Free Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed by Madelaine Montague

sure?”
    She sniffed. “He just hurt my hand when he hit
the door.” She struggled with the urge to burst into tears all over
again. “I thought it was one of you, come to collect
me.”
    He caught her chin and tipped her head back.
“What did I tell about answering the door like that?” he demanded
sternly.
    “ Give it a rest, Lucien,” Damien
growled from behind him. “You know the lock wouldn’t have held even
if she hadn’t cracked the door.”
    “ I know if we hadn’t come out just
then he would’ve had time to hurt her,” Lucien said tightly. “And
if she hadn’t opened the door he would’ve had to beat it
down.”
    “ That could have happened, yeah.
But it didn’t.”
    Lucien looked like he wanted to say more but
finally merely shook his head. “Did he get away?”
    “ I don’t know. The bastard had the
stairway door fixed to lock behind him—he must have propped it open
with something. He managed to get through before I could get hold
of him. Basil took the other stairs and Kane took the elevator to
try to head him off, but he caught us with our pants down. There’s
no getting around that.”
    Lucien glanced up, scanning the ceiling. “Go
see if you can talk hotel security into giving us the tape. If you
can’t, see if you can capture a decent picture to help track the
bastard down. I’m going to help Laurie grab her things. We need to
get her to a secure location. This place is just too wide
open.”
    * * * *
    The blitz attack had been over before Laurie
had had time to consider that her life was in danger. She supposed
that was why it didn’t seem quite real to her and she was more
focused on her discomfort over the fact that she hadn’t been sure
of whether she was talking to Lucien or not until Damien had
arrived.
    Which really sucked because she could’ve
enjoyed the moments much better if she’d realized it was Lucien’s
body pressed against her, Lucien who’d been so sweet … before he
went back to lecturing her about the damned door!
    It made it worse that he’d been proven right.
She imagined there would be no living with the man now!
    Apparently, she was going to get the chance to
find out. They’d left Atlanta behind and were headed into the
mountains of north Georgia.
    She’d been relegated to the backseat where she
could see almost nothing even before it got dark. Lucien was
driving and Damien riding shotgun. Basil and Kane had lingered
behind. She hadn’t understood why until she’d overheard them
talking to Damien on their walkie-talkies about making sure the
back trail was clear.
    They left the interstate shortly after they
left Atlanta traffic behind and got on a fairly well trafficked two
lane highway. The traffic began to fall off fairly quickly, though,
and before long there was only a smattering of headlights on the
road.
    One pair consistently stayed about four car
lengths behind them. She glanced back uneasily when she noticed
Damien studying the lights in the rearview mirror. He lifted his
radio. “That you behind us, Basil?”
    “ Affirmative.”
    The cloak and dagger shit was unnerving. The
worst of it was she still wasn’t reassured. If anything, she felt
more threatened. The behavior of the guys confirmed her danger even
while their presence was insurance against it. And the confirmation
of a legitimate threat was far more powerful than their presence
was reassuring.
    She had liked it better when she’d been
blissfully ignorant of danger.
    Of course, Kane had told her that they’d been
keeping an eye on her for a while. They’d escorted her from her
home to Atlanta. That was how and why they just ‘happened’ to be
near enough at hand to help her out when her car broke down. But
she hadn’t known they were there and she hadn’t felt threatened by
the DA’s certainty that her life was in danger. The murderer had
been caught. He was in jail and she was safe. All she’d had to deal
with was the aftermath of the trauma and worry about having to