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“They mentioned a van. Did you get a plate number? We could run it through—”

“No.”

She let out a frustrated noise. “The witnesses didn’t get it either. These fucks are just going to keep at it. Until they get sloppy.” She let out another pause. “There was a young man, Rico Alvarez. Barely out of high school. He works a night shift at a drive-through on the edge of town. He never came home last night. His mother reported him missing.”

Guilt twisted in the pit of my stomach.

Her voice turned more dangerous. “Funny thing is, the folks at bureau have never heard of you,Special AgentHollens. I think you need to tell me who the hell you really are.”

I disconnected the call.

This was usually the moment Danny and I had to leave town. Once the local law realized we weren’t who we were claiming to be. Granted, that usually worked out well enough: we typically rooted out the monster and destroyed it before that happened.

That gave us two reasons to leave town.

“We really could call one of our hunter friends,” I suggested. “Someone else could handle this. We’ve been made, anyhow.”

“What’s going to happen to Rico?”

I grimaced. If we didn’t do something, there would be one more dead body in the morning. Rico would never make it home to his mother.

“You know what we have to do.”

“I’ll go,” I told him, lurching out of bed. I started pulling clothes on. “You’ll be fine here for a couple hours. I’ll call Tobias and see if he can help us out with a locator spell or something. If he can’t, we can look up one of our other contacts.”

“You’re not going alone.”

“I can’t exactly take Thierry with me,” I muttered.

“I’m coming with you. As long as I stay close, I should be okay.” He paused, flashing me rueful smile. “And since I’m no longer coated with powdered silver, I’ll actually be useful in a fight.”

“Danny, no. Seriously.”

“Michael,” Danny fixed me with an imploring look. “Maybe we’re going to give up on hunting after this. Who knows?” He paused. “But we have a case. We need to close it before we leave. And there’s no way in hell I’m letting you get hurt. Especially not now. You know that already, though.”

Dread knotted up in the pit of my stomach. Usually before a hunt, I felt a thrill of anticipation. Now all I felt was a sick wash of fear at all of the awful things that might happen. All of the ways Danny could get hurt. Could get taken away from me.

“I’m coming. End of story,” Danny said flatly.

I nodded. Besides, I couldn’t really stop him now. With the powdered silver no longer coating his skin, it wouldn’t even have been close to a fair fight.

Maybe he caught some of the fear I felt, rippling through the bond. Because his expression softened. “Michael, we’ve done this a million times before. I’ll be fine. I promise.”

I couldn’t help the fear I felt that he was lying to both of us.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN || DANNY

We expected Thierry to balk at the idea of us going off to hunt a nest of vamps. And he didn’t disappoint.

“Absolutely not,” Thierry said, leaning up against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, glaring at Michael.

“This is what we do,” Michael countered. To me, through the bond, he said,Told you so.

My mate stood in the doorway of the motel room, blocking it. I was right behind him, perched against the edge of our car. Thierry had retrieved it for us earlier, while we were… otherwise occupied. I was doing my best to pretend I couldn’t smell the enticing scent of the other motel guests in the nearby rooms. But with Michael right beside me, it was easy to ignore the hunger gnawing away at me in the pit of my stomach. I was just on the verge of pain, even with him beside me. But it was manageable. I could almost pretend that I wasn’t tempted.

“Not anymore, it isn’t.” Thierry rolled his eyes at Michael, clearly exasperated with him. “Once your boyfriend is safely under lock and key in Seattle, we’ll send a team out to deal with this. Your services are no longer needed.”

“More people could die by then,” Michael ground out.