And then, just as suddenly but oddly out of place, she saw the small storage room in the back of her clinic. There was a big man with dark hair huddled on the floor, bleeding. He was dying, riddled with bullets and other terrible wounds. She reached out to him—
No, that didn‘t belong in her memories. It hadn‘t actually happened... had it?
She didn‘t have a chance to try putting the pieces in place. The vampire blocking her escape stalked forward, his head cocked as he glared at her in wild fury, those enormous fangs deadly white and sharp enough to tear her to shreds.
Dante stood in Gideon and Savannah‘s study, waiting for a verdict on the flash drive Tess had been carrying in her coat pocket. ―You think you can get around the encryption on that thing, Gid?‖
―Please.‖ The blond vampire slanted him an arch look. ―You jest,‖ he said, leaning heavily on his faded English accent. He already had the drive plugged into his computer, his fingers flying over the keyboard. ―I‘ve hacked into the FBI, the CIA, our own IID, and just about every other hack-proof database in existence. This will be cake.‖
―Yeah? Let me know what you find. I gotta go now. I left Tess waiting—‖
―Not so fast,‖ Gideon said. ―I‘m almost in. Trust me, this won‘t take long, maybe five minutes. Let‘s make it interesting. Give me two minutes, thirty seconds, tops.‖
Beside him, leaning back against the antique carved mahogany desk in dark jeans and a black sweater, Savannah smiled and rolled her eyes. ―He lives to impress, you know that.‖
―Be a hell of a lot easier to take if the bastard wasn‘t always right,‖ Dante drawled.
Savannah laughed. ―Welcome to my world.‖
―Too bad you can‘t read computer files with your touch,‖ he told her. ―Then we wouldn‘t need to put up with this guy.‖
―Alas,‖ she sighed dramatically. ―Psychometry doesn‘t work that way, at least not for me. I can tell you what Ben Sullivan was wearing when he handled the flash drive, describe the room he was in, his state of mind, but I can‘t penetrate electronic circuitry. Gideon‘s our best hope for that.‖
Dante shrugged. ―Just our luck, eh?‖
Over at the computer, Gideon hit one last series of keystrokes, then sat back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. ―I‘m in. Looks like one minute, forty-nine seconds, to be exact.‖
Dante walked around to look at the screen.
―What have we got?‖
―Data
files.
Spreadsheets.
Flow
charts.
Pharmaceutical tables.‖ Gideon rolled the mouse and clicked one of the files open. ―Looks like a chemistry experiment. Anyone need a recipe for Crimson?‖
―Jesus Christ. This is it?‖
―I‘m betting so.‖ Gideon scowled, clicking through more files on-screen. ―There‘s more than one formula stored on the drive, however. We can‘t know which of them is valid until we obtain the ingredients and test each one.‖
Dante raked a hand through his hair and began pacing. He was curious to know more about the formulas Ben Sullivan had stored on the drive, but at the same time he was damn itchy to be back in his quarters. He could sense Tess‘s restlessness too, the connection they now shared through the blood bond like an unseen tether linking him to her as though they were one.
―How is she doing?‖ Savannah asked, obviously aware of his distraction.
―Better,‖ he said. ―She‘s awake and healing. Physically, she‘s fine. As for the rest, I‘ve been trying to fill her in on everything, but I know she‘s confused.‖
Savannah nodded. ―Who wouldn‘t be? I thought Gideon was a crazy fool when he first told me about all of this.‖
―You still think I‘m a crazy fool most of the time, love. That‘s part of my charm.‖ He bent toward her and faked a bite of her denim-clad thigh, his fingers not skipping a beat on the keys. Playfully batting him away, Savannah stood up and came over to where Dante was trying to wear a track in the rug. ―Do you think Tess might be hungry? I‘ve got breakfast started in the kitchen for Gabrielle and me. I can prepare a tray for Tess, if you‘d like to bring it to her.‖
―Yeah. Thanks, Savannah. Food would be great.‖
God, he hadn‘t even considered that Tess would need to eat. What a stellar mate he was proving to be already. He hardly took decent care of himself and now he had a Breedmate to think about, with human wants and needs that were well outside his areas of expertise. Oddly enough, where the thought might have given him doubts in the not-sodistant past, now he found the idea almost... pleasant. He wanted to provide for Tess, in every way. He wanted to protect her and make her happy, spoil her like a princess.
For the first time in his long life, he felt as if he‘d found true purpose. Not the honor and duty that drove him as a warrior, but something equally compelling and righteous. Something that called to everything male in him.