Page 64 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
“What, really?” Shane laughed. “I do kind of remember that. I was pissed about the fluff piece I’d been assigned.”
“Right, yeah, it was a vampire thing. You wanted to focus on the framing of vampirism in the media but they wouldn’t let you.” Vincent whistled. “Fuck, I guess you really are a journalist then.”
“It’s not like we were doubting or anything,” Wesley clarified, in a way that sounded like they weredefinitelydoubting. “And you want to know about—”
Vincent cut him off with a poke in the side. “Maybe nothere.”
“He’s right,” Andres said. “Can we walk?”
He finished up the last few bites of his burrito while Shane wrapped his for later, and together they headed outside, walking along the edge of the quiet strip mall. Vincent and Wesley passed their horchata back and forth between sips. The spring night air was still a shade chilly, but it didn’t bother Andres the way it would have before his turning. Shane tucked his bare arms across his chest, though, fluffing up his scarf. Andres swore a little string of metal glimmered beneath the fabric around his neck, and his heart skipped before realizing it was a regular old necklace, not the rose gold of Shane’s collar.
Andres slid his jacket off, wrapping it around Shane’s shoulders without a word. He received the softest kiss in return, leaving his lips to tingle pleasantly and his heart beating to a new, happy thrum.
“Vitalis-Barron,” Andres said, “tell me about it. What was the security like? How did you break in? Do they have records—proof of what they’re up to? Photographic evidence? Anything?”
“The lab’s in the lowest basement level, but there’s a couple of security people in the building with the elevator that leads there—or there was when we entered. I don’t know if they’veincreased that since. There’s also the stairs we took out, but the doors only open one way.” Wesley shrugged. “We didn’t reallybreakin exactly. I passed Vincent off as a vampire I’d caught for them, and after I was finished poking around for the info I wanted, I just kind of released the vampires they had imprisoned there.”
Andres stopped alongside his brain, the whole system coming to a crashing halt of confusion and horror. “Fucking hell. That worked?”
“In hindsight, I think we just got like really, really lucky.”
“Youthink.” Andres rubbed a hand up his face, like that could ground himself to the stupidity of these amateurs. “Had you ever run a con like that before?”
Wesley lifted a brow. “That’s considered a con? Does that mean Vinny and I are con artists now? I should put that on my resume.”
“Clearly not,” Andres grumbled. “Con artists have at least some skill in the trade.”
“You’re so offended, it’s adorable.” Shane wrapped his arm through Andres’s, and Andres managed not to flinch under the suddenness of the motion.
It felt right once he’d settled there, though, not the threatening grip Andres’s mind seemed determined to interpret it as. “This leaves the Vitalis-Barron Met-inspired gala as our best option still.”
“We were already planning to go,” Shane said.
“To generally poke around, yes. But without a plan or more thorough knowledge of the complex, it’s unlikely I can get us anywhere useful.”
“I know a vamp who used to work there,” Wesley said. “Maybe he could help?”
Andres’s heart did a little leap—a smaller, more hesitant one than it had when Tara had sent them here, and Shane had sent them to Tara before that.
Vincent nudged Wesley in the arm, and Wesley glared at him. A silent battle seemed to wage between them, then Wesley sighed, and Vincent turned back to Andres. “We did get something from Vitalis-Barron while we were there. It might not help you with your break in, but it could be useful for Shane.”
Wesley grunted in the back of his throat. “It’s a list of all the vampires they’d captured; test logs and death dates and everything. But the fact that I have it—that I haven’t given it to anyone—is the only reason Vitalis-Barron hasn’t come after us yet. We weren’t exactly sneaky.”
“Fucking hell,” Andres repeated, because the situation kept calling for it. He really had to stop getting his hopes up just to crush them.
But Shane seemed to be taking the news with the opposite mentality. “Do you understand what logs like that could mean? If they got to the right people? If the whole city could look at the data and connect the dots? Saying Vitalis-Barron has an unethical lab hidden in their basement means nothing, but showing the whole city—the whole world—exactly what experiments they’re running and who they’re hurting would be substantial. It could make people stand up against them. It could stop them for good.”
“Or, it could barely hinder them, with their money and lawyers backing their every move,” Andres objected. “And we’d have ruined the lives of two innocent people, people from my—from our community.”
“Look, if it was just me on the line, I’d happily go to jail in order to get the truth out there. But if they take Vincent…” Wesley shook his head. “You didn’t see that place. It was…”
“Tara explained some,” Shane said, his voice soft with sorrow.
Vincent tucked his face against his human’s neck, kissing his skin softly, and Andres didn’t know two people could look so sad and so happy at the same time outside of a Renaissance painting.
“We won’t do anything that will hurt either of you,” Andres promised. “We are not in the business of trading lives.”
“What if we focus on Vincent’s capture and escape as part of the article?” Shane asked. “Then at least if Vitalis-Barron comes for him, everyone will know who to blame. From what we’ve gathered, they’ve been purposefully taking vampires with limited connections—we connect Vincent to the whole city, and it’ll be far harder for them to touch him and get away with it.” He frowned, his focus shifting to Wesley. “I know this doesn’t help you. If Vincent was just there as a prop, he could avoid charges, but they might still come after you for—”
