"Like hell you don't." Brock reached out and grabbed a fistful of the guy's blood-splattered shirt. He lifted him off the ground, letting his feet dangle four inches from the concrete. "You picked up a woman outside the city. Tell me what you've done with her."
"Who are you?" the man croaked, the whites of his eyes growing wider as he struggled--and failed--to get loose. "Please, let me go."
"Tell me where she is, and maybe I won't kill you."
"Please!" the man wailed. "Please, don't hurt me!"
Brock chuckled darkly, then his acute hearing picked up the sound of rushing footsteps, moving stealthily behind the butcher tables and equipment in the adjacent room. He glanced up ... just in time to see the glint of a steel pistol barrel trained on him.
The shot erupted, shattering the office window and ripping into the flesh of his shoulder.
Brock roared, not from pain but fury.
He swung his gaze on the bastard who shot him, pinning the human with the fiery amber light of his eyes, which had transformed from their normal dark brown to the molten color of his other, more lethal nature.
Brock curled his lips back off his teeth and fangs and bellowed in rage.
There was a high-pitched shriek as the man holding the gun turned tail and ran.
"Oh, Christ!" wailed the wheezing human whom Brock still held fast by the throat. "I do nothing to her--I swear! Bitch broke my nose, but I didn't touch her. G-Gresa," he sputtered, lifting his hand to point in the direction his buddy had fled. "He shot her, not me."
At that unwelcome newsflash, Brock's fingers tightened around the fragile human windpipe. "She's been shot? Tell me where the fuck she is.
Now!"
"T-the chiller," he gasped. "Oh, shit. Please don't kill me!"
Brock squeezed punishingly harder, then tossed the blubbering son of a bitch against the far wall. The human cried out in pain, then dropped in a sniveling heap on the concrete floor. "You'd better pray she's all right,"
Brock said, "or you're gonna wish I had killed you just now."
Jenna huddled on the floor of the large walk-in refrigerator, her teeth chattering, body shivering in the cold.
Outside the sealed steel door, loud noises sounded. Heavy crashes, men shouting ... the abrupt crack of gunfire and the bright clatter of breaking glass. Then a roar so intense and deadly, it jerked her head upright just as it was starting to become too weighty to keep lifted, her eyelids growing too difficult to hold open.
She listened, hearing only silence lengthening now.
Someone neared the cold cell that held her. She didn't need to hear the thud of approaching footsteps to know that someone was there. As chill as it was inside, the blast of icy air coming from the other side of the locked door was arctic.
The latch gave a snick of protest in the instant before the entire steel panel was ripped from its hinges on a deafening metallic squeal. Steam poured out of the opening, shrouding a massive, black-clad mountain of a man.
No, not a man, she realized in dazed astonishment.
A vampire.
Brock.
His lean face was so stark, she hardly recognized him. Huge fangs gleamed white behind the broad mouth that was drawn grim and furious. His breath sawed in and out between his lips, and behind a dark pair of wraparound sunglasses, twin coals blazed with a heat Jenna felt as surely as a touch when he scanned the fogged space and found her slumped and shivering in the corner.
Jenna didn't want to feel the rush of relief that swamped her as he strode inside and dropped down onto his haunches beside her. She didn't want to trust the feeling that said he was a friend, someone to help her.
Someone she needed, in that moment. Maybe the only person who could help her.
She started to tell him she was okay, but her voice was thready and weak. His ember-bright eyes seared her through the veil of his dark shades.
He glanced down and hissed when he saw her wounded thigh and the blood that had soaked the leg of her jeans and formed a small pool beneath her.
"Don't talk," he said, stripping off his black leather gloves and pressing his fingers against both sides of her neck. His touch was light but comforting, seeming to warm her from the inside out. The chill drifted away from her, taking the pain of her gunshot wound with it. "You're going to be all right now, Jenna. I'm gonna get you out of here."