Shadow Hunt
Page 26But I still had to know.
When I circled the van, I saw the body right away. Wyatt was lying facedown in the street, his body blackened, his right leg completely missing. My searching eyes found it a few feet away, the pants leg still on fire. I skidded to a stop and closed my eyes, forcing myself to feel for Wyatt in my radius.
“Scarlett!” Jesse came panting up behind me. “We have to—”
“Shh!” I held out a flat hand to silence him.
There.
My eyes popped open as I felt the little spark of vampire magic. “We have to run,” I said, dazed. I was too upset; I couldn’t rein in my radius. I needed to get farther away from Wyatt if he had any hope of making it.
Jesse came around to my front, looking exasperated. “That’s what I’ve been saying!” Grabbing my hand, he practically dragged me back toward the Schmidt house. There was a tiny amount of space between it and the building next to it, and he led me through the side yard, around to the next street. None of the neighbors were watching us—to them, we probably looked like two more spectators who’d run out after the explosion; their attention was focused on the van and the body.
Oh, God, Wyatt’s body.
When we were two streets away, Jesse slowed down and put his arm around me like we were just any couple out for a stroll. Now and then he would crane his head to see if we were being followed. I had dropped Wyatt’s phone in the yard, and my own cell had exploded in the van, but Jesse still had his. When he was sure no one was tracking us, he called Dashiell.
It probably should have been me, but I was too . . . Poor Wyatt, he’d gone through so much just to protect me, and now I had no idea if he was going to survive the next few hours, much less whether he’d be able to grow his leg back. Werewolves could do it, I knew, but why had I never thought to ask about vampire limbs? And what if Dashiell treated him and he did survive? After losing his wife, Wyatt had wanted to die. Would he be angry if we didn’t let him move on?
And there was also my van. God, I loved that stupid van. I’d paid it off myself, one of the first adult things I’d ever done. I’d taken such pains with it, and now it barely qualified as scrap metal.
After a couple more minutes, he hung up the phone and looked down at me. “We’re going to a hotel,” he announced. “Dashiell will send Molly over with some clothes. And he said you already have an extra phone at your place.”
I nodded numbly. I’d trashed so many cell phones over the last few years that Abby had started buying them for me in bulk. Dashiell insisted on getting good ones—I’d once tried buying my own older model, but he insisted on good phones with GPS tracking. Dashiell was very big on GPS tracking.
“Does he have people at the scene?” I managed to say.
Jesse nodded. “When he heard Schmidt’s house was in Long Beach, Dashiell put a couple of the vampires at the Copper Room on standby. They’re already there talking to the cops. And they’ll recover Wyatt . . .” Jesse hesitated for a moment, then added softly, “Either way.”
The Copper Room was a vampire hangout in Long Beach, only a couple of miles away. It was popular among the younger, newer vampires. “Okay,” I mumbled. “That’s good, I guess. What does he want us to do?”
“Nothing for the next few hours,” Jesse said. “He said he’ll be busy making sure everyone who witnessed it gets pressed to think the car fire was an accident. He wants to meet an hour before dawn. Meanwhile, we should get some rest.”
Rest. It seemed like I’d been doing so much of that lately, but then I never seemed to get more than a couple of hours. It was taking its toll. Also, didn’t pregnancy make women more tired than usual? I should have asked Molly for more of her What to Expect knowledge before Lex pressed her.
My thoughts wandered around like that for a few more minutes as we strolled along the sidewalk. Then a dark red Lexus pulled up alongside us, and Jesse steered me toward it. “I think this is our ride.”
To my surprise, the car’s driver was Beatrice, Dashiell’s wife. She was wearing tight jeans and a blousy white shirt, which was about the most casual I’d ever seen her at night. She still had five-inch stiletto heels, though, which clicked on the pavement as she came around the car and tossed Jesse the keys. “Hi, Bea,” I said. My voice came out woozy. “You got here fast.”
“I was at the harbor on business,” she said as she strode up to us. She paused, gave me a critical look, and took me by the shoulders. “You can’t go into shock right now, Scarlett,” she said sternly. “Someone is trying to kill you. You must keep it together.”
“And you look terrible and smell like smoke,” she added, “but this list isn’t helping you stay alive.” She pressed a rectangle of black plastic into my hand. Curious, I looked down and saw a very fancy-looking credit card.
“It’s a corporate card for a shell company,” she said. “For the hotel. Call Molly when you’re settled. She can bring your things. Don’t give her your room number over the phone; she’ll call up from the lobby.”
I had lost the thread of the conversation by then, but Beatrice looked at Jesse. “Get her out of here. Keep her safe.”
“How will you—” Jesse began, but then a second Lexus, this one black, pulled up behind Beatrice’s car. She’d had a security team with her, of course. I couldn’t see the driver through the tinted glass, but Beatrice was already waving us on. “Go now.”
Jesse drove us to the biggest hotel nearby, the Long Beach Hyatt. I don’t remember anything about checking in or getting up to the room. The next thing I really registered was Jesse handing me a robe and pushing me into a bathroom with shiny new fixtures.
I showered and washed my hair, letting the hot spray blast me in the face, and by the time I stepped out, I felt almost like myself again.
Well, a really, really exhausted and worried version of myself, anyway.
When I finally emerged, Jesse stood up from the side of the bed, where he’d been staring down at his phone. He looked tired and grubby, and there was a smudge of dirt or ash on one cheek. He’d thrown the button-down shirt in the garbage can outside before we came in, and the muscles in his chest stood out against his gray tee shirt. He stood right in front of me, assessing me with worried eyes.
It kind of took my breath away.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Jesse shook his head.
There was a moment of painfully awkward silence, and then I blurted, “There’s, um, only one bed.” I immediately felt stupid. We’d shared a bed the night before, but that had been sort of an accident. This was a choice.
“Yeah,” Jesse said, one hand lifting to scrub his palm through his hair. “They have some kind of convention here this weekend; there wasn’t a double queen room. But I can take the pullout couch. Scarlett—” He stepped forward and grasped me around the waist, steadying me, and I realized I’d been swaying. “You should sleep,” he said huskily. He sort of danced me over to the edge of the bed. When the back of my legs hit it, all the remaining strength seemed to leave my body. Jesse started pulling back the covers to tuck me in.
“Why do they want to kill me?” I said, to no one in particular.
“Best guess? Because you can stop whatever they’re about to do,” Jesse said, and his words chilled me. “But not without some rest. I’m going to take a shower now, okay?”
“Jesse.” I caught his wrist, and he turned to look down at me, surprised. I tried to figure out what I wanted to say, but all that came out was, “Sleep in the bed.”
He looked at me for a long moment, the light from the hallway casting a shadow on half his face. “I don’t know if that’s—”
Oh, God, how I didn’t want to hear the end of that sentence. “Please?”