might happen to her in the next minute. "What did you do, make it stop working? Tell me! What the hell did you do!"
"You lied to me, Dylan."
"And you fucking abducted me!" She hated the tears that suddenly ran down her cheeks. Almost as much as she hated her captivity and cancer and the cold ache in her chest that had opened up during her call to the shelter.
Rio put his hand out as he walked up to her. The man in the corridor prowled into the apartment now too. No question about it, he was a vampire - a Breed warrior, like Rio. His gray eyes seemed to penetrate her like blades, and in the same way an animal sensed a predator on the wind, Dylan sensed that where Rio was dangerous, this other man was exponentially more powerful. Older despite his youthful appearance. And more deadly.
"Who were you calling?" Rio demanded.
She wasn't about to tell him. She clutched the slim cell phone in her fist, but at that very instant she felt an energy force pulling at her fingers, prying them open. She couldn't keep them closed no matter how hard she tried. Dylan gasped as her cell phone flew out of her hand and onto the palm of the vampire now standing beside Rio.
"There's a couple of messages here from the newspaper," he announced darkly. "And several outgoing calls to other New York numbers. Residence of one Sharon Alexander, a cell number for the same, and a connected call to a blocked number in Manhattan. That's the one we shut down."
Rio swore vividly. "Did you tell anyone about us just now? Or about what you've seen?"
"No!" she insisted. "I haven't said anything, I swear. I'm no threat to you - "
"There is the matter of the pictures you distributed, and the story you sent to your employer," the dark one reminded her, the way you might remind the condemned of why they were heading for the gas chamber.
"You don't have to worry about any of that," she said, ignoring Rio's harsh scoff as she spoke. "That message from the newspaper? That was my boss, letting me know I was fired. Well, technically it was an involuntary resignation, on account of the fact I no-showed an appointment in Prague because I was busy being abducted."
"You lost your job?" Rio asked, slanting her a scowl.
Dylan shrugged. "It doesn't matter. But I doubt at this point my boss is going to use any of the pictures or the story I sent him."
"That's no longer a concern." The grim one stared at her like he was measuring her reaction. "By now the virus program we sent him should have wiped out every hard drive in his office. He'll be putting out that fire for the rest of the week."
She really didn't want to feel the least bit happy about that, but Coleman Hogg up to his quivering jowls in hard drive crashes was one tiny bright spot in an otherwise unbearable situation.
"The same virus went out to everyone you distributed those photos to," he informed her. "That takes care of any hard evidence leaks, but we still have to deal with the fact that several people are walking around with knowledge we can't afford to let them keep. Knowledge they could, willingly or unwittingly, pass on to others. So we need to remove that risk."
Something icy settled in Dylan's gut. "What do you mean...remove the risk?"
"You have a choice to make, Miss Alexander. Tonight you will either be relocated into one of the area's Darkhaven sanctuaries under the protection of the Breed, or you will be returned to your residence in New York."
"I have to go home," she said, no decision at all. She looked at Rio and found him staring at her, his face unreadable. "I have to get back to New York right away. Do you mean I'm going to be free to go?"
That hard gray gaze turned to Rio now, without giving her an answer. "Tonight you leave for Miss Alexander's home in New York. I want you to handle things with her; Niko and Kade can scrub the other folks she's been in contact with."
"No!" Dylan blurted. The ice in her stomach suddenly turned into a glacial sort of fear. "Oh, my God - no, you can't...Rio, tell him - "
"End of discussion," the dark one said, directing his attention at Rio, not her. "You'll leave at dusk."
Rio nodded solemnly, accepting the orders like it didn't faze