Dark Choices - I. T. Lucas Page 0,5

stuff he and Simmons had done, and she could rat him out. Leaving her alive was a risk, and the guy had admitted openly to being risk-averse.

What if he had killed Simmons?

With the two being best friends and co-conspirators, it hadn’t occurred to her before. But what if Roberts had gotten sick of being second fiddle to Simmons?

Or perhaps he’d had enough of Simmons’s illegal adventures and wanted to stop living in fear of getting caught by the higher-ups?

That was motive enough to kill. Get rid of the risk-taker along with the risk.

The problem was that hiding would be damn hard to do.

Roberts had access to pretty much everything, and unless she ran off to some god-forsaken country, he could find her even without the damn tracker that Simmons had forced her to accept.

That made finding the Chinese and offering them her services even more crucial. It was no longer about money and getting back at Roberts.

Her life might depend on it.

In the meantime, she needed a safe place to hide.

First thing, though, she was getting rid of the damn tracker even if she had to cut it out of her own flesh with a kitchen knife.

4

Vlad

As the sun hit Vlad’s tablet at an angle that made it impossible to see what he was drawing, he shifted his chair to the right. That was the trouble with working outside, and why he rarely did it. Unlike Dalhu, who could take his easel and his oil paints anywhere, Vlad used a stylus on a screen to create his art, and the sun was not his friend.

Usually he worked at home, which was why he rarely saw sunshine and was as pale as a real vampire. But since Wendy had started working at the café last Monday, he wanted to be near her and had been spending his afternoons in the most shaded corner of the place he could find.

“What are you drawing?” Callie leaned over his shoulder.

“It’s part of a project for school.”

Creating patterns for fabrics and wallpaper wasn’t very exciting, but then most of the assignments weren’t. Vlad didn’t mind, though. He was learning important skills.

“Can I see?”

He lifted the tablet and handed it to her.

“You’re really talented. What do you do with the pattern once it’s finished? Do you print it out and put it in your portfolio?”

Vlad took the tablet back. “Only the projects that I like. We submit our work digitally, and those are just patterns. I don’t plan on a career in fabric or wallpaper design, so there is no point in printing them out for my portfolio. It’s also not something anyone is going to hang on the wall.” He chuckled. “Unless they are used for wallpaper.”

“What else do you create?” She pulled out a chair and sat down. “I mean when it’s not homework.” She waved a hand. “What gets your creative juices flowing?”

Unable to resist the opportunity to show off, Vlad pulled up the drawings he’d made of Wendy.

They weren’t actual portraits. He didn’t have the guts to tackle that yet. It wasn’t something he was good at, not like Dalhu, who somehow captured people’s essences in the expressions he painted.

What Vlad had drawn were cartoonish representations of Wendy.

It had started with her asking him to draw her as Wonder Woman just for kicks and giggles. But after seeing how happy it had made her, he’d continued drawing her as every female comics’ superhero he could think of.

“I love these.” Callie scrolled through the selection. “You could create a comic series of your own starring Wendy. I have a friend who makes them. He started small, but over the last year, his comic has gained popularity and sells quite well.” She leaned to whisper in his ear. “Don’t tell anyone, but Donnie based his superhero on Brundar and even made him a vampire.”

“Does he suspect that Brundar is different?”

By now, everyone knew about the nightclub that Brundar co-owned with a human. For years, he’d kept it a secret, but it had gotten out when he’d mated Callie. Since Donnie the comic maker knew them both, he must have worked at the club.

She chuckled. “We are talking about Brundar, Vlad. Everyone knows that he is different, they just don’t know to what extent.”

“You have a point.” The guy had the face of an angel and the personality of a deadly assassin. Frankly, the dude intimidated the hell out of him, and he couldn’t imagine the stern Guardian tolerating being the star of a comic