Awakened (The Belladonna Agency Book 2) Read online

  Hello, Nick. Imagine finding you here all alone.

  Stupid fantasy. He didn’t seem inclined to pursue the subject.

  Barrett’s sigh hitched roughly in her throat. “So who or what tried to strangle me?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said after a fractional pause. “Whoever he was, he was big.” His gaze moved to the crossbow he’d left leaning against the wall, then back to her. “I took aim the second before you moved. Threw me off.”

  “Sorry about that,” she murmured. “I was only fighting for my life.”

  He gave a curt shake of his head. “No shit. Good thing I got there in time.”

  “Yeah.” She cleared her throat. It hurt inside and out.

  “Anyway, not a total miss. The arrow took a chunk of his ear. He let you go and ran. I thought it best to stay with you rather than give chase.”

  “I appreciate that,” she said softly.

  With more determination this time, she once again tried to sit up, bracing herself on wobbly arms. With an impatient sigh, Nick helped her until her back was braced against the wooden headboard. Other than that, the whole room seemed to be made of stone and furnished in steel. Taking shallow breaths to keep the dizziness at bay, she asked, “Are we in a safe location?”

  “For now. I’ve got satellite tracking. It’s how I knew someone was heading up. But I had no idea it was you until the last second.”

  “Oh.”

  “I think the video feed from the gate cam broke down or got whacked. Did you park down there?”

  “I was looking for a camera. Didn’t see one. And yes, I left my car.”

  “The camera’s hidden in the poison ivy. Low maintenance and no one goes near it.”

  “Kind of low tech for you.” Tiredly, she closed her eyes, then jerked them open again when she feared she was dozing off. What had she been talking about? Oh right. His gizmos. “So you’re currently doing the type of research and development that requires you live on a mountain?”

  “For some projects, yeah.”

  She watched him carefully. “Projects designed to identify vampires for the FBI?” she asked.

  Given Mahone’s report to Carly, that was Barrett’s best guess at the moment. Why dance around the subject? Granted, she had no idea how he’d react. He might know more about vampires than she did and volunteer nothing. She hoped he would simply tell her the truth.

  Rather than appearing confused or denying what she’d said, he narrowed his eyes at her. “So this isn’t a social call. And you still haven’t learned to stay out of trouble, I see. What happened to going back to your privileged life and taking up drawing again? Wasn’t that part of the plan?”

  “Maybe in your mind. Never in mine.” And he’d effectively avoided her question.

  For the next few minutes, the tense silence pulsed between them, but she refused to go any further into their past, what he’d encouraged her to do, and what she’d known immediately upon stepping back onto U.S. soil was never going to happen. She also wasn’t going to bring up the mistakes she’d made and would make again if she had to, even knowing it would end the same way. She prayed he wouldn’t bring them up, either.

  Nick finally sighed, then said, “So I guess you’re working for the feds, too.”

  Thankful he wasn’t going where she didn’t want him to, she relaxed slightly. So Mahone had been right. Nick knew about vampires and freely admitted he was working with the FBI. And he didn’t seem overly surprised by the fact she did, as well. “In a manner of speaking.”

  He cocked a brow. “Meaning?”

  “Like you, I’m an independent contractor. I like my freedom.”

  “I remember.”

  Her gaze flew to his. Had that been bitterness in his tone?

  He hadn’t seemed terribly upset when she’d ended things between them, even if he had protested a little. She’d assumed it was a token effort so he wouldn’t hurt her feelings. Yet his next words seemed like another dig. “You never liked following orders, even if they were there for a reason.”

  So she’d been wrong. He had no intention of letting sleeping dogs lie, but he couldn’t force her to talk about it. “Let’s not get into all that. It’s in the past, Nick.”

  Clenching his jaw, he stood again. For a moment he seemed to be listening to something outside that she couldn’t hear. Then he returned his dark gaze to her. “Okay. Then let’s get into something new: Why you’re here, how you knew to find me, and whether anyone knew you were coming.”

  The last part of the question confused her, but only for a second. Then she realized why he was asking it. Her attacker …

  It hadn’t been some random assault by a maniac wandering in the woods. He’d been inhumanly strong. What if he was a vampire who’d been instructed to follow her and kill her? If so, who had sent him? Jane’s captors? The FBI? And why had he smelled like a rotting corpse, unlike every other vampire she’d ever met or heard of?

  She looked sideways at Nick.

  Was it totally crazy to wonder if he’d sent that thing after her? Or to speculate whether he’d only pretended to save her?

  She shivered at her thoughts and shook her head. She hated this. Being suspicious of everyone around her, including the man she’d once trusted enough to welcome inside her body. She’d come here for a reason; she had no choice but to trust Nick again. It shouldn’t be such a difficult task.

  She answered him slowly. “There’s a lot I need to fill you in on.”

  “Including what you know about vampires and what you need from me.”

  At her slight nod, his mouth twisted. Something disapproving radiated from him and he didn’t even bother to hide it.

  “What’s on your mind?” she asked him. The Nick Maltese she’d known hadn’t gone in for displays of emotion. But he was older now. His eyes showed it—and revealed more than he probably wanted to.

  “I wish you were here for a whole different reason, Barrett. A personal one. But I wished for a lot of things over the past year that never came true, and something tells me nothing’s changed.”

  Memories were in his eyes and in his voice, forcing her to relive what she’d sought to forget. Again, Nick’s hint that their split had wounded him in some way surprised her.

  Back then she’d told herself to be practical—their brief affair hadn’t been the romantic kind, but one driven by powerful and mutual desire to connect on a purely physical level. Craving intense sensation. The stress of being far from home, picking up the pieces of random wars and trying to put someone else’s country back together, was overwhelming without some form of release.

  Some drank to blot out the chaos and the violence, some did drugs. They had fucked. A lot.

  Nick was skilled and ultra macho but he never rushed it. He knew just when to be tender and he knew exactly how to take her to climax again and again until she screamed his name. Naked in his arms, blissed out underneath his big body or riding him hard, she was a different woman. Too open. Too vulnerable. Needing him way too much.

  She didn’t want to love him, damn it. Loving someone just opened you to hurt. To loss.

  So she’d always planned to end things with Nick before she returned stateside. If not for Jane Small, Barrett hadn’t planned on ever seeing him again.

  Nonetheless, the fact that he might have truly cared for her and mourned the end of their relationship filled her with a wave of pleasure. One she immediately tamped down.

  “Never mind.” The bluff command snapped her back to the moment. “So what security clearance do you have?” he asked. “Six-Vee?”

  “Six—what?”

  He stared at her. “V as in vampire. You contract with the FBI. You mentioned vampires. And given what attacked you—I mean, I assumed you worked in the Bureau’s Turning Program before it was shut down. That you’d know the lingo.”

  Something he’d said bothered her, but she was still foggy, distracted by her memories; she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was so she just shr
ugged. “I obviously haven’t done all my homework. Guess nothing’s changed.” She shrugged again, trying to make light of the topic even though she could tell by the immediate flare in his eyes that he didn’t think it was funny.

  “Get up to speed. You nearly fucking died out there, Barrett.”

  “I remember,” she whispered. “Being strangled is not fun.” She didn’t want to think about what would have happened if he hadn’t gotten to her in time.

  “So don’t joke about this. Ever.”

  “Okay.”

  He took advantage of her weak reply. “How about if we don’t discuss it, either?”

  She cleared her throat. It was still painful. “Won’t work. On a need-to-know basis … well, I really need to know a few things.”

  “Is that right.” His tone was suddenly wary. He’d never liked conversations where he wasn’t in charge. The words we have to talk had always made him pace the room and eye the door. But he stayed where he was. “Fire when ready.”

  “The thing that attacked me? I’m sort of remembering more now. I’m guessing you’ve seen something like it before.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You didn’t blink when you drew the bow. You didn’t seem shocked by what was happening. And you missed.”

  Nick just stared at her again. “You moved.”

  She ignored that and persisted. “Was it a vampire? And why the hell did he stink like that?”

  “Some do.”

  It was an answer but it didn’t tell her much of anything. He was better than ever at calmly deflecting questions.

  “Why did you assume I work for the Turning Program, Nick? And what exactly do you do for the FBI?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Wondering if she’d gone too far, she almost jumped when he finally did. “You sure have lots of questions for someone who just dropped back into my life with no warning, Barrett. And you haven’t told me a thing.”

  “Maybe I have my reasons. Good ones.”

  “C’mon,” he said coaxingly. “Share. I used to love it when you shared. Your eyes got all misty.”

  The sarcasm in his tone made the dull ache in Barrett’s head began to grow in intensity again. “Go fuck yourself, Nick.”

  “Can’t. I have work to do.” He walked over to what she guessed was the security system and stared into a screen. As he fiddled with some buttons, she got the sense that he was trying to regain his control. “Stupid remote feed got fried somehow.” He gave it a smack that rattled something inside. “Won’t work the way I want it to.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “The satellite tracker and the security system don’t sync.” Nick scowled. “Goddamn it.” His thick dark brows drew together as he stared into the screen and swore under his breath. “Let’s try the zoom.”

  “What are you looking for?” With difficulty, she rose from the bed and went to stand beside him.

  “Your vehicle. And—well, shit.”

  That was putting it mildly, Barrett thought. They both stared at her smashed and burning rental car. Flames licked against cracked glass and bent metal, devouring, destroying. They heard the explosion. The screen went black.

  “Guess you parked in someone’s spot,” he muttered.

  “Oh. So you get to joke and I don’t. That’s really not funny.”

  He shrugged and tapped other keys until he got the map function again.

  Barrett saw several gold dots begin to move randomly at the bottom of the topo map. “What are those?”

  “Could be a malfunction.”

  His tone told Barrett that he wasn’t telling her everything. “And if it isn’t?”

  “Then several someones or somethings are coming up the mountain and that makes us officially outnumbered. Let’s go.”

  “Go where? In what?” Barrett was shaking, and not from weakness.

  “Hang on.” He pulled out a radio. Pressed a button. “Kev, do you hear me?” Nothing. “Kev.” Still nothing. “Shit.” He threw down the radio. “I’ll try calling him when we’re out of here.”

  “Him who?”

  “Guy who works down the mountain. He’s got his hands full dealing with those gold dots.” Nick clenched his teeth. “At least I hope that’s why he’s not answering.”

  “So it looks to me like we just ran out of options.”

  He straightened and took her arm. “Plan H. Follow me.”

  She wondered what had happened to plans A through G, but there wasn’t time to ask.

  He reached down to grab his crossbow and arrows, then led the way to a door she hadn’t noticed. Once through it, he flipped several switches on a panel in an exterior wall. They were in a hangar. Huge panels opened slowly to reveal the sky. Silhouetted in the faint moonlight was a gleaming helicopter.

  Barrett gaped at the craft, momentarily at a loss for words. “Where’d you get that?”

  “It was here when I moved in,” he answered laconically.

  Like she was ever going to get a straight answer to a reasonable question out of him. Nick had been famous for procuring outrageously expensive gear at no cost to himself. Whenever he wanted to see what he could get, he had filled out requisition forms one after the other and his commanding officer had signed off on them without even looking.

  “As long as you know how to fly it.”

  “Just get in,” he sighed.

  She obeyed, putting on the headset with the attached mic she found on the seat.

  They were aloft in minutes, taxiing the short distance out of the hangar to a landing pad and rising swiftly when the rotors got up to speed. There was another scanner with a similar screen mounted on the helicopter’s instrument panel. Barrett didn’t want to look at it but she did. The gold dots moved higher on the map of the mountain, almost to the top. The deafening noise of the rotors didn’t drown out another, much more primal sound. And the headsets didn’t filter it out entirely.

  Ferocious howls rose to the darkening sky as they flew away.

  “Sounds like the hounds of hell,” Barrett yelled, wincing as her shout and the helicopter noise seemed to stab into her temples like razors.

  “Nah. Those are hunting dogs. The gold dots track them, if you really want to know. A breeding operation adjoins my property. The kennels are down there, below the ridge.”

  “Are they after us?” The question wasn’t meant to be serious but it came out that way.

  Nick adjusted his headset mic and glanced at the screen. “No. But someone let them out. They shouldn’t have been loose, which is why we needed to get out of there. But it’s entirely possible the dogs captured him.”

  She knew whom he meant but not exactly. They’d gotten off the subject of what had attacked her.

  He shut off the scanner and concentrated on a bewildering array of instruments and gauges, then looked out at the clear night sky, his mouth set in a grim line. They didn’t speak for some time. Barrett looked out through the clear bubble of the windshield as Nick piloted the craft. Her vision had started to tunnel and she blinked to regain focus. Her mouth was dry, her skin clammy. She needed to lie down. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep for eons.

  She had no choice but to remain upright and bluff her way through. “Mind if I ask where we’re going?” she asked after a while.

  He glanced at her, his eyes narrowing as he took her in. “Got enough fuel to get to the Atlanta area.”

  “Why Atlanta?”

  He shrugged. “Big city. Safer.”

  “If you say so.”

  Nick kept his gaze on the instrument panel. “Rest. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  “I don’t want to. Let’s keep talking.”

  They hit rough air and her stomach roiled from the turbulence. Nick righted the heli with some effort and flew on.

  “Fine,” he said. “You want to talk? Tell me why you came to me, Barrett. When the last time I saw you, you swore to never come to me—or for me—ever again.”

  His voice echoed
distinctly inside her headset. Her face heated at his deliberately crude choice of words. Had she said that? She struggled to remember, distracted by the constant thudding of the rotors.

  Maybe she had.

  What of it? She’d beaten him to the punch, that was all, by being the first to say they should break up. Then added that she didn’t have a place for him in her life or in her bed.

  Over and out.

  And though she’d meant every word, her heart had known her for the cowardly liar she was. It still did, but as always, she pushed beyond that.

  “I came for your help, Nick. Not for you. That’s a big distinction.”

  Chapter 4

  Exhaustion—or shock—finally got to her. Nick looked over. Barrett’s eyes were closed. He didn’t think she was faking sleep. Her soft lips were parted slightly as she drew in shuddering breaths.

  What a reunion. Out of nowhere, she’d shown up in the clutches of a turned vampire and he’d done the required rescuing. Once they were in the air and safely away … maybe the rapid change in altitude had gotten to him. All of a sudden he’d turned into Mr. Fucking Sensitive, wanting to know why she’d ended things.

  Like he hadn’t made it happen back then, for the most part. Witnessing the risks she took and how far she would go, he’d schemed to get her out of Europe and safely stateside—without telling her. Barrett didn’t play safe. She took way too many chances, using her cool beauty and smarts to get into and out of places where she wasn’t welcome, one step ahead of vicious thugs.

  She always had a cause and gave it her all. There were reasons why. They’d been over them. The brother she hadn’t been able to save at a critical moment was one. But that had happened long ago.

  When he got right down to it, Nick had to admit that she took chances because she wanted to. Because she loved living on the edge, in constant danger. Just like him.

  He’d known he had no right to try to change that trait in her, but he’d wanted to. Lost cause. One of many.

  They’d both pretended to move on, but he’d known the moment he’d seen her they’d been lying to themselves.

  He used the heli radio and tried Kev again. This time he answered.