Damian’s eyes widened. “What else have you got in there?”
Jamison grinned and went over to hit the same pad on the wall as Max had earlier. “Only one way to find out!” he shouted as the room reset.
“Scale-skin is cheating too,” Jamison complained by their sixth round fighting against Damian. “So are all your magical superpowers. You too, bear-man. Although, I’m glad you’ve been on my side this whole time,” he said, pointing to Max.
“You’re half metal!” Damian complained, grinning.
“Only, like, a quarter,” Jamison corrected him. “Which means the other seventy-five percent of me is really freaking badass, even remotely holding my own in this room.”
Max looked to Damian, who said what he knew they both were thinking. “Yeah, about that….”
“If you tell me you’ve been sandbagging to make me feel better…no. Just keep it to yourself.” Jamison waved his hand, as Damian laughed, and Max made a deep panting sound that sounded like laughter in his bear-throat.
The door to the training room opened, revealing a prim-looking Mills in a pencil skirt and a floral blouse in the hallway. “There’re only so many organs I can magically replace, gentlemen.” She crossed her arms and smirked at all of them. “I’ve come to retrieve my partner in science before you break him.”
Jamison grinned at the sight of her. “I was really hoping you were going to say partner in crime.”
“Intellectually, I realize that that is sexier, yes, but I can’t lie, you know that.” She gave him an indulgent grin and tossed a towel at him. “Also, I’ve finished inventorying the contents of the Hunter’s van and reached the final wall of shell corps that it was registered too. So, if you all want to take showers and then rejoin me?” She gestured down the hall to where their meeting room was.
“You’re so amazing,” Jamison told her earnestly.
“I know,” she said with a grin. “Sorry. With my condition, sometimes it’s hard for me to be humble.”
Jamison beamed at her. “I wouldn’t hide my light if I were you. Or, that ass.”
Damian cleared his throat, and Jamison blotted his face lightly, turning back to him. “Where are you at on getting that sample back, D?”
“It’s not happening.” It was as close as Damian would get to giving them a confession. He didn’t want to go into his interactions with Andi with them. “And what’s more, I don’t think we need it. Stella told me who paid her.”
“Who?” Mills asked, eyebrows up, and smartwatch at the ready.
“Not exactly who…just who the intermediary was. Rax.”
Max instantly shifted back into human form and grabbed Jamison’s towel from him to cover himself with. “That asshole?”
“One and the same.”
They’d had a few run-ins with Rax ever since Damian had taken up residency in this town. Most cities weren’t big enough for one dragon—let alone two. But Rax was strange. He smelled like a dragon, but it was like he’d gone completely native on Earth. Damian doubted he remembered how to turn into a dragon anymore and wondered if he even still had one inside. He definitely didn’t have a sense of loyalty—or a conscience.
“I never did figure out where his lair was,” Mills apologized.
“It’s okay. I don’t want to fight him at his home.” That kind of action would invite retribution here, and Damian would never allow that. “Just at his home turf. I know where he’ll be, and where we’ll be. The Lynx, back door, four a.m., near closing time. I’ll take a strike crew. Volunteers?”
Grimalkin materialized out of nowhere and sat possessively in front of Mills to yowl up at Damian. “You are not blowing cheeseburgers for me a second time.”
* * *
The monster in her dreams was chasing her again.
It was like she fell into sleep and started running and couldn’t stop. She was in some kind of medieval castle and the corridors were unending and the cold stone she was running on kept hurting her feet, but if she stopped, it was there.
Andi could hear its claws clicking as it chased behind her, and when she twisted her head to look back at it, it was terrifyingly close. Like Death’s own hound, it came up to her shoulder, and whatever scraps of skin it had left was rotted through, showing the white bone shifting and muscles bunching underneath.
She ran until she was out of breath. Her feet felt raw and her muscles ached and her lungs burned.
“Just stop!” she shouted as she whirled. “Stop! I can’t take it anymore!”
The creature haunting her only slowed, trotting up to angle empty eye sockets at her.
“Get away from me!” Andi shouted with a shove. It unhinged its jaw and prepared to bite her hands off as Andi woke up to the sound of a text arriving on her phone, covered in a tangle of penguin sheets on her floor.
Andi took a few moments to catch her breath and reorient back to blessed reality, surprised to find herself on her apartment’s hardwood floor, the same level as her fuzzy red rug and assorted laundry she needed to wash or put away. The framed Fate of the Furious poster Sammy had gotten her after her break-up with Josh was on the wall directly across from her, so that Vin Diesel and The Rock were staring down with concern.
“I’m fine,” she said, balling up a dirty bra to throw at the poster as her phone beeped again.
That was what had woken her up from her dream in the first place, and just in time. She tugged on her phone’s charger so it would fall down to her level and picked it up.
Hey, it’s David.
I ran your blood sample like you asked and got a hit.
Andi blinked at her phone, wiping hair off her cheek. Was this finally a clue—a real and true clue—about what’d happened to Danny? She sat up instantly, cradling her phone.
I’d rather not talk about it in a text, though. Can we meet up somewhere?
Yes! She texted back. Where/when?
Bright Star’s HQ?
She plugged his company name into her search engine and found his corporate headquarters outside of town, far from any bus lines. She still had to go to work tonight and—glancing out of the crack beneath her black-out curtains—she could see that it was already dark. Between paying for rides and then waiting for rides in the darkness….
I just got up. Can I take you up on last night’s coffee instead? At Jones and Shah on MacArthur? she offered. It was a mom and pop coffee shop on the bus line that went all night, just a few easy stops from her hospital.
Even better, David agreed. I’ll bring my laptop.
Thanks. Andi did some quick calculations about travel and shower time. I can be there in an hour and a half.
Perfect. See you soon.
Andi relaxed back to the floor again and stared up at the ceiling. What if David only had bad news to tell her? It was entirely possible, where her brother was concerned. She ought to be braced by now, but old habits die hard.
She turned her head and could see the case for her old pool cue underneath her bed. She reached out to touch its familiar leather side. It was the last thing of value her father had given her, and the last time their father had played fair—giving the same gift to both her and Danny, instead of getting him more or nicer things. She wondered where Danny’s cue was now.
She closed her tired eyes, remembering.
* * *
“My turn to go first!” Andi said, leaning against the pool table, letting it catch her across her chest.
“Your turn to lose, you mean,” Danny snarked, using the footstool they moved around the table so they could play to crawl up and rack the balls, careful not to scuff the felt.
“You’re just jealous because I’m better than you,” Andi said, taking the stool back to use on the table’s shorter side. She stood up on it in her church flats and ankle socks, leaning forward to use a pool cue longer than she was tall.
Danny ran around to make faces at her just over the far side of the table to distract her from her break. “You’re just jealous because Dad likes
me more,” he said.
Andi’s first stroke slashed it, and the cue ball went wild, spinning sideways, nowhere near the racked set, to bounce along a rail. Danny taunted her, then caught the look in her eyes. “I didn’t mean it, Andi-bear,” he said softly.
“Good,” Andi said, rubbing her blue-chalked hands on the skirt of her church dress. “Redo?”
“Sure,” Danny said, rolling the cue ball back to her. “It doesn’t matter. You’re still going to miss it.”
Andi grit her teeth and did what she always did when she was stressed—she focused harder. Tried harder. All she had to do was be better. Better than anyone else. It didn’t matter how many times the world pushed her down because she was between cultures and didn’t belong to either one—because she was a girl. She was always going to get up and try again.
One by one, she sank every ball.
“Cheater!” Danny exclaimed.
“No,” she said, making a face back at him at last. “I’m just good.”
Danny’s eyes widened. “Until Mom finds out you got chalk on your church dress.”
Andi looked down. She was going to be in so much trouble! But right now, Mom wasn’t here, and Danny was. “Again?” she asked him, but he was already clambering up on the table.
“Me first, this time,” he said.
“Sure,” she said, poking his butt gently with the non-chalk end of the pool cue.
“Cut it out!” he laughed, swatting her away as she laughed with him.
* * *
After their dad had left when they were teenagers, and after Danny had learned how to wheedle the keys to Mom’s car, she and Danny would drive off for hours with fake IDs to go someplace that didn’t know them to hustle for money. As long as they went someplace where there weren’t a lot of Asians, people couldn’t tell how old they were. Half her life, she’d been able to pass from twelve to twenty-five, depending on how she dressed that day. Same for Danny and his K-pop hair.
When they got to wherever they’d been going, Danny would pretend to be teaching her and some other fool would always want to butt in and play the harmless pretty girl until the pretty girl took him for all the cash he had on him with a cute shrug and “Beginner’s luck!” It wasn’t her fault she didn’t live up to people’s meek expectations of her—and that their willingness to stereotype her cost them money. Sometimes she’d even get silly and wear a wig or roll on a fake tattoo and pretend to be someone else entirely. She and Danny would drink milkshakes and come up with their backstory the whole ride there—the more ludicrous, the better—only to forget it in the parking lot. There’d even been a few drunken fights which Danny had somehow come through ridiculously unscathed. She never asked her brother where he learned to fight, and it wasn’t that he was technically good at it. He was just always angrier than anyone else he was fighting.
Looking back, it’d all been so terribly exciting and such a terrifically bad idea. If she’d known then the kind of trouble it would escalate into later—the new crowd he would run with, the stolen cars and the motorcycles—no, she never would’ve let Danny talk her into things. But those times in the car and around a pool table were the only times they’d ever really gotten along…and she wasn’t sure if she would trade that, either.
“What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Danny?” she asked her phone, wishing somehow, he’d respond through it to her, and then got up to take a shower.
Andi was at the coffee shop an hour and fifteen minutes later, and while the temptation to wait to order and make David pay for it—as she was sure he wanted to—loomed large, she bought her own drink because she needed the caffeine to start working now, so whatever he told her, she’d be ready.
Jones and Shah was one of those shabby-chic coffee shops. It’d once been chic-chic, only the original owners had gotten a divorce, and now it was Jones-and-his-new-girlfriend-who-apparently-wanted-to-own-a-farm. The mismatched tables had been repainted white; living plants had been replaced by dried floral arrangements, and the prior rotating art displays had been permanently switched out for scenic watercolors of rustic life, probably painted by said girlfriend, now that Andi thought on it. An, ‘It’s not dirt, it’s angel dust!’ sign over the trashcan always made Andi snicker and then kind of wonder about what kind of sheltered life the girlfriend had that she didn’t know the street name for PCP.
Once she got her order, she took up residence on one of the leather couches, taking up enough space with her coat and bag of scrubs to hold the rest of it for David’s arrival. She sat there, drumming her fingers on either side of her mug, trying not to gulp it down.
“Just be prepared, Andi,” she told herself quietly.
Because what if David told her Danny was dead? And that’s why they needed to meet in person? But if that was the case, surely, he wouldn’t have wanted them to meet at a coffee shop. He’d have asked for her address, to come tell her in person. She snorted and fished through her purse to pull out her phone, to reread David’s texts to herself and to see if there could be any other meanings. But there was nothing to read between the lines there. She was just being silly.
She put David into her contacts, so she’d know it was him again if he texted or called, and played around with her phone, trying to distract herself from her overactive imagination—and thought back to the other night when she’d been comparing notes with Julian. What the hell reason could Damian possibly have for wanting his coat returned? Other than just being a jerk?
She searched for the Lynx and called the number, even though it was far too early for them to be open and wasn’t surprised when she hit voice mail. “Hey,” she began, feeling foolish. “This message is for Julian. It’s Andi, Danny’s sister, from the other night. I need that coat back. I’ll pay you for it tomorrow night, okay? Just don’t do anything stupid with it.” She had tomorrow night off. She could go over there with a few hundred bucks and get it back and then throw it at Damian the next time she saw him.
Andi swiped her phone off and stared for a second at her call list. Precious few people called her in this, the Age of Texts, other than staffing from work, robodialers, and telemarketers.
But two nights ago, according to her call history, it looked like David had.
Andi held her phone closer to her face and swallowed. She ran back the days in the interim—and that was the same night that Danny’d called her, saying he was scared, asking for his Andi-bear—and it was the same unknown number she’d compared with Julian.
Only now it wasn’t unknown.
The door to the coffee shop opened, letting in a burst of cold air and David.
“Andi!” he said in his polished British accent, smiling broadly at her, opening his arms out as he came in her direction. She clocked a different set of silver rings on his hand as he reached for her, and she paused as he stepped back. “I’m sorry, are we not at the hug stage yet? I shouldn’t have assumed.”
Andi plastered a tight smile on her face. If her phone was right, his phone had been near Danny two nights ago. And so had he. “No, we are, sorry, just getting up!” she lied and stepped in to hug him. His strong arms folded around her to press her into his chest, and she breathed the scent of his grassy vetiver aftershave in deep. She sank back when he was through and fell into the couch, glad for each and every moment she’d ever had to lie through her teeth to a patient’s family. “Get yourself a drink, why don’t you?”
“I will. I’ll be back,” he promised, setting his messenger bag down beside her with a secret grin and a twinkle in his eye.
Andi smiled at him just long enough for him to turn around.
Chapter 12
If what Julian said was right…. Her eyes scoured David, looking for some sign that he was secretly a fearsome shipper of dead bodies and other illegal things. She didn’t believe Julian so much—he’d been blowing smoke up Danny’s ass for years—but she sure as fuck believed her phone.
“I hate to get down to business,” Andi said, smiling again as D
avid returned. He moved his bag over and sat as close to her as he could without touching. She had to steel herself not to back up. “But what kind of ‘hit’ on Danny did you get?”
“First off, he’s not dead,” David said with a headshake. “At least, he’s not on any of those databases? He’s not out there, ‘John Doe-ing’ around.”
“Small blessings,” Andi said with a snort.
David set his drink down on the coffee table in front of them, and then reached into his bag to pull his laptop out. “Okay, so, as fraternal twins, you two only share half your DNA. You probably already know that, I’ll stop nurse-splaining,” he said as he typed in his password and pressed his thumb to a spot on his keyboard. The screen flashed on.
“No, go on. I don’t really think about DNA much at the hospital,” Andi encouraged him, willing him to keep talking and somehow slip up.
“Okay, so, I had a friend run your blood through CODIS, the big database that the US keeps on criminals, and surprise, surprise, you didn’t come up, because you’re a law-abiding citizen.”
“But did he?” Andi asked, leaning forward inadvertently. “I mean, the half of the DNA we share as siblings, did that come up?”
David shook his head. “Nope. So, I guess he hasn’t hit that level of notoriety yet? Where I did get hits, though, was on some medical stuff. There’s a group out there that’s interested in your sequence—and presumably your brother’s, too, if they knew about him.”
“Why?”
“It looks like you’ve got some strange strings going on in your junk DNA.” He tilted his screen toward her. The screen was full of letters, GAT and Cs, her own DNA sequences she supposed, and he pointed to a highlighted area that read like alphabet soup with very limited letters. “Junk DNA is a poor term for it—just because its use isn’t instantly clear to us doesn’t mean it’s not regulating genes during development or performing other functions. And scientists think it could have some historic evolutionary value.”
Dragon Destined: Billionaire Dragon Shifter Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds) Page 12
