her head away and muttered, “I’m not hungry,” and meant it. She was too frustrated and angry to care about food anymore. Besides what she’d eaten had taken the edge off her hunger.
He was silent for a minute, but then sighed, set the fork on the still half-full plate and stood. “I’ll let you rest for a bit. The drug should be out of your system by the time you wake up again. We can talk then.”
Jeanne Louise didn’t even acknowledge his words with a glance, but stared grimly at the wall as he bent and did something to make the bed slide back into a flat position. She didn’t move until she heard his footsteps cross the floor and the door open and close. Then Jeanne Louise slowly allowed herself to relax and let her eyes slip shut.
She wanted out of there and back to her own life. But she was also tired, and there was little she could do until the last of the drug wore off. The moment that happened though, she would take control of the situation and make the man release her, Jeanne Louise promised herself. He wouldn’t be expecting that. While there were mortals who knew about them and knew some of their skills and strengths, the immortals’ ability to read and control minds was not usually one of the skills revealed. Mortals didn’t take the knowledge of those attributes well. It tended to freak them out to know their thoughts could be heard, and “her kind” had learned over the years to just keep that bit of knowledge to themselves. Of course if his job had depended on that knowledge, he might have been given it. But Jeanne Louise doubted that was the case or he would keep her drugged rather than wait for her head to completely clear to make this proposition he had.
Whoever he was, she thought with a frown as it occurred to her that she had no idea what his name was or much of anything else really. All she knew was that he worked in R and D at Argeneau Enterprises and took the same breakfast break as she did.
Which meant he probably worked the night shift too. That was interesting. Mortals usually didn’t like the night shift. It was usually full of immortals, while the mortals stuck to the day shifts. She wondered briefly why he would work the night shift, and then let the matter go. She needed to rest. Jeanne Louise wanted to be awake and alert when he returned.
Paul pulled the door closed behind him with a little sigh and moved up the hall to the stairs, his mind running over everything he’d done so far, looking for any problems that might arise, but he didn’t see any. He’d waited until she was off Argeneau property and away from the cameras on the grounds before making his move and it had all gone as smoothly as he’d hoped.
Hers had been the only car at the traffic light when Paul had hit her with the tranquilizer. That, of course, had been pure luck. God or the Fates had been smiling down on him this morning.
The tranq had worked as quickly as it did in testing and it had only taken seconds for him to get out of the backseat, shift her to the passenger seat and slide behind the wheel himself. The whole thing had been over within a moment.
The only place where he could see a problem was when he’d crawled out of Lester’s trunk and got into the backseat of her car at Argeneau Enterprises in full view of at least three security cameras. But he’d worn dark clothes, and a balaclava to cover his face. There wouldn’t have been much for the cameras to catch. Paul had snuck onto the property in the trunk of Lester’s car, but there wasn’t anything the other man could tell them. Paul had broken into Lester’s garage, jimmied his trunk open, got in, and hitched a ride into Argeneau Enterprises. It meant he’d had to hold it not quite closed until the end of the long night shift.
Moments before Lester had returned to the car, Paul had slid out of the trunk and made his way to Jeanne Louise Argeneau’s car. His main concern had been that it might be locked, but few bothered in the parking garage. It was so well patrolled and had so many damned cameras, no one would try anything there as