeah,” Nick said thoughtfully, then stiffened when Lucas shot him a hard look. “Not my type, though. Nope.”
Lucas stared at him a moment longer, then sat up. “Is Judy still working with Nightshade down below?” Judy was his head horse trainer, a human who’d been with him since he’d first bought this ranch more than fifty years ago. Judicious doses of Lucas’s blood kept her from aging, so Lucas didn’t have to look for a new trainer every generation. Most of the people working in Lucas’s stables were vampires, but horses were prey animals, and while there were plenty of prey animals who’d evolved to use the darkness for safety, horses weren’t among them. They needed sunlight, and that meant someone had to be there to supervise and work with them during the day, especially the foals.
“Far as I know,” Nick said, answering Lucas’s question about the young stallion.
“Good. Let’s get down there. I need to talk to Kurt about Daniel Hunter and see what he knows.”
* * * *
Kathryn followed Magda’s swaying hips down the hallway, wondering how the woman managed to walk on those heels without breaking an ankle. She had nothing against high heels. In fact, she appreciated the way they made her already long legs look even longer. But if she wore stilettos like those, she doubted she could stay upright. Not to mention, she’d tower over most everybody she met. And fuck Lucas Donlon for making her feel like a drab worker drone.
Jesus! Where the hell had that thought come from? She didn’t give a rat’s ass what Donlon thought about anything, much less how she dressed. Granted, he was a sexy guy. Okay, probably the sexiest guy she’d ever met. But he was a vampire! He wasn’t a guy at all. It was just her hormones reacting to his good looks. Maybe if she got out more, she wouldn’t go all vaporous at the sight of a good-looking man, er, vampire. She had to remember that. Vampire.
Magda led her directly to the front door and opened it. “Was there anything else you needed, Special Agent Hunter?”
Kathryn studied the female vamp. The question had been polite enough, but the tone had been something else altogether, and the subtext was clear: good-bye, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. And wasn’t that interesting? She thought about Lucas and his comment that admiration was only a short step from obsession. Her brother Daniel was very good-looking and charming as hell. Women loved him and, even more, wanted to take care of him. If Magda had been the one who chose the photographs . . . Kathryn knew it was a long shot, but went for it anyway.
“Mister Donlon said you did the decorating in here,” she said, gesturing at the beautiful house around them. “Is this a new residence?”
Magda tilted her head in a peculiar way, as if trying to decide whether to answer the question or stab her with a knife. Kathryn actually draped her hand casually next to her weapon, just in case, and saw the vampire female’s eyes follow the movement.
Magda showed her teeth in what Kathryn assumed was supposed to be a smile. “The original residence is a quarter mile from here. The property is old, but this particular house is fairly new. Lord Donlon oversaw the design part of the process. He had a very clear sense of what he wanted here and in the stables. But after that . . .” She shrugged. “He asked me to handle the interior. I know his taste, so I found a decorator I thought could handle it. She took me to some galleries, private showings, and I made choices. Carmichael was one of those, and when he found out whom the photographs were for, he brought the Ireland series to my attention.
“Do you honestly think I had something to do with your brother disappearing?” she abruptly asked, mockingly.
Kathryn shrugged. “It was only a question. I’m grasping at straws at this point, but maybe if I keep grabbing, I’ll eventually get the right one.”
“I see.”
“Do you? Do you have any family, Magda?”
“I am Vampire, Agent Hunter,” she replied coldly. “Whatever family I had, I have no more. My family is here now, with my lord . . . and the others.”
“Well, I have Daniel, and I won’t stop looking until I find him.”
Kathryn walked out the front door and down the stairs, beeping the locks on her SUV as she went. The truck was right in front of the house, and she was inside with the key in the ignition before Magda had even closed the house door.
Kathryn turned the key without thinking, but then sat for a moment, breathing deeply, trying to still her thumping heart. The very fact that it was pounding troubled her. She wasn’t a raw, rookie agent. Granted, at twenty-eight, she wasn’t exactly a grizzled veteran either, but Donlon was far from the first suspect she’d ever questioned. And he wasn’t even a suspect. She hadn’t thought going in that Donlon had a direct role in her brother’s disappearance, and, having met him, she was even more convinced of it. But she did think he could help her find whoever was involved. And given his admittedly protective attitude towards his people, she was worried he’d be more concerned with protecting his vampires than finding her brother.
Kathryn’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. She believed with all her heart that Daniel was alive, and she wanted him back. That was her goal. Her only goal. She closed her eyes, forcing herself to calm. If she wanted Daniel back, she needed to be smart about Donlon. He could help her, and he was attracted to her. He’d made that obvious. She didn’t mistake that attraction for anything other than lust, the desire of a charismatic male to carve another notch on his bedpost. But if that’s what it took to get his help, Kathryn would play along, although she wouldn’t play all the way into his bed. Not that sex with Lucas Donlon would be a chore. The man, or rather the vampire, was gorgeous. Unfortunately, he was also arrogant, snide and probably a killer, to boot.
The lights from the big front windows, which had been spotlighting her car, were suddenly doused, casting her into darkness. It reminded her that she’d been sitting there too long, and she put the SUV in gear, flipped on her lights and pulled away.
As she retraced her path down the winding drive, she wondered if sex with a vampire always involved blood. She supposed it did. In his videotaped interview, the now-deployed Marine who’d seen Daniel leave the bar had admitted that the reason he knew Alex was a vampire was because Alex had taken blood from him during sex. He’d offered the information readily and seemed almost proud of the fact, as if he’d scored a coup of some sort. He thankfully hadn’t offered any details, but there’d been a dreamy longing to his words, as if it had been a wonderful experience.
Kathryn couldn’t imagine it. How could having someone bite your neck hard enough to draw blood be anything but painful?
She came around the hill, drawing even with the barn and paddocks once again. There were more men out there now. She slowed down to watch and recognized Lucas among them. He’d taken off the leather jacket and wore only his black T-shirt and jeans. The jacket had emphasized the breadth of his shoulders, but without it she could see the definition of his chest and flat belly. No doubt about it, Lucas Donlon was sex in cowboy boots. He pushed a black cowboy hat onto his head, and Kathryn rolled her eyes. A black cowboy hat? And at night? Wasn’t that pushing the stereotype just a little? Lucas strode out into the middle of the ring. A huge, black horse immediately loped across the paddock, stopping right in front of him and butting its head against his chest. A human would have been knocked back a few steps by the force of that greeting, but Lucas didn’t budge. He only laughed and returned the greeting with a nose rub for the horse.
Kathryn couldn’t help smiling as she watched, but the longer she watched, she noticed something else. There was a pattern to the men surrounding Lu
cas. They moved and shifted, but he was never isolated, never alone. These weren’t just random cowpokes watching the big man ride himself a horse, these were his bodyguards and, from what she saw, well-trained bodyguards. They were probably all vampires, too.
She saw Nicholas, the vampire who’d been introduced as Lucas’s lieutenant, lean over and say something to Lucas. The vampire lord looked up then, his gaze crossing the intervening paddock and field to where Kathryn sat in her SUV silently observing. His white teeth flashed in a grin, and he tipped his hat in her direction.
Kathryn felt foolish at having been caught, especially since she really hadn’t meant to linger so long. She quickly put the SUV in gear and hit the gas, breathing a sigh of relief when the road was quickly swallowed up by the first dense cluster of trees. She’d have to be careful with Donlon. She wasn’t stupid enough to deny her attraction to him, but she was smart enough not to do anything about it. Lucas Donlon was not the kind of person an ambitious FBI agent could afford to get involved with. He was part of a secretive society that ruled itself and ignored U.S. law whenever it suited them. No one had ever been able to pin a crime on any of the vamps, though they’d certainly tried. There’d been a case out in L.A. not too long ago. It had been quickly hushed up, but the word underground was that the LAPD had tried to arrest someone very high up in the vampire hierarchy on suspicion of multiple murders.
The operative word there was tried to arrest him, because the warrant had been voided less than forty-eight hours after it was issued. And the big vamp had been released with so many apologies from the higher-ups, it was embarrassing. Adding insult to injury, it had been the vamps who found the real killer, the very human real killer, and turned him over to the authorities.
But even in cases where a vampire actually had committed a crime, the perpetrator disappeared before human authorities could get to him. No one knew for sure if the vampire offenders were imprisoned or executed, or if they were just moved somewhere else, but they were never heard from again. She supposed that was justice of a sort. Not very satisfying for the human authorities, but it saved the taxpayers the cost of a trial, and the outcome was about the same. Maybe even better.
Kathryn slowed as she approached the stone arch with its low, decorative wall. The same gun-toting guards were there. One of them waved her on. She nodded her thanks and kept going, until she saw the gleam of the whitewashed picket fence. A left turn took her back onto the paved section of road, and then the rough two-track again, until, finally, she hit the highway. She checked the dash clock. There was plenty of time left tonight. She would go back to the motel and check out the witness statements again, make some notes, then get a good night’s sleep. If she was going to be sparring words with Lucas Donlon again, she’d need all of her brain synapses firing on full. And if only she could stop the rest of her body from firing on full for an entirely different reason, she’d be in great shape.
* * * *
Kathryn didn’t know what to expect when she arrived at Donlon’s ranch the next day during daylight hours. She’d considered and rejected the possibility that the gate would be unguarded. Even if the vampires were tucked away safely in their beds somewhere, there was the house and barns to consider. And the animals, which to her untrained eye looked valuable. But more than anything, she just couldn’t see Donlon being that lax about security. He pretended to be an easygoing, ain’t-life-wonderful kind of guy, but there was another side to him that she imagined could be quite deadly when it came to the fore. When she’d insisted on questioning his vampires directly, any sense of the playboy had fled, and, in that moment, he’d been all business. And when he’d ultimately told her that his people would talk to her simply because he ordered them to do so . . . she could tell he believed it absolutely. Hell, maybe it was yet another vampire thing.
In any event, there were guards in all the same places and then some compared to the previous night, but they were human instead of vampire. Whereas the white wooden arch off the highway had been unguarded last night, today there were two human guards blocking her way. She showed them her credentials, and they checked her name against a list. Since Donlon was expecting her, albeit later this evening, Kathryn wasn’t surprised when they permitted her to proceed past this first checkpoint. The second stop, the one with the stone arch, had four human guards in place of the two vampires from last night, although all four of them looked remarkably like their vampire counterparts. If the sun hadn’t been shining, Kathryn wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart. She gave a mental shrug and turned over her FBI credentials one more time. The list was checked again, and she was permitted to continue with one cautionary piece of advice.
“The main house will be locked, ma’am,” one of the four humans informed her politely. “And there’s no one there to answer the door. I suggest you wait down by the barns. The trainer’s there, along with her staff. She’ll be able to give you a cold drink and a place to sit, if you’d like.”
“Thank you,” Kathryn said. “I’ll do that.”
And that’s why she found herself parking in front of the main house and walking up the flagstone paved driveway until she reached a set of wooden stairs that dropped down the twenty or so feet to where the barn and paddocks were located. It was a beautiful, sunny day, the sky a baby blue with not a cloud in sight, despite the cool temperature. Lucas’s snide remarks about her clothes the previous evening had stung, so she’d dressed casually this afternoon. Her hair was pulled into its usual tight ponytail that hung below her shoulders. Her jeans were soft and comfortable, well-worn in all the right places, and she had a white tank top tucked in at the waist. The air was chilly, despite the sunshine, so she’d pulled on a light blue dress shirt, wearing it open like a jacket. At least her footwear was good. At the last minute back home, she’d shoved her boots into her suitcase, after flashing on a sudden mental picture of herself in her FBI blue suit sticking out like a sore thumb on the streets of a dusty, wild west town, complete with raised wooden walkways and hitching rails. The only thing missing had been the Lonesome Dove soundtrack. She’d felt silly at the time, but now she was glad to have them with her. The town was a bit more modern than her vision, but she’d seen plenty of people wearing boots, so she’d been right to bring them. And it had nothing to do with Lucas Donlon and his snarky comments.
At the bottom of the stairs, she followed a well-worn path through the grass that took her to the main paddocks. There were no horses in the barn paddock this afternoon, but in the fields beyond that, she could see several animals grazing in the sunshine. They appeared well cared for and content, and not at all concerned that their owner was a vampire. Kathryn smiled to herself as she made her way past the paddock and around to an open side door.
This was a horse barn. Kathryn stopped just inside the door, struck by the unique scent of warm horse, clean hay and packed earth. It brought back memories of her grandparents’ ranch. Their place hadn’t been anywhere near as grand as this one, but horses pretty much smelled the same everywhere. Other animals probably had their scents, too. Cows certainly did, and pigs. But there was something uniquely clean about the scent of a horse barn.
She looked around and found herself on the main walkway between a double line of box stalls, every one of which appeared to be filled. Several of the horses poked their heads out to check out the new arrival, watching her with big, brown eyes. One or two nickered softly, while a big black—even bigger than the animal she’d seen Donlon with last night—snorted his displeasure, his head bobbing up and down as he kicked the wooden side of his stall.
Kathryn gave him a wide berth, heading toward the closed end of the barn where she could see a tack room through an open door. Before she got there, a woman emerged, looking not at all surprised to find a stranger in her barn. She was on the short side, no more than five-foot-two, probably less without her boots on. Kathryn would have pegged her weight at 115 to 120, but well-muscled, no doubt from working with horses. Most people didn’t und
erstand how big horses really were, and how much strength it took to ride one properly so it would do what you wanted it to. The woman wore no makeup or jewelry. She had blue eyes and strawberry blond hair that was even longer than Kathryn’s, her braid hanging all the way down her back to her butt.
“I’m Judy Peterson,” the woman said with a friendly smile. “And you must be Special Agent Hunter. Lord Donlon said you might come by.” She took the leather glove off her right hand and held it out.
Kathryn took it, feeling the rough skin and callouses of hard work. “Kathryn Hunter,” she said. So Lucas had expected her to come early? It wasn’t enough that he was unsettlingly handsome and charming, he had to be a mind reader, too?
“I wanted to see the place in daylight,” Kathryn admitted.
“Looks different, doesn’t it?” Peterson said agreeably. “Especially my babies.” She gazed down the long line of box stalls with a proprietary air.
“You’re the trainer?”
“Head trainer. I have a couple of assistants and some grooms. Lord Donlon spares no expense when it comes to his animals.”
“He breeds them?”
“Some. Mostly he rides for pleasure. But he loves horses, and he’s proud of what we’ve done here, so he doesn’t mind letting one of his stallions cover the occasional mare or two. For a price, of course.”
“Of course. Does he ever go outside his own stock for stud?”
“No.” Peterson shook her head. “If he’s interested in a particular line, he’ll buy the stallion outright. It’s a thing with him.”
“Men and their dicks, I suppose,” Kathryn muttered.
Peterson laughed. “You’d be right about that.”
The big black suddenly kicked the side of his box stall hard enough that it rattled the whole structure, causing several other horses to protest.
“Tromluí doesn’t like being ignored. He’s a big baby that way.” She walked past Kathryn to the stallion’s stall and held out her hand. The horse immediately stuck his nose into her fingers and tongued up whatever had been there. “Carrot,” Peterson said, rubbing the animal’s nose with a fond smile. “He’s got a sweet tooth, this one.”
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