Rose took her hand. “Blake and I are family. And I know how it looked when I came in, but he just caught me by surprise. I haven’t seen him with a woman in a long time. He doesn’t do casual.”

Lilo swallowed. “Casual?”

“You know: casual sex. He’s too busy for that. And he never mentioned you to me before.” The question in Rose’s words was implied.

“We only met tonight.” Immediately she wanted to take the words back. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m easy. I don’t normally do things like that…” She wanted to sink into the ground, wanted to crawl into a hole and hide. “It’s not how it seems…”

“Oh, dear.” Rose suddenly sounded like an elderly aunt about to give advice.

Lilo lifted her lids and met Rose’s eyes. Concern was etched deep into them.

“Then you don’t really know him yet.” Rose leaned in and lowered her voice. “Blake is a good man. Trust in that, no matter what happens. If he cares about you, he will protect you with his life.”

Surprised at the other’s strange words, Lilo wanted to ask what Rose meant, but Blake appeared at that moment carrying two barstools. He set them down.

“Everything alright here?” he asked, his gaze bouncing between her and Rose.

“Of course, luvvie,” Rose replied. Then she walked to the door, accepting her car keys from Blake. She looked over her shoulder. “I should go home. Quinn is waiting for me.” She smiled. “It was very nice meeting you, Lilo. I hope it won’t be the last time.”

“Nice meeting you, too, Rose,” she managed to reply before the beautiful blonde breezed out of the house.

Slowly Blake approached. “Are we okay?”

“I should go to sleep. It’s been a long night.” She avoided his gaze. Before she could walk past him, he stopped her and put his fingers under her chin, making her look at him.

“I’m not going to do anything you don’t want. You have my word… No matter how hot it got earlier.” He kissed her gently on the cheek. “Good night, Lilo. Get some rest. Perhaps we’ll have a few leads on Hannah by tomorrow.”

She smiled at him, at ease again. Rose was right. Blake was a good man. But even good men turned into hungry predators when teased. And she had teased him, tempted him. Though she didn’t regret it. No, not a single second of it. But she also knew she had to take things slower. The incident with Rose had shown her that she knew next to nothing about the man who made her pulse race like a bullet train and her blood sizzle like an egg on the hood of a hot car. And as much as she wanted to continue where they’d left off before Rose had interrupted them, she knew it was better to resist that urge and try to get to know Blake better before she did something she couldn’t undo.

13

Wesley dropped the crystal pendant on the map of Northern California and sighed in frustration. He’d gone to Hannah’s flat, but he hadn’t found much. It turned out that Hannah was pretty neat and tidy. He’d taken her toothbrush in the hopes enough of her DNA was on the bristles, as well as her hairbrush, which only contained a few strands of her hair. Using those two things he’d scried for her, but come up empty.

“Fuck!” he grunted.

Scrying was one of the most basic magical skills, and he was more accomplished than most. He was aware that scrying didn’t work on vampires, but Hannah was human, so he should have found her by now. There were two reasons why he wouldn’t—the first was that the amount of DNA on the toothbrush and the hairbrush weren’t sufficient, the second that she was dead. And the latter reason he wasn’t ready to accept. Because Blake wouldn’t accept it.

So he clung to the first reason. After all, the toothbrush had looked rather new and clean, and he’d found only a half dozen hairs in Hannah’s brush. Probably not enough to get a reading on her, particularly not if she was far away.

His phone rang, interrupting him.

“Yes?”

“Wes, it’s Matt. I’ve got the results for you.”

“Coming down now.”

He needed to clear his head anyway. Maybe he’d come up with something later.

Wesley marched down the hallway of one of the basement floors of Scanguards’ Mission headquarters, heading for the IT lab. Both Thomas and Eddie had left shortly after Wesley had brought the suspect’s laptop to the office, so the task of hacking into it and examining the information on it had been given to Matt, one of their trusted human employees.

It was quiet as he walked down the corridor. Mostly humans and hybrids manned the offices during the day. Few vampires were around, most of them having gone home to sleep. It was midday. As soon as the winter sun set, headquarters would be buzzing like a beehive again. But during the day, this was his domain: he was the highest-ranking Scanguards employee on site. And he liked it that way.

Without knocking, Wes entered the IT lab.

Only a few people were sitting in front of the many computer workstations dotted around the large room. Including one person he hadn’t been expecting.

“Isabelle? What are you doing here?”

Samson’s twenty-two-year-old hybrid daughter looked up from the computer and smiled. “Hi, Wes.” She jerked her thumb at the man next to her. “Clark is teaching me programming and stuff.”

Wes raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you were interested in IT.”

She shrugged, tossing a strand of her long dark hair over her shoulder. She was as beautiful as her mother, and as smart as her father. “I’m not. But I figured if I want to run the company one day I should know as much as possible about how everything works.”

Wesley couldn’t help but chuckle. “You wouldn’t by any chance be competing with your brother again?”

“Which one?” she shot back.

“Both, actually,” Wes said.

Though Grayson, one year Isabelle’s junior, was the more ambitious of her brothers. Patrick, who’d only just turned nineteen was a little more laid back and wasn’t yet thinking of how to position himself to take over his father’s company, should Samson ever decide to retire. Which, considering how much Samson loved his job, would probably never happen.

“All Grayson wants to do is go on patrol.” She scoffed. “If that’s how he plans to prove to Dad that he’s a grown-up, then let him. It takes more than brawn to run Scanguards.” She tipped her finger to her temple. “It takes what’s up here.”