Free Blood-Bonded by Force by Tracy Tappan Page A

important because two of these women had returned.
    After tracking down Kendra Mawbry at her home, John had learned some interesting information. A four-man special security team had saved her from her kidnappers and then taken her to the refuge of a research institute. Very interesting. Because the last day John had seen Tonĩ at Scripps, Teeth-Tattooed Asshole’s friend had shoveled some dung about Tonĩ disappearing to interview at— drumroll, please —a top-secret research institute. Without a single word of goodbye to John before she’d left? No way. He wasn’t buying it.
    But just as John was about to question Miss Mawbry further about the institute, her abductors had returned for her.
    In the ensuing attack, John was shot.
    John returned the favor and shot his shooter, then in the middle of their gun battle, another man had showed up: black hair, black goatee, gold earring, wielding an M4 carbine assault rifle.
    John shot him, too.
    The wound had landed the buttinski in the hospital, bringing to light more interesting information. The blood of the M4-wielding guy, name of Devid Nichita, had tested as not quite human . Same as some blood found in Tonĩ’s hospital room at Scripps when she’d originally disappeared.
    All the threads were starting to intertwine, weren’t they?
    Although, oddly, in the process of being treated for his own gunshot wound, John’s blood had tested as having a “not entirely human” element in it, as well. Not exactly the same inhuman as Nichita’s and the blood at Scripps, but still with an unidentifiable marker. A tight sensation pinched the back of John’s neck. Had to be a mistake.
    Nevertheless, there was something about this case and blood.
    To tangle the strands further, five months after her disappearance, Miss Bonaventure had returned to San Diego bearing the last name of Nichita .
    It was getting more and more difficult to tell where one string of the web ended and the others began.
    John heard the coffee maker burp to a stop, and took a cup off his mug tree. He grabbed the pot and started to pour, but midway through, one of his shaking fits overtook his hands. The pot clanked against the lip of the mug, sloshing hot coffee onto his fingers. “Ouch!” The mug slipped out of his hand and shattered on the kitchen floor. “Dammit!” That had been his Police Academy mug.
    Holding his hand under cold running water, he waited for the shaking to stop, then slammed off the faucet. Snatching up the small broom and dustpan from under the sink, he swept up the shards of the mug with hard jerks. He was having these fits four or five times a day now. Soon he was going to do something in front of his partner that would give away his condition…whatever his condition was, exactly.
    According to the bomb his mother had dropped on him when he was sixteen years old, John suffered from an inherited disorder called Blestem Tatălui. But when he’d looked that up on Google and in medical books, he hadn’t been able to find it.
    Don’t worry, honey , his mom had assured him when symptoms had appeared in his twenties. You can take these pills to manage your condition .
    The pills still arrived monthly by mail, no prescription needed. Detective though he was, he chose to ignore that oddity. Whatever kept him out of a doctor’s office was worth a little feigned ignorance. He’d been gulping the little green babies, called another foreign-sounding name, Suprimarea Patrimoniu, for twelve years now with only minimal problems. It was only in the last couple of years he’d started feeling like absolute crap. More and more each month.
    Something was obviously wrong. But since doctors had killed his dad, he was steering clear of letting that be another inherited condition. At some point he should probably talk to his mom, but he got the sense she didn’t know anything more than she’d already told him. The day she’d filled him in on his condition, it was as if she’d been reading off a