Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
Harriet
“I should get tinted windows,” I say, speeding down the road. “Do you think tinted windows would help?”
“Marginally,” Alexandru says.
“You’re okay, though, right?” I say.
He turns. Our eyes meet, and I feel his heat. He’s like a bear roused from hibernation—dark hair tousled over his brow, eyes sharp. Hungry. Dangerous.
My heart stutters in my chest, and for one wild moment, I think he’s become more beautiful, somehow.
I focus back on the road. It’s probably some kind of glamor or mystic vampire thing. Or maybe the allure is part of his hunter’s weaponry, like his fangs.
“I am really hoping that Bo or Manny is there. It would be great to question Manny.”
“The questioning phase of our investigation is over, Ms. Renfield.”
“Right,” I say nervously. “I’d like to present him with the photos, and then you see what sort of read you get on him. Can we at least do that first?”
“You’ll want to be quick about it.”
Bo is in his studio, thankfully, standing at his three-giant-monitor workstation.
We walk in like we own the place, but Bo’s wary eyes are on Alexandru. “Hey, terrible timing,” he says. “I’m just about to go out on a shoot.”
“This will not take long,” Alexandru says.
I try to look confident and not nervous.
I’m more of a spreadsheet type than a judge-jury-and-executioner type.
“We have some questions that require a photographer’s explanation.” I walk around to his side of the desk and set down a few of the really good champagne tower collapse photos. “Why didn’t you show us these?”
Alexandru comes to stand next to me.
Bo looks outraged. “I showed you the champagne tower set out of courtesy, and now you’re here complaining that I left a few of them out?” He slings his bag over his shoulder, indignant, but his hands tremble as he rolls up his sleeves. “I need to lock up and be across town.”
I set down the sparkler photo. “Somebody messaged the bride impersonating Whitney and asked for these to be taken down. Can you think of any reason for that?” I put down the curtain fire photo.
I’m about to make a comment about how beautifully done that photo is, but that’s when I see a familiar tattoo on Bo’s forearm.
The camera with the lightning bolt through it.
Bo has the same tattoo as Manny.
I look over at Alexandru. He sees it, too.
I slide my gaze back to Bo’s tattoo.
And Bo sees me see it.
In a flash, he has me by the hair. He pulls me backwards, away from Alexandru. The sharp edge of a knife bites into my throat.
“Look at you, too clever for your own good,” Bo growls.
It all comes to me then in a flash: Roy’s comment about how Bo seems to avoid Manny, which is another way of saying they’re never in the same place at the same time.
And Manny’s weird feed cap and long hair and sunglasses.
A disguise.
The blade feels like it’s broken skin.
Alexandru’s face is shadowed with something lethal. Eyes gleaming.
Everything slows.
My blood goes cold.
The fake happy brides all around us seem just menacing, now.
“Please,” I whisper.
Alexandru’s gaze sharpens as he prowls a little closer.
Bo holds my hair more tightly. “S-stay away.”
Ow.
“Release her,” Alexandru says, low and deadly.
I can feel the fear in Bo. Like he’s stiffer, somehow.
“Please, Bo,” I say, pulse whooshing in my ears. “You have my word we won’t turn you in to the police. We promise.”
“Somehow that doesn’t convince me,” Bo says.
“You killed those people,” I say. “The groom who died falling off the balcony. The deputy mayor.”
“You figured it out. Good for you. You want a medal?”
I blink. I have my certainty. Cold comfort.
Alexandru prowls nearer to us, slow and coiled, gaze fixed on mine.
The air feels charged, like a thunderstorm might start raging.
Alexandru’s eyes slide down to the blade pressed against my throat. And finally, to the blood I can feel trailing down my neck.
My blood.
I can feel his fury like heat on my skin, radiating off him in waves. I can feel Bo’s fear escalating behind me, his breath faster now.
The knife bites in more. The pain is precise, intimate.
My pulse keens in my ears. I can’t think. Can’t breathe.
I am so scared.
So scared.
I try to keep my voice from shaking. And maybe it’s stupid, but I have to know. “Why send a gunman after us?”
“A gunman?” Bo lets out a snort. “Wasn’t me. Maybe you two are just that annoying.”
It wasn’t him?
“Hey!” Bo jerks my hair. “Not one more step, Alexandru. You so much as twitch, and she dies.”
Alexandru stills. Too far away. A car length away. Maybe more.
Too far, probably, even for vampire speed.
His unruly hair tumbles over gleaming eyes that are ruthlessly focused on a single point. He’s like a large, powerful panther. There’s a looseness to his muscular body, but I know it’s deceptive; I know he could spring at any moment.
He tips his head a fraction lower, focus intensifying.
Bo tightens his grip on my hair. “Now here’s what’s going to happen. I’m taking your girlfriend for a little ride. You’re going to wait and stare at that clock. For a full hour. When it chimes—”
In the span of a breath, Alexandru is on us, yanking Bo’s knife hand from my throat.
I stagger away on shaking legs.
I hear a sickening pop that sounds like a shoulder socket, and then the unmistakable crunch of a bone as Alexandru twists Bo’s arm up and back.
Bo’s screaming.
Alexandru clamps a hand around Bo’s neck, and Bo’s body suddenly slumps, unconscious. But not dead, I think. Choked out. Blacked out.
He lets Bo drop to the floor and comes to me.
He takes my hand, liquid-brown eyes feral with emotion.
He’s trembling with hunger, I think.
He turns my hand so that my palm is facing up. It’s the one that wasn’t scraped. What is he doing?
My pulse hammers. I’m sure he can feel it. “I’m okay,” I say.
Did he understand that? Or is he too far gone into beast mode...
He brings my palm toward his mouth.
For one terrifying moment, I think he’s going to drink my blood, like maybe from my wrist.
But then he simply presses his lips to the tender center of my palm, kissing me there.
Just a touch of his lips, cool and soft and achingly intimate, his breath ghosting over my fevered skin.
Shivers slide over me, and I have a thought that my palm must be the gateway to the most sensitive and forbidden places inside my body.
This monster.
This kiss.
This shudder of pleasure.
I yank my hand away. “Thank you for saving me.”
He blinks, as though he’s having difficulty understanding my words.
My gaze darts to Bo, lying there, unconscious, broken, defenseless.
Bo’s going to die now. No trial. No jury. Just Alexandru.
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to work,” I whisper. “It feels wrong.”
He comes to me and touches my throat, a touch light as air.
Holding my gaze all the while, he slides his finger down my neck, alongside the trail of blood that I know is there.
“For this,” Alexandru says softly, “he dies.”
I swallow.
He tears his gaze from me with seeming effort, turning to the door. “You will exit the front, turning out the lights as you go, turn the open sign to closed, and drive home.”
He’s going to do it. He’s going to kill him. This was our agreement. This is what saves people.
“Okay,” I breathe.
“Unless you need more ducks in a row?”
“No, I’m good. Enough ducks.”
“Go.”
“What about you? There’s a body and fingerprints and—”
“Ms. Renfield!” His face is hard to read, and I have the sense he’s losing his grip on what shred of humanity he possesses. “Go!”
Pushed by some sense of self-preservation, I find myself rushing to the door, palm buzzing. I turn out the lights, flip the sign, and get in my car.
I drive home, hands shaking.
The headline at this point should be that Alexandru is sucking all of the blood out of local wedding photographer Bo Richardson.
But I can’t stop reliving that kiss—Alexandru’s lips pressed to the center of my palm.
The impossible tenderness of it.
The fierce intimacy of it.
How one brush of his lips dropped through me like a roller-coaster plunge, stealing my breath.
And I can’t stop thinking about how I saw him suddenly, terrifyingly, as something other than a monster.