Enduring Retribution e-book (14 page)

“I’ll go and see what I can find out when I return in a few days. In the meantime, we’ll need
another building. Take out an ad in the paper and tell folks we are still open for business. Make
sure that it says that we aren’t closed. We can’t afford to lose momentum now on what’s going
on.”

Bailey wanted to ask if Tristan had contacted him, but didn’t want to be disappointed when he answered no. She wanted Tristan in the worst kind of way, but a permanent relationship wasn’t something she could consider. She decided that from now on, he would get only what he needed, then maybe he’d get the hint and go to the queen to have this taken care of.

After catching up on a few other matters, they closed the connection. Bailey had to move on.

Her targets were on the go and she needed to keep up with them. One was to lead her to another three on her list. Six targets at once were getting to be the norm, and she wasn’t all that happy about it. It was difficult and stressful, not to mention dangerous.

She was perched on a roof top watching the scene play out below her when Tristan reached out to her.

“Bailey, I need you. Where can I meet you?”
His voice sounded hard and cold.

“I’m going to be in Rome for a few more days, and then I don’t know where this one will
lead me. If all you need is one or the other, I can meet you in an alley somewhere close. But both
would take a little more time than I can spare while hunting.” S
he knew it was cold and heartless, but she needed to move on with her life so that he could.

“I would like both, but a feeding will be fine. Are you free now?”
Her heart hurt with his tone, and she didn’t understand why. She knew that this was what she wanted.

“I have a target now, and it will be at least another hour before this is completed. I can meet
you at the corner of Alley and James Streets at six-thirty Rome time. There’s a dark alley there
and no one will disturb you.” S
he clamped her mind down and forgot about watching the street, but flew out over the city to get away from them all even for only a few minutes.

~~~

He was standing there waiting when she came around the corner. She was late, but only by three minutes. It might not have seemed so long had he not of been there since five-forty-five waiting for her, searching each face as it went by him.

“Tristan. There are two areas you can go, either is fine by me. I can pull shadows around us if you’d rather just eat here.”

He noticed that she didn’t look at him, but over his shoulder or the ground. How had they gotten to this point? It had been six days, and he was hungry, not just for her blood, though that was enough, but he wanted her body too.

“Bailey, please look at me.”

When she didn’t, he touched her chin and brought her face up to his. She had lost weight, he could see that immediately, and she had dark circles beneath her eyes. He wondered if she was still injured and though he couldn’t smell any blood on her, he just didn’t know.

“Just get it over with, please. I have to be in France in an hour. And I still have things I need to get done before I leave.”

She pulled away from his hand and leaned back against the building, exposing her neck to him. His hunger for her nearly overwhelmed him. He leaned into her quickly and licked the pulse beating there, her life blood tickling his tongue, her pulse beating hard against his mouth. Pulling them deep into the shadows so as no one would see them, he bit, deep and hard.

His first pull on her throat hardened his cock to the point of pain; the second swallow had him pressing her against the building, seeking relief that only she could give him. Tristan cupped her breast in one hand and cupping her ass in the other, pulled her tight against him. Still, he drank. He felt her graze her teeth across his neck, then lick the area with her hot, wet tongue. He was close, so close to stripping her down and taking her right there. If she bit him now, he knew that he would. But she didn’t. She pulled her face away from his neck and let him drink his fill.

When he sealed the wounds and stepped back, he looked at her again. She had her face turned away from him again. He wanted to talk to her, to tell her how sorry he was, how much he needed her, but she stepped away from him in more ways than physically.

“Bailey, we can’t go on like this. You have to realize that.” He reached to touch her, to pull her into his arms. But she moved beyond him.

“I have to go to France. Please contact Griff when you need another meal.” She shifted so suddenly that he was startled by the abrupt change. She was suddenly a large grey tabby running along the sidewalk close to the buildings.

~CHAPTER FOURTEEN~

She was looking at another building and was surprised when her phone rang. The only people who had this number were the queen and the one who served her. Neither Griff nor she used phones, and neither did Tristan.

“Hello?”

“I have a contract I’d like fulfilled immediately. I’m willing to pay a substantial bonus if it is done within the next seventy-two hours.” She didn’t recognize the voice. The voice modulator negated that anyway, but she did listen for clues that always gave the caller away.

“This is a printing shop; we don’t do contracts. And we are temporarily out of business until we can set up another location. I’m sorry for your inconvenience, but I have the name of other…”

“Bullshit! I know what you are and what you do. Now you will do as I say. I will send you the things you need to kill this man. You also should understand that there are consequences if you don’t. Understand me?”

Bailey understood just fine and disconnected the line. When it rang again, she let it go to voice mail.

When she picked up the message after she finished going through the building, it was to hear about a select few of the contracts she had fulfilled over the past six months. There was information on who, where, and how much she had been paid to do each hit. There were also references to her relationship with Tristan and to the Kiss of Aaron MacManus. She was given a phone number to call immediately or everything would go to the media, and then she could see how she handled that. She contacted Griff to trace the number and her phone, and then she dialed the number.

“This is the Printer, who is this?” She asked, knowing that whoever it was might not answer.

But some people were incredibly stupid when asked a direct question and she was hoping for that.

“I’ll do the talking, and you, you will do the listening. In less than one hour after we disconnect, you will get an email giving you all the information you need to do this hit. I expect it to be done without any problems, or you contacting anyone else except for your freak you have working for you. If I even hear of a whisper that you have, I will kill you.”

“You think it will be that easy? Better yet, what makes you think I’ll even care whether or not you kill me?” She didn’t really, but lately, just lately, there seemed to be a little more to look forward to. She wasn’t going to say it was Tristan, but she was beginning to look forward to him contacting her for his next meal.

“Then I will hit closer to your black heart. Tristan will die; I will take his head and make it look like you were the one to murder him. His family is royalty; do you think they’ll be happy with just your death? Their money and connections alone will be able to hunt you for years. No, they will make you suffer in ways you cannot imagine. Do the hit, or else.”

“Fuck off. I work for myself, and about Tristan? Are you fucking kidding me? I’m his food source, nothing more to him. He can barely stand to be in the same room as me.” The scream that came through the line had her pulling the phone away. Bailey was surprised by that, and made a mental note to think about it later with the other information she was writing down about the call.

“Food source? You’re his fucking mate, his mate for all time. He will die without you to feed him. I will not tolerate you belittling him again. If his death won’t bother you then I will take out the precious mate of the master MacManus and his two brats. Let’s see how long you live with their deaths hanging around your skinny little neck.”

First she was willing to kill Tristan, now she didn’t want her to belittle him. It was the children that got her, though. Children were innocents. Bailey had no doubt that this was a woman now. And she would be someone close to Tristan and the Kiss. Keeping her talking proved to be fairly easy as she was a gabby sort of thing.

“I’m no one’s mate, not now, not ever. And if you think Tristan gives one shit about me then you’re nuttier than a fruit cake. You send your contract, and if I decide to take it, I will. I don’t care about the media, or anything else you think you might be able to blackmail me with. Bring it on, girl.” She disconnected the line and snapped the phone in two, removing the battery as well.

With a quick look around, she dropped it on the ground and sent a small bolt of energy to it, firing it on the spot. There was a slim possibility that she was as good as Bailey was, but she doubted that.

“Griff, we have a problem. Let me know if you receive anything via email about a rush job.

I’m sure I just heard from one of the people who had us tracked. Did you get anything on the
trace?” S
he was calm, but pissed.

“Yes, mistress. Right away. I couldn’t trace the location, but the tracer picked it up as being
local. It is a toss-away like the ones we generally use. As for the caller, did you get anything? Oh
and the building you are in is ideal for what we need. There are already lines going in and the
basement is finished. What would you like for me to do?”

“Buy it, but haggle. I can see that it needs some work, but very little. There aren’t close
enough neighbors to disturb us, but see what we can do about purchasing them as well. I don’t
want to take any more chances. And we are not going to honor anymore leases. Contact me as
soon as you get the contract and it printed up. And other than a female who may or may not have
connections to the Kiss that Aaron MacManus is currently master of, I got a few phrases that I
might be able to track. Also, I caught some jealously for Tristan St. James. See if we can find a
jilted lover or two for him as well.”
She wasn’t going to think about how much it was hurting her to think he may have someone who wanted him back and would kill to have him.

The contract came in twenty minutes later; the money was not as much as she would normally get, but the bonus more than made up for the difference. It was the name on the contract that stunned her. She had just been hired to kill Bradley Wolff, alpha wolf.

Two hours later, Bailey was back in the realm hiding in the shadows waiting for the queen to make an appearance. She had been waiting for nearly an hour when Mel walked passed her.

Reaching out, Bailey spoke to her.

“You need to leave this area and go to a secure location for me to speak to you. I have an
issue that concerns you and yours, the children of Sara and Aaron MacManus for one. There are
eight men currently residing in your infirmary that Griff and I sent there because of a breach in
security on our end. They are connected. You have a breach in your security, your grace, and it
may be the death of your family. Will you meet me?”

“Yes. There are beings here who can track you even now. Let me wait for my father. He can
shield you and I won’t need to use any traceable magic.”

They waited in the hall, Mel looking at the floral arrangements with an assistant going over the colors and fussing with them. Bailey just waited, not giving a good fig if the white ones were too close to the yellow ones or not. And who even cared if the roses were better-looking next to the lavender.

She looked around the open field outside the doorway and noticed for the first time that there were fields and fields of wildflowers, all of them in neat patches according to color, type of flower, and height. She smiled and thought that Tristan would love this, all the neat little patches.

It was like a big, organized blanket. Her smile didn’t last long, though, thinking what a mess she was and how he was forever trying to neaten her up. Maybe the woman who was on the phone was just as organized as he was and they were a better match.

“Daddy, I was wondering if we could take a ride. It’s such a beautiful day and I need a break.” He had come when she had called for him, only knowing that she needed a shadow deeper than she could make without drawing attention.

They saddled up and rode out and away from the grounds twenty minutes later. Bailey hid in the mane of the larger horse as a barn mouse, hoping that no owl decided to make a snack out of her.

~~~

“I agree with Bailey on this, love. No one else should know. If too many people are aware, especially since she is sure that it is someone who knows the house, then the children are a risk as well. No, she’s right.”

Mel’s dad had been brought in simply because he wasn’t budging without knowing why he had been pulled from his computer. He was so intrigued by the Internet and all he could find.

“But there are already at least nine others involved, all against Bailey.” Mel looked down at the little mouse on her horse. “No offense, but can you handle that many people at once?”

Mel just couldn’t imagine why anyone would want Bradley dead. He was a good man and his family had been caring for the Brotherhood of Gray for several generations.

“If we play this right,” Bailey said through their link. “Then we can catch all the players
involved and the ring leader as well. If there is even a hint of what we are doing, the whole thing
falls apart and Bradley ends up dead anyway.”

“What of the ones we now have? What do I do with them knowing that they are in on this contract? I can’t just let them go without punishment.” Mel was worried about what would happen if they escaped to the human realm. “They have disobeyed direct orders of this kingdom concerning humans.”