Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed (8 page)

She thought maybe she’d just exhausted herself
making the rounds over and over as she tried to figure out how to
piece a puzzle together when she didn’t have more than a couple of
parts.

She knew one thing, though! She was damn
disappointed and if he tried it again she wasn’t just going to
stand there frozen to the spot. She was going to snub him! She
didn’t know what kind of game he was playing, but if it was just
some play to keep her distracted, she didn’t want any part of
it!

As it happened, everybody seemed to be in a
pretty foul mood as they headed back to the courthouse the
following morning to finish up the deposition. Laurie was in such a
bad mood herself that it wasn’t until they got there that she
discovered that nobody looked like they’d gotten much sleep and
that they all looked like somebody had pissed in their cornflakes.
She doubted that it had anything to do with her own bad mood,
though, so it didn’t especially cheer her to see that they weren’t
happy either.

Things didn’t really get better once they got
to the DA’s office. It almost seemed like a repeat of the day
before with one exception. When the DA dismissed her that
afternoon, he dismissed her. They were done with the deposition and
he was placing her in protective custody until the
trial.

Laurie gaped at him in absolute disbelief.
Finally, she blinked as her brain kicked into gear again. “When’s
the trial?”

The DA shrugged. “We’re set to start jury
selection next Friday. That could take anywhere from a few days to
a couple of weeks. Probably closer to a week, though, and then the
trial date will be set.”

Laurie went back to blinking in shocked
disbelief. “But … I’ve only got two weeks’ vacation!” And she
hadn’t planned to spend both of them in Atlanta kicking her heels
while she waited for the trial to start! Alright, maybe it would be
more accurate so say that she’d
hoped
to wind up her
testimony before her vacation was over and have a couple of days to
unwind before she went back to work, but she certainly hadn’t
expected to lose her damned job over the trial! And she was liable
to if she had to take off more than a week! Even if she didn’t, she
was going to be in serious financial trouble if she didn’t work for
weeks!

The DA’s lips tightened. “If you’re dead you
won’t have to worry about the job.”

Laurie felt a little faint. “You don’t
seriously believe I’m in danger …?” she asked, hoping he’d tell her
it was just insurance.

“
The word on the street is that
somebody is looking to hire a kidnapper. What do you think? Why do
you think I hired security and sent them to escort you up here? As
a matter of fact I
do
believe that you’re in danger and I
do
believe that you won’t live to testify if you refuse to
go into protective custody.”

“
Oh my god!” Laurie gasped. “But …
but …what about after I testify?”

“
What would the point be in
killing you once you’ve testified?” the DA pointed out
reassuringly.

Laurie glared at him. “Revenge?”

He shook his head dismissively. “The danger to
you is going to be there as long as he’s a free man. Once he’s
convicted, you can have your life back. But I don’t think your
chances are good of making it to the trial if you refuse to go into
protective custody. You can notify everyone, including your boss,
that I insisted on putting you into protective custody and you will
be back when you’ve testified. But you won’t be able to contact
anyone after that until the trial is over—or at least until you’ve
testified against Smith.”

Laurie was too angry and upset as they headed
back to the hotel to think straight. She realized it wasn’t
actually the DA’s fault that she was in the mess she was in and
that he was looking out for her best interests—and his of course
since he didn’t have a case without her—to insist on protective
custody, but she
still
didn’t like it!

She also didn’t like the fact that she wasn’t
actually given any kind of notice where she could have prepared
herself, either mentally, emotionally, or physically. She would
have brought a
lot
more stuff from her place if she’d known
that there was no telling when she’d get to go back!

Chapter Six

Laurie was too mad on the way back to the
hotel to think straight or she would’ve been preparing her call
list. By the time it occurred to her that she needed one, they’d
reached the parking lot. She didn’t think it would’ve occurred to
her then except the guys were discussing packing her stuff up. “I
have to make some calls before I can check out,” she said
abruptly.

“
No calls …,” Lucien
began.

Laurie put on brakes. “Now wait just a damned
minute! I got that part about not being able to contact anybody
after I go into protective custody, but I need to make some calls
before we leave!”

Lucien’s lips tightened. “I was going to say
once we leave here you can’t make any calls so make sure you make
all the calls you want to
before
we go.”

Relieved, Laurie nodded and led the way
inside. Once they got on the elevator, she dug the pen and note pad
from her hotel room out of her purse and started jotting down calls
to make.

It wasn’t a long list.

It was at times like this that she really
missed her family. Her and her brother and sister had had a falling
out after their mother’s death a few years earlier—because she
hated her father for not being there when her mother died and her
brother and sister had sided with the absent father.

She supposed she shouldn’t have been angry
with them over what her father had done, but she hated the fact
that they made excuses for him when she didn’t feel like he had one
that even approached adequate. They’d had three children together!
She didn’t care if they had been divorced for years. He should have
had the decency to put in an appearance—for his children’s sake if
nothing else.
She
had needed one parent!

It didn’t help that they all had their own
lives/careers, they lived cities apart, and both her brother and
her sister were married with families of their own. With their
mother gone they never got together as a family anymore. There
hadn’t seemed to be a right time or place to make up.

She considered whether she ought to contact
them and let them know what was going on but then discarded it. She
didn’t have time to explain everything and they didn’t know
anything. What would be the point in worrying them with it
now?

And in the back of her mind she heard the
little voice saying if they’d cared about her they would’ve tried
to contact her. They wouldn’t have dumped the entire situation on
her shoulders. If they hadn’t cared enough to call her they
couldn’t be too worried about her.

Instead, she called her best friend and
explained it all to her—and told her to be careful just in case the
guy came looking for her or sent someone looking for her. She
called her supervisor at work and explained the situation and told
her to get in touch with the DA if she had questions. And lastly
she called her landlord and told him she planned to come back when
she could and not to assume she’d left and dispose of her things.
Then she used her bank app to pay her rent in advance and setup her
utilities on auto-pay just in case she wasn’t allowed to contact
them or make arrangements later.

She just hoped there was enough in the account
to cover the utilities when the bills came due!

Of course she didn’t suppose it would be any
great tragedy if her utilities were shut off for a little
while—except for the little problem with the mark on her credit and
them taking her damned deposit! She’d arranged for her friend to
pick up her cat and keep her until she could get back.

She was just sorry she hadn’t done that before
she left, but she’d thought she would be back shortly and it wasn’t
such a long drive that she couldn’t make a round trip as needed to
put out more water and cat food.

And she didn’t like asking people for
favors.

Of course, the damned car was toast now, but
then she hadn’t expected that when she’d left.

That thought prompted her to call the garage.
They told her it would be ready in a couple of weeks which she
interpreted to mean a month at the very least. She told them she’d
check back. An imperious knock at the door encouraged her to wind
up the call, but she was still trying to get loose from the man on
the phone when she answered the door.

She felt perfectly blank when she opened it.
She’d been expecting Lucien, or maybe one of the other guys. The
man standing on the other side was a complete stranger. Several
things happened almost simultaneously. The man slammed the palm of
his hand against the door she was holding. The blow popped the
security latch off as if it had never been there at all and the
door slammed open, tearing several of her nails as it was wrenched
from her grip and then flung against the wall hard enough she heard
the plaster crack.

Even as the man slammed his hand against the
door, however, Laurie heard a shout in the hallway followed by
pounding footsteps as someone heavy ran toward her.

“
Hey! What do you think you’re
doing?”

The stranger, who’d already reached to grab
her, threw his hands up in the air in a pose of surrender and
started backing away. “Sorry! I thought ….”

He didn’t get the rest of the excuse out.
Lucien (or Damien, she wasn’t sure which at that point) grabbed two
fistfuls of the man’s shirt. The man slammed his fists down on
Lucien’s forearms to break the grip and swung at him at the same
time, catching Lucien a glancing blow on the jaw with his elbow.
Twisting, he managed to elude Lucien and race away while Lucien
recovered his balance.

Laurie didn’t see any more. A wall of flesh
blocked her view as Damien swarmed over her, grabbing her and
carrying her into the room in one movement. They landed against the
wall. For a space of several heartbeats, Laurie felt every inch of
his body plastered against hers. Then he stepped back and examined
her with his gaze.

“
Are you hurt?”

She was too shocked even to be shook
up—really. It had happened so fast she didn’t have time to realize
she might be in danger until it was over. She lifted her throbbing
fingers and examined the row of broken nails. Then it hit her that
the man had actually attacked her with the intention of harming her
and she felt an avalanche of emotion crash over her. Fear and anger
warred for dominance and she felt her eyes sting with incipient
tears. She sniffed. “No.”

He studied her woebegone face for a moment and
abruptly pulled her close. That was all it took to shake the last
of her control. She burst into noisy sobs.

“
Aww, baby! Don’t cry. I’m going
to take the bastard apart limb from limb if he’s hurt you. You sure
you aren’t hurt?”

She shook her head, struggling to regain
control.

“
You aren’t sure?”

She sniffed. “He just hurt my hand when he hit
the door.” She struggled with the urge to burst into tears all over
again. “I thought it was one of you, come to collect
me.”

He caught her chin and tipped her head back.
“What did I tell about answering the door like that?” he demanded
sternly.

“
Give it a rest, Lucien,” Damien
growled from behind him. “You know the lock wouldn’t have held even
if she hadn’t cracked the door.”

“
I know if we hadn’t come out just
then he would’ve had time to hurt her,” Lucien said tightly. “And
if she hadn’t opened the door he would’ve had to beat it
down.”

“
That could have happened, yeah.
But it didn’t.”

Lucien looked like he wanted to say more but
finally merely shook his head. “Did he get away?”

“
I don’t know. The bastard had the
stairway door fixed to lock behind him—he must have propped it open
with something. He managed to get through before I could get hold
of him. Basil took the other stairs and Kane took the elevator to
try to head him off, but he caught us with our pants down. There’s
no getting around that.”

Lucien glanced up, scanning the ceiling. “Go
see if you can talk hotel security into giving us the tape. If you
can’t, see if you can capture a decent picture to help track the
bastard down. I’m going to help Laurie grab her things. We need to
get her to a secure location. This place is just too wide
open.”

* * * *

The blitz attack had been over before Laurie
had had time to consider that her life was in danger. She supposed
that was why it didn’t seem quite real to her and she was more
focused on her discomfort over the fact that she hadn’t been sure
of whether she was talking to Lucien or not until Damien had
arrived.

Which really sucked because she could’ve
enjoyed the moments much better if she’d realized it was Lucien’s
body pressed against her, Lucien who’d been so sweet … before he
went back to lecturing her about the damned door!

It made it worse that he’d been proven right.
She imagined there would be no living with the man now!