Page 15 of Hunting His Vampire Mate

Unlike bathroom breaks, getting a drink about once an hour was extremely appropriate in a situation like this. Sitting alone at a table for hours, watching the crowd like a hawk, and not drinking anything tends to attract the wrong sort of attention in a busy club like this.

I turned and scanned the bar.

No Danny.

The twink, however, was now at the bar. He was talking with a bald-headed bartender who was covered in muscles, leather, and tattoos. He was probably trying to convince the guy that he was, in fact, old enough to drink.

I frowned.

Danny wouldn’t have left me. Maybe he moved tables? Maybe he was somewhere nearby, and I’d somehow missed him in the crowd? Not impossible—the place was surprisingly packed, given that Ontario, Oregon barely seemed like it should have been a large enough town to support a club even half this size.

I made my way around the perimeter of the dance floor, certain that I must have somehow missed him. But I scanned every table. They were all full. Most of them were occupied with groups of drunken patrons engaged in slurry soppy-eyed conversations.

But still no Danny.

I glanced up to the second level railing. But he was nowhere to be found. And he wouldn’t have gone up there. Not without a damn good reason. Such as spotting a vamp trying to lure a clueless victim out of here. Even then, there was only one way up, which meant only one way down. He wouldn’t have risked it by himself. He’s not the reckless one. That’s very squarely my job.

I hesitated.

Had Danny gotten so jealous that he’d needed to leave? Had he seen the twink grinding up on me and gotten legitimately upset or something?

No way he’d let his emotions get the best of him like that.

He wouldn’t have left.

Not of his own volition.

Ice water entered my veins as I realized that we were here, in the same bar where a dozen other people had vanished from, and Danny was now missing.

If it really was vamps, they would have gotten him outside somehow, then. They wouldn’t have wanted any witnesses.

How long had he been missing?

I had taken my eyes off him for two or three minutes, at most. And it had been longer than a minute but less than two since I’d realized he was gone. Which meant he’d been gone for about five minutes. That’s an eternity in a life-or-death situation.

Fuck. Scowling to myself, I turned and beelined for the exit.

There, facing the door, I saw the back of Danny’s head just as he slipped outside. He was followed by a man who was dressed head to toe in black and exceptionally pale.

I swore under my breath.

Our plan had worked. But I hadn’t been the bait. Danny was the bait. And he might not even know it.

Fuck.

I had a gun, loaded with wooden bullets, in my left ankle holster. I had a small silver-edged knife in my right boot. But I wasn’t supposed to be the brawn of this particular operation. Danny was. He was the one who had all the real firepower right now.

What was he thinking? Heading outside, where anything at all could happen to him, without any backup? Without even letting me know what he was doing? He knew better.

It took me a full two minutes to push my way through the throng of bar-goers in order to get outside. That was another fucking eternity in which anything could have been happening to Danny. Anything at all.

Danny can hold his own, I reminded myself, trying with all my might to believe that.

I stepped through the door and the cooler outside air swirled around me, causing me to shiver.

We’d already scoped out the surrounding area before we’d gone in, another standard practice. Apart from exploring the area in Google maps ahead of time, we also always drove around the block to get a lay of the land first, then parked several streets down and walked in, to make it harder to connect us with our vehicle. There were cameras and witnesses everywhere and it was dumb to take chances.

So, I knew that if I turned right, there was a whole row of other businesses on either side of the street, with no alcoves or anything between them for the whole block, and potentially plenty of late-night diners and bargoers to serve as witnesses.

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