by Shona Husk
“What kind of help?” He looked genuinely interested.
She shoved her hands into her pockets and glanced at the floor. “My husband is trying to kill me.” Then she lifted her gaze a fraction to judge his reaction.
He lifted his eyebrows. “That’s no small problem.”
Rachel waited for him to say something else, for him to turn her out onto the street. Instead he stood there looking at her. She swallowed and nodded. “No, it’s not.” And her husband wasn’t a small man, either. “He flipped when I started divorce proceedings, and I’ve been on the run for the last week.”
She didn’t add that she hadn’t really been sleeping and that she was worried that he’d find her and that would be it. She’d vanish and no one would know what became of her. She had a life waiting for her, friends and family, and she didn’t want to leave them guessing. None of them realized how much trouble she was in because none of them knew the real Cory. To them he was the good guy, always willing to help out, and she was the bad one for leaving him. Were her parents and friends now in danger? Cold slid down her back. She’d ring home and make sure no one else had been killed… And if her parents said Cory was still in town then she could breathe a little bit easier.
“Would you like to talk to someone about it?”
She was talking to someone, him, but before she could say anything he continued speaking.
“I own the place and run the classes. I don’t take on cases.” He started walking down the hallway as if expecting her to follow.
She didn’t want to be a case; that sounded like it cost money. Money she didn’t have unless she accessed their joint account, then he’d know where she was. She’d taken out as much cash as she could before leaving Liberty and had been living on that, but it was running out fast.
She took a breath and breathed out slowly. It will all be fine. She repeated that to herself even though she didn’t believe the words.
Then she followed the man deeper into the office. She was here, and she’d make it clear that she just wanted some advice. If they started asking for money, she’d leave. What could they do to stop Cory when the cops in Liberty didn’t care and didn’t want to know?
The corridor opened up into a gym. A big, open space. Mats took up a quarter of the floor and boxing bags hung along one wall. Gym equipment was along another. This was where the classes obviously happened, but there was no class tonight, just a bunch of guys working out, a couple of women, one very pregnant, a few kids rolling on the mats and a teenager pretending not to care. Was this staff night?
The voices she’d heard from the front went quiet when they realized there was someone watching, but they didn’t stop what they were doing. The smack of fists and feet on the bags, the whir of a skipping rope and the huff of breath from one guy doing chin ups. His elbow was strapped, and every time the blond guy in front of him threw a punch, he’d lift his legs in a crunch to block, then try and kick. His stomach was an honest-to-god washboard and his shorts were hanging low—criminally low. She could see the tattoo on his hip even though she couldn’t make it out. She remembered to blink and breathe and look away before everyone realized she was staring. It wasn’t as though she’d never seen a well-cut guy before, but some guys deserved a second glance. The man on the bar was one of them.
This time she pretended not to be looking at him. He dropped down, shook out his taped-up elbow, then waited while the blond guy took his place and did a few chin ups.
The man she’d come in with cast his gaze over the gym as if looking for something or someone; no one was meeting his eye. If it weren’t for the kids playing and the two women practicing yoga, this place would be testosterone central. She’d spent enough time around jocks to recognize it, but this place had a different feel. There wasn’t the high of a win or the depression off a loss, or even the keyed-up atmosphere before a game. There was more to this place and, while they obviously weren’t all related, it had that close-knit vibe, and she was an intruder.
He pointed at the guys she’d been watching. But which one, the blond or the dark-haired one? The dark-haired guy turned and walked over as if he’d been verbally summoned. He looked really unimpressed.
“This is Noah Kelly; he deals with protection cases like yours,” the man she’d followed in said.
“I can’t afford protection.” While a bodyguard would be great, she didn’t want someone else getting hurt on her behalf.
“Advice is free.” The older man smiled as if daring her to argue.
Her tongue became wooden. He was right, it’s what she’d come here for. However, looking at Noah, she wasn’t sure she’d be getting much out of him. His lips were pressed together and his arms were crossed over his chest. He had a crow tattooed over his heart and something like three letters down his bicep, but they weren’t any letters she knew.
“I’ve just come off a case.” Noah spoke to the other guy, whose name she hadn’t managed to get, and almost ignored her. His gaze had flicked over her once before dismissing her as an obvious inconvenience and interruption to his training.
“It’s not a case, Noah; she wants a little help hiding from her ex.” Then he slapped Noah on the shoulder and walked away. She got the feeling that he didn’t like people arguing with him.
Where the other guy had been open, if not friendly, the guy she’d been handballed to was a shut-up shop with bars on the windows and a triple deadlock on the door. No one was getting in unless invited. And no one ever got invited.
Immediately she tried to make excuses for being there, as if it were somehow her fault that he’d been chosen to help. “It won’t take long, there’s probably nothing you can do—”
“Let me get a shirt.” Noah walked over to where piles of clothes and towels were waiting against the wall. He dragged a navy blue t-shirt on and rubbed his face and hair with a towel before picking up a drink bottle and beckoning her to follow. This time the other people were watching her as if they were trying to work out why she was here.
She tried to act as if everything was fine, but she knew that they knew that the only reason she was here was because something wasn’t fine. It was a relief to follow Noah out of the gym and back down the hallway. She expected him to take her out to the reception area, but instead he opened up a door in the hallway that she hadn’t noticed before and ushered her in, then he shut the door and sat on the other side of the desk.
He took a drink from his water bottle and watched her for a moment. There was something in that look, as though his blue eyes were seeing beneath her skin and into her soul. She looked away first. This was getting stranger by the moment. She should have researched the agency before walking in.
“Would you like a drink before we get started?” He pointed to the water cooler at the side of the office.
She shook her head. He’d gone from sweaty, disgruntled jock to professional as if he’d flicked a switch, which wasn’t what she’d been expecting. She’d half expected him to sit on the desk and tell her to stop wasting his time. Even though he was acting like he was sitting there in slacks and a collared shirt, the image of him shirtless lingered in her mind. He was leaner than Cory, and he’d be faster in a fight. Perhaps Noah was exactly what she needed.
He pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. “Okay then, want to tell me what’s been going on?”
Straight to the point, and he sounded like he was going to take her seriously. That or it was all an act to get her out of there fast. “You don’t want to know my name?”
“Will that help me understand your problem?”
“No. But I know yours and it seems rude.”
Noah looked at her for a moment as if considering how much trouble she’d be. “Okay, your name, date of birth and social security number?”
“Rachel, you don’t need the rest.” The less he knew about her the better at the moment. What if he was a football fan and admired Cory? The thought made any hope she had that he could help shrivel up. Please no.
&
nbsp; He made a sound that could have been either a choked laugh or a grunt and wrote her name on the top of the paper, along with the date.
“Why are you making notes?” If it was all going to be filed away, how much did she want to say? How much was this going to cost? She’d come in for advice, not a consult.
“In case you come back or in case something happens.”
She drew in a breath. How could he be expecting anything to happen when she hadn’t told him anything yet? “I’m hoping that nothing will happen.”
He smiled. “That’s what we all hope for, but we’re both here so we know the odds of that happening are small. So before I start thinking of a hot shower and dinner, tell me what the problem is so I can give you some free advice on staying alive.”
Wow, he didn’t sugar coat, and that kind of truth scratched all the way down. She hadn’t even said what kind of trouble she was in and he was assuming the worst.
“Um.” Where did she start?
“Try the beginning, but just hit the main points. Also, don’t tell me what you think is logical, just give me the facts so I can join the dots.”
Was he always this abrupt or just when people strolled in looking for a freebie? Still, he was right; they were here so she might as well see what she could get.
“I filed for divorce and my husband didn’t take it well. He burned the papers and threatened to kill me, then he went out. When he came home he locked himself in his gym.”
“He has a home gym?”
“Yes.” She paused, not wanting to give Noah everything. She didn’t want this turning into a major scandal. “The next day I heard that the divorce lawyer had been found dead. I packed some things and left.” Her hands had been shaking the whole time. While she’d been planning on leaving, she’d been hoping on being set up better, but then she hadn’t planned on her lawyer being murdered.
“Did he kill the lawyer?”
“The lawyer’s arms and legs had been pulled off. He couldn’t have done it; besides, according to the police he had an alibi.” No one had the strength to tear the limbs from another, but even as she spoke and defended Cory, she remembered the look in his eye when he heard the news. That was the moment when she’d known she’d had to leave.
“Why aren’t the police helping you?”
She glanced at her hands. “Because it’s a private dispute and there’s been no history of violence. They said he was just angry, but I know him. I’ve never seen him like this before. He wants to kill me.” Once she’d been able to brush off his controlling behavior as love and wanting what was best for them both, but now, looking back, she saw it for what it was. If she’d been older when she’d met him and married him she might have known better. She pitied his next wife, yet at the same time knew there would be plenty of women willing to fill the gap she’d left.
“Because you’re leaving him.”
Why was this so hard for him to understand? “Yes, he’d been becoming increasingly possessive and jealous. Said if he couldn’t have me, no one could, that he’d rather be widowed than suffer the shame of being left.”
“Sounds like a top guy. How long were you married?”
“Seven years.”
“And you’re what, twenty-five-ish?”
“Twenty-eight.” She was sure he’d been playing it safe when guessing her age. Looking at him, she would have said he was twenty-five, certainly no younger, however there was something about him that made him seem far older. Maybe he’d seen his share of bad times. “Does any of this matter?”
“I don’t know yet. How long did you know him for?”
“Since I was eighteen.” Technically longer, but they hadn’t started dating until then.
He kept writing, not pausing to even ask the next question. “Why did you want the divorce?”
Rachel fidgeted. She wasn’t used to people asking so many questions about her. It was usually all about Cory and she just smiled and nodded. “Why does it matter?”
“I want to know.”
She wanted a lot of things, but that didn’t mean she was going to get them. “He changed. Like I said, his jealousy was getting worse. I wanted a no-fault divorce. I wasn’t blaming him for anything.” For the moment, that was as much as she was going to say. The rest would only earn her a disbelieving stare and laughter once she’d left.
Noah scribbled some more down. While her name and the date at the top had been printed clearly, the rest was a scrawl that she couldn’t read upside down. Was it his observations mixed with what she was saying? He seemed to have written more than what she’d said.
Perhaps now it was time for her to ask a few questions. Her gaze was again drawn to the tape on his arm, above that she could see the start of one of his tattoos. “What happened to your elbow?”
He glanced up as if surprised that she’d asked a question. “It got broken.”
That had to have hurt. “On a case?”
He shook his head. “In college. But that doesn’t affect your case.”
“It’s not a case.” She had no idea what he even charged or what kind of protection services he offered. “What do you do?”
Noah put the pen down and leaned back. “I try and stop people from dying.”
It was really hard to stop people from dying when they weren’t telling the whole truth. Noah looked at Rachel and then his notes—which also included vague impressions he received. Things other people wouldn’t pick up on. He was getting a really bad vibe off of her. Whatever trouble she was in it was big, really big, and it probably had really big teeth and a bad attitude to match.
He didn’t need this right now. He’d only been home from Canada for three days. Barely enough time to do the paperwork, write some notes about the demon for his demon database and catch up on sleep. He should have known when Mason said that someone would be in that it would land at his feet. Peyton found his own cases and Sawyer’s usually had the cops hot on their tail.
The cases that came to him usually involved demons. When she was leaving he’d check to see if she had one on her back, but looking at her now, she wasn’t showing the signs. She wasn’t gaunt or overly pumped, just curvy. While she looked scared, she didn’t have the haunted edge or the half-crazed look that also hinted that a demon was whispering malevolent nothings in her ear. If he touched her, she wouldn’t be overly hot or cold, either. But he also knew enough about demons that they could manifest in more ways than he could count, and unless he knew what the demon wanted, he couldn’t do anything…and even then it didn’t matter.
Four days ago he’d seen a demon go off like a grenade and leave the man in one thousand pieces, and there hadn’t been damn thing he could. No spell or binding had worked. The demon had just laughed. The coven had been disappointed, even though they hadn’t said anything. He was supposed to be the demon expert, he’d gathered lore from everywhere and compiled it in a massive database, and he still couldn’t stop people from dying.
He looked at Rachel again. Her light brown hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail and her dark eyes were wide with anxiety. Was her husband carrying a demon or was he just a jealous freak? Maybe both. Maybe he hadn’t realized what he’d manifested and a quiet chat would make the whole thing dissolve into nothing. It was when the human host refused to part with the extra power that the problems really began…and became his problem.
Other covens only called him when all else had failed, which left few options. Killing the person who’d brought it into existence went against all of his teachings. That and he had no desire to be a murder suspect again. Once had been plenty.
Rachel swallowed and didn’t say anything. He got up and filled a plastic cup with water. She took a sip as soon as he handed it to her. “Do you think he will kill me?”
If he was demon driven and had decided that killing Rachel would solve his problems, then there was a better-than-good chance she’d die. However, talking about demons would only send her running and he had no proof. He needed evidence
of a demon. “I think you believe that. Right now that’s all I’ve got to go on.”
“So what can I do?”
He wasn’t ready to commit to any advice yet. He wanted to look into the lawyer’s death—which shouldn’t be that hard to find—and dig a little deeper into what Rachel had told him. She was holding back, she hadn’t started at the beginning just jumped into the scary part, which meant he was missing vital pieces of information. If there was a demon involved, it hadn’t appeared when she’d handed over the divorce papers. Maybe he was getting too caught up in his own research and she was just an average woman with a dick of a husband. Simple.
Which didn’t explain why Mason had been expecting her. Nothing the Morrigu brought to the coven was easy.
“You’re not from New York City?” He only asked to confirm his own suspicions and to see what else she’d give away; people said all kinds of things instead of answering directly.
“No, I’m staying at a hostel not far from here.”
“And how long have you been here?” He tried to sound friendly, which wasn’t that hard. He didn’t want her walking out feeling as though he didn’t care, even if he wasn’t sure what he could do.
“Three days.”
“Have you seen him?”
She shook her head and looked relieved even before she answered. “No.”
Noah tapped the pen. As much as he’d like to do a couple of spells to get a bit more information, right now that would probably freak her out. Most people didn’t believe witches were real, much less covens and demons. “Let me have a look into a few things. If you come back tomorrow, I’ll give you some pointers.”
Her tongue darted over her lip. “For free?”
“Yeah, not a case yet.” He forced a smile, but it was starting to taste like one. He got up and showed her out of his office. As she walked up the hallway to the entrance, he closed his eyes and muttered a single word. Illuminate. As he opened his eyes, he clicked his fingers softly and for a heartbeat his vision shifted and everything took on an odd glow. There were no extra shadows around Rachel. No demons.
