Page 11 of Vanessa’s Bravery

“Can you tell us anything about him? Looks? Height? Clothing?” Samson asked.

“All I could see was that he’s blond and average height.”

Vanessa leaned closer to the microphone. “The one I intercepted had brown hair. And he was at the edge of Chinatown. He looked confused when he saw me.”

Samson turned to her. “What do you mean by confused?”

Vanessa contemplated her next words for a second. “As if he didn’t know that I was a vampire hybrid. It seemed to take a moment until it sank in.”

Samson exchanged a look with Gabriel, who was now standing next to him. “Newly turned?”

Gabriel grimaced. “Possibly.”

Vanessa put a hand on her father’s forearm. “That might explain why his bite wasn’t clean. He made several attempts at Ginger’s neck, until he finally latched on to feed from her. And when he heard me coming, he ripped her flesh savagely.”

“Fuck!” Samson cursed, and the others in the room let out similar curses.

Then he looked back at his son on the monitor. “Patrick, stay put until Nicholas arrives with the ambulance. I’ll have three guys meet you out there to look for the rogue.” He turned to Benjamin. “Send Zane, Adam, and Damian to Patrick’s location. Vanessa, once you’ve sat down with the sketch artist, take Quinn, Lydia, and Sebastian to the location where the sex worker was attacked.” Then he looked at Gabriel. “Where was the third attack of the woman who’s already down in the med center?”

“Near the baseball park. I’ll go there.” Gabriel turned around to the others in the room and pointed at several of them. “Blake, Oliver, you guys are with me.”

Samson nodded, then pushed a button on the console. Thomas’s face appeared on the screen next to Patrick’s live stream. “Thomas, you and Eddie work on getting drones in the air. Top priorities are the three attack areas: Chinatown, Inner Sunset, and the ballpark. Once they’re up, have your team control the drones and survey the areas. In the meantime, you and Eddie need to check every CCTV camera in the city. We need to know where those bastards came from and where they disappeared to. Questions anybody?”

There were no questions.

“I’ll be in a roaming unit with Ryder and Ethan. We’ll be covering the northern part of the city. Amaury will take John and Cooper and cover the southern part of town. Deirdre, Brandon, and Yvette will be on standby at HQ.” He turned to Benjamin. “Where are Luther, Haven, and Roxanne?”

“At the prison in Grass Valley. For a security upgrade,” Benjamin replied.

“Call them, and ask them to come back tonight. We’ll need every man and woman. And make sure that Charles and Wesley are ready to jump in if we need witchcraft.”

“You’ve got it.”

“Okay, everybody. Let’s roll out.”

As people cleared the command center, Gabriel took Vanessa’s arm and leaned in. “Your mother said you went into heat.”

Vanessa let out a sigh. “Of course she did. Sometimes that telepathic bond between blood-bonded mates can be downright annoying.”

“She’s just concerned about you because it’s not your time.”

“I know that, but I’m fine.”

“Are you sure you wanna go back out there tonight? The others can cover for you.”

“The sex workers are my responsibility. I can do this, Dad, really. I’m totally fine.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.”

He cleared his throat. “So you, uhm, took care of it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes. End of discussion.” She brushed past him and headed for the door.

There were moments when she wished that nobody knew what she was going through when she went into heat. But there were very few things she could keep from her parents or anybody else at Scanguards. It was truly a big family where everybody knew everybody else’s business. Keeping things a secret was difficult.

But just this once she wanted to keep her experience with Cole a secret. She didn’t want to share any of it with anybody. Because what she’d felt when she’d been in his arms was different from any of her other sexual encounters, and not just because he hadn’t even fucked her. She’d felt cherished and adored. Cradled by his big body, everything in her world had suddenly felt right. As if everything in her life was finally falling into place. With Cole in the center of it all.