him at all. Like he'd done this sort of thing a hundred times before.
"As of tonight, Rio, no more loose ends." The flinty eyes slid pointedly to Dylan, then back to Rio. "Not one."
As his terrifying friend departed, Dylan turned shakily to Rio. "What did he mean, remove the risk? No more loose ends?"
Rio glowered over at her darkly. There was accusation in that piercing topaz gaze, a scathing coldness and very little of the wounded, tender man she'd been kissing in this very room just a short time ago. She felt cold under the blast of that hard glare, like she was looking into the face of a stranger.
"I'm not going to let you or your friends hurt anyone," she told him, wishing her voice didn't falter as she said it. "I'm not going to let you kill them!"
"No one's going to die, Dylan." His tone was flat, so detached it was hardly reassuring. "We're going to take their memory of what they saw in your photographs, and of anything you might have told them about the Breed or the cave. We're not going to hurt anyone, but we need to scrub their minds of any recollection of those things."
"But how? I don't understand - "
"You don't have to understand," he said softly.
"Because I'm not going to remember either. Is that what you mean?"
He looked at her for a long moment in silence. She searched his face for some hint of emotion beyond the stony resolve he projected. All she saw was a man fully prepared for the task he'd been given, a warrior committed to his mission. And none of the tenderness she'd seen in him before, or the need she thought he'd felt for her, was going to stand in his way. She was a captive at his mercy. An inconvenient problem he intended to eliminate.
Rio's brows came together slightly as he gave a vague shake of his head. "Tonight you go home, Dylan."
She should be happy to hear it - relieved, at least - but Dylan felt oddly bereft as she watched him leave the room and close the door behind him.
Chapter Twenty-one
He came back for her after a couple of hours and told her it was time to go. Dylan wasn't surprised that her next conscious memory was waking up in the backseat of a dark SUV as Rio brought it to a stop at the curb outside her Brooklyn apartment building. As she sat up drowsily, Rio met her gaze in the rearview mirror.
Dylan scowled at him. "You knocked me out again."
"For the last time," he said, his voice low, apologetic.
He killed the engine and opened the driver side door. He was alone up front, no sign of the two others who were supposed to be riding along. The ones who'd been ordered to take care of the other "loose ends" while Rio personally took care of her.
God, the thought of her mom coming in contact with the kind of dangerous inpiduals that Rio was apparently associated with made her shake with anxiety. Her mother was dealing with enough as it was; Dylan didn't want her anywhere near this dark new reality.
Dylan wondered how fast Rio would catch her if she tried to bolt out of the SUV. If she could get a large enough lead, she might be able to make a run for the subway station into Midtown where the hospital was. But who was she kidding? Rio had tracked her from Jicin to Prague. Finding her in Manhattan might prove a challenge for him...for all of about thirty seconds.
But damn it, she needed to see her mom. She needed to be with her, at her bedside, and see her face so she could know for certain that she was okay.
Please Lord, let her be okay.
"I thought you were going to have company for this trip," Dylan said, hoping by some miracle there had been a change of plans and Rio's friends had stayed behind. "What happened to the other guys who were supposed to come with you?"
"I dropped them off in the city. They didn't need to be here with us. They'll report back to me when they're finished."
"When they're finished terrorizing a bunch of innocent people, you mean? How do you know your vampire buddies won't decide to take a little blood donation along with the memories they're going to steal?"
"They have a specific mission, and they'll adhere to it."
She looked into the smoky topaz eyes staring back at her