What he really needed was a good case to distract himself with, but sadly, the crime rate in Monroe was practically nil at the moment. He’d been working so hard to stay away from home that he’d managed to clean up the bulk of their current case load and all their cold cases in the past few weeks. Now the place was like fucking Mayberry. He wouldn’t be surprised if Aunt Bee strolled into the station at any minute with a pie.
But it wasn’t Aunt Bee who strolled into the station right about then.
Noah Riddick strolled in like he owned the place. Well, stalked was probably a better word for it. The guy was way too intense to ever do anything as laid back as strolling. His narrowed eyes scanned the bullpen until they landed on Lucas.
Every cop in the building immediately went on high alert. Six-two, about two hundred pounds of lean muscle, wearing a black leather jacket and a don’t-fuck-with-me expression, Riddick probably looked like a drug lord or gun runner to these guys.
“Always a pleasure to see you, Riddick,” Lucas said with absolutely zero sincerity as the monosyllabic douchebag stopped in front of his desk. He jerked his head in the direction of what looked to be blood splatter on the front of Riddick’s T-shirt. “Cut yourself shaving?”
He glanced down distractedly. “Broken nose.”
And…Riddick’s nose looked fine. That was rather telling. Probably work-related. And knowing any more than that about Harper’s business was bound to irk the shit out of him, so he let it go. “To what do I owe the honor?”
Riddick’s fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, and the look of pure contempt and disgust in his eyes reminded him distinctly of the way Seven looked at him lately.
Seemed he couldn’t do anything right by the Riddick family these days.
“What the fuck did you do to my sister?” Riddick growled.
Lucas sat up straighter. “What’s wrong? Is she OK? Where is she?”
Riddick waved off his concern. “She’s with Harper at the office. She’s safe. She’s just not…happy.”
Thanks for the news flash, Ace.
Like all the slammed doors and her look of death hadn’t clued him in on her displeasure. “So, why are you here?”
“Because it’s your fault she’s unhappy.”
“Did she say that?”
His expression went flat. “Yeah, we had a long talk about each other’s feelings, hugged it out, then braided each other’s hair.”
Touché. Score one for the douchebag. “Yeah, OK, I get it. She’s not a talker. No idea where she might have picked up a trait like that. So, if she’s not talking, what makes you think this is my fault?”
Riddick raked his hands through his hair. “Look, I ask her if she’s OK, and she says, ‘I’m fine.’ I’ve been married long enough to know that when a woman says she’s fine, she means the opposite. So then I ask her if everything is OK at your place—because you know I would be overjoyed to pull her the fuck out of there and beat the shit of you—and her face gets all…scrunchy.”
Lucas lifted a brow. “Scrunchy?”
“Yeah. Scrunchy. It’s the same look Haven gets when I put her down for a nap and she’s not tired, OK? Scrunchy.”
Riddick looked beyond exasperated, and under any other circumstances, Lucas would’ve enjoyed the hell out of it. But under these circumstances? He kind of felt sorry for the guy. If the roles were reversed, he’d want to beat the shit out of the guy who made his sister unhappy, too.
Lucas sighed. “Look, I didn’t do anything to her. Vi thought maybe it would be a good thing if we didn’t get too…attached to one another. So, I told her we needed some space.”
The pause on Riddick’s end was so long Lucas thought maybe the conversation was over. But then Riddick did something Lucas had only ever seen him do in Harper’s presence.
He smiled.
“Well, shit,” Riddick eventually said, maintaining his huge, irritating-as-fuck grin, “I guess there’s no need to worry about her wanting anything to do with you anytime soon. Especially since you just told her she was clingy and pathetic.”
“I never said that,” he said with a frown.
“No, you didn’t mean to say that,” Riddick corrected. “But that’s what she heard.”
Lucas scoffed. “Fuck, man, you been watching Nicholas Sparks movies or what? You sound like a damn girl.”
“Yeah, ‘cause mentioning Nicholas Sparks makes you sound real fucking manly.”
Lucas suddenly really missed the days when Riddick barely spoke. “I have work to do, you know.”
Riddick glanced around at the gaping cops disdainfully. “I can tell. Looks crazy around here.”
Score two for the douchebag. “Wrap it up, Riddick,” he grumbled. “I’m losing patience.”
Riddick looked like he couldn’t possibly care any less about Lucas’s patience. “The whole ‘space’ speech definitely explains her scrunchy face, but not why she’s been hanging out with Benny every night and came to work today with a cut on her cheek.”
Lucas shot to his feet. “Bury the lead, why don’t you, asshole! Someone hurt her?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. She said she fell.”
“Did you ask Benny what’s going on?”
Riddick’s glance labeled Lucas as the dumbest motherfucker on the planet. “No. Why ask a guy I work with every day when I can come down here—way, way out of my way—to talk with someone I can’t stand who makes my sister’s face scrunchy?”
Jesus, apparently Harper’s supreme command of sarcasm was rubbing off on her husband. “So, you’re saying Benny backed the ‘I fell’ story?”
“Yep. I was going to call Tina in to talk to him, but…” he trailed off and shrugged again.
But Tina was terrifying and no one wanted to have to call her unless it was their absolute last resort, Lucas mentally finished the rest of Riddick’s statement. If Lucas was terrified of her, he couldn’t imagine what it was like for Riddick to have her as a mother-in-law.
“I’ll talk to Benny,” Lucas said. And by “talk,” he meant hang the little prick out a ten-story window by his feet until he spilled his guts.
“Good. Straighten this shit out, Cooper. I don’t want to have to kill you.”
And with that, Riddick turned on his heel and walked away.
“Nice chatting with you, as always,” Lucas called out to his retreating back.
Riddick didn’t bother looking back or slowing his steps, just lifted his middle finger high as he marched right out the door. Every cop in the building let out a collective sigh of relief when he was gone.
Charming dude. No wonder Harper’s so crazy about him.
Which made him wonder…
Swiping his phone off the desk, he punched in Harper’s number. He didn’t bother with a greeting when she answered, just asked, “Hypothetically, if I told you we needed space, what would you think I meant by that?”
“Oh, Jesus,” she grumbled after a short pause. “Tell me you did not say that to Seven. Is that why her face gets all scrunchy when anyone mentions you?”
Lucas pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. Son of a bitch, he hated it when Riddick was right.
When he didn’t answer, she let out an exasperated sigh. “You moron! You better fix this, Lucas. I’d hate to have to ask Riddick to kill you.”
No worries there. If he wasn’t able to set things straight with Seven, she’d probably kill him in his sleep before too long.
“So much for doing the right thing,” he muttered after Harper hung up on him.
Chapter Fifteen
Benny didn’t even notice Lucas had been tailing him for the past ten blocks. Hopefully Harper only used the guy for skip- tracing, because any detective worth his salt would’ve noticed a tail by now.
Lucas sat in his truck and watched from across the street as Benny crawled through a gaping hole in the chain-link fence that surrounded the old foundry.
“What the hell are you doing, Benny?” he mutt
ered to himself.
As a former member of the VCU, Lucas knew what went on in this old abandoned building. Of course, with 90% of the force on the take, no one bothered to shut down the illegal gambling and fighting that went on inside. Besides, why should good folk—good human folk, that is—care about a bunch of vamps consensually beating the shit out of each?
The Vampire Council usually kept its distance, too, only getting involved if and when someone died. Hunter and his predecessors felt that if the paranormals were taking their aggressions out on each other in a controlled setting away from the rest of society, all was well.
On a typical day, Lucas didn’t give a shit either.
But today wasn’t a typical day.
Harper said she’d heard Benny tell Seven he’d meet her around 9:30 or so. It was 9:45, and since he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her, Lucas had to assume Seven was already inside, which pissed him off to no end.
What the hell was Benny thinking? Bringing Seven to a shithole like this to watch vamps beat the fuck out of each other was bad enough, but leaving her alone in there? Jesus, he didn’t even want to think about all the bad shit that could’ve gone down.
Yeah, he wasn’t exactly sure Benny was going to come out of this alive, he thought as he entered the building in Benny’s tracks.
The inside of the shithole was even worse than the outside, and the outside looked like a bombed-out hovel in Beirut.
The place was wall-to-wall crumbling concrete, stained with God knows what kinds of mold and filth and bodily fluids. The air was thick with the scent of sweat, blood, and testosterone. Graffiti—not the artistic kind, but the kind that got kids arrested for defacing property—covered just about every flat surface.
And the place was packed, filled to capacity with bloodthirsty idiots who were baying and howling like a pack of junkyard dogs. They were going nuts, jumping and punching the air as two guys in a giant cage in the center of the place pounded the hell out of each other.
He lost count of the number of times he was tempted to get his badge and gun from the car and clear the place as he elbowed and shoved his way through the crowd to the cage. As he suspected, Benny was right up front in the thick of the action, grinning like a maniac and collecting money as he took bets on the action in the cage.
Lucas didn’t bother with a greeting. He just grabbed Benny by the throat, lifted him off the ground, and shoved his back against the cage.
“Where is she?” Lucas snarled.
Benny knew better than to struggle. He was half Lucas’s size, and on his best day, wasn’t nearly as strong as Lucas on his worst. “She’s safe, man,” he choked out. “I swear to God she’s safe.”
Right. In a room full of pumped-up jackasses screaming for blood, she was safe. And he was the fucking Easter Bunny. Even a dhampyre could get into trouble in a pit like this. “We’ll talk about why you brought her here later,” he said through clenched teeth. “But for now, we just need to get her the fuck out of here.”
“That might be a problem,” Benny said, gasping as Lucas tightened his grip.
“Why?”
The crackling of the PA system interrupted whatever Benny was going to say.
“You wanted it, and you’re going to get it, folks,” the announcer said, his voice booming through the overhead speakers. “Our undefeated champ is here tonight, and this time, the fight’s personal. Ivan’s back, all healed up after the last beating he took, and he wants the title that was stolen from him.”
Lucas blinked. Could he be talking about Ivan Costanov? The big Russian vamp from Sayersville? Shit, someone took that giant down?
Ivan was six-foot-eight inches and 400 pounds of solid muscle. He’d been an amateur boxer full of promise—undefeated—before he’d died in a freak car wreck and been turned into a vampire by his then-manager. As a human, he’d been absolutely brutal, merciless. Every one of his victories had been by early knockout.
Lucas had followed the guy’s career and often wondered what he was up to now, since there was no official vampire boxing league. Guess this answered his question.
Benny started to squirm. “Let me explain, man…”
“And here she is,” the announcer shouted over the crowd. “Your champion: The Angel of Death!”
The roar of the crowd was almost deafening as Lucas shifted his gaze from the announcer back to Benny, who smiled weakly at him.
“I don’t guess you’d consider not killing me if I gave you my cut of her winnings, would you?” Benny asked hopefully.
Lucas dropped him to the ground and looked into the cage to see Seven—looking so, so tiny and heart-wrenchingly beautiful in her black tank top, black cargo pants, and steel-toed work boots—standing toe-to-toe with Ivan, who towered over her so much it would’ve been comical if it didn’t scare the shit out of him.
She looked completely at ease, nearly expressionless. Ivan, on the other hand, had blood in his eyes. He wanted to tear her apart and she looked like she couldn’t care less.
“No chance, Benny,” he muttered.
Benny sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say.”
Chapter Sixteen
It made no sense at all to Seven that Ivan would return to the cage. She’d beaten him in under a minute the last time. It wasn’t as if he’d gotten any faster or stronger since then.
Although, he’d definitely do better this time. Benny had told her the crowd was disappointed with quick victories. They liked to see a more drawn-out battle. More hits, more tricks, more bloodshed.
Yet another aspect of human behavior that was absolutely foreign to Seven.
But at this point, she didn’t really care. Being in the cage gave her the one thing she needed most right now: someone to hit.
And as he stood there, snarling and glaring down at her, Seven decided Ivan would serve beautifully in his capacity as her punching bag.
He was big and strong, and looked smug in a way that suggested he’d been training and was certain he’d win. But his lack of speed and overconfidence would work against him. She’d make sure of it.
Ivan made the first move, lunging at her and throwing a right hook that seemed to have all his weight behind it. If it connected, it would’ve shattered her jaw. But it didn’t connect.
Seven dodged the blow, which threw Ivan off balance. When he stumbled, she stuck her leg out and tripped him. He hit the concrete floor face-first with a grunt of pain and a muttered Russian curse.
Ivan pulled himself to his feet, glared at her and snorted like an enraged bull. She shook her head. Fighting angry was the quickest way to lose.
He charged her, fists flailing. Seven was ready for him. She threw one straight punch to Ivan’s gut, which doubled him over. Thinking of Benny’s advice to make the fight more interesting for the crowd, Seven did a backflip, making sure to catch Ivan under the chin with her boot heel. The impact lifted Ivan right up off his toes. The crowd went wild when he landed flat on his back in the center of the cage.
Ivan scissored to his feet and bellowed in rage as he came at her once again. She dodged the hard left he threw at her, but shrugged her shoulder up to take the hit from his follow-up right. After all, Benny had told her it was unnatural for a fighter to never get hit. She wouldn’t want the crowd to think she was even more of a freak than the vampires she’d been fighting lately.
A rumbling of unease rose from the crowd, followed by a shrill shriek of metal—and before Seven could process what was going on, she found herself staring down at the back of a snarling wolf who’d positioned himself between her and Ivan.
Ivan’s eyes widened as he raised his hands. “I no fight shapeshifters,” he muttered, then leapt back with a yelp when the wolf snapped and lunged at him.
Benny crawled into the cage through the giant gaping hole the wolf had left in its wake and grabbed Seven’s arm. “Gotta go, doll,” he hissed. “This ain’t gonna end well.”
“But he’s still standing,” she protested. “I’m not
supposed to leave until one of us can’t stand. You told me those were the rules.”
He snorted as he dragged her away from the crowd and out into the alley behind the building. “Yeah, well, rules change when a pissed-off alpha shifter tears through the cage like he’s the fucking Hulk and stakes his claim on one of the fighters.”
She stumbled to a stop and blinked at him. “Wait. Was that Lucas?”
“Duh,” he said with an eye roll. “Who’d you think it was? He all but peed on you in there to mark his territory.”
“How am I his territory? He’s in love with Harper.”
Benny rubbed the back of his neck. “Doll, you never let me finish what I was sayin’ that day at the bar. He used to have a thing for Harper, but now?” He shrugged. “He seems to only have eyes for you. And now we gotta go before he gets out of there and kills me.”
A growl behind them had Benny spitting out every curse word Seven had ever heard.
Seven had never seen a fully shifted werewolf up close before. Anytime she’d had to eliminate them for Sentry she made sure she did so while they were in human form, since their strength after a shift was nearly double. But even in her limited experience, Seven would say that Lucas was an exceptionally good-looking wolf.
If he were to stand on his hind legs, he would be a foot taller than her, and his gray and black coat was so shiny he looked like he belonged in the high-end dog food commercial she’d seen while watching TV with Harper and Mischa the previous night.
But she imagined he probably wouldn’t like that comparison.
Wolf Lucas coughed and spit out what appeared to be a scrap of tattered red nylon.
Ivan’s athletic pants. Or what was left of them, at least. The wolf had obviously torn into Ivan a little while the big Russian was attempting to run away.
Benny tried to pull her back, but Seven knew better than to run from an enraged werewolf. A pissed-off wolf certainly didn’t get less angry when he was forced to run down his prey. “Don’t move,” she said.
Harper Hall Investigations Complete Series Page 69
