by Tes Hilaire
“We’ve all had nights like that,” he said, punching in E-8. The machine whirred and the Snickers fell. “I remember when these were a quarter.”
She quirked her head to the side, her brow furrowing.
Crap. A quarter? How long ago was that? Probably before she was born. Or at least when she was still in diapers.
And that’s why he kept away from humans. They lived, they died. He just existed.
Shit. How do I cover that flub?
“Have we met?”
He stilled, all but his heart, which accelerated as fast as Bennett’s pretty blue Lotus Exige from the starting line. Should have left. He was a fool not to. There had been ample opportunity, but he was greedy, feeding his enchantment with her with stolen looks and flirtatious banter.
And now it was too late to bolt. Anything sudden or suspicious and that shield on her memories might crumble.
And every moment he didn’t answer was just as suspicious.
“I’m hurt you don’t know one way or the other.” He flashed what he hoped wasn’t too strained a smile, cursing his lack of balls. A simple lie. “Nope. Don’t believe so.” That’s all it would’ve taken. Of course he sucked at giving flat-out lies, another “gift” from his damn pure genealogy.
He tensed, ready for the shield to crumble, for recognition to crinkle her model-worthy features. But all she did was shake her head. “You’re right. Man like you? I’d remember.”
He inclined his head. “Thank you. I think.”
She chuckled again, popping the bag of Doritos. He watched her dip two slender fingers into the bag and extract a chip. She popped it in her mouth and chewed with the same drawn-out enjoyment as Roland when he indulged. The thought of his friend reminded him why he was here, and it was not to flirt with a woman. Especially a cop. No matter how beautiful or intriguing she was. He opened his mouth to speak, ready to bow out as gracefully as a man could when he was alternately sweating bullets and drooling like Pavlov’s dog.
“So what you in for?” she asked.
Too late.
“’Scuse me?” He settled back against the wall. Her question had put all his good intentions on hold. “Oh. You mean why am I here?”
“Yeah. You don’t exactly look the type to normally grace these doors.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not a defense lawyer are you?”
Defense lawyer was said in the same way one spoke of slime. He stared at her for a moment, his internal alarm going off. There were dozens of cops in the precinct. Chances of her being at all involved in Roland’s case were slim to none, right? But if she were then she would probably have been given a rundown on the deets of how his buddy had been found.
“No. Not a lawyer,” he answered then continued with the same vein. “Friend. Idiot got brought in for something stupid.”
She shook her head. “Don’t they all?”
“Yeah,” he replied, though his voice must have expressed some sort of doubt because her chewing slowed further as she thought it over.
“And you don’t think he should be here.”
“No,” he said carefully, then decided to test the waters. “Not for saving a kitten.”
“A kitten,” she deadpanned back. The stiff set of her shoulders told him her break was over. She was all cop again. Her eyes calculating as she regarded him.
He stilled. A chill coursing through his veins as he thought, no fucking way. But then reality set in. Coincidences like this just didn’t happen.
Goddammit. Why couldn’t he catch a break? Just one. One tiny get-out-of-jail-free card. But no. She was the detective on the case.
She laughed, this one a bit forced. “Hardly even seems like a misdemeanor.”
“Yeah, well.” He bit into the Snickers, surprised at the explosion of flavors. Sweet chocolate, salty nuts, smooth caramel. He twisted the bar in his hand. Looking at it with new eyes. “This is good.”
“You’ve never had a Snickers?”
“I’m not one for indulgences.” Except where she was concerned. Crap. This totally sucked. He knew what his next step had to be. The Paladin couldn’t afford to have their secrets revealed. Which meant Roland had to get off her list of suspects ASAP. If something didn’t happen to turn her attention away from Roland, then more drastic measures were needed. Things like altering memories. He could do it too. It would be child’s play to dive in there and dissect every memory to do with Roland or Thomas Rhodes. And while he was at it, he could pull out the names of anyone else who might give a shit about the case and then track them down to squeegee their brains too. He should do it. If not for the Paladin, then for Roland and Karissa. The problem was that he didn’t want to. It felt like raising his hand against an innocent. Like the action would be at the cost of his goodness. It felt like…Holy crap. He didn’t know what it felt like; he just knew that he didn’t want to.
His shoulders tensed and he fought the urge to fist his hands. You’ll do it, Calhoun. Your friend, your sister, every one of your brothers are counting on you.
She wasn’t looking at him suspiciously anymore, but with knowledge on her face. Nope, Jessica Waters was no rookie, and her detective instincts had kicked into full gear.
She crunched up the empty Doritos bag in her hand, tossing it into the nearby trash before flicking her wrist again to look at her watch. “Damn. No rest for the weary.” She pasted on a smile as she brushed off her hand on her jeans and offered it to him. “It was nice to meet you, Mr…”
He hesitated, but he answered, knowing that when the time came, he was going to have to strip this memory from her too. “Calhoun. Logan Calhoun.”
It took every bit of his willpower to take that hand and not drag her to him, yet he somehow managed.
He knew she was waiting for him to ask who she was, but he figured why bother? After a prolonged stare which ended in her nodding her head as she took away her hand, she turned to go. She was halfway to the waiting room, him still rubbing the residual tingles out of his fingers from their handshake, when she turned back. “Oh, Mr. Calhoun?”
“Yeah?”
“You aren’t planning any trips, are you?”
He folded his arms across his chest, inclining his head slightly. “I’ll be around.”
“Good,” she said, then strode through the waiting room to disappear through the double doors.
He wasn’t sure he’d agree with her on that assessment, but he would be around—watching her closely. And when the time came, he would also do what was right.
Chapter 5
“So, what do you think?” Mike asked, pushing open the door from the observation room and waving his hand for Jessica to go through.
Jessica took the lead as they weaved through the crowded station, skirting around a misplaced chair and narrowly avoiding a street beat jogging toward the back door, Styrofoam cup in hand. It wasn’t until they arrived at her desk and Jessica plopped down in her chair, the thick file thudding on the surface of her desk, that she replied. “I think we have jack shit.”
“Why do you say that?” Mike eased his hip onto the edge of her desk. “Witness identified him.”
“Yeah, and then went on to act as a glowing character reference. Can you imagine the field day his lawyer would have with her on the witness stand?”
Mike’s face tightened into a scowl. The slightly crooked nose and his scruffy beard along with his torn jeans and hooded sweatshirt made him look like he belonged in the holding cells with the other street scum rather than perched on her desk. That misimpression was what made him so good at what he did. Normally, Mike worked undercover narcotics, but a volatile situation had put him under scrutiny and necessitated that he lay low. It just happened that the timing corresponded with his old friend’s arrival at the station bearing tales of attempted date rape, roofies, and the darkly handsome knight who
rescued her, thus landing the intended victim a spot in Mike’s recently emptied caseload. The case was eventually connected with Jessica’s East River John Doe, giving her their current suspect and her newest partner.
“Sorry. I know you and the witness are friends.”
He gave an indifferent shrug. “Not really. Rach grew up down the street from me. That’s all.”
That wasn’t all, but she didn’t press. Instead, she sighed as she reached for the file on her desk. The words blurred in a jumble of letters. Jessica rubbed the heel of her palm against her forehead, trying to ease the headache pounding her skull.
She was sleep deprived and cranky. Mike quietly waited for her to gather her thoughts. That made him not only the newest but the most patient partner she’d ever had.
“Okay, let’s review what we have.” She skimmed through the material in the report. “Witness statements place Thomas Rhodes in the bar with Ms. Rachael Harrison at approximately 11:45. She’d already had a few with her friends, but they left to go to the next bar on their crawl, leaving her with the gentleman who’d offered to buy her a drink.”
“Gentleman, my ass.”
Jessica’s mouth curled up in a sardonic grin. “Thomas Rhodes was an exceptional player. A good one, too, if what his buddies say is true.”
“World is fucking full of them, ain’t it?”
Hell yeah it was. And they came in all different flavors too. Middle-aged banker who liked to pretend he was still the shit. Vigilantes who liked to act out white knight fantasies. And bullies who liked to play at being Mr. Nice-and-Sensitive.
Jessica sucked in a breath, her brow furrowing against the pain that spiked deep into her skull. Where the hell had that thought come from? Or more to the point, who was it about? Mr. Logan Calhoun? But he was no bully. He’d flirted, she’d flirted back, but the moment they’d caught on to who the other person was, they’d both taken a giant step back. Professional. Respectful. Poor taste in friends aside, there wasn’t much else she had on the guy. Other than a lingering desire to run her hands through the wealth of his thick chestnut waves. Yeah, real professional.
“Jess?”
She blinked, focusing her attention back on her partner’s concerned face. “Sorry, long night.”
Mike shook his head. “You’re really going to have to look into getting some Lunesta. This zombie thing you have going on is getting out of hand. What the hell are you doing before bed that keeps you from sleeping?”
Jessica winced, guilt assailing her. Nothing, actually. She slept just fine once she finally hit her pillow, it’s just she wasn’t there very long before she had to get up again. Luckily she didn’t have to come up with any sort of excuse as Mike just sighed, grabbing the file from her and taking over.
He cleared his throat. “Okay, so we have multiple witness reports that Thomas and Rachael sat at the bar for another twenty minutes or so. Bartender says it was busy, per usual, but he remembers serving them at least a couple drinks each. Rach leaves for the ladies’ room…yada, yada, yada…guy shows up and takes her place. Tommy gets pissed. Rachael returns and our suspect tells her that her drink’s been spiked. Thomas leaves with suspect for the alley.”
“Never to be heard from again.”
“Until weeks later when his body was finally ID’d,” Mike pointed out.
Jessica grunted. Too bad they hadn’t known in the beginning that it was a homicide. No, too bad no one ever reported Tom missing. Not even his employer. By the time Thomas was identified, everything was stone cold. No matter how much legwork they did. No matter how many pretty connections, Jess still had positively nothing she could bring before a jury. Everything was coincidence and conjecture. Nothing concrete.
And wasn’t that the sticking point.
She cracked her knuckles as her gaze slid over toward the interrogation room that her suspect had no doubt been led back to after the lineup. She could prove without a doubt that he and Rhodes walked out of the bar together into that alley. And given the witness statements and the suspect’s own tight-lipped, hard-assed personality, she bet she could even convince a jury that the beat down had indeed occurred there. But that was it. Water and wildlife had taken care of any evidence on the body, the elements removing any traces of blood from the alley. And although not a single person had come forward to say they’d seen Thomas after he’d left that bar, she didn’t even have the goddamn car to connect any dots between one place and the other. Ergo, she had no proof.
“So…” Mike drawled, closing up the file and setting it back on her desk. “What are we going to do?”
“Damn it. I’m going to have to let him go.”
***
Logan stared morosely at the door that swung shut behind the blonde “witness” exiting the station house, cutting off the outside traffic. Three hours of silence, sitting alongside his tense-as-rebar sister. Three hours of rolling his own tense shoulders and wondering how everything could have ended so completely screwed up.
“Do you think she…” Karissa trailed off, leaving the rest of the question unasked.
Didn’t take a genius to figure out what Karissa wanted to know. Did Logan think the witness had identified Roland?
Hell yeah, he did. The young blond woman who’d been ushered into the back shortly after Detective Jessica Waters hadn’t struck him to be as much of a flake as her misadventure in that bar would suggest. Her eyes were sharp, her determination palpable, and given how accurate the sketch of Roland had been, he doubted her memory was faulty either.
Which meant that what he had to do just got harder.
Should’ve cornered her in the vending area. Erased her memories.
No, what he should have done was found the witness right after that sketch came out and altered her memories then. But he’d been busy with other things. Like, say, twiddling his thumbs waiting for some real action, and playing power games with a father who didn’t approve of Logan’s association with “monsters” like his best friend, or said monster’s bond mate, aka Logan’s disowned sister.
Logan sighed. Too late to agonize now. There was no going back. Not unless he wanted to wipe the memory of everyone here, which was completely impractical. Both in execution and in results. A couple of people missing a chunk of time could be explained away, but a whole station house?
Karissa shifted beside him, her hand tightening exponentially on his with each silent second that passed.
“It’s going to work out.” He’d make it work. Somehow.
He was still staring at the exit door when Karissa dropped his hand, bolting upright. Logan stood as well, then sucked in a breath as both Alex and Roland pushed through the doors that lead into the back. No paperwork? No bail? Roland briefly met Logan’s gaze, then turned his attention to his mate, spreading his arms. With a half whimper, half squeal, Karissa leapt over the tangle of legs and chairs and scrambled into his embrace.
Knowing how tense Karissa was, Logan was content to let them have their moment, but it seemed Alex wasn’t. He grasped Roland on the shoulder, his voice gruff as he spoke. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
His reason was made obvious when the door swung open again, and Jessica stepped through. She didn’t actually enter the room, merely stopped on the threshold, arms folded as her gaze zeroed in and hardened on their little reunion. Alex’s fingers tightened on Roland’s black T-shirt. That slight signal got them all moving, Alex placing his large body between Detective Jessica Waters and his client as he ushered them out of the precinct.
“She didn’t look too pleased to let Roland go,” Logan said when they’d reached street-level.
“She’s not,” Alex replied, falling into step beside Logan and behind Roland and Karissa.
“What happened? Didn’t the witness identify him?” Logan asked.
“Oh yeah. But then she started sin
ging Roland’s praises. How he saved her. How she was sure he wouldn’t have killed Tom. Think our detective realized the field day I’d have with her in court, so unless they get something more concrete they’re stuck playing the ‘don’t-leave-town’ card.”
“You’re kidding me.”
Alex gave a jerk of his shoulders. “Nope. And I’m not going to look too closely at it.”
Logan grunted a muffled agreement, but if anything, his nerves jumped more not less. Even though Alex might have been willing to take this gift horse at face value, Logan was all for a proper vetting. Jessica Waters struck him as tough, smart, and tenacious. How long before the other shoe dropped?
“Hey! Wait up!” A feminine voice pierced the bustling traffic noises around them. Logan spun, saw the flash of Jessica’s brunette head as she pushed her way through the other pedestrians toward them.
Not long. Crap. And that’s what you got with gift horses.
“Why…?” Karissa’s voice, sharp and worried made Logan turn back to his friends. If possible, Karissa was wound even tighter than she was in the waiting room. As if she, too, felt like they were barely slipping through the noose. In response to her tension, Roland’s eyes had sparked, the crimson tinge marking the edge of violence that rose with the threat of danger to his mate.
Attempting to control the potential fallout, Logan laid a settling hand on his best friend’s shoulder. “I’ll take care of this.”
“You think that’s a good idea?” Alex asked.
“Better than the alternative.” With a last squeeze and a reassuring smile for Karissa, Logan released Roland’s shoulder. “See you guys around.”
They hurried to the next cross street, rounding the corner, Alex continued to play guard dog. Not a moment too soon, either. A brush against Logan’s arm announced that she’d entered his space and stopped. He twisted and received the same solar plexus punch he’d gotten earlier
Damn. Did she have to be so beautiful?
