The woman stopped where she was. She was tall, at least five nine, with short hair, a lean face, and a body that was taut with muscle. In spite of the cold, which immediately started clawing into him in spite of his loose jacket, she was dressed only in a black muscle shirt—and she seemed wholly unaware it was fucking freezing out tonight.
“We going to play with metal?” she said in that low voice he recognized from the phone. “Or do this in a civilized manner.”
Her weapons stayed strapped around her waist, but she put her hands right on her belt so they were within easy reach.
“I didn’t know we were packing at this meeting,” he tossed back.
“Then why did you bring your gun.”
“I’m too weak to defend my woman otherwise. Can you really blame me?”
As his reply hit the airwaves, Lydia’s head snapped around to him, and he was surprised at the admission himself. For however self-aware he had been, he had avoided acknowledging a lot, too.
That shit was done now.
In response, Alex Hess briefly looked down at the hardscrabble ground. “So when you said you were dying over the phone, it wasn’t hyperbole. Or a metaphor for having a bad day.”
“No, it wasn’t.” He lifted his chin and held out his hand to his woman. “I have cancer and not a lot of time left.”
Lydia came over to him, and he sensed her tears sure as if he were looking at her. He kept his eyes on the soldier in front of them, however—because that was what this woman was. He’d spent enough time in special forces that like recognized like.
Plus she was as sure of herself as any other fighter he had ever seen.
“I’m going to throw some clothes on,” Lydia murmured. Then, in a louder voice, she said, “As long as you two aren’t going to make introductions in a target-practice kind of way?”
She clearly wasn’t worried about the woman—and not only did Lydia have that thing where she made instant, valid assessments about people, but the two had walked back from the summit together. Side by side. Without tension.
And Miss Hess didn’t seem bothered by the nudity. She was just staring at Daniel like she was trying to diagnose him.
“Are you a doctor?” he asked.
“No, I’m not.” Her dark eyes narrowed on him. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”
“We just got here, really.”
“Not tonight. For all these months.”
Over on the driver’s side, a car door opened and there was some flapping and shuffling as Lydia covered her body. He supposed he should have been uncomfortable that she’d been naked in front of a total stranger, but if she wasn’t bothered, why should he be?
“So what changed your mind, Alex?” He hobbled to the rear door of the Suburban and opened the back. “I’m going to have to sit down. ’Scuse me.”
When he pivoted and tried to pop himself up onto the lip of the cargo hold, he fumbled—and was caught by the stranger with the weapons. But the woman didn’t give him a lot of fussy sympathy or simpering compassion. She just hitched him up by the armpits, set him on the edge as he’d wanted to be, and stepped away. No muss, no fuss.
“So how long have you been in the military,” he asked her.
Her eyes were gray, dark gray. Like her guns.
“I’m not. Well, not in the sense you mean.”
“Me, either.” When she cocked a brow, he figured as a dead man walking, he could afford to be more honest than he usually was. Ever was. “I’m also not in a formally recognized arm of the government.”
“So how long do you have,” she asked quietly.
When Daniel just cocked a brow back at her, she shrugged. “Running out of time means different things to different people.”
“Two months,” he answered. “Maybe. So why did you change your mind about meeting us.”
Not a question, a demand. Because if she could walk around in his mental garden of delights, he expected some quid pro quo on her end.
“My husband, as you’d call him, almost died last night.” As he recoiled, she nodded. “It was a reminder.”
Lydia came around. “Of what, exactly?”
The woman, soldier—whatever she was—looked back and forth between the two of them. “That things can be taken away in the blink of an eye.”
Lydia took Daniel’s hand and squeezed it.
“Does she know what you are?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“Yeah,” Alex Hess said. “I know she’s wolven.”
“But you’re not one of them.”
“No.” Before he could ask her how she could help or what her connections were with Lydia’s other side, the woman cut him off. “Exactly how did you get my number?”
* * *
She’s a vampire, Lydia thought. And something else.
As she stood by Daniel and held his hand, she tested the air with her nose, teasing out and disregarding the scents of shampoo, deodorant, and fabric softener… so she could focus on what was under all that artificial surface stuff.
Vampire. Yes.
Since the spring, Lydia had run into them on the mountain from time to time—although rarely, because like wolven, they preferred to keep to their own. They always recognized her, however, just as she noted their presence, and invariably, there was eye contact over the heads of Homo sapiens.
But there was something else to the female. Something she had never sensed before.
“I got your number from a source,” Daniel said in response to the question that was floating around them.
“What kind of source.”
As the terse demand hit the cold air, Lydia appreciated the female’s no-nonsense approach to conversation.
And she did bring up a question that was worth asking.
“Just someone I know,” Daniel hedged.
“Who is…?”
“A person I once used as a source in a brokered deal for information—and no, I’m not going any further than that.”
In a rush of memory, Lydia remembered the details of Daniel’s previous life, before he’d met her, before the cancer had come for him: She recalled the terrible story of how his mom had thrown herself off a bridge when he’d been a teenager—and how he’d tried in vain to save her. After that, he had floated around under the radar of the system, a homeless kid who had stayed on the streets and learned to survive. Somewhere along the line, he’d joined the military… and after that, he’d worked for a clandestine agency, a shadow arm of the U.S. government tasked with protecting the human genome from bioengineering.
Which was how he’d come to the Wolf Study Project, and why he had lied to her in the beginning about who he really was and what his purpose in Walters had to be.
She could only guess what the information he’d brokered with the “source” for had been and why it had been required.
And no, she didn’t want to know the contact he had used.
“Can you give me a name?” The female known as Alex Hess looked over at Lydia. “Or you?”
“He never told me,” she replied. “And I never asked.”
Daniel squeezed her hand. Then brought it up and kissed it. “I’ll say this. I believe he, too, was… different. In some way.”