Page 5 of Fanged Embrace
This was the lead I’d been looking for. This was a foot in the door that Arlon could not secure. His position in the police force could only take me so far—he could not give me what I wanted most of all.
Arlon thought I was after justice, to put my abusers behind bars. That’s why he was helping me. That’s why he’d been investigating the organization on my behalf. To him, it was a simple case of tracking down the people who’d hurt me, hauling them into the spotlight, and sending them off to prison where he believed they belonged.
But you can’t cage a vampire. You can’t even catch one. You can only kill it. And that was exactly what I intended to do.
If this woman was one of them—and judging by the contents in her bag, that was certainly the case—then she could lead me straight to the top. To the leader of the organization that stole five years of my life. And that wasn’t all they had taken from me.
I would find him, that shadowy figure at the very top, and I would kill him myself.
Or I would die trying.
3
River
Fate was strange, if not always considerate.
One minute I was lamenting my missing handbag, the next, the universe plopped it right back in my lap along with who I believed was exactly the woman I’d been looking for. And while I was certainly grateful that my searching hadn’t proved fruitless, I would have appreciated more time to prepare before she turned up at my doorstep.
But there she was, in the flesh, ten minutes after our brief phone call. She wore a tense expression and an old leather jacket, watching me with dark, guarded eyes across the threshold. It was her, the woman from my visions. I was sure of it.
We stared at each other.
Her hair was dark and choppy, cropped short in places like she’d cut it herself—in the dark. Her navy sweater was frayed under her jacket and under that, her button-up was clasped tightly at her throat. Protective layers that looked more like makeshift armor than any sort of fashion statement. Her jeanslooked borrowed, too short on her legs, and her loafers looked just about ready to throw in the towel.
Under that perpetual tension in her shoulders, there was a bristling sense of something not quite right with her that I couldn’t put my finger on. She was short, small, and she kept her shoulders hunched like she wanted to shrink down even further. Something told me she wasn’t just wary of strangers, but rather the world at large.
Then she cleared her throat. “Uh, hi.” She slid the strap of my bag off her shoulder and held it out like a shield. “I brought your bag.”
I remembered then that staring was rude and snapped on a polite smile. “Hey, thanks! You saved me a midnight trek through the city with this delivery.”
When the woman said nothing back, only held the bag out further, I faltered.Oh, she definitely went through your stuff. She saw everything.Hunter was going to kick my ass.
Just to make sure, I reached for the bag and kept the smile glued to my face. “I can be a real scatterbrain sometimes—good thing I left my number floating around in there. And, uh… hope you didn’t find anything too embarrassing when you were digging?”
The woman raised a brow and I swallowed a wince.Subtle.
“Nope.” I caught the faintest waver in her voice, and she snatched her hand away the moment I had the bag securely in my grasp. “Not much. You should consider clearing out your bag once in a while, though.”
She was lying. Of course she was lying. But if she’d seen the vials of blood at the bottom of my bag then why the hell had she decided to deliver it straight to me? Did she want leverage? Did she know what I was? Was she a…
No.She was human. I could taste her mortality like something sweet on my tongue. And she looked ready to flee if I so much as blinked wrong.
“Yeah, uh. I have a bit of a hoarding problem. If you think this bag is cluttered you should see the rest of my place.” I gestured over my shoulder and contemplated inviting her in.
If we did need her memory wiped, it would make sense to keep her around until Hunter showed up. But then again, I’d rather find out what her game was first before wiping the entire interaction from her mind. That and, considering the apprehension etched into her every muscle, I wasn’t sure she’d be willing to set a single foot inside.
Like she’d read my mind, her eyes flicked over my shoulder, scanning the dimly lit foyer beyond.
“So…” I rocked on my heels, hugging the bag to my chest, “did you want anything for your trouble? A… coffee, or I don’t know.” I shrugged, hoping she’d linger long enough for me to get a better read on her.
From the way she hesitated, I wondered if she was thinking the same thing. Then she shook her head, lips thinning to a papercut smile. “No, I'm good. Please don’t worry about it.” She took a small step backward. “Just wanted to make sure you got your bag back.”
I matched her expression, a deferential mask.Why lie about what you found?“In that case, thanks again. Really.”
She bobbed a stiff nod. “Sure.” Her eyes flicked around my face, looking for…what exactly?But she gave me no time to unravel that thread, backing away from the doorway and bowing her head low. “Anyway, I should get going…”
“Wait—” I jolted forward a little too quickly and she flinched away from the movement. Her body leaned away like she was preparing for a sprint, but her feet stayed planted in place. I noticed the tremor in her fingers. “Sorry, I just—I didn’t catch your name.”
