Compelled (Vampires in America #10.5) Read Free Page B

that, however. He shot her a grin as he sat down and said, “Good evening, darling. How was the flight?”
    She just rolled her eyes and placed a hand on Raphael’s forearm, as if to forestall any reaction.
    “Would you like anything to drink?” she asked instead. “We have the usual. Water, coffee, tea, . . . vodka.”
    “What about the unusual?” he couldn’t help asking.
    She gave him a saccharine sweet smile and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know sorcerers drank blood. Would you like it warmed?”
    Next to her, Raphael snorted his amusement. It was on Nick’s tongue to suggest he’d like his blood hot from the vein, namely Cyn’s, but that whole not-suicidal thing came up again, so he just tipped his head in Cyn’s direction in a silent touché.
    “Let’s get this over with,” she said, assuming control of the meeting, which admittedly was the wisest course, because he and Raphael would either bicker back and forth all night, or come to blows over it. “What do we know?” she asked Nick.
    Nick turned his chair sideways, legs crossed, one arm on the tabletop, pretending an ease that he wasn’t feeling. If it had been the two of them, it wouldn’t have been a pose, but having Raphael so close was like steel wool scraping at his nerves. And this time it had nothing to do with Cyn. He might have thought—okay he did think—the vampire was bad for her, but even he had to admit that it was obvious they loved each other. And he knew vampires well enough to know that Raphael would protect her. So it wasn’t concern for Cyn that left him feeling so raw that he expected blood to start leaking from his pores at any moment. No, that was Raphael himself. The damn vampire wasn’t simply powerful. His strength was several orders of magnitude beyond that of any vampire Nick had ever met. Nick’s own power reacted to Raphael’s presence, preparing for an attack, demanding a response. It was a constant state of readiness that was exhausting.
    He forced himself to focus on Cyn’s question, wanting to get out of this damn hangar as soon as possible. “I’ve ID’d the guards involved,” he said. “And you were right; there were just the four, which means one of them has to have taken the manacles from the house in Hawaii.”
    “How’d you get their IDs?” she asked.
    “Connections. I checked airline manifests for departures on the days following the rescue. There was always a chance one or more of them might have stayed behind, but I got lucky. All four left the next day, their fares paid for by their employer, who’s a fairly well-known security contractor. I confess, I was a little surprised Mathilde used North American talent instead of bringing in her own from Europe.”
    “She was already flying in a large number of vampires from Europe to bolster her power,” Raphael said, surprising him. “Adding daylight personnel would have added to her expense, and to Mathilde, one human was the same as any other.” He twisted his arm beneath Cyn’s hand, changing their positions so that her fingers were entwined with his on top of the table.
    “Yeah, well, it was good luck for us,” Nick continued. “Four tickets in first class the very next day, purchased by a high-profile purveyor of private security personnel? Pretty much a dead giveaway.”
    “How’d you get that data?” Cyn persisted, with a touch of suspicion. “Not just the manifests, but information on the purchaser?”
    “I told you, darling. Connections.”
    She ignored the darling, regarding him instead with a curious tilt to her head. “Federal connections,” she concluded accurately. No one had ever claimed Cyn was all beauty and no brains. At least, no one who knew her for more than ten minutes.
    Nick nodded silently and continued, not wanting that shrewd brain of hers to delve too deeply into exactly what kind of federal connections he might have. His arrangement with the government wasn’t exactly aboveboard. In fact, it