Lucien said nothing.

“If she chooses you,” Baojia said, “this antagonism must stop. She will depend on you, especially within the first year. Whether you are honest about your feelings for her is your choice. But your feelings are not her fault, so find a way to handle your resentment.” Baojia paused. “I expected better of you, Lucien.”

The quiet admonition pricked Lucien’s conscience. He closed his eyes. “She tempts me. I don’t like it.”

“Everyone in the lab saw your bickering for what it was,” Baojia said. “And we all know why you didn’t sire her yourself.”

Because siring Makeda would have killed off the possibility of anything more than a paternal relationship.

“I won’t insult either of you by cautioning against an intimate relationship,” Baojia continued. “The roots of… whatever you two have were evident months ago. But you are more powerful than she is. You are older and have more control. Show your honor and let her lead in this.”

He kept returning to the addictive pleasure of her bite. “And if I can’t?”

“Don’t use weakness as an excuse.” Baojia picked up a note near the phone on his desk. “We both know your self-control is unparalleled. It’s the only reason you can work with patients as you do.”

Because a vampire performing surgery in the throes of bloodlust wasn’t something Lucien could allow to happen. His mind touched on the cool self-control Makeda had mastered in her own body, and he wondered if her transition to immortal life would be easier because of it. She was, in her own way, as controlled as he was.

Except when she’d bitten him.

“I need to go into town,” Baojia said. “I managed to convince the human police that Makeda sustained only minor injuries, but I had to use amnis when they wanted to question her. If I don’t resolve things, there will be too many questions. The human who owned the car filed a report.”

“Whose car was it?”

“Her neighbor. Philip Marin.”

Something about the neighbor scratched at his mind. It was the same neighbor who had interrupted Lucien at her house weeks before. They weren’t lovers; Lucien would have smelled the human on her skin. There had been only the faint whiff indicating casual contact.

So why did Makeda have access to his car in the middle of the night? And why had that car slid down the hill when Makeda was a competent driver? It could have been a random accident caused by the storm, but not knowing irritated Lucien. Makeda had only scattered memories of the minutes before the accident, which wasn’t unusual in humans who’d experienced head injuries, so she could offer no insight to the cause of the crash.

“Have you spoken to Philip Marin?” Lucien asked.

“No.” Baojia looked up. “The police said he left a few days ago for a meeting in Palo Alto.” His eyes narrowed. “Right after his car was crashed and a friend was seriously injured?”

“The meeting could have been unavoidable and he was informed she had no major injuries. Has he called her phone?”

“No. Natalie has it. No calls except from her family and a few colleagues from her former lab. Natalie’s been dealing with them.”

A phone call would be the bare minimum a friend might expect in this situation. Philip Marin’s actions were leading Lucien to speculate he’d left town for other reasons. Protective anger simmered in his belly. “Was the car examined?”

“The car is barely recognizable.” Baojia nodded toward the door. “But I know someone in San Francisco who can sort through it. I’ll need to call him up and get him into the impound lot. Shouldn’t be a problem. In the meantime, I’m going into town to talk to the police. You coming?”

Staying at the lab would only make his thoughts circle around Makeda. “Who’s monitoring her?”

“She wanted to be locked in alone. She has a store of blood and her notes. Ruben is watching her, and I have two extra guards on call. One human and one vampire.”

Ruben was Lucien’s second-in-command of the lab, but he was also trained by Baojia. The guards were simply a precaution.

“I’ll go with you,” he said. “Let’s see if Makeda’s accident was really an accident.”

Lucien stared impassively at the human who was trying not to panic. Philip Marin was buried up to his neck, his pale face had lost the sun-kissed tan, and pallor had stolen the calculation from his expression.

“I don’t know any more than that,” the operative said. “I was supposed to watch her. The night of the accident, I panicked. She said she’d had a breakthrough. The breakthrough. I knew my bosses didn’t want that to happen.”

“And your bosses are…?” Lucien had his suspicions, but he’d rather know for certain.

Philip was silent.

“Your birth name isn’t Philip Marin,” Baojia said, standing next to Lucien in the cavern cut by the Pacific Ocean. They’d found Marin two nights earlier in San Francisco, trying to find passage to Europe on a freighter. “Interpol identified your prints as belonging to Stavros Marinos, a low-level criminal with drug connections and a history of identity theft.”

“You’re a nobody, Philip.” Lucien dug his feet into the wet sand around the human. The earth pressed in, turning Marin’s face red as he struggled for breath. Lucien eased back. “Tell us who hired you.”

“They’ll kill me,” Philip choked out. “They’ll kill me no matter what—”