Page 33 of Guardian

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Logan had slept on and off. And though sharing a bed with Winter had raised his desire for her even more, he hadn’t acted upon it and let her sleep. She needed her rest. Instead, in the darkness of the hotel room, he’d worked on a plan for how to proceed. He knew he had to be careful. Not only were they running from the demons, they were also hiding from the Stealth Guardians—at least for now, until Logan could figure out a way to convince the council that Winter should live. Until then, he had to take every precaution to evade his fellow guardians. Which meant he couldn’t ask them for help. He had to find help elsewhere.

He’d already showered and gotten dressed by the time Winter stirred. He walked to the bed and sat on the edge. When he pressed a kiss on her shoulder, she hummed softly.

“Time to get up,” he said. “We’ve got a lot ahead of us today.”

She turned and wiped the sleep from her eyes. Her hair was rumpled, and there was a soft glow about her. She looked rested. And irresistible. But guilt was churning in him again this morning. He’d slept with Winter, but hadn’t told her that he’d gone to her shop to kill her. He felt like a cad for deceiving her like this, but right now he couldn’t tell her the truth. What if she ran from him once he confessed that he wasn’t only an immortal guardian, but that on occasion he also had to be an assassin?

“Good morning,” she murmured and wrapped her arms around him.

The gesture was so trusting, it made him feel even worse. But he couldn’t let her believe that something was wrong, so he hugged her back and pressed a kiss into her hair. “Being with you last night was amazing.” It was true, though that wasn’t the reason he was saying it. He knew only too well that on the morning after, regrets could surface, and he didn’t want her to regret her actions from the night before. Even if he regretted having been too weak to resist her allure. What he’d done was wrong. Still, having Winter in his arms, making love to her had been the best thing he’d ever done.

Slowly he eased out of her embrace and stood up.

“Why don’t I get us some breakfast from downstairs while you take a shower and get ready?”

It would be best that way. At least then he wouldn’t be tempted to follow her into the shower to make love with her again. And repeat his mistake.

“Sure.” She shrugged, looking somewhat disappointed, just as disappointed as he felt inside. Why couldn’t he have met her under other circumstances?

He forced himself to smile at her. “Eggs? Bacon? Pancakes?”

“Bacon and eggs, and coffee. Black. Thanks.”

“Be right back.”

Logan left the room and made his way downstairs to the breakfast buffet. A dozen other people were already chowing down on their food and gulping down their coffee. On one wall, a mounted TV screen showed the news. The TV was muted, but Logan read the closed captioning. No news about any dead men with green blood found two states over. Had the police found men oozing green blood, every TV station in the country would be reporting on it. It meant that his compound mates had cleaned up Winter’s shop and disposed of the demons.

By now they would also have found his car and traced his cell phone. Whether they were following the fake trail he’d left was another question. His compound mates weren’t stupid. The diversion wouldn’t keep them off his trail for long. They had to assume that he would eventually use one of the lost portals to transport them somewhere without being traced. But how quickly would they figure out which portal Logan intended to use?

Logan had memorized the location of three portals in the area. He could, of course, travel farther afield, but it would mean logging into the Stealth Guardians’ system from an unsecured public computer to research the location of other portals. Once he did that, his compound mates would be able to determine his location by the IP address of the computer he was using. He couldn’t risk it. There was a more complicated way of figuring out the location of a portal, but unfortunately Logan wasn’t sufficiently well versed in the intricate mathematical calculations necessary to perform such a task. He had no choice but to choose one of the three portals close by.

Minutes later, Logan entered his hotel room with a tray of food. Winter was already showered and fully dressed, her hair still damp at the tips. Her eyes were wide, and she looked scared.

He set the tray down on the desk, then rushed to her. “What’s wrong?”

“I saw him again.”

“Whom? Where?”

She gripped his arms tightly. “The demon who tried to kill me. The one you choked to death.”

Logan didn’t correct her that the man who’d tried to kill her wasn’t a demon, nor did he tell her that he knew that Manus wasn’t dead.

“Did you leave the room? Where is he? Where did you see him?”

Winter shook her head. “I was in the shower. I had a vision. It was different this time. Maybe because I knew what it was. I didn’t fight it, not at first. But then I saw him. I thought he was dead. I thought you killed him. But he’s still alive.” Tears brimmed at her eyes.

Logan pulled her to his chest and stroked his hand over her head. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”

She looked up at him. “It was a warehouse, I think. Red brick. He was staring at something. At a wall. It looked like something was carved into it, but I couldn’t make it out. It was too dark. But I saw the dagger at his belt. He was waiting. I think he was waiting for me. For us. As if he knew where we would go.”

Because Manus did know. He’d figured it out. He’d put two and two together and deducted that Logan would go to a portal to disappear with Winter. And at one such portal, Manus was now lying in wait. And Logan had to figure out which one, and whether any of his other compound mates were guarding the other portals. Luckily, he knew there were too many portals within a fifty mile radius of Philadelphia for his fellow guardians to guard them all. They would have to make an educated guess where Logan would appear, and that’s all it would be, a guess. Because they couldn’t rely on transit cameras to find him and Winter, nor on credit card charges. Logan had made sure of that.

“You’ve done well,” he said to Winter.

“Well? But he’s chasing us.”