Free Night Huntress 02.5 - Happily Never After by Jeaniene Frost Page B

going to point and fire him at the would-be mafioso .
     
    "Do you think he was serious?" Isa asked at last, her gaze sliding toward the still-open window. "About killing the Salucci brothers, I mean?"
     
    "Oh, Isa . With how angry Chance was, in all likelihood, they're already dead."
     
    Isa looked at her grandmother and wondered how she had ever, ever thought this woman was a straight-laced Italian housewife. That cold glint in her grandmother's eyes belonged more to a shylock than the gentle old lady who'd raised her.
     
    But as Isa had been reminded via a bullet cut out of her torso by a man who happened to be a vampire, looks were very deceiving.

Chapter 9
     
    With everything that happened, Isa never expected to fall asleep. But after being awake all last night, drinking multiple shots of whiskey while she waited for Chance to return, and then lying down on her grandmother's couch, she must have dozed off. A soft touch on her cheek made her eyes flutter open. Chance was kneeling next to her, the room cast in shadows. It was dusk. He'd been gone for hours.
     
    "The Salucci brothers?" she asked quietly.
     
    Chance dropped his hand from her face. "You won't have to worry about them again."
     
    There was a hard satisfaction to his voice that said Isa wasn't the only one who wouldn't have to worry about them. Neither would anyone else on the planet. She supposed she should be aghast that Chance had murdered them so easily, but she could only muster up the faintest feeling of… caution.
     
    "What about the police? I'm amazed they haven't come by yet. With holes shot into my restaurant and my staff telling them I'd been there, I thought for sure they'd come to my grandmother's asking about me."
     
    "They won't. I took care of them," Chance replied.
     
    That did make Isa uneasy. "Um, the permanent way?"
     
    Chance smiled faintly. "No. The mind-altering way. After I was done with the Saluccis , I went back to your restaurant and pulled aside the lead detective there. He now believes he's spoken to you and that you didn't see who fired the shots. I can't imagine Robert would say anything to contradict that, whenever he surfaces again."
     
    "So Robert wasn't hit earlier? He's okay?"
     
    "For now."
     
    There was that coldness to Chance's voice again. Isa shivered. The man—no, the vampire —kneeling just a foot away from her had admittedly killed two people today, and from his tone, he wanted to up that number.
     
    "Robert struck you," Chance said, as if reading her thoughts. "You think I'd let him live after that?"
     
    "Robert's done much worse to a lot more people," Isa countered. "If you're going to kill him, kill him for them, not for me."
     
    Chance shrugged. "Dead is dead, darling. I suspect those other people will care more about the end result than my motivation."
     
    "I care about your motivation," Isa said sharply.
     
    Green began to swirl in Chance's blue-gray eyes. "Do you?"
     
    It seemed like he caressed those two words, as if they had a taste he enjoyed. Isa shivered again, but for a different reason this time.
     
    "Why didn't you show up last night?" she asked, mostly because she was worried about Frazier, but also to cut the growing pull she felt toward Chance. "Was it because of what Paul did to you? I mean… did it take a while, to, ah, heal?"
     
    Chance must have seen her refusal in her gaze, because he stood up and walked to the other side of the room.
     
    "No, my head healed very quickly. That's how it is for vampires. Why I didn't show up was because Robert confessed he didn't know where Frazier was. He thought I'd stolen him away, that I was someone the Salucci brothers hired to make him look incompetent. So I paid them a visit last night. An all-too-kind one, as it turned out, since I should have just killed them once I'd gotten what I needed to know out of them. Nevertheless," Chance waved his hand curtly, "that's been remedied."
     
    He hadn't killed the Salucci brothers last