"But this isn't war, not yet." Mira stormed toward him, finding it all but impossible to resist pounding her fists against his broad chest. She steeled herself against the urge to strike at him, if only because she knew that touching him - even in anger - would only tempt her toward something more. Something she could not afford to feel for him, not now. Not ever again. "It doesn't have to be war, Kellan. Not if you stop this, right here and now. It's not too late - "
His snarled curse abruptly cut her off. "It is too late. It was too late months ago, when this all began."
He cursed again, more savagely this time, and stormed over to a trunk at the foot of the bed. He dropped down on his haunches, yanked the lock off in his hand, and threw open the lid. "You'll need a change of clothes at some point." He tossed a folded T-shirt at her, followed by a pair of his well-worn sweats. "If you need anything else that I don't have, Candice will get it for you."
"When what began?" Mira asked, inching toward him. "You said this all began months ago. What happened?"
He rose, standing face-to-face with her now. "How much do you know about Jeremy Ackmeyer?"
Mira shook her head. "Beyond his basic resume? Not much." She gave an abbreviated list of his scientific achievements and accolades as best she could recall. Kellan didn't flinch or react, apparently hearing nothing that surprised him. "And obviously you're well aware that he's been tapped to receive a big cash award from Reginald Crowe at the summit gala in a few days."
She watched his lack of reaction and realized something now. "This isn't about political dissent or disrupting the peace summit, is it? You said Ackmeyer has something you want . . ."
Kellan held her searching gaze, his eyes no longer bright with amber fury but banked and cooling, the level hazel that always seemed to bore straight through to the core of her being. "Three months ago in New York City, a Darkhaven male was gunned down in the street by human thugs. An innocent Breed civilian, killed without warning or cause, by men who drove away in a government vehicle."
Mira thought back, frowning, skeptical. "There have been no such killings, certainly not that recent. It would've made headlines. Hell, it would still be in the news."
"No body. No witnesses," Kellan replied. "Or so they thought."
"What do you mean?"
"A woman saw the whole thing. She watched it from her apartment window over the alley where the murder occurred." Kellan's expression was grim. "There was no body because it was ashed on the spot, Mira. The rounds these human bastards shot him with were made of superconcentrated UV light, converted to liquid form. They were bullets made for the express purpose of killing vampires."
Mira considered for a moment, then gave an incredulous laugh. "Come on, Kellan. You can do better than this. Government assassins using liquid UV rounds? That kind of technology is pure science fiction. It doesn't exist."
"Doesn't it?"
"No," she insisted. "For one thing, it breaches the ban on potentially catastrophic armaments. It would never get past the GNC for approval. For another, the Order would personally never permit that kind of weaponry to be developed. They would destroy it before they'd let something as potentially devastating as UV bullets come into existence."
He shrugged, unconvinced. "And yet it has been, obviously."
"Then prove it."
He said nothing, merely dug into the pocket of his dark jeans and withdrew a spent bullet casing. "The woman recovered this from the ashes of the dead vampire. He was her lover. She said he didn't have any enemies, was just walking home before sunrise when the humans accosted him, started provoking him with anti-Breed slurs, then shot him dead like an animal. Worse than that."
Mira swallowed past the anger in her throat as she looked at the unmarked, spent round and pictured the horror of what the woman who loved that Darkhaven male must have felt, seeing him killed before her eyes.
"She didn't know who to trust or where to go," Kellan said. "So she came to us."
"Who is she?"
"You saw her in the other room a few minutes ago - Nina. She's a friend of Candice's, now one of my team."
Mira shook her head, trying to absorb everything she was hearing. "Are you trying to tell me that Jeremy Ackmeyer is responsible for this somehow?"
Kellan took the bullet casing from her and slipped it back into his pocket. "It's his technology. It took all this time, but we finally traced the tech back to Ackmeyer. We'd been planning to raid his lab, but the place is a fortress - even more so than his home. But then word arrived that Ackmeyer would be on the move. He was expecting a security escort at his house."
"Me," Mira said, feeling like a pawn.
"We had to act quickly," Kellan explained. "I didn't know Ackmeyer was expecting an escort detail from the Order. It was a daytime op, and with roughly ninety-nine percent of the Order's warriors being strictly night patrol - "
"Who gave you the intel?"
Kellan stared at her. "We have our sources around the city."
"Rooster," she guessed, then barked out a humorless laugh when he didn't deny it.
"The guy is garbage," Kellan admitted, "but he serves his purpose."
"Did you know he was the reason I was assigned to escort duty with Ackmeyer?" She pursed her lips, gave a vague shake of her head. "It was punishment from Lucan, for skewering the little redheaded bastard down in the cage arena at La Notte. I should've aimed for his heart."