Bite her, then you’ll be connected and she will have to stay with us,my wolf piped up.
We can’t bite her yet,my vampire argued.Humans need time to fall in love. They don’t trust their feelings the way we do. We need to woo her.
I can’t woo her, I have a job to do. I have to keep her safe right now,I argued back.
Great, now I was arguing with my inner demons. I sighed, watching as a man dropped into the chair on Hazel’s other side. He was older, probably mid to late fifties, with perfectly styled white hair and perfect teeth.
“Ah, another Canadian delegate,” he boomed as he shook Hazel’s hand. “It’s very nice to meet you. What office are you from?”
“Ottawa.”
“I’m at the Montreal office.”
Hazel switched to French, speaking with the man for several minutes before she said in English, “If you’ll excuse me, I need to find the washroom.”
I stood up, following her out of the ballroom. Instead of heading for the ladies room, she pulled me into an empty room.
“That guy next to me isn’t a Canadian delegate.”
“How do you know?” I asked, my guard immediately going up.
“His French is wrong. He’s speaking the Parisian dialect, which is different from what’s spoken in Quebec.”
“Maybe he’s new?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, he claims to have grown up in Montreal, but when I asked him about his favorite local restaurant, he struggled to come up with something. Also when I asked for his business card I noticed that it has an old logo on it, one we stopped using about a year ago.”
“Do you think he’s just using up old cards?”
She shook her head. “We’re required to change them immediately. That card was either stolen or counterfeited. Either way, he’s a fake.”
I looked around, making sure no one had slipped into the room with us while we were talking, then asked, “Do you think he’s one of the mercenaries looking for you?”
I hadn’t gotten a mercenary vibe from the guy. He was too soft, too out of shape, to be someone sent to kidnap Hazel, unless he had back-up in the crowd who were ready to do his bidding. Then again, I hadn’t sensed that he knew who Hazel was. His conversation with her had seemed more opportunistic than anything.
“No, he’s up to something else that doesn’t have anything to do with me.” She handed me the card. “Probably a spy for a foreign government. Let’s have Wanda investigate him.”
I wanted to tease her about giving me orders, but her idea was a good one, so I snapped a picture of the card and texted it to Wanda with a message.
“We should get back,” Hazel said. “I want to see if I can find anything else out.”
By the time we returned to our table the keynote speaker was starting, which left us with no time to talk to the fake diplomat. It didn’t take long for Wanda to text me back a picture of theperson who those business cards belonged to. It definitely wasn’t the man sitting at our table. I subtly snapped a picture of the imposter so Wanda could alert the conference organizers. Ten minutes later hotel security stopped at our table, whispering for the man to follow them. He went without an argument.
“I’m dying to know what’s going on,” Hazel said.
“Wanda will let us know,” I reassured her. “She’ll make sure it’s really unrelated.”
It was. We heard a little while later that the fake Canadian was really a Romanian national trying to get intel on the delegates. Of course it was the Romanians, I thought. We’d run up against them before.
By the time we finished our afternoon sessions I was ready to crawl out of my skin. At least if I was on a stake-out I could have worked on my computer or something. But sitting in this hotel waiting for someone else to make an attempt to snatch my mate was nerve wracking.
The constant commentary from my vamp and wolf only made it worse. I’d grown used to my vamp’s voice over the years, but now that the wolf had made an appearance, I felt like one of those cartoons where there’s a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. My vamp was cautious and strategic, just like me, but my newly present wolf was all about instincts and action.
“What should we do tonight?” Hazel asked when we were finally heading up to our room. “There are no conference events tonight. I don’t want to sit around here, but I also don’t want to make myself a target.”
“I’ve got an idea.”
Lois was leaving the office for the day when we ran into her in the lobby, walking hand in hand with her mate Monique.
