Blood Challenge Read Free Page B

between the ages of twenty and sixty, and either unemployed or working a dead-end job. He probably also hated gays and immigrants, blacks and Jews—everyone he could blame for having upset “the natural order.” The natural order would have him on top. Since he was miles and miles away from that spot, someone was clearly at fault.
    Lily had plenty of neighbors who fit the age and sex demographic. Some might hate their jobs, too, but they weren’t bottom-of-the-heap workers. The high-rise she lived in these days had correspondingly high rents.
    But not all haters were financially challenged. Robert Friar proved that.
    Lily shook her head. Hell of a way to end a good run, finding this shit. Really messed with all those endorphins she’d produced. If the perp had still been around, she might have gotten back some of that high by kicking his sorry ass, but she was alone in the parking garage … except for a few of her neighbors.
    The Prius pulling out of its spot now belonged to a single mom on the second floor. Wendy Something. Wendy left about this time every weekday with the kids so she could drop them at day care. She was white, brown and brown, under forty, and worked at some bank—Lily couldn’t remember which one—and looked tired all the time. Highly unlikely that she’d spray bad words on a car with her kids watching.
    The man crossing the cement to his Lexus left around seven every weekday, too. He was in management at some alphabet-soup company. He was overweight, well-groomed, around forty, and Hispanic. Black and brown, with some gray mixed with the black. Fifth floor, she thought. He was possible, but only just.
    Then there was the motorcycle she’d seen tearing out of the garage as she approached it. Jack was a nice guy in a resoundingly unsuccessful band. He got the occasional modeling job, too, but could never have afforded the rent if not for his boyfriend, who had some kind of trust fund. Said boyfriend was, in Lily’s opinion, an asshole, but not the sort of asshole who got up before seven A.M. to spray-paint insults on an FBI agent’s car.
    It was unlikely the perp was still present. She kept her senses tuned anyway as she took her phone from the armband she used on a run. She used it to take a few pictures of the damage, then checked out the surveillance cameras.
    Didn’t seem to be damaged, so maybe they’d get a look at the asshole who’d defaced her ride. It would be nice to know for sure it wasn’t anyone she shared the elevator with.
    Of course, to see the images from the cameras, she’d have to tell Rule. He owned the building. Or rather, his father did, but it really belonged to the clan. Nokolai clan, that is. Rule had two clans now, and that was another source of trouble.
    Lily got in the elevator and punched the button for the tenth floor. She did not want to tell Rule. She’d have to, but she didn’t want to. She hadn’t realized how overly protective he’d gotten until the heat wave broke and she could abandon the treadmill to run outside again. He didn’t want her running alone. At first he’d found reasons to join her, but when he couldn’t he’d tried sending one or two of his guards along.
    She’d put a stop to that. Sure, there’d been a situation last month when the guards had been useful. But that case, that situation, was over. His caution was excessive and annoying, and that was half the reason she didn’t want to tell him about her car.
    The other half was the guilt. Rule was all too grimly certain to blame himself for the vandalism, and that was harder for her to deal with because she couldn’t get mad about it. She even understood. She’d handled similar feelings herself, worrying about how their upcoming marriage would affect him.
    When Rule asked her to marry him, he’d broken a centuries-old taboo for his people. When she accepted, she’d given the haters of the world a new target. Her.
    The elevator dinged. Lily got off and turned left. Rule had a