“So where is it?” he repeated.

“I hid it.”

“Where?”

“In San Francisco.”

“Good. We’ll go together. Hope you won’t mind, but considering that you shook me off last time, I’m sure you won’t mind if I’ll stick to you like glue on our second attempt, will you?”

He motioned to the second dark van. “Get in there.”

“I want to ride with Blake,” she insisted quickly.

“Not a chance. His van will follow us. If you lead us into a trap, my men have orders to hurt him.”

Clearly, Keegan had learned from his mistakes. She hadn’t expected anything else. Now she could only hope that leading him and his men to a place where she had allies would provide her with sufficient advantage to fight him off.

When she stepped into the van and felt the door close behind her, she closed her eyes and allowed her nerves to calm. She needed all her wits about her now, because one false move, and she and Blake would perish.

33

“She’s gone,” Thomas confirmed from the top of the stairs.

Panic flared up in Quinn as his suspicion was confirmed. Rose had left the house without telling anybody.

“Shit! What is she up to?” he wondered out loud.

“She’s meeting Keegan,” Thomas continued as he rushed down.

“What? Why the fuck didn’t she tell me?” Quinn cursed, furious now. Rose had to understand that alone she was more vulnerable. Only if they stuck together as a cohesive unit, did they have a chance at defeating Keegan.

As Thomas reached him, he held his cell phone out to him. “I just got an alert that text messages were sent between the cell I fixed up for you and Keegan’s number.”

“How? I thought it was untraceable,” Quinn said, confused.

“I mirrored the number on my phone so I would receive a duplicate whenever a message was sent or received. Just in case.” He paused for a brief second. “Who’s Wallace?”

Quinn nearly stumbled backwards at hearing the familiar name. “What does my sire have to do with Keegan?”

“It appears he has something to do with Rose.” Thomas handed him the phone. “Read this.”

Quinn’s eyes darted over the text messages, reading them twice.

“Fuck!”

His mind worked overtime, trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. If Rose knew Wallace, it could only mean one thing. He didn’t want to follow that thought to its conclusion, because if he did, it would only lead him to a place where guilt was waiting for him. Too well he remembered the night when he’d quarreled with Wallace. The night he’d left. He recalled the last words they had exchanged as if it were yesterday.

“You want to help me?” he had accused Wallace. “Then help me! Help me make her love me again. Or get out of my sight!”

“Very well,” his maker had replied.

Quinn had seen it as an answer to his last words, to get out of his sight, when in fact Wallace had agreed to his earlier words: Help me make her love me again.

How wrong he had been. And how blind not to see what had been right in front of him for so long. Wallace had turned her so she would have no reason to reject him any longer. No wonder she had never come back to him, because he alone was responsible for Rose’s turning. He had asked Wallace to help him. He had begged his sire. And his sire had listened.

Quinn didn’t waste any more time guessing what had happened to Wallace in the end. In his heart he knew the answer already. It all made sense now. He understood what had happened and why. Now all that mattered was getting to Rose and closing this chapter of their lives. It was time to bury the past for good.

“Do you know where those Lyon’s steps are?” Quinn asked Thomas, who instantly nodded.

“She’ll be long gone. The message was sent over ten minutes ago.”

“Can’t you trace the phone we gave her?”

Thomas shook his head with a sad look. “You wanted an untraceable one. Sorry. No can do. Besides, Keegan has probably already gotten rid of it.”

The thought of Rose in Keegan’s hands made his blood boil. “She should have trusted me. She shouldn’t have done this on her own.”

Thomas pointed to the phone message. “Whatever it was that she didn’t want you to know, Keegan is obviously using it against her.”

“That’s not important right now. We’ve gotta find her before it’s too late.” Quinn ran a shaky hand through his hair. “Send two people to the Lyon’s steps to see if they can pick up her trail from there.”