Awakened Read Free

who ran SexFlash or how he’d met them. She’d been afraid to push for more lest she drew Powell’s suspicions and lost her ability to gather any information at all on vampire sex rings, but …
    “Don’t tell me you’ve come up with nothing, Peter! We work for the FBI and you’re telling me no one can track down a sex ring site when I’ve given them the freaking URL?”
    Despite his turned vampire status, Peter was tall and slim with light brown hair, chiseled features, and a smile that was potent when he chose to use it. He didn’t try to charm her now so much as calm her.
    “You gave us the URL Powell let you see, Barrett, and clearly someone has swept that trail clean. Without more …”
    A flash of anger blotted out her other thoughts. What did he mean by “more”? More than what?
    More than befriending a blood-sucking pedophile like Powell? More than letting him drink from her? More than doing sneak searches of his place on multiple occasions, risking discovery and death, only to come up empty time and again?
    How much more did she have to give before she caught a break?
    Anything and everything, she reminded herself. She’d been willing to put her life on the line numerous times to rescue victims she didn’t know. She’d damn well do the same for Jane.
    “I’ll go back to Powell’s,” she choked out. “Convince him to buy Jane.”
    “Powell is gone. Might be dead, for all we know,” Peter said. “His house has been cleared out.”
    Barrett’s body jerked, not in surprise but in despair. She’d known Powell had pissed off the brunette. She’d suspected they might retaliate. But not so fast. Not before Barrett could get something— anything —out of him that might help her rescue Jane. “How?” she choked out.
    He shrugged. “We have no idea. All we know is that a moving company showed up a few hours after you left yesterday and took his belongings to the flea market.”
    She put a hand to her forehead. “Powell made a mistake by letting Jane’s captor see me. Whoever runs SexFlash took care of the problem, rerouting the site and ‘relocating’ Powell. If they got to him so soon after I was with him …”
    Peter said nothing but he didn’t have to. It was there in his eyes. The brunette had seen Barrett through the webcam. What if she’d had her trailed after she left Powell’s? Granted, Barrett always followed the evasive techniques Peter and Ty had taught them to ensure no one followed her, but she was still new at all the secret-agent bullshit.
    “He was my only lead to Jane,” she choked out.
    Her gaze focused on the intercom placed strategically near Barrett’s leather armchair. Carly, Belladonna’s leader, usually ran the show, so why hadn’t she spoken yet? None of Belladonna’s recruited female agents—Barrett, Ana, Justine, and Collette—had ever spotted a hidden cam in this room. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. When Carly still didn’t speak and Barrett again failed to find any sign of a hidden cam, she rubbed her eyes in frustration.
    Maybe she’d been followed. Maybe not. In the end it didn’t really matter. And even if the brunette’s accomplices had rerouted the SexFlash site, they had to have left some bread crumbs behind. Tracing their steps couldn’t be that hard. Not with the might of the U.S. government behind them. Unless …
    Her head snapped up. “The possibility of an FBI mole. Do you think—”
    “Until we know for sure, we keep our eyes open, and we do what we need to do. We’re sworn to protect the citizens of this country. No sacrifice is too great.”
    “Some of us sacrifice more than others, Peter,” she said in a low voice.
    “Perhaps,” he answered evenly. His dark eyes, which she knew were actually black with silver pupils underneath the contacts he wore, blazed for a moment, reminding her that he hadn’t sacrificed his humanity—it had been viciously taken from him. He never whined or complained about it, and