“What?” Suddenly we both were standing. He backed off, needing space. “Did she talk to you about Dawson?”
“Ah, see, she’s not…well, she didn’t respond well to his name.”
He gave me a cool, measured look. “Explain.”
“She kind of went alien ninja on my butt.” Feeling too warm, I grabbed a hair tie and twisted my hair up. “She threw me against the wall.”
His eyebrows shot up in interest.
I rolled my eyes. “Not in that way, you perv. She’s like a suped-up freakin’ mutant. She even did the whole glowworm thing, too.”
Daemon rubbed his chin. “Did she tell you anything useful?”
I told him what she’d said, elaborating on the fact that most of it didn’t make sense. “I think she’s cracked. And she flipped out when I mentioned Dawson. She didn’t give me much of a choice to push the questioning. She removed me from the house.”
“Dammit,” he said under his breath, turning away. “Besides getting ahold of one of the DOD officers, she was my last hope to find out where Dawson could be.”
“I did find something else.” I dug into my pocket, pulling out the scrap of paper. “I found this.”
Daemon took it, his eyes widening.
“Do you think DB stands for Dawson Black?”
“It could.” He clenched the paper tight. “Can I use your laptop? I want to see where this address goes.”
“Sure.” I moved over to the coffee table, opening up the computer and quickly shutting down the website I’d been looking at. I didn’t want to tell him about Blake’s potential involvement in all of this. Not when Daemon was looking incredibly scary and I had no idea how deep Blake was involved.
Daemon sat beside me and quickly typed the address in Google Maps. Modern technology was frightening. Not only did it give us directions right to the doorstep, but he was able to pull it up on the satellite and see that it was an office building in Moorefield.
I chewed on my fingernail as he scribbled down the directions. “Are you going?”
“I want to, right now, but I need to scope out the place first. Tomorrow I’ll check it out, then go back later.” He shoved the piece of notebook paper in his pocket and faced me. Hope sparked in his eyes. “Thank you, Kat.”
“I kind of owed you something, right?” I rubbed my arms, shivering. “You’ve saved my butt a lot.”
“And what a lovely butt it is, but you risked too much by doing this.” He reached behind me, tugging the quilt off, draping it over my shoulders. He held the edges together, searching my face intently. “Why did you do this?”
I lowered my eyes. “I just was thinking about everything, and I wanted to see what was in there.”
“It was crazy dangerous, Kitten. You can’t do anything like that again. Promise me.”
“Okay.”
He caught the edge of my chin, tilting my face up to him. “Promise me.”
My shoulders slumped. “I won’t. Okay. I promise. But you’ve got to promise me the same thing. I know you can’t drop this. I understand that, but you have to be careful, and you can’t sneak off without me, either.”
Daemon scowled. “This shouldn’t involve you.”
“But it does,” I insisted. “And I’m not a fragile human, Daemon. We’re in this together.”
“Together?” He mulled over the word, then a slow smile played on his lips. “Okay.”
I gave him a tentative smile. “So, that means I go when you check out the address.”
He nodded with a resigned smile. We talked about the photos, and how much the DOD had to know. He was taking the violation of privacy a lot better than I had, but I discovered he was accustomed to them being all up in his business. “What do you think Bethany meant by ’They are coming’?” I asked.
He was sprawled against the back of the couch, the picture of ease and lazy arrogance, but I knew he was coiled tight. “I don’t know.”
“I guess it might not mean anything. I mean, she was kind of whacked out.”
Daemon nodded, staring straight ahead. Many seconds passed before he spoke again. “I can’t help but wonder what my brother is like right now. Is he like that? Whacked out? I don’t think I could…deal with that.”
My chest ached from the desperation in his voice. Tomorrow could bring anything, and things were really up in the air between us, but he…he needed me.
I inched toward him. My confidence wavered with the near-feral look he shot my way. Pushing forward, I crawled up against him, wiggling down so that my head was against his shoulder. He inhaled sharply, and I squeezed my eyes shut. “Even if he is…whacked out, you can deal with it. You can deal with anything. I don’t doubt that at all.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
Very slowly, he draped his arm around my shoulders. I felt his chin rest on top of my head. “What are we going to do, Kitten?”
My toes curled at the deep octave of his voice. “I don’t know.”
“I have a few ideas.”
I cracked a grin. “I’m sure you do.”
“Wanna hear about them? Although, I’m much better at the show part rather than the tell.”
“Somehow, I believe you.”
“If you didn’t, I could always give you a teaser.” He paused, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “You bookish people love teasers, don’t you?”
I laughed. “You’ve been doing your research on my blog.”
“Maybe,” he replied. “Like I said, I’ve got to keep an eye on you, Kitten.”
Chapter 30
Daemon and I checked out the office building in Moorefield the following morning. We’d thought it would be empty, considering it was sort of a holiday, but the whole plaza of offices was packed with cars.
Pulling the cap over his face, he jumped from the car and checked out the office on the street. When he returned, he grinned at me and quickly pulled out of the plaza. “It appears to be a lawyer’s office. Has at least two floors above the main one. They’re closed for New Year’s and obviously on Sunday. Bad news is they are outfitted with an alarm system.”
“Crap. Know a way around that?’
“Fry their systems. If I do it quickly enough, I shouldn’t trigger an alarm. But that’s not all. Above the entrances and windows is that same damn blackish-red gemstone.” His lips tipped up higher. “This is good, though. Whatever those stones are, they have to mean something.”
It did. Dawson could be in there right now. “What if it’s guarded?”
He didn’t answer.
I knew what that meant. He’d do anything to get his brother. Some people might think that’s wrong, but I understood. If that were my mom or something, no one would be safe. “When are you going back?”
Again, he was silent. And I knew that meant he didn’t want to tell me because he was planning to do this on his own. I pushed the issue the entire way home, but he didn’t cave.
“So are you going to Ash’s party?” he asked, changing the subject eventually.
“I don’t know.” I fiddled with the button on my sweater. “I can’t imagine her wanting me there, but back to—”
“I want you there.”
I glanced at him, my chest swelling to the point of bursting. Way to knock me off track in such a deliciously tender way.
Daemon’s eyes slid toward me. “Kitten?”
“Okay. I’ll go.” At least I’d be able to keep an eye on him there, because I knew he wouldn’t wait past tonight to check out the offices. Or at least that’s what I was telling myself. The fact he wanted me there didn’t outweigh the importance of my keeping an eye on him.
The party wasn’t starting until nine, and he was heading over early to help Adam with a few things. I was supposed to drive over with Dee, and with a sly wink, he said he was taking me home.