this was ridiculous. She couldn’t stay here all night. Putting the back exit to use, she ducked her head and hustled quickly to her car, aware of a ringing paranoia in her blood. Glancing around furtively, she didn’t unlock the Golf until she was four feet away from the driver’s side. But come on, like someone was going to sneak into her back seat otherwise? Throwing herself behind the wheel, she shut the door on her coat and left it there as she locked things back up.
Cranking the sewing machine engine over, she pulled her seat belt across her chest, put the gearshift in reverse, and hit the gas—
Jo slammed on the brakes.
In her rearview mirror, bathed in the red illumination of her taillights, a huge figure with a Mohawk was standing right behind her rear bumper.
Jo shoved the engine into park and jumped out.
A quip about long time/no see died in her throat.
“Are you okay?” she asked as she got a load of him.
When he nodded, she didn’t believe him. He was pale and shaken, and at the base of both sleeves of his leather jacket, his hands were trembling.
“I need a shower,” he said.
“What?”
“I don’t smell good.”
“Your cologne is all I can smell.”
“I need…”
She had the feeling he had no idea what he was saying, and she wanted to know what the hell had happened during the twenty minutes between when he’d run out of the bar and now. It couldn’t be second thoughts about leaving her. That wouldn’t leave a hard-ass like him in this dazed, disordered state.
Before she was aware of making a conscious decision, she went to him and took his hand. She meant to say, “Come with me.” But his skin was so icy, she worried about hypothermia.
“We need to get you warm.”
“Am I cold?”
She led him around to the passenger side and opened the door for him. “Sit.”
You know, in case he didn’t know what to do—although how in the hell was he going to fit his big body into that seat—
“Guess you’re retractable,” she muttered as she shut him in.
Going around the front bumper, she put herself back behind the wheel, aware that her heart was pumping hard and her blood was rushing. As she put the car in reverse for a second time, she glanced at the man she’d picked up off the street like a stray dog.
He barely fit into her car: “Retractable” was an overstatement. Cantilevered was more like it. His knees were practically up to his earlobes, his arms wedged in between his legs, his far shoulder squeezed against his door. He didn’t seem to care. Then again, he didn’t seem to know where he was.
“My apartment’s not far from here,” she said. Well, not compared to someone who lived in Vermont. “I mean…”
Syn stared straight ahead. As if he were in a different world.
“Seat belt?” she prompted.
When he didn’t move, she hit the brakes and reached across him to—
In the cramped space, he moved so fast, she couldn’t track him. One second he was like a full-length coat crammed into a shoulder bag. Then next, he had grabbed her around the throat and was looking at her with blank, unseeing eyes.
True fear shot through Jo’s chest. “Please…” she croaked out. “No—”
He blinked and focused on her properly.
“Oh, shit…” He immediately dropped his hold. “I’m sorry. You took me unaware.”
Sitting back against her seat, she put her hands up to her neck. “I’m not going to do that again.”
“It’s just because… I’m somewhere else. I’m not going to hurt you, I swear.”
As he shuddered, he seemed to have trouble breathing right. And even though he was physically strong and clearly a tough guy, she felt an overwhelming need to take care of him. He looked broken.
“It’s okay,” she told him. “You be wherever you are. I’ll handle the rest right now.”
* * *
“I knew I couldnae trust you.”
As Syn’s father spoke, Syn put his back to the sweet cottage, to the young female and her little brother, to the innocents who ran with abandon and unknowing bliss through the wildflower meadow.
His sire took another step forward, another fallen branch cracking under his horrible weight. “And I knew where you would go. Care you not that I hunger? You were to get something to sustain me, but it looks as though I must find something myself.”
Glittering black eyes shifted to above Syn’s head, and they tracked the fragile prey that had been marked. As his father’s lips parted, the