For her own safety and that of the Breed, she was going to have to leave her apartment, her friends, her career. Leave behind everything that had been a part of her life so far.
And she was going to have to do it tonight.
"If you have any other photographs like these, Gabrielle, I need to see them."
She nodded, lifting her head. "I have everything on my computer," she said, pushing her hair out of her face.
"What about the ones in the darkroom?"
"They're on disk, too, along with every image I've sold through the gallery."
"Good." Her mention of art sales tripped an alarm in his memory. "When I was here a few nights ago, you mentioned having sold an entire collection to someone. Who was it?"
"I don't know. It was an anonymous purchase. The buyer arranged a private showing in a rented penthouse suite downtown. They looked at a few images, then paid cash for all of them."
He swore and Gabrielle's already stressed expression slipped toward true terror.
"Oh, my God. Are you thinking it was the Rogues who bought them?"
What Lucan was thinking was that if he were the one standing at the helm of the Rogues' current operation, he would be most interested in acquiring a weapon that could home in on his opponents' locations. To say nothing of crippling his enemies' ability to use said weapon for their own gain.
Gabrielle would be an extraordinary asset in Rogue hands, for many reasons. And once they had her in their possession, it wouldn't take them long to discover her Breedmate mark. She would be abused like the meanest brood mare, forced to take their blood and bear their spawn until her body simply gave out and died. It could take years, decades, centuries.
"Lucan, my best friend took those photographs into the showing that night, by himself. It would have killed me if anything had happened to him. Jamie walked in there without knowing anything about the danger he was in."
"Be glad for that, because it's probably the only reason he walked out alive."
She recoiled as if he'd slapped her. "I don't want my friends getting hurt because of what's happening to me."
"You're in more danger than anyone right now. And we need to get moving. Let's download those pictures off your computer. I want to take all of them into the lab at the compound."
Gabrielle led him over to a neat corner desk in her living room. She powered up the desktop workstation and as it cycled through its startup, she pulled a couple of flash memory sticks out of their store packaging and popped one into the computer's USB drive.
"You know, they said she was crazy. They called her delusional, a paranoid schizophrenic. They locked her away for believing she had been attacked by vampires." Gabrielle laughed softly, but it was a sad, empty sound. "Maybe she wasn't crazy after all."
Behind her, Lucan moved closer. "Who would that be?"
"My birth mother." After beginning the copying procedure, Gabrielle spun around in her chair to look up at Lucan. "She was found late one night in Boston, injured, bloody, disoriented. She didn't have a wallet or purse, or any kind of ID on her, and in the brief periods when she was lucid, she couldn't tell anyone who she was so the police processed her as a Jane Doe. She was just a teenager."
"She was bleeding, you say?"
"Multiple throat lacerations - presumably self-inflicted, according to the official records. The courts deemed her incompetent to stand trial and locked her away in a mental institution once she was released from the hospital."
"Jesus."
She gave a slow shake of her head. "But what if everything she said was true? What if she wasn't crazy at all? Oh, God, Lucan... all these years, I've blamed her. I think I've hated her, even, and now I can't help but think - "
"You said the police and the courts processed her. You mean, for some kind of crime?"
The computer beeped to indicate the memory stick was full. Gabrielle turned back to continue with the next copying function, and she stayed there, giving him her back. Lucan put his hands down gently on her shoulders and brought the swivel chair back around.
"What was your mother charged with?"
For a long moment, Gabrielle didn't say anything. Lucan saw her throat working. There was a great deal of hurt in her soft brown eyes. "She was charged with abandoning her child."
"How old were you?"
She shrugged, shook her head. "Young. An infant. She stuffed me in a trash bin outside an apartment building. It was only about a block from where the police picked her up. Fortunately for me, one of the cops decided to check the surrounding area. He heard my crying, I guess, and took me out of there."
Holy Christ.
A jolt of recollection flashed hard in Lucan's mind as she spoke. He saw a dark street, wet pavement gleaming in the moonlight, a wide-eyed female standing in transfixed horror as a Rogue vampire sucked at her throat. He heard the shrill wailing of the tiny baby nestled in the young mother's arms.
"When did this happen?"
"A long time ago. Twenty-seven years ago this summer, to be exact."
To one of Lucan's age, twenty-seven years ago was a blink of time. He clearly remembered interrupting the attack at the bus station. Recalled stepping between the Rogue and its prey, sending the terrified female off with a stern mental command. She'd been bleeding profusely, some of it raining down on her baby.
After he'd killed the Rogue and cleared the scene, he had gone to look for the woman and her child. He hadn't found them. He'd often wondered what had happened to the both of them, and cursed himself for not having been able to at least remove the horrific memories of the assault from the victim's mind.
"She committed suicide in the mental facility not long afterward," Gabrielle said. "I was already a ward of the state."
He couldn't stop himself from touching her. Gently sweeping aside her long hair, he cupped the delicate line of her jaw, stroked the proud lift of her chin. Her eyes were moist, but she didn't crack. She was a tough one, all right. Tough and beautiful and so incredibly special.
In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and tell her as much.
"I'm sorry," he said, meaning it with utmost sincerity. And regret, something he wasn't used to feeling. But, then, since he'd first laid eyes on her, Gabrielle made him feel a lot of things that were entirely new to him. "I'm sorry for both of you."
The computer beeped again.
"That's all of them," she said, reaching up as if she might stroke his hand, but couldn't quite bring herself to touch him yet.
He let her back out of his caress and felt a sharp pang of remorse for the way she silently turned away.
Shutting him out like the new stranger he was.
He watched her remove the last memory stick and place it with the other. When she began to close the application, Lucan said, "Not yet. I need you to delete the image files from the computer and from any backups you might have. The copies we take out of here have to be the only ones remaining."
"What about print copies? The ones on the table there, the ones I have downstairs in my darkroom?"
"You wrap up here. I'll get the prints."
"Okay."
She got right to work, and Lucan made a quick sweep of the rest of the apartment. He gathered all the loose snapshots and took down her framed images as well, wanting to leave nothing behind that could be of use to the Rogues. He found a large duffel bag in Gabrielle's bedroom closet and brought it downstairs to load it up.
As he finished packing and zipping the bag closed, he heard the low rumble of a muscle car coming to a stop outside the townhouse. Two doors opened, then slammed shut, followed by urgent footsteps coming toward the apartment.
"Someone's here," Gabrielle said, sending him a stark look as she shut down her computer.
Lucan's hand was already inside his trenchcoat and snaked around to the base of his spine, where a custom Beretta 9mm was tucked into the back waistband of his pants. The gun was loaded with maximum blast, Rogue-smoking, titanium rounds - one of Niko's latest innovations. If a Rogue stood outside that door, the Bloodlusting son of a bitch was about to get a belly full of hurt.
But it wasn't Rogues, he realized at once. Not even Minions, which also would have given Lucan a bit of satisfaction in blowing away.
There were humans on the front stoop. A man and a woman.
"Gabrielle?" The doorbell rang several times in rapid succession. "Hello? Gabby! Are you in there?"
"Oh, no. It's my friend Megan."
"The one you went to last night?"
"Yes. She's been calling here most of the day, leaving messages. She's worried about me."
"What did you tell her?"
"She knows about the assault in the park. I told her how I was attacked, but I didn't tell her anything about you... what you did."
"Why not?"
Gabrielle shrugged. "I didn't want her involved. I don't want her to be put in any danger because of me. Because of all this." She sighed, shaking her head. "Maybe I didn't want to say anything about you until I had some answers for myself."
The doorbell rang again. "Gabby, open up! Ray and I need to talk to you. We need to know that you're okay."
"Her boyfriend's a cop," Gabrielle said softly. "They want me to file a report about what happened last night."
"Is there a back way out of here?"
She nodded, then seemed to change her mind and shook her head. "The slider opens onto a shared backyard, but there's a tall fence - "
"No time," Lucan said, discarding the option. "Go to the door. Let your friends come in."
"What are you going to do?" She saw that his hand had just slipped back out of his trenchcoat, easing off the weapon concealed behind him. Panic flooded into her expression. "Do you have a gun back there? Lucan, they won't do anything to you. I'll make sure they don't say anything."
"I won't have to use the weapon on them."
"Then what will you do?" After so deliberately avoiding any physical contact with him, now she finally did touch him, her small hands clutching at his arm. "God, please tell me you won't hurt them - "
"Open the door, Gabrielle."
Her legs moved sluggishly beneath her as she approached the front door. She twisted the deadbolt and heard Megan's voice on the other side.
"She's in there, Ray. She's at the door. Gabby, open up, honey! Are you all right?"
Gabrielle slid the chain free, saying nothing. Not sure whether she should assure her friend that she was okay, or shout for Megan and Ray to get the hell out of there.
A look behind her at Lucan gave her no indication either way. His sharp features were emotionless and still. His silver eyes were rooted on the door, cool and unblinking. His powerful hands were empty, down at his sides, but Gabrielle knew he could spring into motion with no warning at all.
If he wanted to kill her friends - even her, for that matter - it would be done before any of them knew to take the first breath.
"Let them in," he told her in a low growl.
Gabrielle slowly turned the knob.
The door was barely open a crack before Megan pushed inside, her boyfriend, still in uniform, right behind her.
"Holy shit, Gabby! Do you have any idea how worried I've been? Why haven't you returned my calls?" She pulled her into a fierce hug, then released her, only to frown at Gabrielle like a frantic mother hen. "You look tired. Have you been crying? Where have you - "
Megan broke off abruptly, her eyes, and Ray's, catching a sudden glimpse of Lucan in the middle of the living room behind Gabrielle.
"Oh... I didn't realize you had someone here..."
"Everything okay here?" Ray asked, stepping past the two women and letting his hand rest lightly on his holstered weapon.
"Fine. Everything's fine," Gabrielle quickly replied. She held her hand out toward Lucan. "This is, uh... a friend of mine."
"Going somewhere?" Megan's boyfriend strolled forward, and gestured to the stuffed duffel bag that lay on the floor beside Lucan's feet.
"Um, yeah," Gabrielle interjected, walking swiftly past Ray and putting herself between him and Lucan. "I've been a little shaken up tonight. I thought I'd go to a hotel and chill out. Lucan stopped by to give me a ride."
"Huh." Ray was trying to peer around her to where Lucan remained rudely stoic and silent. Lucan's scathing stare said he had already sized up the young cop - and dismissed him in that same instant.
"I wish you hadn't come, you guys," Gabrielle said. And that was the God's honest truth. "Really, you don't have to stay."
Megan walked over and took Gabrielle's hand protectively in hers. "Ray and I were hoping you'd consider coming with us to the police station, honey. It's important. I'm sure your friend would agree with us. You're the detective Gabby's mentioned, right? I'm Meg."
Lucan shifted a step. The small movement brought him right up in front of Megan and Ray. It was such a slight flex of muscle, so fast, time seemed to slow around him. Gabrielle saw him take those handful of impossibly quick strides, but her friends blinked and found Lucan standing in their faces, crowding them with his massive size and a menace that vibrated in the air around him.
Without any warning at all, he lifted his right hand and took Megan by the forehead.
"Lucan, no!"
Meg cried out, a half-uttered noise that died in her throat as she stared into Lucan's eyes. With viper speed, he reached out with his left hand and clamped Ray in a similar hold. The officer struggled for a mere second before his face drooped into a trancelike stupor. Lucan's strong, clutching fingers seemed to be all that was holding the pair upright.