Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [874]
“Alex … let’s talk about this before you go in there and say what you think you need to say to those folks.”
She frowned. “They need to know. I need to tell them.”
“Alex.” He reached out and grabbed her by the arm, more firmly than he’d intended. She stared at his fingers clamped around her, then looked back up at him. “I can’t let you do this.”
She pulled out of his hold, and for a second he considered trancing her to keep her away from the gathered crowd up the road. With a small mental effort and one brief sweep of his palm over her forehead, he could place her into a pliable state of semiconsciousness.
He could buy precious time. Prevent her from jeopardizing his entire mission for the Order by alerting her fellow townsfolk to the existence of vampires living among them, preying on them from the shadows.
And she would hate him even more—rightfully so—for the further manipulation.
She took a step back from him, her brows still knitted together in confusion. “What’s wrong with you all of a sudden? I have to go.”
He didn’t stop her when she pivoted around and headed off at a jog for Harmony’s small health clinic. On a gritted curse, Kade went after her. He caught up in an instant, then wove with her through the anxious, chattering crowd.
“… just terrible that something like this should happen again,” murmured a white-haired woman to the person next to her.
“… he lost so much blood,” someone else remarked. “Tore them up, was what I heard. Not much left intact on either man.”
“A horrible thing,” said another detached voice in the crowd, shrill with panic. “First the Tomses, now Big Dave and Lanny. I wanna know what Officer Tucker plans to do about this!”
Kade strode beside Alex as she marched toward Zach, who stood near the entrance of the clinic, his cell phone pressed to his ear. He acknowledged her with barely a glance, continuing to bark grave orders to someone on the other end of the line.
“Zach,” she said, “I need to speak with you—”
“Kinda busy,” he snapped.
“But, Zach—”
“Not now, goddamn it! I’ve got one man dead and another bleeding out in there and the whole fucking town is going apeshit around me!”
Kade could hardly contain the protective snarl that curled at the back of his throat at the human’s outburst. His own anger spiked dangerously, muscles tensed and ready for a fight he realized he was more than eager to initiate. Instead, he subtly took Alex by the arm and placed himself between her and the other male. “Come on,” he said to her, guiding her away from the trooper and his meltdown in progress. “Let’s go somewhere else until things settle down.”
“No,” she said. “I can’t go. I need to see Big Dave. I need to be sure—”
She broke away from him and dashed up the concrete steps and into the clinic, with Kade fast on her heels. The place was quiet inside, only the hum of the overhead fluorescent lights that tracked from the vacant reception area down the hallway toward the examination rooms. From the sparse look of the clinic and its lack of equipment, it didn’t appear that it was set up for dealing with much more than the occasional abrasion or vaccination.
Alex headed down the hall at a determined, brisk pace.
“Where’s Fran Littlejohn? She never keeps it this cold in here,” she murmured, at just about the same time that Kade was noticing the temperature, as well.
An arctic chill, blowing up the hallway from one of the rooms in back. The only one with the door closed.
Alex put her hand on the knob. It didn’t budge. “That’s odd. It’s locked.”
Kade’s warrior instincts lit up like firecrackers. “Get back.”
He was already standing in front of her, moving faster than her eyes could possibly track him. He gripped the doorknob and gave it a hard twist. The lock snapped, mechanisms were crushed to powder in an