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Some of the vampires, like Brick, had never worn trackers at all.

Nick was pretty sure Zoe had never worn one, either.

Brick delicately cleared his throat.

Nick turned to stare at him.

Remembering his vision of the cave, of Brick drinking from the neck and shoulder of Dalejem, Nick felt his temperature spike a few degrees hotter.

“We’re going to have a talk, you and I, when this is over,” Nick said in a low growl.

Brick’s eyebrow spiked a little higher. “Oh? Are we?”

“Yes. We are.” Nick glared at him. “I have questions. Specifically about a cave in the French Riviera somewhere.”

Brick looked taken aback for real.

“You remember?” he asked in surprise.

“Not exactly.” Nick glared at his sire again. “But I’m starting to.”

Brick had schooled his shocked look back into one of bland indifference.

“Well,” he said brusquely. “Now is not the time, offspring. Is it?”

Nick felt a harder knot grow in his throat. “No. I suppose not.” He glared at his sire again. “But there will be timeafter,Brick. I’ll make sure of it.”

One of Brick’s wicked smiles spread slowly over his handsome face.

“Well, I suppose you’d better make sure you survive this, then,” the older vampire quipped. “Hadn’t you, Naoko?”

Brick winked at him, then leaned against the metal wall, and folded his arms.

Nick didn’t answer.

Still, something about the older vampire’s words struck him oddly, anyway. They sent a shiver down his spine, and made him grimace without really knowing why.

Nick thought later that he should have paid more attention to that.

At the time, he simply leaned his back against the truck’s metal insides right next to his sire, even as he pushed Brick himself forcibly from his mind.

He hoped like hell Jordan was still inside the building.

He ignored the feeling of ghosts that wafted through the truck, touching him just enough to briefly chill his vampire bones and skin.

CHAPTER21

THE ENTRANCE

“Okay,I think I’ve got it… I think I got in,” Kit’s voice whispered in Nick’s ear, soft as a breath.

“How sure?” Nick sub-vocaled back on the comms. “No weirdly convenient backdoors into the security system, I hope?”

“No,” she snorted softly. “The old fashioned way. Wynter grabbed an employee we profiled, and used her seer stuff to make him give up his passcode and user name.”

Nick grunted. “How much access do you have?”

There was a pregnant feeling pause.