This was the journal she’d been instructed to retrieve. However, now that she had it, what was she to do with it? For that matter, why did her mystery caller want it?
She hesitated to pick it up. If she took the journal, she would be starting down a path she knew could end her career. If she didn’t, she risked losing something even more precious.
“It’s for Maya,” she whispered. “Think of Maya.”
Her hands closed around the brown bag and freed it from the bin. Stuffing it in an inner pocket of her jacket, she replaced the boxes and catalog and hurried outside, making sure to close the lab’s door behind her.
As she turned to leave, she thought she heard a soft double click. She frowned, fearing she’d triggered some hidden security system, and pulled on the door’s handle.
The door refused to open. She tried again and realized the door was now locked.
“What the hell?”
Her cell phone clipped to her belt beeped with an incoming text message.
EXCELLENT WORK. WE’LL BE IN TOUCH.
Fear lanced her spine. She scanned the lab’s exterior, searching for hidden cameras, but found none. How could anyone know what she’d done, so quickly?
Did it matter as long as the deed kept her from losing Maya?
Her thoughts leapt to the Johnsons, tucked in their home, jumping whenever the phone or doorbell rang, anxious to learn of their daughter’s fate. For ten years, she’d experienced a milder form of their anxiety, separated from Maya by her own inability to stand up to Caleb.
She wouldn’t allow Maya to completely slip away.
Tasha returned her phone to its holder and inhaled the damp and chill November air. Squaring her shoulders, she marched across the parking lot to her car.
If the cost of keeping her daughter in her life was betraying a few vampires, then so be it.
four
KIRK BELJEAN GREEDILY LAPPED AT THE BLOOD SEEPING from the girl’s neck. She moaned as he rhythmically thrust his hips. He loved entering her from behind. The position gave him full control of her movements and he could watch as he slipped in and out.
It also meant he didn’t have to see her face. She was pretty enough but the expressions she made during sex were comical. He couldn’t fuck her face-to-face unless she was drunk or high, and then she usually passed out before he finished. It didn’t stop him, of course. In fact, he preferred her that way. That was when he had the most fun.
Of all the blood bunnies in his stable, Piper was his favorite. Not because she was willing to do anything he wanted in bed. Not because her blood tasted sweeter than the others. She was his favorite because she was pliable, easily manipulated. All he had to do was suggest that he wanted something and she would see that it was done.
The stupid bitch even believed he loved her.
It hadn’t taken much. He gave her the attention she’d never gotten from human guys. Made her feel as though she was special to him and in return she gave herself over to his will.
Thinking of how easily he’d twisted her into his personal suck and fuck threw off his concentration. The flood he’d been holding back broke free. He roughly grabbed her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh, and held her tightly against him.
“Not yet, Kirk,” Piper pleaded. “I’m not close. Just a little—”
A primal roar burst from his throat as he ignored her pleas to wait for her to climax with him. He bent her forward, burying her face into the pillows, and rammed himself into her.
Piper’s muffled squeals and violent thrashes spurred his blood-hunger as well as his lust.
Kirk grabbed her long blond hair and pulled her head out of the pillows.
She gulped for air as he sank his fangs into her neck. Blood spurted, hot and sweet, into his mouth. The rush of memories from her life forcing themselves into his mind proved too much for him. He buried himself within her, riding the waves of his climax until his pleasure fully drained from him. Shaking, he withdrew and collapsed next to her on the blood- and semen-stained bed.
Breathing heavily, she rolled onto her side and draped her arm over his chest. “That … was a-fucking-mazing.”
“I wasn’t asking for your approval.” He shoved her away and reached for the pack of cigarettes on the nightstand.
The hurt from his rejection passed quickly and she smiled, drunkenly. “So what’s got you in such a