Bound By The Night: Dark Heat / Dark Dreams / Dark Fantasy

Jordan frowned and shook his head. “Smart enough to pick a lock? I’m telling you, poachers are doing this. Someone with a grudge against DiNero, maybe...”

“Poachers would take the animals. They wouldn’t kill them. Would they?”

He looked at her. “About seven years ago, DiNero got into a fight with some Japanese billionaire over a rare breed of panda they both wanted. Neither of them had the right habitats for it, but they were going head-to-head over it anyway. DiNero won the auction. The billionaire had someone come in and kill the panda before DiNero could take delivery. Some people don’t want anyone else to have what they want.”

She gave him a long, steady look, then reached to touch his shoulder. Just briefly. Just once. “Jordan, I know this is killing you. Believe me, I want to find out what’s going on.”

He put a hand on the wall and leaned, shoulders hunched. “This is fucked up, Monica. I know DiNero brought you in here because he thinks you can help figure out what’s happening. But I just can’t...”

“You don’t have to believe me,” she said. “Honestly, if it’s a chupacabra or a poacher, does it matter, so long as we find out and stop it?”

Grudgingly, he looked at her. “No. I guess it doesn’t.”

“We’re going to find out what...or who...is doing this.” She looked grim.

Though he hadn’t known her long at all, Jordan had no doubts that woman meant what she said.

Chapter 4 (#ulink_ac110d8c-a61b-5a03-bd5f-860c754b9656)

Vadim’s face was a little blurry for a moment on the computer screen before the picture cleared. He was sitting, as he almost always was when they video-chatted, behind his oversize mahogany desk. Behind him, bookshelves overflowed with textbooks and papers. He adjusted his glasses and leaned forward to look at her.

“Strong enough to drag a tiger over a wall but now picking a lock instead?” he asked.

Monica sipped some more of DiNero’s excellent whiskey and nodded. “Yes. Maybe whatever it was got tired of the heavy lifting. It looks like it figured out how to get through one of the gates along the perimeter wall, then let itself into the mountain-lion cage. Both were missing. Some blood, some hair, but nothing else. No bones, even. If it’s actually eating the animals, it’s consuming them entirely.”

“DiNero’s man thinks it’s human, eh? An inside job? Does he have a grudge against his boss?” Vadim sat back in his chair.

Monica shrugged. “It’s possible. DiNero is kind of a dick. But Jordan seems to really care about the animals. If he was somehow working with an outside source to steal the animals away from DiNero, he couldn’t hurt them.”

“He could be making it look as though they’re hurt,” Vadim pointed out.

“He could, I guess. Seems pretty elaborate to me. And he seems genuinely upset by what’s going on. He runs a clean house here. The habitats are expensive and well maintained, not just cages. There’s a wide variety of animals, but they’re all really taken care of.” She paused, sipping. “He’s a little odd. The zookeeper.”

Vadim grinned. “Handsome?”

“Ugh, stop.” She made a face. Vadim was always trying to set her up with some Crew member or other. Then she laughed a little. “Very.”

“I have Ted ready to head down to you once you think you might know what’s going on. I’d send someone sooner, but...”

“I know. Too many investigations, not enough Crew. I got it. I’ll be careful,” she put in before Vadim could lecture her.

Crew rules stated that no investigator try to hunt something alone. They worked at the minimum in pairs. Her role here was to assess the situation and try to get a handle on what they were looking for. No use coming loaded for bear, as Vadim said, if they were really hunting rabbit.

Something told Monica this was no bunny.

“Have they added any security measures?” Vadim asked. “I warned DiNero that your safety was my priority. Not that of his collection. You’re not to go off on your own, do you understand?”

He was nowhere near old enough to be her father, though he tried to act as much as a patriarch to the Crew as a leader. Sometimes Vadim’s protective nature warmed her. Other times, like now, it left her with the urge to roll her eyes and stamp her feet like a teenager reminded over and over again to “drive carefully.” Monica kept her expression bland.

“Don’t give me that look,” he said.

She raised both brows, innocence personified. Vadim sighed. Monica raised her whiskey glass. After a moment, he shook his head.

“Something that can haul away a tiger could certainly do a lot of damage to you, Monica.”

She had, for a period after losing Carl, done many reckless things. But time had passed and her life had gone on, whether she liked it or not, because that was what life did. “I know. And believe me, I’m not... I’m not trying to get myself killed. I’m here to study and assess, and then the team will come in and we’ll catch this thing.”

“If we’re lucky,” Vadim said.

They both knew how infrequently the Crew got lucky. There was a reason why people kept repeating that monsters weren’t real, after all, and it mostly had to do with how hard it was to find proof. Monica raised her glass again, draining it, and this time, Vadim signed off.

Chapter 5 (#ulink_8be4cffa-8f3c-5824-9674-f491d53a9ff8)

Ten guesthouses, and DiNero put the woman in the one closest to his. Jordan fumed, though it was pointless. DiNero would do whatever he wanted. And, Jordan grudgingly admitted, it made sense to have Monica closer to him, if only because she’d be walking the zoo with him for the next few days.

He’d seen her out on the terrace earlier. Sipping a glass of whiskey he could smell across the lawn and through his open windows. He could smell her, too. The soap she’d used, the laundry detergent seeping from her clothes. Those were good, clean scents. So was the lingering scent of wine she’d had with dinner. She’d be mortified to know he could smell the meat she’d eaten still on her breath, though she’d covered it with toothpaste.

She made him hungry.

Damn it.

Dinner for him had been some pasta with olive oil and some fresh-baked bread. A salad. The food filled him up but didn’t sate him. That was why, he told himself, he was up at nearly two in the morning to rustle around in his fridge for some scrambled tofu and cheese when he really wanted to gorge himself to bursting on a thick slab of beef still dripping with blood... Jordan shook himself. He shoveled the food in his mouth, barely tasting it, trying to fill the emptiness. When he’d finished, he rinsed his plate and looked out the kitchen window to the guest bungalow where Monica was staying.

Her lights were off, which made sense at this time of night. The bedroom window was open, though, like his own. He could hear her inside. The slide of limbs on the bedsheets, the whisper of her hair on the pillow. She murmured something sleepy.

He needed to stop being a freaking creep about it. Jordan shook himself and put the plate in the drainer, then froze, head going up, ears straining at the change in her voice. He couldn’t make out the words, but the tone had changed.

Carefully, slowly, he put the knife and fork he’d been using in the drainer, too. Still listening. He closed his eyes, opening his senses.

Her scent had changed, becoming bitter. The low mutter of her voice rose, edging toward hysteria. Not quite screaming, but definitely in distress.

Jordan didn’t think twice. He was out the back door and heading for the guest bungalow in seconds. He leaped the low brick wall of his back patio and landed hard on the other side, bare feet slapping at the grass DiNero paid so much to keep looking nice. He hit the guesthouse’s back patio in three strides after that. She’d locked the door. One hit with his shoulder and the door frame splintered.

She was in the bedroom, and Jordan barreled through the door ready to battle whatever was attacking her. He’d been unable to save the animals, but there was no way he was going to let something hurt anyone or anything else. He skidded on the hard floor, moving too fast to stop himself when he saw the woman was alone.

She sat up in bed at the sound of him coming into the room. Her hands punched at the air. Her low cry changed as her eyes opened and she focused on him.

He’d been moving so fast that he’d ended up next to the bed. Breathing hard, he stared down at her. He looked everywhere, trying to make sure nothing was there ready to pounce on them both.

“Am I still dreaming?” she asked in a totally clear, absolutely calm voice that sounded nothing like the terrified cries he’d been hearing earlier. “Because if I am, goddamn, please get over here and fuck me.”

She wasn’t still dreaming. Monica hadn’t ever been able to control what happened while she was—she had friends who could lucid-dream, and there was a whole squad of people in the Crew who dealt with the monsters that lurked in the realm of the subconscious. The words had tumbled out of her before she was fully awake, though, and she wasn’t going to take them back.

The man in front of her had grumbled his way through their earlier introductions. He wasn’t someone she’d ever have considered in a romantic way. She was here on a job, not to get laid. Yet of course right now, after the nightmare, which had been even more intense than ever, all she could think about was getting fucked right through the mattress. It didn’t matter much who did it.

“Shit,” Jordan said.

Shirtless, jeans hanging low on lean hips, bare feet. If she’d ordered him from a catalog, he couldn’t have arrived in more perfect condition or with better timing. And, she realized as she took in the heave of his chest and the way his fists were clenched, he’d burst in here to...save her?