“Nash did.”
“Nash?”
“Grace, Cargill had no idea what Welsh had done.He didn’t have a clue.He especially didn’t realize that his men were taking sips of you.By the time I reached that shack, his men had developed their color sight, but Cargill didn’t believe them.”
“I want to hear about how Welsh died,” she insisted, her voice cracking.
Reaching over to the small table beside the bed, Rhyne snatched up the mug of water and held it up to her.Taking its straw between her lips, she drank thirstily, then cleared her throat.
“More?”he softly asked.
“No to the water.Yes to the story,” she answered with a smile.
He set the mug down.“Apparently Cargill had no idea that Welsh had placed a target on his back, which was why the sheriff’s deputies rammed his SUV.I went inside the shack to confront them, and told Cargill what Welsh had done.Then I challenged Welsh.”
“What do you mean, you challenged him?”
“With my kind, once a vamp breaks the cardinal rule for survival, another from his nest can challenge him.In other words, it’s an automatic death sentence to that vamp, but only one from his nest can pull the trigger, so to speak.”
“But you said Nash killed him,” she pointed out.
Rhyne pressed his lips together.“I challenged him because of what he’d done to you.Because of what he’d put you through.But I hadn’t fed in some time, and I was growing weak.Welsh almost killed me instead, but Nash stepped in and finished the deed.”He shook his head.“He’ll never bother you again.He’s permanently out of our lives.”
“But isn’t the sheriff’s department still looking for him?For Welsh?”
“Yes, but they’ll never find him or his remains.Cargill and his men made sure of that.”Rhyne took a deep breath.“Unfortunately, since Cargill’s nest was placed in the crosshairs, he and his men are now having to take on new identities and find a new place to live.And find new employment.”
“Wow.Imagine having to be on the run for the rest of your life.”It was difficult to envision what the others were forced to go through.Rhyne’s next words surprised her.
“Oh, I don’t have to imagine.I’ve had to do the same thing myself.Trust me, it’s not something I want to go through again, even though I’ll have to—” He abruptly stopped.
Releasing her hand, he stood and walked over to the window where he peered out.Grace refused to let it end there.“You had to do the same thing yourself?Why?Is it because you killed someone?”
He slowly shook his head.“No.It’s because of what I am.Remember me telling you I was born in the early nineteen hundreds?”
“Yes.”
“When you’ve lived as long as I have, at some point you have to abandon, walk away from whatever life you’ve established in one place and do what Cargill’s doing.You have to assume a new identity and start all over again.”
“Why?”
This time he snickered.“When you don’t appear to age after so many years, it draws attention to you.That attention could end up being your downfall.”
Now she understood.“Have you always looked the way you look right now?”
“When you’re changed, your appearance remains exactly the same as it was at that point in time.”
“You can’t change your appearance, but you change everything else when you have to take on a new identity.Got it.”She gave him a puzzled look.“Does that mean Rhyne isn’t your real name?”
“No.My given name was…is Stefan.”
“Stefan.I like that.”Grace leaned back against the pillows as a cold, stark truth raised its ugly head.“So, at some point, you and Nash are going to have to leave town.Is that what you’re telling me?”
“No.Not in the immediate future.It would look too suspicious to the cops, and that’s the one thing we have to avoid right now.”He turned around to face her.“There’s a lot more I want to tell you.That I need to tell you.But I want you to know something.I’ve fallen in love with you.It’s not something I was planning on doing, but it’s complicating the hell out of my life.”
She knew she was on the verge of tearing up, but she pressed on anyway.“Funny, but I was just about to tell you the same thing.”
His eyes widened.Apparently he hadn’t expected that answer from her.
