Page 65 of Healer's Call

She scoffs. “Like I’d ever talk to him.”

Well, that answers that question.The only thing I can think is that he reached out to somebody...maybe Sam? My heart softens.

“Are you going to drink it or just stare at it?” Ava asks wryly. I take a sip and close my eyes as the flavor hits my senses and the heat hits my stomach. “So, you’re moving?”

“I guess so,” I say absently.

“You don’t have to, you know,” she points out.

“It’s just down the hall,” I remind her.

“So, back to my original question was it vampires?”

I put my cup down. “I don’t know.” I meet her eyes and for just a moment, I see the fear in her eyes that I know is reflected in my own. She stands up and starts to pace.

“Were they exceptionally fast?”

I think back. “I don’t know. It happened so fast.”

“Were they freakishly strong? Did they sniff your neck? Did they do that blurring thing?” Each question feels like lead dropping into my stomach. When I don’t answer right away, she whirls towards me. “Well?”

“I don’t know. It all happened so fast. I—” I pause, and my mouth dries up. “I was so scared. I was fighting to try to get away. I didn’t have a chance to...categorize their movements.”

Her eyes soften but only for a moment. “If it was vampires, and we’re going to assume it was, then we need to get out of here because they’ve found us here. They’re going to come back for us. We know they’re after us. They’ve already come after us before.” Each word gets higher and higher until she’s in near hysterics. Fear clenches my stomach, and I grab my phone.

“So soon?” Maverick answers.

I don’t waste any time. “Was it vampires?” The words come out in a whisper, but I know he’ll be able to hear me with his sensitive hearing.

“No.” His answer is swift.

“Who were they?” I ask just as quietly. When he doesn’t say anything, I push. “Please tell me.”

“We don’t know.” I can hear the frustration in his voice, in the gruffness of his response. “When we do, you’ll be the first to know.” I take that in. “Did you need anything else?” he asks after a moment.

I shake my head before remembering he can’t see me. “No. Oh, thanks for the tea. How did you know—” Changing my mind, I stop the question before it fully forms. “Thanks. Bye.” I hang up before he can say anything else and drop my phone onto my bed like it’s going to burn me. “It wasn’t vampires,” I tell Ava before she can ask. “They don’t know who it was.”

Ava scowls. “Well, that’s super helpful. Well, we’ll just have to figure it out on our own.”

I sit wearily on the bed. “And how are we going to do that?”

Ava ignores me and continues her pacing. “So, a team breaks in here, gets past the security...somehow. That’s hard enough as it is, so they had to have some serious stealth skills. I feel like it couldn’t have been wolves because they would have known that too. It has to be those guys from the restaurant.”

I shake my head. “Mav would have known.”

“Well, maybe it was other guys that work for him,” she argues.

“I don’t think so. Maverick went to the boss’s house and apparently threatened him and his family. I don’t think he would have sent a team right after that,” I reason.

She lifts a brow. “No? It sounds like a perfect time to retaliate.”

“Have you met Mav?” I toss back. “If he threatened the guy’s family, there’s no way he sent an attack.”

“That’s a good point,” she concedes. We exhaust every possibility over the next hour and come up with nothing. “Ugh,” she says as she falls into the chair. “I didn’t want to have to do this.”

“Do what?” I ask in confusion.

She stares at her phone a moment and then pushes a button. She must have put it on speakerphone because I hear it ring once before a deep voice answers. “Hello.”

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