"Derrick! Duck!"

Derrick and I both hunched down in our seats. A gunshot rang out and the government car accelerated and shot into oncoming traffic.

The car in front of us sped up and darted around a taxi. I pressed the accelerator, about to swerve to clear a motorcycle, but the oncoming traffic began screeching to a halt, the cars swerving into the lane in front of me.

"s.h.i.+t!"

I managed to avoid hitting any moving vehicles, but could only watch as the taillights of the car we were chasing careened around a corner.

"Did she take out his tire?" I glanced over my shoulder.

"No," he said, looking behind us. "She took out the driver."

I shook my head in disbelief. "How? There's no way she could have made that shot with such accuracy at that distance."

Sirens sounded in the distance, and it hit me that during our several-minute chase we hadn't encountered a single law enforcement officer.

The pa.s.senger door of the government car pushed open and one of the men who had been in my apartment stumbled out, blood trickling down the side of his face. My pulse kicked into overdrive when I saw the gun in his hand.

"We have to go, Rachel." Anxiety thickened Derrick's voice.

"No s.h.i.+t." But that was easier said than done. The traffic in front of us had no intention of moving anytime soon, that much was obvious. I backed up several feet, then headed for the sidewalk.

"And we have to follow that car. We can't let them get away."

"I'm working on it." I needed to get out of here before the cops showed up. A gunshot rang out, shattering the back gla.s.s. The fact that they were being so blatant in their pursuit only proved that they would do anything to catch us. I was pretty sure we wouldn't walk away from this alive.

"Rachel."

I gunned it, sending pedestrians scattering left and right as I pulled around a parked sedan and into an open lane.

"They turned that way." He pointed to where they'd disappeared.

"I know!" I hadn't meant to be short, but it wasn't an everyday affair for me to take part in a car chase and shootout. I breathed a sigh of relief as I turned the corner, heading away from the parking lot of cars. The police were behind us, thank G.o.d, along with our trigger-happy tails, but the car was a good minute ahead of us. I had no idea how we were going to find it.

Derrick must have been thinking the same thing. "You live here. What's in that direction?"

"Correction. I live in East Harlem. But lucky for you, I know this area. There's nothing much over here. Just a few abandoned buildings a couple of blocks ahead." He was on to something. "So who's the guy?"

He remained silent.

Dammit. "Do you think she wants the same information you're after?"

He hesitated long enough to draw my attention.

"Derrick! I'm not some f.u.c.king idiot, so stop treating me like one. We need that information, all right?"

"I don't know why she wants him, but I need the information Caine has. He's the key to everything."

"Since she didn't kill him, she must want to know what he knows, too. Which means we need to find him before he spills it all and she kills him. An abandoned warehouse would be the perfect place for her to get information."

"I think we have time. He's probably somewhat resistant to torture and not easy to kill."

"What is he, military? CIA?"

He laughed, but it sounded ragged. "No. Definitely not."

"Then who is he?"

"Like I said, you'd never believe me. h.e.l.l, I'm not sure I even believe it. But I do know I need to find him."

We drove around for fifteen minutes before I stomped on the brakes. "There!" Parked halfway down an alley was the older model sedan, the back window conspicuously missing. "There's no one in the car. They must have taken him inside that building."

His brow lowered as he studied the car. "Yeah, you're probably right."

There was no doubt it was a good place to take a kidnap victim. A fifteen-foot chain link fence surrounded the property. Not that it had deterred the taggers from spray painting designs on the dilapidated building. Stairs led up to a slightly ajar door.

"I bet you ten dollars they've gone up there." I pointed to the door. "How do we want to do this?"

"We aren't doing anything," he grunted, pulling out his revolver. "You are staying in the car."

"What? You really expect me to wait in the car? Have you lost your f.u.c.king mind?"

His eyes burned with intensity when they met mine. "This isn't a game, Rachel!"

"No f.u.c.king s.h.i.+t it's not. I just outran government goons while getting shot at. That was my second clue. The first was when those same goons sacked my apartment." I opened the car door and grabbed my messenger bag. "Let's go."

The pa.s.senger door opened as I walked around the front of the car. He stumbled out, grabbing the top of the door for support.

"Derrick?" I hurried over to him, surprised to see he'd bled through the s.h.i.+rt-bandage again. I tried to grab his arm to help him up, but he pushed me aside.

"Just give me a moment."

"You shouldn't walk on that leg."

"I'm fine." Anger drenched his words. "Just give me a minute."

Movement on the stairs caught my eye. "Get down." I pushed him back into the car. "They're leaving."

I squatted and quietly pushed the door closed, then moved around to the front of the car, keeping an eye on the two figures making their way down the front steps, about a hundred feet away. One was unmistakably the woman from the park even though a hood covered her head. The other figure, a man, confused me. While the woman moved with stealth and grace, he hobbled down the stairs, taking his time as he maneuvered a broken step. When he reached the bottom, his face was illuminated by the moonlight and I blinked in surprise.

He was old.

That didn't make sense. I'd caught a glimpse of the woman, she couldn't be much older than twenty-five, but this man had to be close to eighty. Was he her co-worker? Her grandfather?

They walked soundlessly across the lot from the old building to the chain link fence. She was in the lead, so she grabbed a portion of the metal and lifted it, letting the older man duck through before following him to the car.

He opened the car door, but she stopped, standing perfectly still, and slowly pivoted around, lifting her face to the air. Then she turned toward the car and got inside before the old man drove away.

Where was the guy she'd thrown into her trunk? He could still be back there, but I stood by my a.s.sertion that the abandoned building was the perfect spot to interrogate him. Had she gotten her information already? Was the informant already dead? Only one way to find out.

Once I was sure they were gone I hurried to open the pa.s.senger door. "I'm going inside."

"What?" He pushed the door wider and swung out his legs. "I'm going with you."

"Not a chance," I said. "You'll only slow me down."

His face twisted with anger. I knew it was a low blow, but I had to get through to him.

"This isn't your fight, Rachel." But his words lacked the bite they needed. His body was tense with pain.

"If this involves bioterrorism, it does involve me. It involves all of us."

Derrick cursed under his breath, then reached into his jacket and pulled out a voice recorder. "His name is Caine. He has red hair, pulled back into a ponytail. He is dangerous, so if he's restrained, do not release him."

I held up my Glock. "I can take care of myself."

He shook his head. "No. If what he says is true, you'll need this." He reached into his coat again and pulled out a handgun.

I snorted. "My gun works just fine."

"No," he insisted. "This one has silver bullets."

"What?"

He pushed the gun into my hand. "If you're going in there, you have to be prepared. This gun has silver bullets."

I laughed. "Do you think there's a werewolf down there?"

His serious eyes met mine. "I don't know."

My jaw dropped. "Oh, my G.o.d. You really think there might be one."

He rubbed his head. "No. I don't know. I'm not sure if they exist. But he's something else."

"Did you suffer some brain injury I don't know about?"

"No," he groaned. "Be alert. They move silently, so be on your guard."

"So now they're ninjas."

"This isn't funny, Rachel. This is serious. You need to be ready. Find Caine. Ask him where the facility is. Who's running it. Ask him if they are close. Get it all on the recorder. And hurry. I suspect his kidnappers won't be gone long."

I took the gun and tucked it into my messenger bag. "Don't worry about me," I called back as I made my way to the fence. "I've got this covered."

As I crawled through the chain link fence and then strode across the overgrown parking lot, I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

CHAPTER 9.

LEA.

Caine writhed at my feet, the pinchers wrapped in four feet of his guts now. Not a lot, really, when you consider how many feet of intestine are in a human body. I knew I was running the facts to keep myself calm. As much as he deserved what I was doing to him, that didn't keep me from feeling like a monster.

"I have to tell you, I thought you would have spilled your guts by now," I said, then covered my mouth. "Sorry, bad pun."

He grimaced. "You won't get me to speak."

I looked up to see Calvin staring at us, completely dispa.s.sionate. In some ways, he was better at this than I was. "Did you bring the blood?"

He gave a tight nod and carefully went through our bag of tools. I crouched beside Caine and drew in a deep breath. "We don't have time for games, my friend. So that means we're going to do this the even harder way."

He spit a gob of blood at me hitting me in the throat. "f.u.c.k you."

I wiped the blood off, flicking it to the floor. "No, Caine. This most definitely will not f.u.c.k me. You, on the other hand..."

Calvin handed me a silver flask. My gloves kept the metal from burning me. I unstopped it with my teeth, spitting the cork across the room. I took a long sniff of the contents and wrinkled my nose. "Blood of an alcoholic priest. Do you know what that means, Caine?"

His eyes widened and he tried to scoot away, but I pinned him to the floor with ease. "It's a myth."

"No," I leaned over him, knees on his arms and one hand on his mouth to hold it open, "it's not."

I poured the blood into his mouth, and while he fought to spit it out, we both knew his efforts were in vain. Our bodies absorbed blood the instant it touched our mouths. Like leeches, we took it in; that was what we were designed to do. A vampire expelling blood would be like a human trying to reject air. It just wasn't possible. I handed the empty flask to Calvin.

Caine swallowed the last of the blood, gagging. I sat on his chest, drumming my fingers lightly on his bare skin. "You know, for years I wanted to find a way to make you a.s.sholes speak the truth. To say things you were bound by vows to your master not to say. But the blood of a priest is a cleansing thing, and even better, an alcoholic...well, you can imagine the combination. Do you feel it now, Caine?"

I peered into his eyes, which were going misty as the blood coursed through his veins. I should know; Calvin had used the blood on me in a trial. He never spoke of what I'd said while...well, under the influence...but according to him, it had worked. I chose not to think about the questions he'd asked me or what he might know of my past.

Caine gave a low groan under me.

"Why were you talking to the reporter?" I eased up a bit, sitting further down to give him the illusion I trusted him.

"The government," he mumbled. "The government is helping us."

I kept my face straight. A part of me had seriously doubted his earlier words to Derrick. "The human government?"

Caine tried to nod but only managed a s.h.i.+ft of his head. "They're protecting us from you, actually."

Calvin sucked in a breath. "Explains why you elders have gotten so hard to find lately."

Snickering, Caine rolled his hips under me. "I'd really, really like to f.u.c.k you. Seriously, that should be taken for the compliment it is. Because we all know I'm not into full-fledged women. You, though, I'd do you in a heartbeat. Especially if I could tie you up and take you from behind. I'd lay money down that your a.s.s is still virginal, isn't it?"