Archer's Lady: Bloodhounds, Book 3 Read Online Free PDF Page B

fight.” Besides, they couldn’t know about her, or they’d have torn the fucking town apart in a fiery rain of death to get their undead hands on her. “Would they want you this bad?”
    “No.” It didn’t sound like a lie. She opened her eyes and met his gaze, her expression bewildered. “I angered men, not vampires. More than one, and a few with connections, but there would have been easier ways to get to me.”
    That left bait, which was unlikely. “Then the answer has to be here,” he murmured, indicating the stack of papers and ledgers. “There’s someone or something here they want.”
    Grace dropped her hand to her side, where her fingertips brushed his wrist in the lightest caress. “You’re so sure they’re not simply after entertainment?”
    “I’m pretty sure, sweetheart.” Archer turned his hand and wrapped his fingers around hers.
    She exhaled slowly and clutched at his hand. “It shouldn’t make me feel better. I’m sure they’d hardly be gentle, torturing me for information. But I suppose it’s a different sort of fear.”
    “If you don’t know what they want or why, you can’t begin to fight them.”
    “Of course.” The words straightened her spine, and she slipped her hand free of his and reached for the papers. “Who would you like to look at first? Those still alive? Or everyone, in case they don’t realize who has fled and who remains?”
    “The living,” he answered immediately. “Then the rest, and we’ll see.”
    She eased the stack of papers toward her and flipped through three pages before handing him the first one. “Farmers,” she offered, adding the next two to the stack clutched in her hand. “They take them when it’s convenient, but they seem more interested in the townsfolk.”
    He set aside the papers she’d handed him. “Give me the files on the people they are interested in, Grace.”
    “I’m looking,” she replied, her voice tight. “They’re scattered in with the dead, and there are more of those than I remembered.”
    Archer closed his eyes. This was his job, but it was her town, her community, that had been torn apart. “I’m sorry. Give them to me. Maybe something will jump out.”
    Pride stiffened her shoulders as she continued to flip through the pages, moving only a small percentage to the meager stack in front of him. “I’ll give you those who fled too. Some were rich. They could have had something of value, or some personal or political importance I don’t recognize.”
    It felt wrong somehow, the notion that such scattered, messy attacks could have such a precise—no, impersonal focus.
    Which brought him back around to the one thing vampires and their ghouls universally hated. “Is there a file on Diana?”
    “I don’t—” Grace frowned and dropped the heavy pile of the dead on top of the safe. “Most often, families are grouped together,” she said as her fingers began to sort back through the stack. “I believe she’s… Yes, here she is. With Doc.”
    He took them, along with a moment to explain. “Maybe they do know about her. And if it’s revenge they’re after instead of death, there isn’t much that would hurt your average hound more than watching everyone fall. Especially the people she was supposed to protect.”
    “I see.” Grace looked away, her gaze falling on the files numbering the dead. “It’s hard to watch, even if there’s no good reason you should be able to protect them.”
    He could take the papers and pore over them later. For now, he rose and touched her arm. “Grace.”
    She shivered. “I’m not a sentimental woman. I don’t require comfort.”
    He caught her chin and lifted her gaze to his. “You’re lying to me again.”
    She jerked away from his grip and turned her back on him. “If you want a sweet little country schoolteacher to collapse in your arms and sob her foolish eyes out, you’ll find me a grave disappointment.”
    He squashed the flash of irritation that rose. “I