Reaching into his pocket, he thumbed the button on the key fob and unlocked the doors. Lola stood next to the passenger door while he walked around the front to the driver’s side. She stared at him over the roof, still frowning.
“We need to add more security to Blush. Tighten up the restrictions on the number of vampires allowed inside at a time,” Lola murmured. Rafe was pretty sure she was talking more to herself than him.
Rafe stopped next to his door and smirked at his companion. “There’s no need to panic and start battening down the hatches. The MacPherson clan or any of the other clans might think we’ve got reason to be worried about an attack.”
Lola looked as if she wanted to argue, but her eyes widened suddenly as she stared past Rafe’s shoulder. Before she could catch her breath to shout a warning, Rafe felt it. The same muted flicker of awareness he’d felt when he was outside the nursing home with Philippe. He could sense a vampire so damn close, but it was faint and wavy, like the fucker had found a way to mask himself.
Reaching under his leather jacket, Rafe wrapped his fingers around the handle of the long knife strapped to his back. He pulled it free while pivoting on the balls of his feet. Ducking low, he felt the wind riffle his hair. The vampire was overextended, the shiny blade missing him completely.
For a heartbeat, the world seemed to stop, both Rafe and the attacker frozen. Their eyes met. The attacker’s were wide with horror as he realized his mistake. Rafe’s were narrowed with a dark glee. The vampire tried to recover from where he’d overbalanced, but he was too slow. Rafe whipped his blade around and shoved it up through the bottom of his jaw, plunging it straight through his brain. As he stood, he ripped the blade free. The vampire staggered backward two wobbly, unsteady steps. With a snarl, Rafe swiped the blade, cleanly slicing through his attacker’s neck. The body collapsed to the left while the head bounced off the pavement a couple of times and rolled away toward the right.
Lola raced around the car and stopped in front of him, a blade ready in her hand as she waited for another attacker. But no one appeared. Nothing moved. But there was a low flicker of vampire power for a second, and then it disappeared. There had been another vampire besides the attacker, but they were gone now.
“Do you recognize him?” Rafe demanded.
Slowly, Lola relaxed, lowering her blade to her side. She walked over to the head and picked it up by its short brown hair. “Nope. Don’t think I’ve seen him before.”
“Don’t suppose his clan had him tagged,” Rafe muttered. He frowned at the body, wishing it would somehow spill more than just blood on the road. The strange, masked power left him thinking these people were the same as the shooter, but he still couldn’t be sure if this had to do with the Arsenault investigation or the Varik political turmoil.
“I’ll call the cleaners,” Lola offered, dropping the head next to the corpse.
Rafe nodded. “Stay and wait for them. See if they can identify him or if he was part of a clan. I’ll go to Blush.” He wanted to personally keep an eye on things there. It would give him a chance to take a closer look at who was passing through his club. He could also spend a little time thinking about the two attacks as well as the information they’d gotten from Edgar. “I’ll send Ryder for you in my car.”
“Don’t bother. I can find my own way.” Rafe lifted one questioning eyebrow at her and she waved him off. “You need him watching your back.”
For once, Rafe didn’t argue with her. Two attempts on his life in a short period of time was serious. He needed to get to the bottom of it, and he had a feeling that a big part of that was going to be solving Philippe’s problem.
Chapter Nine
Philippe leaned against the back wall of the elevator as he rode up to Rafe’s penthouse. The previous night had been spent deep in discussion with Ezra and Jullien as he battled his building sense of guilt and dishonesty. He couldn’t go on deceiving Rafe. Ezra had argued most of the night that Philippe’s current plan was a horrible idea. Jullien had been disturbingly quiet. Philippe wasn’t sure which bothered him more—Ezra’s outspoken dissent or Jullien’s disapproving silence.
But he had to shove those uneasy feelings aside. He’d made his decision, and he knew it was the right one. Ezra and Jullien didn’t understand simply because Philippe couldn’t tell them the whole story. They didn’t see Rafe with Gideon, didn’t understand he was protective of his own people the same way Philippe was protective of his clan. Rafe wasn’t a threat to the Arsenaults.