The Renegade Hunter (32 page)

"He was trying to keep his promise without keeping his promise," Mortimer said dryly, stepping off the stairs and moving to Sam's side.

"What promise is that?" Nicholas asked.

"I had to clue him in to what was going on when I called about his sending out the IV and drugs for Jo's turn, but I made him promise not to mention your presence here."

"Why?" Thomas asked with surprise.

"Because I made a promise to Nicholas that if he brought Jo in, he could see her through the turn and have one night with her before I called Lucian. I didn't want word getting out before that promise was fulfilled."

"Thank you, Mortimer," Jo murmured, grateful that he'd kept his word.

Otherwise, she could have woken to the news

that Nicholas had already been judged and executed and wouldn't now have the hope of saving him. Patting the man's

arm, she smiled and then turned to Thomas. "You need to take me to your sister."

"He needs to take both of us to see Jeanne Louise," Nicholas corrected her grimly, and then pointed out, "You have no idea what was happening at that time. I can find out more from her."

"You're right," she agreed and glanced to Thomas. "You need to take us both to Jeanne Louise."

"Just a minute," Mortimer muttered, moving between them and placing a hand on Nicholas as if suspecting he might make a run for it at any moment. "Nicholas isn't going anywhere."

"You said he could have a night with me," Jo said accusingly.

"Well, yes, but here" he said at once. "Not gallivanting around the city."

Jo arched an eyebrow and glanced to Nicholas. "Was there any mention of where that night would be?"

"No. Just one night with you," Nicholas said with a grin.

Nodding, Jo turned to Mortimer. "Are you a man of your word or not? You promised him one night with me. I want to go to Aunt Marguerite's. Hence he has to go."

"Jeez," Bricker muttered. "She sounds like Sam when she pulls on her lawyer face."

Mortimer scowled, his voice hard when he said, "I agreed he could have one night with you. I also said that if he came here, we wouldn't let him leave. The agreement that the night in question would be here was implicit. Whether you choose to spend that night with him here or not isn't my problem, but I am not letting him leave. I'm already going to have to talk fast when Lucian finds out I let him see you through the turn and spend that night with you here, so don't push your luck."

"Why do you want to talk to Jeanne Louise?" Sam asked quietly, joining the small circle now. "What are you hoping she can tell you?"

Jo sighed and then explained. "It all goes back to Annie's death. The night before the accident she called Nicholas in Detroit-he was a rogue hunter then like Mortimer," she paused to add in case Sam didn't already know that. "Anyway, she told him she had something to tell him when he got back. But that night she died in this car accident that decapitated her, one of the few ways an immortal can die. And the beheading on the windshield was a freak accident," she said

grimly. "A one-in-a-million type thing they told Nicholas when he got home." She arched her brow meaningfully, satisfied when Sam started to get her narrow-eyed look.

"Anyway, so then a couple weeks later Nicholas sees this gift Annie had bought for her friend at work, this mortal gal named Carol. So he takes the gift and heads over to see Carol, thinking he'll ask her if she knows what it was Annie had been all excited about. He remembers driving there, and then crossing the parking lot and seeing this pregnant woman who looked like his dead life mate. The next thing he remembers is Decker calling his name, him opening his eyes and finding the pregnant woman dead in his arms, her blood all over him.

"He never connected the two things, but I think it's pretty odd that she died before she could tell him something she was pretty excited about, and then he suddenly finds himself accused of murder and on the run before he can ask this Carol what it might have been about."

Jo paused, and silence reigned for a moment, and then she shifted impatiently. "Don't you get it? Nicholas has absolutely no memory of killing the woman. He remembers nothing between seeing her in that parking lot and finding her dead in his lap. Is that possible if he killed her? With your nanos, those memories should be there, shouldn't they? I think he was drugged and he and the woman taken back to his place, the woman killed and placed in his lap for Decker to find.

"I think it was all to keep him from finding out what his Annie had to tell him," she announced triumphantly.

"Why not just kill him then?" Bricker asked uncertainly. "Why kill the mortal?"

Jo frowned at the question. She hadn't considered that herself. She did now, but it was Thomas who said, "Because we don't die easy or often. Annie and Nicholas both dying so close together would have made us all suspicious. But his being executed for killing a mortal in the throes of grief would have been something we all wanted to forget and not think about."

Jo glanced to the man with surprise. "Nice one, thank you."

He smiled faintly, but nodded.

"I suspected Decker was behind it all," Jo announced now. "It was pretty convenient how he showed up when he did, but

Nicholas is sure he wouldn't have done something like that."

"Mortimer?" Sam asked, glancing to him. "It's possible Jo could be right.

Nothing Nicholas has done speaks of a murderer

to me. He has repeatedly risked himself to save others, and even turned himself in to save Jo. What if she's right and Nicholas didn't kill the woman?"

When he remained silent, a frown on his face, Thomas said quietly, "The memories should be there, Mortimer. It's odd they aren't."

"Maybe they are and he's lying," Mortimer pointed out reluctantly. "We won't know until Lucian reads him."

"You don't have to wait for Lucian," Bricker pointed out quietly. "If he's anything like you and Decker, his mind should be an open book now that he's met his life mate. Read his thoughts."

When Mortimer glanced to Nicholas, he nodded. "Go ahead. I won't fight it.

I want you to read them."

Jo watched Mortimer, noting the sudden concentration on his face, and then glanced around to see that Bricker, Anders, and Thomas all had the same expressions on their faces as well and suspected all four were reading him.

"It jumps from seeing the woman in the parking lot to her dead in his lap,"

Thomas murmured suddenly.

"He's angry when he sees the woman though," Mortimer pointed out with a frown.

"But the memory skips from seeing her to opening his eyes and her being dead in his lap, like a record with a scratch. Jo could be right," Bricker pointed out and then muttered, "Jeez, Nicholas try to keep your thoughts on that night. I don't need flashes of a naked Jo in my head."

"Sorry," Nicholas muttered, and he actually blushed. "You're the one who mentioned Jo. My mind just reacted."

Jo rolled her eyes. It figured. Mention her name and does an image of her being clever or amusing come to his mind? No.

He immediately thinks of her naked. Men.

"All right," Mortimer said with a sigh, his face relaxing. "I'll agree this needs more investigation. But I don't know about letting you leave here."

Jo was just winding up to snap at him when he added, "We'll call and have Jeanne Louise come here so we can question her."

"I'll call," Thomas offered as Jo relaxed.

"You'll have to find some way to get her here without mentioning Nicholas,"

Mortimer warned. "Or we'll have Lucian

breathing down our necks."

Thomas nodded and glanced around. "A phone?"

"My office," Mortimer said at once, and moved to lead the way, saying,

"You call Jeanne Louise and then I'll call the front gate to watch for her. Bricker, keep an eye on Nicholas."

Jo watched them go and then glanced to Nicholas, frowning when she noticed how pale he was. "Are you feeling all right?" she asked with concern.

"I'm fine. I just need to feed."

"Come on," Bricker said at once. "There's plenty of blood in the refrigerator.

I could use some myself and Jo has another

bag to go I think."

"And a mess to clean up," Jo said dryly and moved ahead as Anders and Bricker positioned themselves on either side of Nicholas. She grimaced as she entered the kitchen and saw that a good amount of blood had gotten out of the bag before she'd dumped it in the sink, and then sighed and headed for the roll of paper towels hanging under the counter.

"So, why is my dog at your place, Anders?" Jo asked as she tore off several sheets of paper towel and began to clean up the mess she'd made in the kitchen.

"He followed me home," Anders said dryly, moving to the refrigerator to retrieve several bags of blood.

"Yeah, right," she muttered, swiping at the blood on the floor.

"Actually he did," Sam said quietly as she and Nicholas collected paper towels and bent to help her clean up her mess.

"He stuck pretty close to Anders after they got back from the hotel, and then followed him out to his vehicle and hopped in when he went to go home. We figured since Charlie liked him, and Anders didn't mind, he could keep Charlie at his place until you returned to us."

Jo frowned at this news. Charlie had always been her baby, preferring her company over anyone else's. She wasn't sure she liked the idea that he'd attached himself to Anders in her absence. Still, she hadn't been around and the man had apparently looked after her beloved pet for her, so Jo muttered a reluctant

"Thanks for looking after him."

"My pleasure," Anders said as he watched them clean up the last bits of blood. "Although I must say I find it hard to believe he was raised by you. Charlie does as he's told and is much quieter than you. I quite enjoyed his company."

Jo glanced sharply at Anders as Nicholas helped her to her feet, caught the spark of humor in his eyes, and gave a reluctant chuckle. "Yeah, well, they say to trust the instincts of dogs and children, so I guess you can't be as bad as you pretend."

Anders's response was to hand her a bag of blood with one hand and pop a bag to his own mouth with the other.

"You guys have a nice setup here," Nicholas commented as he took the used paper towels from Jo and Sam and tossed them in the garbage. "It's a lot more organized than it was when I was a hunter."

"You still are a hunter from what I can tell," Bricker said dryly. "A renegade hunter, maybe, but a hunter just the same."

Nicholas chuckled. "Yeah, that's me, the renegade."

Bricker smiled and said, "But you're right. It is a lot more organized now.

We have to be. We've lost a couple hunters

lately and are shorthanded. It makes things a little difficult."

"Lost them how?" Nicholas asked curiously.

"Well, Decker resigned. He doesn't want to leave Dani alone until we catch Leonius. Not that he'd have been any good anyway. You guys are pretty useless for the first little while after you meet your life mates."

"Where are Dani and Decker?" Jo asked curiously. "I thought they were staying here with you guys?"

"The whole Ernie thing spooked him. He took Dani and Stephanie for a trip until things calm down," Sam explained quietly.

Jo frowned at this news and was about to tell them it was safe enough here, that Ernie had been the only one to figure out where the house was and that Leonius was apparently lying low for a while somewhere in South America, but before she could, Bricker continued, "So he's out of the picture for now, and then we lost two more when Lucian made Victor and DJ stay in Port Henry."

Nicholas raised an eyebrow. "Port Henry?"

"It's a little town south of here," he explained. "The entire town knows they have vampires there."

"What?" Nicholas asked with amazement.

Bricker nodded. "They don't know about the nanos or anything, they just think they're traditional vampires. Still, that's more than they should know."

"That's going to be a problem," Nicholas said grimly.

"Yeah." Bricker sighed. "Lucian says the same thing. Apparently a lot of the people think it's all just a joke, but just as many don't. Lucian thinks that's going to explode eventually and he made Victor and DJ stay there to deal with it when it happens."

"Hmm," Nicholas murmured, accepting the bag of blood Bricker held out.

"Well, maybe Nicholas and I could take their place and help after we get this all sorted out," Jo suggested.

Nicholas had been about to pop the blood bag to his mouth, but paused abruptly and turned a horrified look her way.

"What?"

"Well," she said reasonably, "you were already one, and I'd be a great hunter now that I'm an immortal too."

Anders snorted, and Bricker muttered, "Yeah, right. It would be like I Love Lucy meets Dracula."

"What's I Love Lucy?" Jo asked with confusion. She thought she might have heard of some old show called that, but had no idea what it was about.

"Never mind," Nicholas muttered, and then glanced to the doorway as Mortimer led Thomas in.

"Jeanne Louise is coming," Thomas announced as Mortimer moved to the refrigerator to retrieve himself a bag of blood.

He held it up and offered it to Thomas, and when Nicholas's brother took it, fetched himself another.

"Good," Jo said with a smile of relief. "Then this could all be over soon."

"Jo," Sam said with concern.

"What?"

Sam hesitated, and then gestured for her to follow and headed out of the room.

Jo raised her eyebrows, but trailed Sam out of the kitchen and up the hall to the living room.

When her sister settled on the couch, Jo dropped to sit beside her and asked,

"What is it?"

Sam bit her lip, but then sighed and said quietly, "I know you're hoping that Jeanne Louise knows something that will help here. But even if she does know what Annie wanted to tell Nicholas that night, it might not be enough to exonerate him."

"It has to," Jo said quietly. "Nicholas didn't kill that woman. I know it."