“No. Don’t go too close,” she begged.

He glanced at her. “You’ll have to point out the building to us, and since I doubt you want to get out of the car, I have to drive closer to it.”

Oliver noticed her jaw tightening in concert with the rest of her body as if she was trying to steel herself against an invisible attacker.

“Don’t worry, if anybody approaches us, we’ll speed away.” And then he and his colleagues would come back later without her. But he didn’t tell her this.

“Which building is it?” Zane asked.

Oliver turned the corner, slowing to a crawl, then his eyes followed Ursula’s outstretched hand.

“That one.”

16

The four-story building was built of bricks, and it looked just as foreboding as it had the night she’d escaped its walls. A chill ran down Ursula’s spine just looking at it. Fear tightened her throat, making her unable to say anything else.

“The brick building?” Zane asked over the loudspeaker.

“Yes,” Oliver confirmed.

“Looks dark. There are no cars in the vicinity, no movement I can detect. Nothing. I say it’s deserted. I wouldn’t normally do this tonight, but let’s not waste any time and check it out now.”

“No! No, they’ll catch you. You’ll need more people,” Ursula warned, overtaken by panic. If they went in there just the four of them, they could easily be overpowered. And then she wouldn’t be any further than before: her kidnappers would recapture her.

“Cain, stay with the girl. The rest of us, let’s go.”

Before she could stop Oliver, he opened the car door and got out. She saw how the two other vampires, Zane and Amaury, left the Hummer.

Oliver had described Zane to her earlier while they’d been waiting for him and Amaury. But even his comment that Zane only looked tough because of his bald head, couldn’t have prepared her for what she saw. He was tall and lean. When he briefly turned his head to look in her direction, his ice-cold gaze chilled her to the bone. His mouth was pressed into a thin line. His gait was determined, purposeful, and she knew instinctively that those long legs could chase down their prey in seconds. She never wanted to be caught on Zane’s wrong side.

Amaury seemed different. Compared to Zane, he looked like a cuddly bear, but she wasn’t fooled. He was just as deadly, and with more mass than his colleague, he could crush any human or vampire without effort. Those two were dangerous, deadly vampires.

She watched as they joined Oliver and marched toward the building. When they passed a streetlight, she noticed that all three of them carried guns. She pulled in a quick breath: she hadn’t noticed that Oliver had been armed when he’d left the car.

“Don’t worry, they know what they’re doing,” Cain said from the driver’s seat.

She shrieked. She hadn’t seen that he’d also exited the van and taken Oliver’s spot while she’d watched the three vampires walk toward her former prison.

Cain shrugged. “Just in case we need to make a quick getaway.”

Ursula wrapped her arms around her torso, feeling cold and scared. The vampire next to her wasn’t like Oliver. Yes, he seemed friendly on the surface. He didn’t carry his hostility on his sleeve like Zane—even seeing Zane only from the distance she’d felt that—but there was something unreadable about him. It made her feel uneasy around him. Oliver, on the other hand, unleashed an entirely different feeling in her. She felt drawn to him in the most primal way she had ever felt. Was it the fact that he was the first man who’d kissed her in over three years? Was it because she was so starved for physical intimacy that she had temporarily pushed aside her disgust for vampires when he’d pressed his lips onto hers?

Whatever it was, the intensity of it scared her. Because she knew that if it happened again, it would be as impossible for her to push him away as it had been to refuse his demand to touch him.

Wanting to silence her thoughts, she searched for a topic of conversation. “How long have you been working for Scanguards?”

Cain’s eyes narrowed, suspicion rolling off him. “Why are you asking?”

“No reason.”

She looked out the window. Oliver and his colleagues had disappeared. Had they entered the building or walked around it? “Where are they?”

“Inside.”

At his nonchalant voice, she glared at him. “Aren’t you worried?”

“They know what they’re doing. Amaury and Zane are the best.”

Her legs trembled. She pressed her palms onto her thighs to hide the fact that she was full of fear. “And Oliver?” Why hadn’t Cain said that Oliver was one of the best too?