Samantha’s safety would serve as excellent bait. He removed his hands. “I must go after him.”
“I’m driving you.” When he started to reply, she glared. “You don’t know where the Turtle’s Nest is, and you don’t know how to drive. I do.” She took a set of keys from Burke’s pocket. “He’s your friend, Jamys, but he’s my lord. This is my job; let me do it.”
He might have compelled her to think otherwise, but it would take more time they didn’t have. “Very well.” He reached out to Burke one more time. You will remember none of what you have told me here.
Burke’s expression blanked and, when Jamys withdrew his hand, grew puzzled. “Lord Durand, Christian, good evening.” He glanced around. “Did you, ah, need something?”
“We’re good,” Chris told him. “I’m going to borrow your car and take Lord Durand for a ride around town, okay?”
“Of course.” Burke smiled as he reached into his pocket, and then frowned. “Oh, dear. I seem to have misplaced my keys.”
Chapter 9
Chris knew the Turtle’s Nest from its brief tenure as a fairly awful bar and its more recent rep as a popular flop spot; when horny tourists weren’t getting high or having sex inside the building, runaways and street kids used it for temporary shelter. It stood on the far end of an old pier, and the only way to get to it was by walking the length of the dock.
She parked Burke’s Mercedes in a metered curb space directly behind Lucan’s red Ferrari. “Well, he didn’t stop for coffee.” She peered out through the side window, but all the lights of the pier’s lampposts appeared to have burned out. Glass never had a chance when Lucan was in a temper; she’d bet her next paycheck that each bulb had shattered the moment he’d passed under it.
“Chris.” Jamys pointed to a couple of dark shapes bobbing at the base of one piling. “Boats?”
“Too small.” She got out of the car and walked around it. As Jamys joined her, she finally made out the silhouettes of the speedy water vehicles. “Jet Skis. Come on.”
He held her back. “You should remain here.”
“I should get a day job working for normal people who don’t think blood banks are a buffet, but sadly, I haven’t.” She smiled. “And I don’t wait in the car.”
The ramp leading up to the pier creaked under their footsteps, but the rush of the waves covered the sound. Chris strained to see any sign of Lucan or a setup, but the dock seemed entirely deserted.
As they approached the old bar, Jamys came to an abrupt halt, holding up his hand to signal her to do the same. When she looked around him, she saw something flash and heard wood crack.
“Gun.” Jamys dragged her behind a wall of rusty metal siding.
Chris didn’t protest as he covered her body with his. Bullets that would definitely hurt or kill her would only bounce off his Kyn flesh. Unless they were copper, in which case they’d both end up looking like Swiss cheese.
“Come out with your hands up,” a man shouted in an ugly tone, “and no one will get hurt.”
“There’s a guy who loves bad cop shows,” Chris muttered in Jamys’s chest. “They never say that, you know. Sam always goes with ‘Drop the weapon’ or ‘On the floor, asshole, hands on your head.’”
“There are two of them,” he murmured. “Both mortals.”
The corrugated metal behind her back suddenly hammered into her as the adjoining wall exploded outward in a burst of splintered studs and chunks of drywall.
“Which one of you is Dutch?” she heard Lucan ask in the pleasant, polite tone he used whenever he was in a full-blown rage.
“Don’t move,” a man replied. “Dutch sent us to have a little chat with you. I said, don’t move.”
Jamys went to the edge of the wall to peer around it, and then vanished as a man screamed. Chris followed, only to come up short as she took in the sight of Jamys checking a man on his knees clutching a ruined arm, and Lucan advancing on another who was backing away as he fired directly into the suzerain’s chest. The gun emptied quickly, and in true bad cop-show fashion, the thug threw the useless weapon at Lucan.
The suzerain caught it with his bare hand, and crushed it into a mass of twisted metal before dropping it. “Where is Dutch?”
“I don’t know.” As the man reached the end of the pier, he glanced over his shoulder. “But I got his number, right here. I’ll call and find out.” He whipped up his hands, but when Lucan kept coming, he cried out, “Don’t do it, man. I can’t swim.”