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“He set a fire?”
“Yes. ” He didn’t see any need to burden her with where.
“We’ve got to call the fire department. ”
She pushed herself up and he released her, sorry to have to let her go. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Thanks to you. ” She picked up his phone and pressed 911. “Is there a return policy on these visions I accidentally stole from you because I would happily give them back?”
“I may be able to free you of them. That’s what I was trying to do when I inadvertently started to control you. ”
She threw him a wary look that said she didn’t understand what he was talking about and wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
But her sigh was one of exhaustion. “As soon as we get back to your place, you have my permission to muck around in my head all you want. Just get me free of these things. ”
“You got it. ”
As she called in the fire, he found the building and pulled up in front. Sure enough, smoke was already beginning to curl from one of the open windows.
Tighe tossed Delaney the car keys. “Wait for me. ”
“Yeah, right. ”
As he opened his door, she jumped out, pulling the gun he’d seen her take from the cop, as she ran for the building. Hell. Tighe raced after her. There was no way he was going to be able to talk her into staying outside. Any more than she’d talk him into it.
He pushed past the frightened residents rushing out the front door, following Delaney, who was threading her way through the crowd. He forced his way in and was heading for the stairs when he heard Hawke call, “Stripes!” The lean, dark-haired warrior crossed the foyer to his side.
“You catch him?” Tighe asked.
“No. No sign of him anywhere. Neither of us can sense him. Either he’s fled the scene, or he’s lost his draden smell. ”
“The latter. The son of a bitch set that fire just to create fear so he can feed off it. No way would he leave now. He’s here somewhere, feasting on the terror.
Hawke nodded. “That explains it, then. Kougar found the apartment and said it was the source of the fire. ”
“What about the woman?”
“There was no one alive in there. ”
Crap. “Find Kougar and cover the exits. I’m going to try to flush him out. Delaney’s with me. ”
Hawke lifted a brow but said nothing.
Tighe started up the open stairs, pushing past frantic residents. Children cried. People shouted, calling for one another. As he breached the throng on the landing and started up the second flight, he saw the woman from the vision and felt a quick, sharp empathy for her and relief that she, at least, had survived. Another woman had her arms around her hunched shoulders as she cradled both arms against her body.
Fury stirred at her unnecessary suffering.
The woman looked up, her eyes dazed until they landed on him. Stark terror flared in her eyes as a strangled scream wobbled from her throat.
The sight of terror directed at him from a woman’s eyes slammed him with memory, igniting his fury. Gretchen, you should have known.
Deep inside him, the chaos leaped, wrenching him back to the present.
No. I can’t go feral. Not here. Not now.
Tighe tore his gaze away from the woman’s terrified face as he pushed as far to the right as he could. Keeping others between them, he ran past her and up the stairs. But he was losing the battle, that inner rage riding him, clamoring to be set free.
His fingers began to tingle. His teeth ached.
No! He wouldn’t lose it. Not when he was so close to finding his clone. Not with Delaney here.
He pushed through the crowd in a growing panic as his claws slowly unsheathed. He couldn’t lose it here. He couldn’t lose it here.
At the top of the stairs, he saw an open doorway and dove through. With his last ounce of free will, he no longer fought the imminent change, but rode it through the feral, straight to the tiger as he shifted into his animal.
Only in his animal form could he call for help, unless one of his friends had already shifted.
With a surge of relief and joy, the change swept over him, and he raised his beast’s head to the ceiling and let out one long, rumbling growl.
To his surprise, the storm inside him began to abate. He apparently had better control in his tiger form than his human. Until a woman’s scream had him swinging toward the open door. A woman stared at him in horror, as a man grabbed her shoulders and pushed her past.
Wildness clawed at his control all over again. Fury leaping to be set free.
They’re running from a tiger, his logical mind roared. Any sane human would be terrified.
In his animal form, he managed what he hadn’t been able to in his human form and slowly beat back the chaos. Before he shifted back to human, he took advantage of his tiger’s ability to scent draden. But he smelled nothing but humans. And smoke.
He called to his friends. Any sign of him?
None. Hawke’s voice. We’ve got the exits covered as best we can with only two of us.
Good. Delaney’s in here somewhere. I’m going to try to send her out. Keep an eye on her. Do not let Kougar near her.
I’ll do my best.
Tighe shifted back into his human form, then ran into the hall to search for Delaney. If she had to face that clone again, she was doing it with him at her side.
Chapter Ten
Delaney stumbled down the hallway from apartment 331, her lungs sore and burning from coughing. Her nostrils fried from the stench of burning flesh. Her heart aching. Dear God, he’d burned the children.
In the hallway, the air was quickly filling with smoke. Even if Tighe’s twin were here, she wasn’t sure she’d see him.
A figure appeared at the top of the stairs. Her heart lurched at the familiar sight. Tighe or the killer? But the angel wings in her head fluttered with pleasure, and she knew it was Tighe. But at the sight of him, at the thought of what she’d just done, her stomach spasmed with guilt. She’d just gotten off the phone with Phil. FBI SWAT was on its way.
“Did you…find him?” she asked, coughing.
“No. ” He quickly closed the distance between them, his hands going to her shoulders. “Get outside, brown eyes. You need some fresh air. ”
“We’ve got to find him. ”
“We do. My men are watching the back of the apartment. I need you to cover the front while I flush him out. ”
She wasn’t ready to leave, yet. SWAT or no SWAT, this was her investigation, dammit, but she was coughing badly. And Tighe was barely coughing at all. The smoke hardly seemed to be getting to him. Maybe she should leave him to root out his twin while she sought out fresh air. She’d heard and felt his reactions during this latest attack. There was no doubt in her mind he’d been as horrified by his twin’s savageness as she was. God knew, he should be, but the certainty that he had been only confirmed those instincts of hers that kept insisting he was a good man. A good man who would almost certainly get caught and hauled in for questioning once SWAT arrived. Unless she warned him.
She coughed harder, her eyes and throat burning from the smoke. But warning him went against everything she believed in as an FBI agent.
Tighe gave her a gentle push toward the stairs. “Go watch the front, Delaney. Get out of here before I have to carry you out. ”
Coughing too hard even to answer him, she nodded and turned away. He needed to be taken in for questioning. Whatever else Tighe was, he was dangerous. And involved up to his well-muscled shoulders in this case, her case. At the very least, he’d kidnapped and drugged a federal agent. Honest, everyday citizens didn’t do things like that. They didn’t have access to weapons like mind-control drugs.
He had to be apprehended. She knew that. Yet there was a part of her that felt like she’d betrayed him.
Thank God she w
asn’t weak enough to listen.
Tighe systematically broke down one door after another on the floor where the fire started, searching for the clone and finding nothing. Not even any people. At least the humans were smart enough to flee. He was all too afraid his clone was way too smart now to wait for Tighe. Why fight when he could slip away unnoticed?
Frustration ate at Tighe’s nerves, and he pushed it back. He couldn’t afford to shift again. Not when the firefighters would be here any moment and he still hadn’t found his quarry.
When he’d gone through every apartment on the third floor, he started down the stairs to search the second. A heavyset woman with a cane was struggling to climb up. Under her breath, she was crying, “My baby, my baby. ”
The smoke was already thick on the third floor. She had no business going up there. He told himself it wasn’t his business. He told himself he didn’t care.
“Ma’am, you need to go downstairs. The fire’s spreading and the firefighters are going to need to get through. ”
She turned a tear-streaked face to him, desperation in her eyes. “My baby’s up there. I left her alone for just a few minutes. She can’t get out the door. She’s only three. ”
Three. He remembered Amalie at that age. So demanding and bossy for such a tiny thing, yet he’d gladly been her slave and lackey. He’d have done anything for the daughter he’d loved more than his own life. Anything.
The woman pushed herself onto the next highest step. “She’s crying for her mama. I know she’s crying. I’ve got to get her. ”
He told himself they were humans. He didn’t care.
“Which apartment?”
“Four thirty-one. ”
Hell. She was directly above the fire. It might already be too late. “Go down. Hurry. I’ll get her. ”
“Wait! The key. ”
She handed him her apartment key and Tighe palmed it, then turned and ran. Three years old.
Amalie. Her face swam in his mind’s eye as he’d last seen her. Crying, her face streaked with tears as her small arms reached for him, clawing the arms that bound her in her desperation to get back to him.
And he’d turned away.
Ah, goddess. Amalie.
They were so tiny at that age. So fragile. How long could small, mortal lungs breathe such smoke? How long before the fire burned through the floor and sent this child tumbling into the flames?
She needed him.
How many times had Amalie needed him? How many times had she cried out for him, and he wasn’t there to hear her?
How many times?
Delaney watched the chaos in helpless frustration. What if Tighe doesn’t give himself up when the FBI arrives? What if they shoot him?
A bloodcurdling scream went up to her left, and she feared her worries were coming all too true as she quickly sought its source. Her gaze found the one screaming, a woman holding badly misshapen arms against her body. Delaney followed the woman’s line of sight and froze.
The woman was staring at Tighe. Except…he wasn’t Tighe. He was dressed in the same navy blue shirt and too-short khakis she’d seen him in when he attacked her in the laundry room. And he wasn’t wearing shades. Even from this distance she could feel the coldness in him that brought back nightmarish memories of the attack. A cold that was not Tighe’s.
Goose bumps lifted on her flesh. There were two of them. Just as Tighe had said. And she was staring at the murderer. Hatred curled in her gut as she pulled her weapon and started running. The killer looked up as she came toward him. He was near the corner of the apartment building, standing among more than a dozen agitated residents waiting for the fire trucks.
“FBI!” she choked out, coughing. “Freeze!”
He ducked behind the other residents, and she lost sight of him. Blast it.
The guy was not getting away this time. If she had to empty the chamber in his head to stop him, she’d do it.
But when she reached the group, he wasn’t there. And there was no way a man his and Tighe’s size could easily hide. She took off around the corner, but could see no sign of him, so she kept running. By the time she was three-quarters of the way around the apartment complex, her lungs felt like they’d been rubbed raw with gravel.
She doubled over, coughing, desperately trying to catch her breath. She’d lost him. How in the world had she lost a man who had to be over six-six? Did he go back inside? Or was he long gone by now?
Pushing herself to keep going, she rounded the corner to find the street clogging with fire trucks, police cars, and two SWAT vans.
The gang’s all here.
Except Tighe’s twin had almost certainly escaped. Tighe was the only one they’d get. But he had to be apprehended. They had to figure out who he was, who he worked for, and what he knew.
She knew that, accepted it. She was an FBI agent, first and foremost. Her loyalty was to the Bureau alone.
But she couldn’t help feeling the sick guilt of betrayal.
Tighe raced down the smoky hallway, alive with the screech of smoke alarms, to apartment 431. Inserting the key, he pushed open the door to the sound of a child’s coughing and crying.
“Come, little one,” he called softly in a voice he’d once reserved for Amalie alone. “I’ll take you to your mother. ”
A small shape flew across the floor to him and he swept her into his arms. Not Amalie. Black hair, not blond. Dark skin, not pale. Not Amalie.
But as her small arms wrapped around his neck he was swamped by memories of sweetness and loss. Not in six hundred years had he held a child in his arms.
Cradling the small, coughing body against him, he ran for the stairs as pain that he’d thought long buried swept over him in a blinding torrent.
He barely noticed the stairwell flying past until he heard a woman’s glad cry echoing from below.
“Jensie! Baby!”
The little girl stirred in his arms and began to cry. “Momma. ” Her cry dissolved into a fit of coughing.
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