Read Online His Witch To Keep (Keepers of the Veil) by Zoe Forward - Free Book Online Page B

reapers weren’t allowed to be close to one woman.

    “W here are they supposed to be?” Eli asked as he eased out of the passenger seat one level below the designated meeting point and adjusted his ball cap.
    “Somewhere near the elevator.” This whole thing stank of a setup. But this was about Liz. God, how many times had she said that to herself in the past few hours? Too many. She blew out a shaky breath.
    He adjusted the Kevlar vest beneath his dark shirt and bent awkwardly to lean into the car. “I’ll be there. I’ll have my gun on them the whole time. If they twitch, I’ll kill. Drive slowly so I can get up there.”
    “Okay.” She pushed the edge of her Kevlar vest away from her stomach where its seam cut deeply. She hated these things. Eli was good, but she wished she’d swallowed her pride and phoned Alexi. She needed his kind of badass precision to emerge from this unscathed. Actually, Alexi probably would’ve said hell no to the whole thing. Right now, she agreed. She never liked missions that involved her playing chicken with a loaded gun. Slowly she wove up to level four.
    She parked but paused before she headed toward the halted white workers’ minivan.
    A dark-skinned man in sunglasses stepped out of the van’s driver’s seat.
    This is for Liz , she pep talked herself. She stepped out of the car and slung the backpack over one shoulder. Showtime.
    “Where’s Liz?” she demanded of the van’s driver. She couldn’t read jack shit through the guy’s dark sunglasses, other than his compressed lips.
    With a light accent she couldn’t place, he replied, “Where’s the hardware you acquired yesterday?”
    “I said I’d only exchange it for her.”
    “The situation has…changed.” His sinister half smile shot an oh, shit through her stomach. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about the computer. Or Liz.
    Going on instinct she sidestepped left. A bullet hit the concrete wall behind her in perfect alignment with her used-to-be-located head. She gasped and stumbled when a bullet ripped into her arm. The backpack flew off her shoulder and thudded somewhere behind her.
    The man fell backward from the impact of bullets.
    Eli tackled her and grunted. His body shuddered as if…oh, God. Bullets were slamming into him. Please let them hit his vest only. Her head cracked against the concrete, heartbeat thudding like a drum in her brain as her mind struggled to get back online.
    Two hundred fifty–plus pounds of solid male crushed her. Breathing became her focus.
    Gunfire echoed in the distance. Who fired? Then silence. Seconds later a car squealed upward from a lower level.
    She had to move. She’d rather die standing up than trapped underneath a likely dead man. He might be dead…no. He wasn’t gone. Stop it. Get back in the game. “Eli? You with me? Come on. Be with me.”
    Nothing.
    She held her breath. He couldn’t die. She wouldn’t let it be her fault that he’d died. Finally, she detected the faint rise and fall of his chest. She pushed at him. “Wake up.”
    He didn’t budge.
    She swung into survival mode. Someone was coming for her. For them. She pushed harder on him. “Get off me. Eli?”
    He didn’t budge.
    She could shift both of them to her alternate dimension, but for some reason she feared his survival if she did. Shifting a person who wasn’t her destined was risky. Then why hadn’t she hesitated to take Alexi with her? Maybe because she’d inadvertently bonded him. Shit. Get focused.
    Someone approached.
    Eli’s weight disappeared. She went invisible and rolled.
    Awkwardly she stood but stumbled against vertigo until her back rested against the concrete wall next to the elevator. She gripped her gun, concentrating on her surroundings. Eli wasn’t on the ground or anywhere visible.
    Alexi took her breath away with his sheer beauty as he strode toward her, as if power personified. She couldn’t stop how her body swayed toward him. Her vision blurred, and she feared