“I’m going outside. I need to know who the intruder was.” I need to put miles between me and her, before I slip from bodyguard to predator.
“I’m already all over it.”
“I need to get out.” He couldn’t put it any plainer than that. “You know what I mean.”
There was a significant pause. “Okay. Get one of Jack’s men to babysit.”
“I don’t trust them like I trust you.”
Kenyon grunted with resignation. “I’ll be there.”
“Now.” Sam thumbed off his phone, shoving it back in its belt holster. His shoulders ached from tension, making the movements awkward.
Barely a minute later, an enormous gray wolf came trotting around the corner, tail and ears held high. Kenyon plopped onto his haunches before Sam and lifted his front paws in a classic begging gesture.
Sam stared, huddled in his bad mood. It was hard to keep up in the face of a grinning timber wolf. “Smart-ass. What happens if someone wanders down the hall? I’m tired of bribing animal control officers.”
Kenyon flopped down in front of the door, rolling on his back to expose a hairy belly.
“Whatever.” Sam gave up and went outside. Annoying or not, Kenyon would keep Chloe safe.
He’d meant what he said about a leak. Someone in the household had tipped off the thieves about the dress. Finding out the traitor’s identity was top of his to-do list.
But, right that minute, he needed a break. He was no more domesticated than Kenyon’s wolf. There was a reason he steered clear of jobs that forced him to mix among humans. He was the knife in the dark, the menace lurking on a rooftop. A predator. The only reason he was here was out of respect for Jack.
But somehow, Chloe had touched him. She’d seen a glimpse of the beast tonight and hadn’t known enough to run for it. He’d seen her face, his own darkness reflected back at him through the desire in her eyes. She wanted all of him, even if she didn’t understand what that meant.
That alone meant he owed her protection. He couldn’t articulate why; it was simply a fact. Long ago, when he had been a man, he’d had a wife. He’d adored Amy from childhood, and he kept her memory deep, deep inside where he hid the treasured memories of his human life. But whatever drew him to Chloe was different. It was as primal a response as his hunger for blood.
Sam stood a moment under the night sky, letting the crisp air cool his face. The night smelled of the nearby forest, the scent of pine sharp and clean. Jack’s estate covered around two hundred acres, enough room for even a vampire to feel free for a moment.
He set out for the patch of ground beneath the broken window of Chloe’s old bedroom, passing a rose garden and a patio set with table and chairs. His gaze swept the ground, hunting the shadows for any sign of the intruder.
He looked up, calculating the distance the intruder had jumped. There was a low roof a story above, then another dozen feet to Chloe’s window. A two-part leap to safety—one a trained human could achieve without much trouble. Except this one was wounded. Sam had winged him.
He knelt and examined the grass. This part of the lawn was well trampled. The security guards, once roused, had given enthusiastic chase. Footprints would be hard to track. Blood, however, would not.
Taking a quick look around, he checked to make sure none of the guards still roaming the grounds were in view. Then he crouched until his nose was mere inches from the lawn. A vampire’s sense of smell wasn’t as good as a werewolf’s, but it was better than that of a werewolf stuck in human form. There had been too many people around during the chase for Kenyon to get hairy. Sam might have better luck picking up the trail. Hopefully it wasn’t too late to matter.
There. He caught the scent of blood, memorizing its unique signature. Sam crept forward, following the trace in a diagonal line across the lawn. Now that he knew what he was looking for, the muted glow of lights from the house showed him a particular set of tracks—a medium-sized man wearing soft-soled shoes. Drops of blood dotted the path, keeping the scent strong.
The path led up to a garden wall. It was brick and a good fifteen feet tall. Scuffed dirt at the bottom made it obvious that the intruder had climbed it—no doubt a painful process for a man shot in the shoulder.
Sam took a running step and bounded lightly to the top. He squatted for a moment, scanning the view before dropping to the other side. The wall drew a line between the order of Jack’s gardeners and the wild kingdom beyond. Sam landed in a clump of weeds beside a gravel road. Across the road was untamed forest.
He could see where the intruder had stood. Blood had pooled there, but no trail of drops led away. Sam swore. The intruder must have had enough of a head start on his pursuers to risk stopping to bind his wound. Then, he’d splashed whiskey on the ground, drowning what scent there was in a fog of alcohol. Alcohol mixed with something that made Sam’s nose numb.
That made Sam’s job much, much harder. Was the guy using the smelly substance for disinfectant, or was he expecting tracking dogs? Or did he know there were vampires?
He was willing to bet the latter. Jack’s killers had used silver bullets.
Sam walked up and down the road in ever-widening loops, searching for clues. The gravel was hard packed and dry, giving away nothing. Now that he’d left the protected zone of the walled garden, a freshening breeze was sweeping away any lingering scent. Not that Sam could smell much of anything anymore, after encountering that scent bomb the thief had left.
No wonder Kenyon hadn’t had any luck. Sam stopped, jamming his hands in his pockets. He was coming up empty, too. Come on. Everyone makes mistakes. What clue did this guy leave for me to find?
He had to have escaped somehow. If I were a villain, which way would I run? Outside of a few other estates, there was nothing but ocean to the west. Sam followed the road east.
He’d barely gone a quarter mile before he found what he was looking for. A car had been parked by the side of the road—a small compact, judging by the tire treads in the soft shoulder. They weren’t deep, and human eyes had missed them. The shadows were dense here at the edge of the forest, so Sam pulled a compact flashlight from his pocket, filtering the bright beam with his fingers and using just enough light to see without wrecking his night vision.
There weren’t any obvious clues—no lost buttons or dropped wallets. Just a few spots of blood that probably fell when he climbed into the car.
Sam narrowed his eyes. If he was reading the tracks right, there were two sets of footprints in the soft dirt. It looked as though the intruder got in the passenger side. Had someone been waiting for him?
Instinct made Sam follow the road about a mile to the first bend. The wind was starting to smell damp with a rain that would wash away any remaining clues once it fell. He was running on pure intuition now, all hunter, the beast in him adding its predatory cunning to his human intelligence.
Just around the bend he found the car. It was nose-first into the ditch, the front bumper crunched against a tree. The passenger door was partially open but jammed into the ground, as if the accident had happened when the door was ajar. Had someone bailed out partway through the crash?
Sam wrinkled his nose. Despite his deadened senses, a new banquet of smells, both revolting and enticing, pulled him toward the scene. He approached cautiously.
The driver was slumped over the wheel, obviously dead. Air bags hung like deflated balloons. Sam felt a wave of cold nausea as he circled toward the windshield, peering through the glass to catch a glimpse of the man’s face.
A good deal of the man’s head was splattered over the side window glass. The bullet had come from the passenger seat. Sam mentally reconstructed the events. Bang, pop the door, jump out just before the car swerves into the ditch and smashes the tree.
Risky, shooting the driver. Then again, he would have