Donald: Dalton’s Kiss: Vampire Paranormal Romance (Dalton's Kiss Book 3) by Kathi Barton (best large ereader .txt) 📗

be there with Don whenever he said, they closed the connection. Sending Lola on her way to take care of the other nests, she made her way to the hospital. There were things there she still needed to take care of as well.

She entered the hospital and went to the third floor. Cody had told her a man had died that morning of what appeared to be a bloodletting. CJ was asked to go and check it out and not to let Bancroft know. The only reason she did it was so he could be ruled out as the one that had killed the young man. Bloodletting was a serious way to get your ass in trouble with Mother Earth. As soon as she entered the morgue without anyone seeing her, she had a good idea what had happened. It was none of the vampires at the house, but she had a good idea who had killed Josh Hinkley.

~*~

Don’s first duty to Banny was to find the killer of a human that had been in the jail locally. He already knew who had killed the young human. He also knew now why he’d been in jail. According to the information he’d gotten from Banny, as well as from Lizzy that morning, he had a good handle on a lot of reasons that someone might well have wanted the man dead. He was, in a word, a dick.

“Why are you here?” He smiled at CJ and told her where he’d been told to start. “Well, that’s just stupid. I told you where the man was, and coming here is a waste of your time. Did he even listen to me when I gave him the information? I swear to you, one minute I like the man, then for the next two or three days, I want to string him up by his balls. Why aren’t you where I told you the man—?”

To stop CJ from ranting more, he pulled her tightly into his arms and kissed her. The morgue wasn’t the most romantic of places, but he had to come here for the soul reason that he’d been told to. Telling CJ that had her ranting against his palm over her mouth.

“We must do this by the books.” She asked him why that mattered. “Because the man is in the public, and killing him outright will cause a lot of trouble for a great many people. What do you think will happen when they first find out he’s disappeared? Then secondly, that he’s a vampire? I’m betting no one he works with is aware of that. And if they are, they’re going to hide him away if we say a word about him doing this. It’ll be justified in their minds.”

“Oh.” He let her go. “I guess you’re right, but I don’t have to like it. He murdered the man for no other reason than he was annoying. Everyone is annoying to me. What if I went around killing off people when they annoyed me? There wouldn’t be anyone left. That’s what would happen.”

“I’m so very happy you restrain yourself.” He watched her face to see if she could tell he was joking with her. Sometimes when she was intense about something, she wouldn’t get it. “Are you going to keep following me around, or do you have something else you can do? If you can’t decide, I’d like for you to find something else to do. I’m sort of excited to be doing this for Bancroft.”

“I know you are. And I know you won’t get hurt. But this guy, he’s killed once. I’m worried he’s going to have done it be—” She stopped talking and moved him back against the wall. When the door beside them opened up, he pulled shadows around them both.

“I tell you, I saw her go in here. She’s like trying to catch a fart in the wind.” The man speaking looked around, then back at the person who’d not come through the open door yet. “She’s not in here. I don’t know why you’re so worried about her. We don’t have any way of keeping her from finding out she’s been tagged to be killed by you.”

Don didn’t move when the man’s companion came into the room. Not a person as he’d thought, but Cody, CJ’s faerie. CJ looked up at him when Cody went to sit on the shoulder of the first man.

“I have to tell you, I’ve enjoyed giving her false hope that no one will find her. Also, you do know that if she goes to the queen, it’s going to be all over for us. She’ll get the magic she has coming to her, and we’ll be out of luck in doing much more than just taking her.” The man asked Cody what he meant as he opened and closed the drawers the bodies were cooled in. “She’ll get all this special power. I thought for sure we had the wrong person when she never seemed to use anything but just mundane magic. But then she met her mate, and it was like she’d been pulled from darkness, and there it was for me to see. I cannot wait for her to be gone from my life. I like her, don’t get me wrong, but she’s nothing compared to the queen.”

“You’re sure you have the right woman, right?” Cody said he was ninety-nine percent sure of it. “Yeah, well, it’s the one percent that worries me. What if, by that small margin, she’s the wrong chick? Do you think the queen will give us what we want because we have this person she’s related to? Then she finds out it really isn’t? That worries me more than anything. Then there is what my boss will say.”

“I’ve yet to meet him. Is he as badass as everyone says?” The man said it was a woman he worked for. “A woman? Well, I guess they are as smart as men when it comes