"Like it never happened, my man. Niko and I got rid of the bodies, the broken glass, and all the blood. The meat chiller where they held Jenna looked like it had been used for a fucking slaughterhouse."
Brock's jaw went tight as he relived the moment he'd found her in a flash of vivid recollection. His temper flared even hotter when he thought about the two bastards who'd harmed her.
"What about the witnesses?" In the long half second of silence that answered him, Brock ground out a curse. "The two guys who picked Jenna up outside the compound and brought her out there--I left one of them semiconscious in an office outside the meat chiller, the other hightailed it after he shot me and caught a glimpse of my fangs."
"Ah, fuck," Kade said. "There was no one in the building except the corpses we disappeared. We didn't know about witnesses, man."
Yeah, right. Because in the heat of the moment, with Jenna bleeding and shivering in his arms, Brock neglected to mention that fact.
"God damn it," he ground out, slamming his fist against the dashboard of the Rover. "It's my fault. I fucked up. I should have told you there were live ones that needed to be contained."
"Don't sweat it," Kade said. "We're not that far away. I'll tell Niko to head back. We can have another look around the place, chase down your two runners, and scrub their memories of the whole thing."
"Not necessary. I'm already on it." Brock hung a sharp left at the nearest intersection and gunned it for Boston's South End. "I'll report in once I have the situation contained."
"You sure?" Kade asked. "If you want some backup--"
"I'll call in when it's handled."
Before his brother-in-arms could comment about the lethal tone of Brock's voice, he clapped the phone closed and shoved it back into his pocket as the Rover barreled into the underbelly of the city.
By the time he reached the neighborhood of the meatpacking plant, his pulse was hammering with the need for violence. He parked the vehicle on a side alley and trekked through the snowy lots so that he came up behind the building. Lights burned inside, and through the brick and mortar of the place, he could hear the muffled rumble of raised male voices, both of them heavily accented and one of them verging on hysteria.
Brock leapt silently onto the roof of the old building and made his way over to a snow-crusted skylight that looked down into the plant below.
The two assholes he wanted to see were roaming back and forth among the hanging sides of beef, sharing a fifth of cheap vodka and smoking cigarettes held in shaking fingers.
"I'm telling you, Gresa," shouted the one with the broken nose. "We need to call the cops!"
The shooter--Gresa, evidently--took a long swig from the bottle, then gave a stern shake of his head. "Tell them what, Nassi? Look around you!
Do you see any evidence of what we think we saw in here tonight? I say, nothing happened. No cops."
"I know what I saw," Nassi insisted, his voice still climbing. "We need to tell someone!"
Gresa strode over and shoved the vodka at him. While Nassi drank, his friend gestured to the quiet plant. "There is no blood, no sign of trouble.
No sign of Koli or Majko, either."
"They're dead!" Nassi wailed. He lapsed into a few words in his native tongue before continuing again in broken English. "I saw their bodies, so did you! They were here when we ran out of the building. I know you saw them, Gresa! What if that man--that ... whatever he was--took them away? What if he comes back for us now, too?"
Jenna's shooter reached around to the small of his back and pulled out his pistol. He wagged it in front of him like a prize. "If he comes back, I have this. I shot him once, I can shoot him again. Next time, I will kill him."
Nassi put the bottle to his mouth once more and gulped down what was left. He dropped the empty to the floor at his feet. "You are a fool, Gresa. Soon, I think you will be a dead fool. But not me. I'm leaving. I quit this stinking job, and I am going home."
He stormed out of Brock's line of vision, his companion hard on his heels.
By the time the two men stepped out of the building to the dark street outside, Brock was waiting. He dropped down off the roof and now stood there in front of the door, blocking their path.
"Going somewhere?" he asked them pleasantly, giving them a good flash of fang. "Maybe you need a lift."
They both screamed--bone-scraping cries of pure human terror that were music to Brock's ears.
He leapt on the man in front, the one with the broken nose. Ripping into the vulnerable throat, Brock didn't drink, but killed instead. He cast the limp body to the snow, then cocked his head toward the one who'd put the bullet in Jenna's thigh.
Gresa screamed again, the gun in his hand trembling violently. Had Brock been human, or had he been distracted as he had been earlier in the plant, when his fury at Nassi had made him miss the fact that a pistol was trained on him from across the room, Gresa might have been able to shoot him again now.
He fired a shot, but it was clumsy and ill-aimed.