Page 73 of Shadow Hunter

“Jace McCannon,” Tiffany read from the hunter’s statistics. She bit her lower lip. “He is one fine piece of—”

Damon hit power-off on the monitor, the men’s faces were gone in a second.

Tiffany hmphed, but a small grin crossed her face. “Jealous, much?”

Damn right he was jealous. He was jealous of any man she found attractive, and he would shove his fist straight down the throat of anyone, hunter or otherwise, who made a move on her.

“We’d better prepare for the raid,” he said.

He stood to leave. Before the other hunters arrived, she needed to arrange the meet-up with the vampires, and he needed to prep his weapons. Preparing their plan of entry would have to wait until she led them to the location via the tracking device.

She crossed her arms over her chest and smiled. “If it’s any consolation, I think you’re sexier than all of them. You’ve got the whole tortured soul thing going on. It’s in your eyes. Women love that.” Without another word, she brushed past him and walked out of the control room.

He raised a single brow.Tortured soul?

16

After mulling over the plan with Tiffany, Damon stood in his room, prepping his weapons bag while Tiffany was downstairs, preparing to make her call.

Everything was planned to the full extent it could be. The incoming hunters would provide the tracking device for Tiffany to wear. His contact in the police department had ensured that word of Caius and Carl’s deaths and the abandoned and—much to Tiffany’s chagrin—now impounded Bugatti was never released to the press, and somehow the mess at the restaurant had been entirely hushed up by Headquarters. Without evidence of Caius and Carl’s deaths, the other vamps would be confused as to their sudden absence. Everyone knew of Caius’s obsession with Tiffany, and luckily, it gave her a higher standing in the hierarchy. She was going to request a private meeting with the coven to discuss his disappearance. She’d prepped to play the role of the grieving, overly attached human.

Once she met up with her contact, she would be escorted to the coven’s meeting location. Damon and the other hunters would monitor her movements from a safe distance and follow her to the location. Damon had instructed her to play it coolonce she was inside and not draw too much attention to herself. Caius’s subordinates would undoubtedly engage in a power struggle if they assumed he was dead. She needed to encourage them in the direction of declaring him missing, instead. Ideally, she would also find out who was behind the zombie virus.

While Tiffany distracted the vamps, the tech specialists would map a layout of the building and use a high-powered heat sensor to detect where all the beings in the residence resided. It was Damon’s job to make the call on when to enter and to direct their routes of entry.

Tiffany promised him that once the hunters were inside, she would seek safety in the van with the tech team.

The hunters’ objective was simple: annihilate as many vamps as possible, particularly the ones showing any signs of viral infection. With luck, all the Rochester vamps would be in attendance, including the bloodsucker orchestrating the spread of the disease.

No matter what, they hoped to effectively control the situation by destroying the source of infection, even if they were unable to identify him, which would free Damon to hunt down any remaining infected vamps—should there be any left—as quickly as possible.

He finished tucking his weapons into place, with one last piece to go. With care, he removed a long black case from the top shelf of his weapons closet and laid it across his bed. Damn, it had been a long time since he’d opened this thing.

He unhooked the latches and opened the lid to reveal his father’s pure silver slaying sword. The sword had passed through the last ten generations of Damon’s family, a treasured possession even before the Execution Underground’s formation, uniting freelancing hunters who were newly settled in the Americas into one central group, a group which would later become international. The beautifully crafted piece of weaponryhad served his ancestors in slaying thousands of vampires over the years, and now he intended to use it for the very first time.

He strapped the custom scabbard on his back and slipped the sword in. Assessing his mental check list, he made certain he’d prepared. He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes before the Sergeant’s chosen hunters arrived.

He grabbed his jacket from the bed, felt something in a pocket and realized what it was. Tiffany’s letters.

A tight feeling constricted his chest.

Before he could change his mind, he snatched the letters from the pocket and opened the single envelope holding them.

Tiffany was right. He needed to know.

He had ten minutes. He sat down on his bed and opened the pages. The first letter was dated three weeks after Mark’s death.

Dear B,

Your letters are piling up. I’ve received one every day for a week now. I haven’t read a single one.

Damon stopped breathing.Deep down, he wasn’t surprised she’d never read them, but it still hurt.

But she had read his letters now. One, anyway.Theletter.

He flipped to the next.

Dear B,

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