Embraced By Darkness (Riley Jenson Guardian 5)

I bit into the chocolate, felt the gooey strawberry filling spill into my mouth. Bliss itself. "Bank transfers aren't anonymous."

"No, But the money for this one came through an overseas account."

"Which are harder to track down?"

"They are when they're opened under false names."

While I had no doubt that the Directorate, with all their resources, would eventually pin down the actual owners, it would take time. And if there was someone wanting to get rid of me, we didn't exactly have a whole lot of time. "So how did he track me down?"

"Bug underneath your car." He picked out several chocolates then handed me back the box.

"Did he put it there?"

"Nope, He was just sent the receiver."

"So someone got close enough to bug my car." Which I suppose, considering I parked either in the street or in public parking lots most of the time, wasn't a hard thing to do. "But I can't think of one person that I've annoyed enough to go to the extreme of hiring a hit man."

"What about Blake? Or Patrin?"

I shook my head. "Granted, they're both angry that I didn't manage to save Adrienne, but they still want me to track down her killer. If they were going to do anything, they wouldn't do anything until after that happened."

And personally, I didn't think they'd do anything afterward. Patrin was a bully-boy like his father, but I'd proved that I could well and truly defend myself against him. And bully-boys tended to back away from situations they knew they couldn't win.

"I'm afraid I tend to agree with you."

The dry note in his voice had my eyebrows rising. "And you've changed your mind because...?"

"Because Patrin and I had a little chat after I saw you safely into the hospital." He shrugged, not looking in the least bit repentant. Not that I really expected him to. He'd been at the receiving end of as many of Patrin's taunts and blows as I had. "He swears he wouldn't waste a bullet on useless half-breeds like us, let alone pay someone else to waste said bullets."

That was the truth if ever I'd heard it. "What about Kye?"

He frowned. "What about him?"

"How many arms and legs did you break before you convinced him you weren't intending to harm his boss?"

"None. He saw the family resemblance, apparently, and refused to intervene." He hesitated. "I have to say, he's fast for a werewolf."

"He's in the protection business, so he'd have to be."

"Yeah, but this more than that. I was moving with vampire speed, and he tracked me. Had his gun on me all the time. That's not normal."

I shrugged and popped another chocolate into my mouth. This one was nutty. Nice. "No, but he's the best for a reason. Maybe he has some sort of psychic gift that allows him to 'feel' where vamps and such are."

"Possibly." He sniffed and reached for another chocolate. "I intend to do a bit more investigation into his past. I've got a feeling we need to know more about him."

"Ah, the family trait of clairvoyance is hitting you, too, huh?"

"No, it's just my nose for trouble. And trust me, that one is." He paused to munch on his chocolate. "So, if it wasn't Patrin or Blake, then who?"

"I don't know. As I said, the only case I'm dealing with now is Adrienne, and that's sort of stalled."

Stalled because I needed to talk to the owners of the club, and hadn't gotten around to it yet. But now that Wilson was contained, I'd have the chance.

But I didn't really think it could be them. I mean, why would they want me dead? They didn't know I'd sprung their little blackmailing operation, and even if they had noticed me at the club, why would they think I was a danger? They couldn't possibly know who I was, and if they had tried to do an identity search on me, it would have come up on the Directorate computers.

Yet that man at the club - the man who had smelled the same as Jared - had appeared to be hunting me after he'd almost sprung me in the camera room. I frowned, and asked, "In your experience, have you ever met two humans who smell the same?"

Rhoan raised an eyebrow. "That's an odd question."