Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

The photo didn't seem very old. There were no scars riddling the left side of his face, so the injury he sustained must have been fairly recent. Whatever happened had robbed him of his classic, impossibly good looks, but it was the anger he carried inside him that seemed the bigger tragedy. Dylan looked at the picture of Rio in happier times and she had to wonder how he'd fallen as far as he apparently had in the time since.

She glanced to another picture, this one an antique. It was a sepia-toned studio image of a dark-haired woman with a Gibson Girl updo and a high-necked, frothy lace Victorian dress. Dylan bent down to get a better look, wondering if the exotic beauty with the coy smile might be Rio's grandmother. The dark eyes stared directly into the camera lens, a look of pure seduction. She was gorgeous and sensual, despite the prim fashion of her time.

And her face...it seemed strangely familiar.

"Oh, my God."

Disbelief, as well as an overriding sense of wonder, swamped Dylan as her gaze traveled to another photograph on the sofa table. This one was full-color, obviously taken within the past decade or less...and it featured the same woman from the antique picture. This later one was a nighttime shot of a woman standing on a stone bridge in the middle of a city park, laughing as her long black hair blew playfully around her head. She seemed so happy, but Dylan saw a sadness in her dark eyes - pained secrets hiding in the deep brown gaze that was fixed so tightly on whoever it was that took the photo.

And she recognized that face for certain, she realized now, though not merely from the impossible time range of photographs displayed on Rio's sofa table.

This was the same face she'd seen on the mountain in Jicin...the face of a dead woman.

The beautiful ghost who led Dylan to the cave where she found Rio was his wife.

Chapter Fifteen

It was almost as if he'd never been gone.

Rio stood in the compound's tech lab surrounded by Lucan, Gideon, and Tegan, who'd each greeted him with a hand offered in genuine friendship and trust.

Tegan's grasp lingered the longest, and Rio knew that the stony warrior with the tawny hair and gem-green eyes was able to read his guilt and uncertainty through the link of their clasped hands. That was Tegan's gift, to pine true emotion with a touch.

He gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head. "Shit happens, man. And God knows we all have our own personal demons yanking our chains. So, no one's here to judge you. Got it?"

Rio nodded as Tegan let go of his hand. As he passed off Dylan's messenger bag to Gideon, he cast a glance toward the back of the lab, where Dante and Chase were cleaning their weapons for the night. Dante gave him a tip of his chin, but Chase's steely look said his jury was still out when it came to Rio. Smart man. Rio figured the ex - Darkhaven Agent's reaction was probably the same one he'd have if the tables were turned and Chase was the one flying in deadstick and in need of a rescue.

"How much does the woman know about us?" Lucan asked.

At nine hundred years old and first generation Breed, the Order's founder and formidable leader could command control of an entire room with just a quirk of his black brows. Rio considered him a friend - all of the warriors were as near as kin to one another - and he hated like hell that he might have disappointed him.

"I only gave her the basics," Rio replied. "I don't think she fully believes it yet."

Lucan grunted, nodding thoughtfully. "It's a hell of a lot to deal with. Does she understand the purpose behind that crypt in the rock?"

"Not really. She heard me call it a hibernation chamber when Gideon and I were talking, but she doesn't know anything more than that. I sure as hell don't plan to clue her in. Bad enough she saw the damn thing for herself." Rio exhaled a harsh breath. "She's smart, Lucan. I don't think it will take her long to start putting the pieces into place."

"Then we'd better act fast. The fewer potential details we have to clean up later, the better," Lucan said. He glanced at Gideon, who had Dylan's laptop open on the computer console beside him. "How hard do you think it will be to hack in and lose those pictures she's sent out via e-mail?"

"Deleting the source files on her camera and computer is easy. Half a minute's work."

"What about getting rid of the recipients' image and text files?"

Gideon scrunched up his face as if he were calculating the square root of Bill Gates's net worth. "About ten minutes for delivery of your basic hard-drive wrecking ball to all of the computers on her distribution list. Thirteen, if you're looking for something with a little more finesse."

"I don't give a rat's ass about finesse," Lucan said. "Just do whatever you need to trash the pictures and kill any text references to what she found on that mountain."

"I'm on it," Gideon replied, already working his magic on both devices.

"We can destroy the electronic files, but we still need to deal with the people she's been in contact with about the cave," Rio pointed out. "Aside from her employer, there's the three women she was traveling with, and her mother."

"I'm going to leave that to you," Lucan said. "I don't care how you go about it - use her to deny the story, discredit her, or go out and find the folks she's talked to and scrub the memory of every last one of them. Your choice, Rio. Just handle it, like I know you will."

He nodded. "I give you my word, Lucan. I will fix this."

The Gen One vampire's expression was as grave as it was certain. "I don't doubt you. Never have, never will."

Lucan's confidence was unexpected, and a gift Rio didn't plan to squander, no matter how wrecked he knew himself to be. For so many years, the Order and the warriors serving within it were his chief purpose in life - even above his love for Eva, which had seeded a quiet, but festering resentment in her. Rio was honor-bound to every last one of these men like his own blood kin, pledged to fight alongside them, even die for them. He looked around him, humbled by the grim, courageous faces of the five Breed males whom he knew without question would lay down their lives for him as well.