Eternal Hearts (46 page)

How long could it take to ask someone a few questions?

Fifteen minutes later, Toni jammed her cell phone back into her pocket and glared at the door leading to the offices. What the hell was taking him so long? She stood up and paced a short line in front of the bench then kicked at the ground.

“So much for scaring people,” she muttered under her breath.

“Ma’am, the Zoo will be closing in five minutes. Please start making your way to the exit.”

Toni carefully studied groundskeeper. “Okay…just let me go get my brother from inside and we’ll leave.”

He nodded, seemingly content with her answer, and then continued on his way. Once he was out of sight, she whipped open the office door and ran inside.

The receptionist shot her an odd look. “Hello. May I help you?”

“Yeah, actually…I’m looking for my brother. He’s a big guy, wearing a white tank top and leather pants. Can you tell me where he went? I can’t leave until I find him.”

The woman’s smile spread to an almost unnatural width. “Oh, yes. He’s in a meeting with Ms. Erickson. If you’d like to have a seat, you’re more than welcome to wait for him.”

For the second time in two days, Toni felt like she’d just stepped into the Twilight Zone. Why was the receptionist all
smiley
over Dominic? She nodded as she slowly backed away from the counter, then sat down and cringed when the receptionist began humming.

As if she didn’t feel weird enough about this place already, now she just felt down-right freaked out. She glanced out the window then back to the weird woman behind the desk. Maybe Chicago had been sucked into a black hole while she’d been waiting for Dominic to come out. Maybe aliens had invaded and they’d already sucked her brain out of her body.

Maybe she was dead and she just didn’t know it yet.

Toni’s thoughts were broken roughly ten minutes later when she caught sight of Dominic’s large form out of the corner of her eye. She jumped to her feet and glared at him. “It’s about time. The zoo closed five minutes ago.”

Dominic smacked his lips together then smiled. “Let’s go then.” He turned to the receptionist. “Next Friday, I’ll pick you up here at eight. Wear something you can move in.”

“Okay, I’ll be ready,” the woman practically purred.

Toni stared between her brother and his apparent date. What the hell? He was the one yelling about getting somewhere fast and he was in here making dates with chicks?

She stormed through the doors and waited for him to come out.

When he finally did, he smiled at her. “What?”

She narrowed her eyes when she noticed a flash of something red on his fangs. “Do you have blood on your fangs?” Her eyes widened when she realized exactly what she’d just said.
“Oh my God!
Put those away, you dumb ass! Why the hell are they out?”

Dominic grabbed her hand and started dragging her back towards the parking lot at his insanely fast pace. “A man’s gotta eat.”

She ripped her hand away from him. “You ate in there?” She couldn’t find the words to say anything else. All she could do was glare at the back of his big, stupid bald head.

“Stop staring at me. I had the opportunity to eat so I took it. The woman’s fine. She’ll be a little woozy for an hour or so, but she’s still alive and feeling a lot better than she was before I got there.”

Toni rolled her eyes. “Did you at least find anything out while you were in there?”

“Yeah, Ms. Erickson is the Director for the zoo. She personally talked to an unusually tall blond woman who was wearing a purple, one piece vinyl suit about the transfer. And the tall blonde was also a representative for the Toledo Zoo.”

Toni could barely believe her ears. “Oh, shit! So it really is Stryker behind everything? What the hell do we do now?”

“Now we
fuckin
’ find proof that it’s her. Talking to the Director ain’t enough. She didn’t even know Stryker’s name, but at least we know we don’t need to look at anyone else now.”

Toni tried to stay calm as excitement wound down her spine. The closer they got to Stryker, the closer she was staying in Chicago with her brother…and Drake. “Where do we go next?

“Let’s go to that
Cyberz
place you mentioned before. We’ll see if anyone there has seen our dogs.” He turned to look at her but didn’t stop moving. “What did you find out?”

She pressed her lips together. “I didn’t exactly talk to anyone.”

“If you didn’t talk to anyone…then what the hell were you doing the whole time?”

Toni snorted. “Oh please, you’re the last one who should be asking what
I
was doing, especially when you walk out of a building smelling like blood and crotch.”

He laughed, loudly. “I told you, I needed to eat. She wanted me, so it was an easy meal. It’s not like you’d have done any different.”

Toni intended to object, but stopped short. He was right, if the Director had been a man, she probably would’ve done the same thing. She’d been doing almost the exact same thing to every guy she’d picked up in a bar for nearly four years now.

At least he didn’t hurt her.
Taking the subconscious cue, she decided to ignore the subject. “I didn’t talk to anyone because I had that really bad feeling again, and then I realized we have no idea what the new wolves look like. The last thing I wanted to do was walk up to one of them and say, ‘Hey, ya seen this guy?’ – I don’t think it would’ve gone over well.”

“Good point,” Dominic said as he pushed through the gate and back into the parking lot. “I’ll meet you at
Cyberz
. I really wanna know what the hell Stryker’s up to with these dogs.”

Toni headed straight for her car.
“Yeah, you and me both.”

***

Stryker sat comfortably in her high back office chair, patiently waiting for her last guest to arrive. Once the impending meeting ended, three years of hard work would be finally come to fruition. And every single debt Christian Locke owed her would soon be paid in his worthless blood.

“Miss Stryker,” her butler said, interrupting her wonderful thoughts. “Your guest is here.”

“Please show him to my office. And make sure he’s given anything he wishes to drink. I’ll spare no expense for a guest of his station and stature.”

Her servant swallowed the apparent lump growing in his throat.
“Anything, Miss Stryker?”

She glared at him. “Did I stutter? Yes, you imbecile.
Anything.”

He wrung his hands before he turned away. “Yes, Miss Stryker.”

Stryker twirled the platinum pen on her desk as pure excitement simmered in her blood. The assurance this single meeting would garner her was worth every penny she’d spent on it.

She jumped when she heard a loud cracking sound, followed by one of her maids shrieking. A second later her guest sauntered into her office with a bloody finger protruding from his mouth.

“You wanted to meet with me?” he asked, almost innocently.

She frowned, and had she been human, her stomach probably would have churned. “Where exactly did you get that finger?”

He smiled down at her. “You said I could have anything I wanted. I wanted a finger.” He held it out towards her. “Would you like some? Tastes kinda like chicken.”

She grimaced. “That’s absolutely disgusting. Is she dead?”

“Right now, she’s just missing a finger. What else she loses depends on how long I’m here.”

“If she bleeds on one of my Persian rugs, I’m holding you financially responsible.”

He didn’t seem to care. “Get on with it, Stryker. The longer I sit here, the more I think about eating
your
finger.”

A jolt of fear shot straight down Stryker’s spine. She knew she was out of her league, but she still had something he wanted. “So be it. I have another job for you.”

He kicked his head back and let out an evil, thundering laugh that chilled her to the core. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, Kid.”

She offered him a curt nod then pushed a piece of paper across the desk. “Why don’t you take a look at that, and then you can tell me just how much nerve you think I have.”

The smile he’d arrogantly draped across his lips quickly changed to a fanged snarl as his eyes moved across the letter. “You have ten seconds to explain yourself.”

She reined in the fear flooding her body and forced her voice to remain steady. “That’s a rejection letter from DePaul University, currently slated to be mailed to your little showgirl in Vegas. Which, I’m sure will be the only career she’ll have once her dreams are shattered by not getting accepted to the school of her dreams. Of course, should you complete the job I need done…I’ll make sure that letter reads: Congratulations, you’ve been accepted.”

Stryker felt anger wash over the entire room before the lights went out, plunging her into total darkness. She stilled when she felt his gloved hand close around her throat.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now,” he growled in her ear.

Even when her body began shaking, Stryker struggled for a deep breath and forced the words between her lips as confidently as possible. “Because if you do, and I don’t check in with the man I have watching her, she’ll meet a very brutal, very violent end. And then you’ll
never
get to meet her.”

Stryker let loose with a scream when pain exploded in her muscles as she connected with the wall on the other side of the room. A nearly deafening roar cut through the silence, followed by the shattering of glass and the cracking of plastic from near her desk.

Unwilling to lose what little edge she had on him, she crawled to her feet. Every movement she made sent a shock of pain down the backs of her legs, causing lights to dance across the dark room. But somehow, she found the nerve to continue. “I know what you want more than anything in this world, and I can give her to you. I researched her as payment the last time we worked together. This time I’ll actually deliver her. All you have to do is say yes.”

She groaned as the back of his hand cracked hard against her cheek. The force behind the blow sent her to the floor again, where he stepped on her chest, pinning her to the ground.

“Who?”

She shivered as his voice clawed at her from every direction. “Christian Locke. If he’s still alive after tomorrow night, I want you to kill him.”

Silence stung the air as seconds turned to minutes…

“You’ll make sure she’s accepted to DePaul, and then you’ll forget you ever knew me, Stryker. You’re nothing but a whelp, who stumbled across information you should
not
have. It wasn’t because of your intelligence. It wasn’t because of your skill. It was blind luck. You’re nothing, and next time…I will kill you, whether I get what I want or not.”

Stryker winced and squeezed her eyes closed when the lights came back on. She knew he was gone, but every nerve in her body was still teetering on edge. Slowly, she once again rose to her feet and stared around the room. She’d expected everything to be broken, but it wasn’t. Nothing even looked out place. And if she hadn’t known better, she’d have never believed he’d been in the room.

She carefully moved to her desk then sank down into her chair. She covered her mouth with an unsteady hand and gave herself a moment to calm down. But when that calm finally found her, she realized something very important…

Oktober had meant every word he’d said. She knew it. She felt the warning tapping against her soul like a wayward branch against a window pane. This would be the last time she could use him…the last time he’d allow himself to be used.