It made no sense for anything to be up, not when Junger had passed his background check with only a few unsavory notes in the margins, but vampires were wily, spiteful, and often didn’t even know what they were going to do until they did it. Atticus learned very early on to trust no one but family.
The low rumble of an engine broke the silence. He half-turned toward the road that connected to the other side of the lot. Twin dots of light that began as pinpricks in the far distance gradually got bigger.
The muscles of Atticus’s neck tensed, but his arms remained loose. Ready.
A frigid wind whipped off the hard-packed desert soil and sent the hem of his long coat fluttering. Bits of grit sprayed his cheeks as he watched the vehicle gradually resolve against the velvet blackness of the night.
Junger said he’d be driving a van, and he was apparently true to his word. It was one of those fancy miniature RVs that pulled into the lot, its headlights turned down low. Hitched to the back was some sort of sleek trailer about half the size of the van.
The RV pulled up next to Atticus’s borrowed car. The engine cut. For just a moment, there were no other sounds but the howl of the wind and his own breathing.
Then the door opened.
A pale, upper-middle aged woman hopped out of the driver’s seat and didn’t bother shutting the door. Her face was a little gaunt, her eyes restless as they assessed Atticus, then his car, then the lot, before doing the circuit all over again. One fang worried her chapped bottom lip.
“Well?”
Atticus glanced at the trailer again. There was nothing distinct about it. Nothing outwardly strange, except for the units attached to the front and top. Maybe it was refrigerated?
It wasn’t his place to speculate, though, so he grunted the codeword Junger had given him. “Stitches.”
The woman nodded. Smoothing her palms down the front of her jeans, she started walking toward the car. “Good. Okay. Safe trip.”
“Wait.” Atticus caught her arm before the woman could scuttle into the car and haul ass out of there. “How do I know the cargo is in there? You got a key or something to that trailer?”
The woman gave him a narrow-eyed look and lifted her lip to show her fangs. “It’s in there. And your biometrics were keyed into the lock in case of an emergency. You’re not supposed to look, though. Your boss was very clear about that.”
Your boss.Atticus had to work hard to keep the tendons in his neck from popping out.
Junger wasn’t his boss. He was nobody. Atticus had one boss, one man in the whole world he respected above all others,and that was Harlan fucking Bounds. To imply he answered to anyone else was galling.
Taking this job was a mistake.That cold crawling feeling sharpened, spread down from his neck to his whole spine.
This wasn’t supposed to be an illegal job, just under the table transport. He’d left crime behind when he, his sister Adriana, and Harlan escaped the vampire syndicate several years prior. Adriana had never, ever been part of it, but he and Harlan were once the two most sought after assassins on the continent, as long as you didn’t count Shade, a jack-of-all-trades madman.
They’d given that life up — happily, more or less — for safety and security in the Elvish Protectorate, leaving United Washington and its vampiric underbelly behind.
But the way the other vampire was looking at him now, the trailer, the gut feeling swirling inside Atticus… It was all too familiar. Too close to all those jobs he’d done to survive before Harlan saved his ass.
But what could he do? He’d already given his word, and something about getting back in that car, leaving the trailer behind, made his stomach clench.
Atticus let the woman go with a grunt. “If something’s wrong, then it’s your ass who’s gonna pay the price. Got it?”
“Good luck,” the woman dared to sneer, but she wasn’t brave enough to stick around. Bony shoulders hunched around her ears, she hustled off toward the car. Atticus watched her practically throw herself into the driver’s seat. The tires screeched as she pulled onto the road. The scent of burnt rubber lingered for a moment before the wind blew it away.
Running his claws through his windswept hair, Atticus let out a sigh. “Well, fuck.”
Chapter Two
The rules were simple:
1. Get the cargo.
2. Drive, avoiding all major checkpoints that couldn’t be bribed.
3. No stops at hotels or in cities.
4. Don’t look in the trailer.
