The Beloved by J.R. Ward

Author:J.R. Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2024-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

At the downtown induction site, Evan exited the tunnel by jumping out and landing in a crouch with both of the guns he’d boosted front and center. With quick eyes, he scanned the well-lit parts of the basement. The elevator was still sitting open and at the ready, but there was no alarm anymore. Other than that?

Nothing out of place, no one in the space.

Leaving the shadows, he was prepared for an attack, and when he came up to the Otis box, he was surprised he wasn’t shooting. Peering in, he saw that someone had discharged a bullet into the control panel.

Keeping his guns up, he went silently over to the emergency exit. Sidestepping the door that had been blown out of its hinges, he leaned around the jamb and assessed the stairwell. It was dangerous to go up it, but he was as ready as he would ever be for that scarred vampire who was after him. On the ascent, he was careful to remain as quiet as possible—but he didn’t know whether that was his mind being smart, or his body making decisions for him.

He was hoping it was the latter as the autopilot thing was probably better at keeping him alive.

Or… less dead?

Whatever, whichever, who the fuck cared. He just kept going. At the first-floor landing, he paused and glanced at the big 1 that had been painted on the concrete wall. This fire door had had a limited breach, just the lock blown, the black blast ring localized by the bolting mechanism. Taking a deep breath, he pulled the panel hard, the hinges resisting because of the warping from the explosion, and he jumped out once again.

The lobby was still dim, and as he rounded the corner, he looked to that oily trail that led out from that fucking elevator.

His body paused, even though he told his feet to keep walking. As his head turned from side to side, he saw nothing out of place, nothing lurking, nothing… anywhere. The only difference was that the plywood panel that had been blown off the entrance had been put back on somehow.

The scarred killer had left. Evan could feel it.

Now he moved fast, but he still kept things as silent as he could, putting his new high-performance boots down carefully because there was debris and cracked mirrored glass that would be loud if he walked on it. At the building’s entry, he stopped for a moment. When nothing pinged his instincts, he used the side of the door that had stayed in place. The last thing he needed was the other plywood sheet falling in again.

As soon as he was out, his head jerked left. Right. And up.

Reholstering one of the guns, he fell into yet another run and retraced the path he’d taken the night before, shooting out onto Market, dodging cars that honked at him, ignoring pedestrians that looked his way. He felt nothing of the cold, and still no hunger or need to take a piss.

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