There was a click in the darkness, loud enough that the men jumped from outside the door.
"There's nowhere to go, Levi!" Kowalski called out as the jumpy one with the grenade launcher swept the weapon back and forth across the interior of the barn. Levi's hackles rose as it crossed where he was hidden, deep in the pile of furniture.
How the hell had they learned his name? Someone, somewhere had blabbed. Or someone had recognized him. He'd been found somehow, so there was a good chance that the steps he'd taken to disable Mortensen's surveillance had fallen through. If his face had been recorded, it would have taken someone with the vampire's resources a matter of hours to identify him.
If the stakes hadn't been high enough before….
"Why don't you come out now, nice and easy?" Kowalski continued. "We don't want to hurt you. We just want the knife back."
Levi swallowed the growl that rose in his throat. Mortensen wanted him dead. It was the only kind of response the bloodsucker could have, if he wanted to save face among his kind.
A small movement at the corner of Levi's eye attracted his attention. There, over the trunk of the car, the black snub end of his nine mil slid slowly upward.
If Harper was going to have any chance of hitting the guy, she was going to have to aim. And to aim, she'd have to stick her head into view. Then the thug with the grenade launcher would see her and fire, and it would all be over.
Unless the man was looking somewhere else….
Levi crouched, muscles bunching hard under hide and fur, and then he leaped, propelling himself up the tottering pile of furniture. A chair, balanced precariously, wobbled under his weight as he landed, and he slammed it down the pile as he jumped again, starting a slow avalanche of wood and upholstery behind him.
The man with the grenade launcher shouted, whirling. Levi could see his finger on the trigger even across the distance, tightening….
But the nine mil barked first, and the man fell to the ground, the launcher falling from his hands. Kowalski shouted, firing a burst of rounds wildly into the barn.
"Get in the car!" Harper's voice pierced the reverberating aftershocks of the gunfire.
He crested the top of the collapsing mountain and half-ran, half-tumbled down the other side, paws dancing on the shifting furniture. He could see her through the front windshield now, scooting over the bench seat in nothing but her bra with her keys clutched in one hand. He hit the ground with all four paws, claws biting into the dirt as he took the corner around the front of the car. He shifted as he lunged for the door handle, dragging it open and flinging himself inside.