And with that, he disconnected the call and slid the phone across the table back to Mischa. “So?” she asked.
He rolled his head around on his shoulders a few times before sighing, and saying (in the most world-weary voice Mischa had ever heard), “You have 48 hours. Wrap up your case by the close of the competition, one way or the other. Then I take over.”
She smiled and started to thank him, but he interrupted her with, “Don’t even fucking say it. If anyone was paying a damn bit of attention to what we do in this unit, I wouldn’t be able to do a fucking thing to help you. And trust me when I say I’d rather not be helping you, Mischa. So don’t you fucking dare thank me.”
And with that, he shoved them both out the door, slamming it shut behind them.
Feeling pretty pleased with herself, she smiled up at Hunter. “So, feeling like helping me solve this thing?”
He chuckled. “I’m assuming that if I say no you’ll sic Harper on me?”
She raised a brow at him. “If Harper hadn’t gotten the job done, I was calling Tina.”
He shuddered, then shook his head, smiling. “Remind me never to piss you off.” Offering her his arm, he added, “Shall we, friend?”
Mischa took his arm and ignored the sour feeling in her gut she experienced at the word friend. Sucking up her feelings and ignoring her instinct to tell him that he was, in no uncertain terms, hers in a very not-just-friends kind of way, she gave him a cheery, “We shall.”
Chapter Twenty-One
By the time they got back to the convention hall, the police and a majority of the contestants had left. The janitorial staff was hard at work, fixing the damage the gunman and horde of stampeding humans had left in their wake.
Hunter was immediately asked to help with the cleanup, and agreed (somewhat reluctantly, and only after a lengthy debate) to let her snoop around backstage on her own.
Mischa walked past a janitor on her way to the backstage area and nearly blacked out as the smell of ammonia, dirty mop water, and—oddly enough—flowers assailed her nostrils. She shook her head. Why on earth did cleaners try to hide unpleasant odors with floral scents?
She found Tina patting a sobbing Miss Utah’s shoulder soothingly, handing her tissues. The poor sobbing girl didn’t notice that the seemingly endless supply of tissues was coming from Tina’s bra. Mischa shuddered.
“Are you all right, dear?” Tina asked as she approached, concern clear in her expression, even as her voice remained completely calm.
“I’m fine,” she murmured. She gestured to Emily, who honked despondently into her tissue. “What’s going on here?”
Emily let out a keening cry that made Mischa cringe. “This is all my fault!” she wailed.
Mischa turned her attention back to Tina as Emily continued to sob. She raised her hands in the universal what-the-hell gesture.
Tina handed Emily another bra tissue and said quietly, “A few years ago, when she was still human, Emily had a stalker. He quit bothering her when she was in a car crash and someone on the scene changed her into a vampire. She assumed it was all over. Until today.”
Mischa knelt down so that she was eye-level with Emily. “What did your stalker do to you, Emily?”
She sniffled, her big green eyes looking confused. “To me? Oh, he didn’t do anything to me.”
Mischa was beyond tired. She’d had to prance around in a too-small swimsuit in front of a studio audience. She’d had to argue with—and threaten—the cops to keep her case moving. She’d watched Riddick dig a bullet out of Hunter’s back—a bullet that had been meant for her. She really, really lacked the patience necessary to deal with this sobbing, emotional wreck of a vampire.
Tina picked up on her impatience (and, if she was being totally honest, her desire to throttle poor, hysterical Emily) and said, “Her stalker sent her notes and flowers. Let her know he was watching and was ready to help her,” she made finger quotes on help, “get everything she wanted in life.”
Emily sniffled again. “In the beginning, it was really kind of sweet, you know? It was kind of nice knowing that someone…loved me and wanted to watch over me.”
Sure, ‘cause nothing said “sweet” like a stranger watching you from afar. Mischa barely refrained from rolling her eyes. “I’m guessing his idea of ‘helping’ wasn’t real helpful?”
“No, it totally was,” she said, lip trembling. Mischa braced herself for another wail, but Emily pulled herself together, adding, “Just not for anyone but me.”
Tina patted her shoulder again. “When Emily was graduating high school, she missed being valedictorian by a smidge, maybe a fraction of a grade point.”
“Fucking home-ec,” Emily muttered.
Mischa pinched the bridge of her nose, silently reaching deep for any trace of patience she might have left.
“On graduation day,” Tina went on, “the valedictorian had an…accident. She broke her leg and Emily got to deliver her speech after all.”
The look on Tina’s face made it clear that the Valedictorian’s accident hadn’t been quite as accidental as it could’ve been. “The stalker pushed her?”
Emily nodded. “He sent me a note with some flowers saying how great my speech had been, and that he was glad he’d ‘taken care of’ everything to make sure I got to deliver it.”
“Did you go to the police?” Mischa asked.
Emily didn’t look her in the eye as she twirled her long red curls around her finger and said, “No. I was kind of…glad he’d done it. Jessica was a horrible girl! She’d been picking on me since elementary school. Made everyone call me ‘Giraffe.’ It was humiliating!”
Mischa had been called “Midget” in elementary school, so “Giraffe” didn’t seem too bad, in her opinion. And Emily did have really long, skinny legs and a long, slender neck, which gave her a distinctly giraffe-like appearance...
Mischa gave herself a sharp mental slap to get back on track. “What happened after that, Emily?”
“I started getting into pageants after that.”
Emily went on to tell stories of girls who’d been performing better than her in various pageants, only to mysteriously end up skipping town in the middle of the night, or to get disqualified when events from their pasts that no one could possible know came to light. Emily eventually won every pageant she ever entered, which brought them full circle.
The urge to throttle the girl grew. “And you never told the police?” Mischa practically shouted.
Emily cringed away from the anger in her tone. “No one died! He was just giving me an advantage.” Her chin came up a bit. “I never had an advantage before.”
Foster care, Mischa knew immediately. In the barrio where she’d grown up, foster care kids all had the same hurt, deep and dark, in their eyes. Emily had the look of a former foster care kid.
Mischa felt her first twinge of sympathy for Emily. Hadn’t she, after all, taken the “advantage” Sentry had offered her? And she’d walked away from her family without a second thought. Could she honestly say that she wouldn’t have kept a secret admirer (or, avenger, as the case may be) to herself?
Emily dabbed at her melting mascara. “It all stopped after my car accident, anyway. Once I was a vampire, I guess my stalker decided I didn’t need any other advantages.” She looked contrite as she muttered, “Until now.”
“And you didn’t say anything to the cops tonight, either?”
Emily looked a little defensive this time. “I was scared, OK? I’m still not entirely sure why I told Tina. I just…had to.”
Tina had the grace to look a little contrite. She must’ve felt that Emily was holding something back and used her powers to push her into confessing. Bless her intrusive heart.
“Emily, honey,” Tina said, “the former Miss New York and Miss New Jersey…do you know what happened to them?”
She looked positively miserable. “No. I didn’t really think anything of them dropping out—I mean, the guy hasn’t contacted me since my acciden
t—but then…I got these.”
Emily gestured behind her, and in an expensive-looking glass bowl full of water, Mischa saw two fragrant white flowers floating lazily. They were huge and delicate looking, with dainty, spiky bases. She’d never seen anything like them.
“It’s what he’s always sent me,” Emily whispered. “I looked it up one time. They’re Kadupul flowers. Super rare. They only grow in some forest in Sri Lanka. They bloom at midnight and die at dawn.”
Much like a vampire, Mischa thought, more creeped out by Emily’s stalker than ever before. Had he planned her car accident? Did he always intend to make her a vampire so that he could be with his rare and beautiful flower forever?
Metaphor flowers. Now she’d seen it all.
“When did you get these?” Tina asked.
“They weren’t here before the swimsuit competition. But when I came back to grab my stuff after the shooting, after I talked to the cops, they were here.”
“Note?” Mischa asked.
Emily handed a tiny scrap of heavy, cream-colored card stock over to Mischa, who immediately gripped it by only the corners—you never know, maybe the dude was dumb enough to leave prints. Three words were printed on the card in some kind of elaborate, script-y font.
Soon, my love.
Great, Mischa thought. He was escalating. Her psych training at Sentry had taught her that stalkers weren’t usually willing to stay in the background for long. They tended to step up their attentions when they felt the object of their fixation was slipping away from them. Maybe this guy felt that once Emily won Miss Eternity, she’d be beyond his reach unless he made a major move.
“Doesn’t explain why he shot at me, though,” Mischa murmured.
Tina shot her an incredulous look and snorted. “Duh. You were winning!”
Emily nodded emphatically when Mischa looked skeptical. “Oh, it’s true. I sneaked a peek at the judges’ scorecards while they were talking to the cops, and you were in the lead by several points.” She sighed wistfully. “Your swimsuit was awesome. Saul obviously liked you the best.”
If being his favorite meant getting groped and having to wear nothing but shoelaces and glitter onstage, she’d rather be at the bottom of his pervy little wish list.
Mischa turned to Tina. “You didn’t mention any of this to Lucas, did you?”
She shook her head. “Harper told me not to for two days. Plus, I could tell he was just dying to pull you from the competition, so I thought keeping quiet for the moment was a better way to go.”
Tina Petrocelli was a lot of things. Dumb wasn’t one of them.
“I’m going to have Benny and Leon check on a few things. Will you stay with Emily for the rest of the night? In case this guy decides to make contact?”
She made a mental note to ask Lucas to put extra patrols on Tina’s house. No telling what Harper would do if she found out Mischa had put her mom in harm’s way.
“Sure thing.” Tina grabbed Emily’s hand. “My darling,” she said with enthusiasm, “you are coming home with me tonight. I make a mean Bloody Juan. And my son, Michael—he’s single and just started medical school if you can believe that—will just love you.”
Emily looked confused, but seemed as enticed by the idea of pig’s blood and tequila as she was by the idea of a single med student. “OK,” she said with a shrug and a little smile.
Mischa watched them go, shaking her head.
Emily had no way of knowing it, but when faced with choosing between a creepy stalker and a night with Tina Petrocelli, most people would take their chances with the stalker.
Chapter Twenty-Two
After stopping by his apartment to grab a change of clothes, Hunter drove Mischa back to her place. He told her it wasn’t safe for her to be alone, in case Emily’s stalker decided to take another shot at her. And that was the truth. But also…
He’d come too close to losing her—again—to not be with her now. Even if all he did was watch over her while she slept, it was necessary. He couldn’t explain it.
Just another symptom of how far gone he was over this woman. Always had been.
He was starting to not see it as pathetic, though. It just…was.
Looking around, he decided that if he had only her apartment to go by, he’d guess that nothing had changed over the past year. Cool, neutral tones on the walls, books neatly lined up on the shelves by her fireplace—arranged alphabetically, of course. Sleek, modern furniture. Nothing frivolous or personal scattered about. Not a single throw pillow or knick-knack out of place.
It was the exact opposite of the chaotic Crayola explosion Harper lived in. Mischa’s space was all about precision, function, and order.
His heart clenched at the thought of how painful it must be for her to have her neat, orderly life in such upheaval.
Hunter sighed and forced himself to sit on the couch.
Don’t snoop around her apartment like a damn stalker, dumbass.
Mischa emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, hair wet and tumbling over her shoulders in loose waves, legs peeking out from beneath a knee-length gray T-shirt. His, he recognized immediately. The one she must’ve worn home after their last night together.
He ignored the sudden tightening in his chest. He’d been a complete idiot to leave her, alone, in his bed.
Her eyes moved over his torso, reminding him he’d thrown his torn and bloody shirt away after his shower and hadn’t bothered putting another one on yet.
“You look…” she swallowed hard, “…really good.” She hastened to add, “The bullet wound is almost gone, I mean.”
And you look like my every fantasy made real.
He wanted her so badly. To feel her soft skin against his. To hear her whisper his name as he slid into her. Deep, deep into her…
“Can we…talk?”
Talk? Was he still capable of that when she this close to him, half-naked? He wasn’t sure, but he nodded.
She sat down next to him with her legs tucked up underneath her. When her eyes met his, he felt the usual invisible string that seemed to bind them together tighten, urging him to lean toward her. He caught himself before he could do something stupid. Like see how quickly he could get her clothes off and coax her into making the same throaty, breathless sounds she’d made the last time they made love.
He closed his eyes, calling himself a thousand kinds of fool. Weak. That’s what he was. Weak.
She sighed. “I have so many problems, Hunter. I’m a complete mess.”
Welcome to the club. “It’s to be expected. The transition from human to vampire is difficult.” Or so he’d heard. He was so damn old he couldn’t remember his.
“It’s not even all about the transition.” She paused, looking embarrassed. “Vi says my instincts are all wrong. She convinced me that I need to do the opposite of what my instincts tell me to do so that I can reprogram myself to not be so…twisted anymore.”
He frowned, not liking that word at all. “You’re not twisted.”
You’re beautiful and strong and smart, and the only thing I ever really wanted in this world.
Her little self-deprecating smile made the tightening in his chest exponentially worse. “It’s nice of you to say that, but Vi’s right. I’m a runner.”
Well, at least you’re not Pepé Le Pew. “What’s your instinct telling you to do now?”
“Run. Leave you alone. Do anything but try and apologize again…or tell you how I feel right now.”
That sounded horrible. He opened his mouth to tell her so, but she cut him off with, “So, here it goes.”
And with that, she straddled him, tightening her thighs around his hips, locking her fingers behind his neck.
His hands went automatically to her hips, fingers tightening, digging into smooth, soft flesh. This couldn’t happen again, he thought. At least not until they’d had an actual conversation. Gotten a few things straight. But…
God, she was perfection in his arms. All warm, soft curv
es and sweet-smelling skin.
But sweet-smelling perfection aside, it was ultimately the vulnerability in her eyes that destroyed every argument he’d ever had for pushing her away. She never let anyone see this side of her, and it’s what made him fall for her in the first place all those years ago.
She was different now, but…not. And he loved her as much now as he ever had. Maybe more.
His life had been hell over the past months, and if it didn’t work out with them this time…he didn’t really want to think about where he’d be.
So, he supposed it was time for that conversation they should’ve had months ago. “What are you—”
“I’ve asked pretty much everyone for advice on how to talk to you, how to make things right between us.”
In the distant recesses of his brain it made him sad that she had to ask for advice about how to talk to him, but with her straddling him and only a few layers of cotton and denim between them, he wasn’t sure his brain was in any condition to feel any particular way about…anything, really.
“And what did everyone tell you to do?” he asked, surprised he actually managed to sound so coherent.
She watched him through lowered lashes and licked her lips. “Well, Harper said I should bend you to my will. Force you to listen, then take what I want.”
“So, loot and pillage, huh?” That seemed perfectly Harper-esque. “Not a terrible plan.”
She laughed, which made her braless breasts jiggle, throwing off his concentration once again. “Unless the person you’re trying to pillage is much, much stronger than you.”
You might be surprised. He certainly wasn’t feeling very strong at the moment.
“Benny’s advice was the simplest.”
How could it be anything but? “And what did Benny advise you to do?”
Mischa bit her lip, looking embarrassed. “Show you my boobs.”
Harper Hall Investigations Complete Series Page 53
