Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [605]
She had to make the most of that time, which is why she found herself staked out down the road from the isolated, camera-monitored gate of a peculiar building in the town of Terrabonne. It had no windows, no signage out front. Although she couldn’t be certain, her gut instinct was telling her that the squat slab of concrete and brick at the end of a private access road was the place Lex had mentioned—the containment facility where Nikolai had been taken.
She prayed it was, because at the moment, the warrior was the only thing close to an ally she had, and if she wanted to find Mira—if she stood any chance of retrieving the child from the vampire who had her now—she knew that she couldn’t do it alone. But that meant finding Nikolai first, and praying she found him alive.
And if he was dead? Or if he was alive but refused to help her? Or decided to kill her outright for her role in his wrongful arrest?
Well, Renata didn’t want to consider where any of those potentials would leave her. Worse, where they would leave an innocent child who depended on Renata to keep her safe.
So, she waited and she watched, calculating a way past the security gate. Another supply truck rolled up to the entrance. It came to a stop and Renata seized the opportunity.
Jumping out of Lex’s car and running low to the ground, she raced up along the back of the vehicle. While the driver punched in his access code, she hopped up on the rear bumper. The trailer doors were locked, but she slipped her fingers around the handles and held on as the gate clattered open and the truck lurched through.
The driver swung around to the back of the building, following a stretch of asphalt that led to a pair of shipping and receiving bays. Renata climbed up to the roof of the trailer and hung on tight as the truck turned around and began to back into an empty dock. As it neared the building, a motion sensor clicked and the receiving door lifted. There was no one waiting as daylight filled the hangarlike opening, but then if the place was held by the Breed, anyone manning this area would be turning crispy after just a few minutes on the job.
Once the truck backed inside completely, the big door started to descend. There was a second of darkness between the closing of the bay and the electronic flutter of the overhead fluorescent lights coming on. Renata scrambled down and leapt off the rear bumper just as the driver got out of the truck. And now, coming out of a steel door on the other side of the space, was a muscular man in a dark military-style uniform.
The same kind of uniform as the ones worn by the Enforcement Agents Lex had called to arrest Nikolai last night. Complete with a semiautomatic pistol holstered at his hip.
“Hey, how’s it going?” the driver called out to the guard.
Renata crept around the side of the truck before the vampire or the human could spot her. She waited, listening to the jangle of the lock being freed. When the guard got closer, she sent him a little hello of her own, a mental jolt that made him rock back on his heels. Another small blast had him staggering. He clutched his temples in his hands and gasped a vivid curse.
The human driver turned to look after him. “Whoa. You okay there, buddy?”
The brief inattention was all the opportunity Renata needed. She dashed silently across the wide bay and slipped inside the access door the guard had left unsecured.
She ducked past an empty office containing a workstation with monitors displaying the gated entrance. Beyond that, a narrow hallway offered two possibilities: a bend that appeared to lead toward the front of the building or, farther down the hall, a stairwell to the second floor.
Renata opted for the stairs. She hurried toward them, past the spoke that