CHAPTER FIFTEEN

P iper’s eyes flickered open, and she found the sun streaming into her hotel room. She went to lift her head and moaned.

What the hell?

Oh!

Oliver.

She sat up suddenly, recalling the hours of incredible sex, moaning further as she began to feel all the aches from her head to her toes. Yes, even her toes. But oh, God, it had been worth it.

And surprisingly, she remembered it.

Or did she?

Ugh.

She was mildly grateful Oliver had confessed to messing with her memories, but in the haze of lust he’d spun she ironically forgot to ask him exactly how he was able to make her forget.

He made me forget my own name at one point last night, but I doubt that was how he was doing it.

Damn it.

After they’d collapsed, she had felt his lips on hers and heard soft instructions to sleep. And she had. It was hard to know if it was delicious exhaustion or manipulation.

Piper flopped back down onto her pillows. “Holy shit.”

Oliver had been everything she’d dreamed of and more. She’d expected a man his size to be big, but usually they arrogantly thought the girth was enough and got lazy or didn’t know what to do with it.

Oliver did.

He knew exactly what to do with his cock.

And his mouth, his fingers, his everything.

It had become clear, very quickly, her pleasure was important to him. And what a pleasant surprise that was. Certainly a first in her world.

Piper reached for the glass of water and noticed a piece of paper under it.

Go home, Piper. Please trust me on this. I will visit you when I return and explain everything. Oli x

She let out a sigh. It wasn’t the romantic love note she’d been expecting. Not that what they’d done was make love. Far from it. Trying to get rid of her wasn’t exactly the welcome she was hoping for after what they’d shared.

Well, too bad.

She wasn’t leaving—she had a job to do, a story to break and a Pulitzer to win.

Piper decided it was best to carry on with her plans and find out what she could about Oliver and his friends and any other leads she came across. She would have to keep her wits about her, and not let that cock of his distract her.

She stretched her deliciously sore limbs.

Somehow, they were all linked. Sage, Ari, Oliver and BioZen. She just didn’t know how.

Yet.

But she would.

After a long hot shower, Piper grabbed a bagel from the breakfast buffet and climbed into an Uber.

First, she visited two of the largest BioZen facilities, asking for both Sage and Dr. Phillips. She was told the same thing: Sage no longer worked there. Dr. Phillips was not located at that venue, and they couldn’t give out his number.

Whatever.

She left her card again and sniffed around until the security people began making their way toward her.

She stopped for lunch at a café nearby and sat watching employees and eventually opened her laptop.

Sipping her ridiculously hot coffee, she scrolled through thread after thread of vampire conspiracy theories. Many of them started months ago when the news first broke about their existence.

It had been shocking at the time and for days the world was in a spin. Then the media machines had quickly worked overtime to report the news as fake. While most people had believed it was all a conspiracy—and wanted to believe that—there was a small group who thought there truly was another race of intelligent beings living amongst them.

Piper quickly noticed a couple of regular commenters stirring up trouble. She immediately picked it for what it was. Counterterrorism. People hired to post and comment with the intent to shift beliefs.

Fake news spammers in other words.

Or... were they truth news spammers?

Who knew?

It was what marketers did every day through advertising and news media.

In a world where data and knowledge was king, you had to step away from listening to those claiming to be an expert—or worse, the one source of truth—and trust your intuition.

And Piper did.

She didn’t rely on other people telling her what the truth was. She did her own research and used her intuition. She hoped it would make her a phenomenally successful journalist one day soon.

With a few more clicks she traced more credible posters who looked like they had something tangible to share.

She clicked on contact and sent several of them a message.

Now she’d wait.