Sadly, it wasn’t a terribly farfetched theory. Her patients ranged in mental stability from docile to psychotic and everything in between.
But still, the fact that she was here, tied to a chair, had her seriously doubting his truthfulness.
When he didn’t answer her question, she glanced up and found that he was staring at her bound hands, frowning. She followed his gaze to a small patch of raw skin on her wrist—note to self: pulling against zip ties is a painful waste of effort—and a little trickle of blood that had run down to her hands, staining her nailbeds an unsightly pink. If she lived through this, she’d definitely need a new manicure.
Nik muttered a harsh-sounding Russian word and stood up. When he pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket and raised it, Vi wanted to scream, but terror practically closed her throat up and all she managed to get out was a pathetic squeak as she flinched and brought her bound hands up to protect her face.
After a moment of not feeling a blade sliding between her ribs to pierce her heart, Vi peeked through her fingers to find Nik looking down at her with an unfathomable expression, hands—and the knife—raised.
“I won’t hurt you, kotehok,” he murmured in that grumbly baritone of his. “You have my word. I cut ties at your wrists, yes?”
His accent was thicker, she noticed. And he was dropping articles in his speech, saying “cut ties” instead of “cut the ties,” which she’d never known him to do before. Vi couldn’t help but wonder if the emotion she saw but couldn’t quite identify in his eyes was responsible. Maybe that emotion was something she could use to her advantage to escape.
Or maybe that emotion was what was eventually going to get her killed.
Vi swallowed hard and lifted her hands to him, praying she wasn’t reading too much into his seemingly sincere offer.
“What does kotehok mean?” she asked.
One corner of his mouth quirked up as he leaned in and took both her wrists in one of his hands. “In English it means kitten.”
She frowned, ignoring how wonderful his strong, callused fingers felt on her cold skin and how he smelled like sunshine-dried laundry. “Because I’m fluffy and harmless?”
His smile grew and a dimple—goddamn him, a dimple!—carved into his cheek. “Because you’re sweet but have sharp claws when you want to use them, and because I’ve wanted to make you purr ever since I first saw you.”
Her breath lodged in her throat and she couldn’t have worked up a decent reply if her life depended on it. He was flirting with her! Her kidnapper was flirting with her. How in the hell was she supposed to respond to that?
Well, she certainly couldn’t admit that before he drugged her and tied her to a chair she’d been about five minutes away from begging him to take her to a bed—or a couch, or a shower, or a wall, or, well, pretty much anywhere—and make her purr.
It had been a really, really long time since she’d last…purred.
His smile faded when she didn’t reply. He cleared his throat. “My apologies,” he mumbled. “That was inappropriate.”
Well, this just got more and more confusing. So, Nik was a polite kidnapper who’d promised not to hurt her, and made her nipples go on high alert whenever he was in the same room with her.
My life is so fucked up.
She sighed as he sliced through the ties at her wrists. “Just tell me what’s going on, Nik. Who did you think might be trying to kill me?”
Vi winced as he grabbed a bottle of water and wet her sore wrists, then dabbed gently—much more gently than she’d expect from a man his size—at the abraded skin with a clean T-shirt he’d pulled from his duffel bag. (Or, his serial killer go-bag, as she’d been thinking of it since she woke up.)
“Sentry cleaner designation 754821,” he eventually answered, eyes still cast down on the task of cleaning up her wrists and rubbing some circulation back into her icy fingers.
“Seven? You thought Seven was trying to kill me?” Of all the patients who could be trying to kill her, Seven was last on her list. Vi shook her head. “No. She’s making tremendous progress. She wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that.”
“The only progress Sentry cleaners make is getting close to their targets and eliminating them,” he said, voice going hard for the first time in, well, ever. “If the target isn’t you, there are many other possibilities. The shifter, the halfer, the vampires, the slayer, the psychic…” he paused, throwing his hands up in frustration. “I can’t tell which one—or ones—she’s after.”
So he’d been watching Seven. He’d seen her with Lucas, Benny, Mischa, Hunter, Riddick, and Harper. Which meant her nipples went on high alert for a guy who was a drink-drugger, a kidnapper, and a stalker.
And if he was all those things, he probably…oh, God. “You were the one who tried to kill her that night in the alley, weren’t you?”
Please say no. Please say no. Please say no.
His short nod made her stomach sink down to the pointed toes of her sleek black Louboutins. “I acted without thought and I failed,” he said. “I won’t do it again.”
His first instinct, probably because of his training, had just been to take her out. But he now he wanted more information about her and her plans. So that…he could more be a more efficient assassin?
She swallowed hard. “Seven doesn’t want to kill anyone. “Riddick and Harper are her family. The others you saw her with are her friends. She’s just trying to build a life for herself.”
The look he gave her was dangerously close to pity. “Cleaners don’t have family and they certainly don’t have friends. Cleaners hunt. Kill. It’s all they know.”
He sounded so sure of that, she had to wonder… “How do you know so much about cleaners?”
So many emotions filtered through his eyes. Pain, shame, anger, frustration. He was usually so calm, so in control. And right now? He was anything but. That answered her question more clearly than words ever could.
“You were a cleaner like Seven, weren’t you, Nik?” she asked quietly.
He lowered his head and his hands went to his hips, the very picture of frustrated alpha male. But he didn’t answer her. Instead, he took a deep breath and gestured to the ties at her ankles. “If I cut those,” he said, his voice even lower and more…grumbly than usual, “can I trust you to not try and run away?”
Nope. Not even a little bit. “Yes.”
Nik laughed, but it was the most humorless, world-weary laugh she’d ever heard. “You’re lying. Not that I blame you. But I’m sorry, kotehok. I can’t risk it. This isn’t a good neighborhood. Having you wandering around out there looking for help…it’s just not safe.”
Being out there wasn’t safe, but being in here, with the drink-drugging, kidnapping, stalking, nipple-hardener who wanted her patient dead was somehow better for her well-being? That hardly seemed possible.
And second of all…how did he know she was lying? She was a great liar. No one could ever tell when she was lying. What made him so different?
Vi licked her lips nervously. “So, I guess we’re at a stalemate. I can’t tell you what you want to know about Seven. What do we do now?”
She lifted her eyes to his and noticed his gaze locked on her mouth. Her heart threatened to pound its way out of her chest as her brain tripped into OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod territory. Was he remembering their kiss? Was he as affected by her as she was by him? Shit! That couldn’t be good! Wait…could it?
Slowly his eyes lifted and met hers again. The normal pale green she was used to seeing had gone smoky and dark with need. She couldn’t have looked away at that moment if the National Guard knocked the door down to rescue her.
“I’ll call her here on your phone and ask her myself,” he eventually said. “She’ll come for you, yes?”
Well, that didn’t sound so bad. Maybe she hadn’t been so terribly wrong about him after all. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy. “Then what?”
“When I know who her target is?”
“Ye
s. What then?”
“Then you can go home.”
She let out a deep breath as relief washed over in waves. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for not crushing my hopes this time.
Then he added, “And then I kill her.”
Vi just blinked at him for a moment, sure she’d misunderstood. When it became clear she hadn’t, she closed her eyes and let her chin hit her chest.
“Fucking hope,” she muttered.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The apartment where 654590—no, Nikolai—lived was exactly what Seven expected. It reminded her of every place she’d ever stayed while working on assignment for Sentry.
One overstuffed brown leather sofa, a banged-up dinette set with a pair of mismatched chairs, and a king-size mattress were the only pieces of furniture in the place. No pictures, no television, nothing decorative or personal of any kind.
Beyond that, the place was so clean, smelling not-so faintly of bleach, that Seven suspected he wiped everything down for fingerprints daily. He’d be able to up and leave this place at a moment’s notice, and would do just that when the job was done.
When she was dead, Seven assumed.
Knowing that a fellow cleaner, one who was most likely also a dhampyre, was trying to kill her should probably upset Seven more than it did, or at least make her hate the guy. But oddly enough, she found that she just felt…sorry for Nikolai.
Seven understood him. Felt for him a way that few could, she would imagine. He was doing a job. The job he’d been trained to do.
A job he’d been brainwashed and tortured into doing.
It was pretty hard to hate a guy who, at heart, wasn’t really all that different from Seven herself.
Lucas clearly didn’t see it that way, though.
“Anything yet?” he grumbled, frustration and anger rolling off him in shimmering waves.
Harper pursed her lips and shot him a glare. “Premonitions aren’t like a lunch special, Lucas. I can’t always just order one for myself. Sometimes it doesn’t come easy. It’ll happen when it happens.”
Lucas exhaled sharply. “We don’t have time for this.”
Benny snorted as he leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. “And what should we do instead? Run up and down the street yelling ‘Marco!’ and hoping Vi gives us a ‘Polo!’ in return? Good plan, dude.”
Seven grabbed Lucas’s hand when he took a menacing step toward Benny. “He’s right,” she said quietly. “Our best hope is Harper at this point.”
Lucas exhaled sharply, but thankfully, seemed to realize the truth in her words. Hunter and Mischa had returned to Council headquarters to see if they could dig up anything additional in the old records, but if Nikolai was as good at his job as Seven had been at hers, she’d be willing to bet he’d long ago broken from any patterns that might lead them to Violet.
And given the overly clean smell of the apartment, there was likely no way Lucas could pick up so much as a hint of Nikolai’s scent for tracking purposes. At this point, if Harper couldn’t use her psychic ability to find them, they were screwed. If Nikolai didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t be.
Riddick came out of the bedroom and handed a black T-shirt to Harper. “This was in the closet. Maybe it’ll help.”
While she smiled at him and shifted the shirt from one hand to the other, Riddick motioned for them to follow him back into the bedroom. “I also found this,” he said, gesturing to the closet.
“Son of a bitch,” Lucas muttered.
Yeah, that about covered it, Seven thought as she took in some of the most thorough surveillance work she’d ever seen.
On the back of the closet door were pictures. Pictures of her with Lucas, Benny, Riddick, Harper...hundreds of pictures. There were enough of them to suggest Nikolai had been watching her every minute of every day since she’d been released from Midvale. Until…
Somewhere along the line, the focus of his surveillance seemed to shift to Vi. He must’ve assumed he could get to Seven through Vi. And he’d been right, apparently.
They were all stunned into silence except for Harper, who tossed the shirt over her shoulder and clapped her hands like a little kid on Christmas morning. “Ooohhh yeah,” she said, “Now that’s what I’m talking about. Come to momma.”
Without another word, she slapped her palms on the door and closed her eyes, brow furrowing in concentration.
The next four or five minutes felt like days as they watched Harper’s facial expressions change as visions flooded her. Anger, sadness, confusion…they flitted across her face quickly, like channels on TV with someone absentmindedly clicking a heavy finger on the remote.
When she finally pulled her shaking hands away from the door, Harper stumbled, clearly exhausted from channeling so much power. After so many training sessions with Hunter, Seven knew the feeling. Riddick moved faster than Seven had ever seen to grab his wife and scoop her up in his arms.
“What did you see?” Lucas and Benny asked in stereo, then frowned at each other.
“Give her a fucking minute,” Riddick growled.
Harper patted his chest and shook her head. “No, I’m fine. It was just…a lot to take in.”
Seven glanced back at the photos, noticing something odd. “Do the photos of Violet seem…different than the photos of me?”
Lucas frowned. “Different how?”
Benny squinted at them. “The pictures of Seven are wide shots. Serious surveillance-type shit to get an idea of background, time, and location. The ones of Dr. Hot Stuff start out like that, but then they turn into close-ups. They get kinda…I dunno…Fatal Attraction, maybe? Obsessive-like?”
Everyone turned to look at him in stunned silence. He eventually ran a finger under his collar nervously and said, “What? I can’t be good for more than just comic relief and eye candy every now and then? I got a brain, you know. I’m capable of saying insightful shit.”
Harper was the first to find her tongue. “Benny’s pretty much dead-on. Our guy is definitely into Vi in a big way. He’s all twisted up over the idea of her being in danger.”
Lucas scoffed. “So he kidnapped her to protect her? What a bunch of bullshit.”
“Maybe,” Harper said, “but that’s what he was thinking. He thinks Seven’s either trying to carry out a mission, or that she’s going to go on some kind of rogue killing spree. He doesn’t want to take her out until he knows who her target is, though. If Seven’s on a legit mission, he intends to complete it once she’s dead.”
He was carrying out the final mission. The one all cleaners had been instructed to carry out should Sentry ever fall. It’s what she would do if she was him.
“We’re the last two cleaners,” Seven whispered. “Aren’t we? He killed the others.”
Harper nodded. “There were five others left, other than you two. He killed them while you were in Midvale.” She shuddered. “From what I saw? They needed to be killed. Without Sentry’s guidance, they were out of control. Like Dexter, only without Harry’s code to guide him.”
“Shit, I miss that show,” Benny murmured sadly.
Seven had no idea who Harry and Dexter were, but she overlooked it. She was getting used to only understanding about half of what Harper said at any given time. It was usually enough. “Did you get any idea of where he might be keeping her?”
“Not really. I mostly saw Nikolai. What Sentry did to him to try and break him?” Harper shook her head. “It’s a miracle he has any functioning brain cells left. He’s definitely a dhampyre, because no human could’ve taken that.”
Lucas shoved a hand through his hair. “Something about this isn’t adding up. So, he killed the other cleaners because that was part of the Sentry plan, right? If Sentry was to shut down, the cleaners were supposed to kill each other off.”
“Right,” Seven answered.
“Well, why bother trying to figure out who your target is? That wasn’t part of the final mission. If he’s really just some brainwashed killing machine, shouldn’t
his only focus be on killing Seven? Why worry about Vi? Why worry about completing whatever mission Seven might be on?”
“Sentry’s reprogramming wasn’t entirely successful on him,” Seven said. “Reprogramming is supposed to eliminate emotion to make the cleaner more efficient at his job. Nikolai was sent back four times and he still feels…something. Based on these photos, he feels something for Vi and for whoever he thinks I’m going to kill. He’s not the mindless killing machine they wanted him to be.”
He’s exactly like me.
Riddick pulled a disgusted face. “OK, so our guy is an attempted murderer, a kidnapper, and a stalker, but because he means well I shouldn’t want to break every bone in his body? I’m calling bullshit on that.”
“Damn straight,” Lucas muttered.
Seven sighed. As nice as it was to see her brother and her mate agreeing on something, this wasn’t the time or the situation she necessarily wanted their unity on. “I’m just saying he can be reasoned with. If we can convince him to let Vi go, and that I don’t mean anyone any harm, maybe we can just all move on with our lives.”
“No fucking way,” Lucas grumbled at the same time Riddick said, “Fuck that shit.”
Harper held up a placating hand. “Look, no one is saying we all have to hold hands and sing Kumbaya or anything. But Seven’s right. If he’s reasonable—which, I’m telling you he is—maybe we can get him to let Vi go and turn himself in to the Vampire Council for whatever punishment they feel is necessary.”
“I don’t know how you can call this dude,” Lucas said, gesturing to the wall of surveillance photos, “reasonable.”
“None of that matters anyway if we can’t find the guy,” Riddick added. “How about we worry about where he is before we worry about how to take him out?”
“You mean down,” Harper corrected. “Take him down. Not take him out.”
He shrugged. “Sure. We’ll go with that for now.”
Harper shot him a look that Seven had come to think of as her disapproving “mom” face. It was the same look Tina gave Harper and Marina whenever one of the girls made an inappropriate comment. She imagined Harper wouldn’t appreciate the comparison, so Seven kept her mouth shut.
Harper Hall Investigations Complete Series Page 77
