by Rachel Shane
A waitress rushed over and set another chair next to him to rest his cast-covered leg on. His sausage-link arms propped over his abundant belly. “A bounty hunter bringing me a present? You’re too kind, dear.”
It took all Cole’s willpower not to snarl. He pushed the leather satchel toward him. “Here’s ten percent of what I owe.”
Sean glared at Cole, never flicking his eyes toward the leather case. “I may have dropped out of high school but correct me if I’m wrong. Ten percent does not equal one hundred, right?”
Cole clenched his teeth. “You’ll get the rest.” Eventually. Maybe after Cole was dead.
Delilah cleared her throat. “Sir, when did you break your leg?”
Sean glanced at Delilah, then back at Cole. “Darling, this business is with Mr. Tiernan here, not you.”
Cole crossed his arms. “Answer the question.”
Truthfully, he’d never had the balls to stand up to Sean before. The power felt exhilarating.
Sean half rose from his seat but a face of agony forced him back down. “I’m calling the shots here. Three of my guys are waiting right outside this bar and would be more than happy to even out what you owe me.” He slammed his knuckle on the table, his thick silver ring striking the wood with loud metallic blasts. Nearby, a woman gasped and scooted her chair farther away.
Delilah plunked a water bottle filled with the Chai substance she’d brewed earlier on the table. She unscrewed the cap and slid it toward Sean. “Care for some Chai tea?”
Sean looked at her as if she were insane. “I don’t want your fucking tea.” He swatted at the bottle and the plastic tipped over, gushing across the table toward him like a waterfall dripping onto his legs. He desperately wiped at his pants with his bare hands and the corners of Delilah’s lips lifted into a grin.
“Sir, you’re going to answer three of our questions and then you’re going to let us go by calling off your henchmen.”
Cole couldn’t help it. He laughed. Anyone who could work the word henchmen into modern speech deserved accolades.
Sean’s eyes glazed over. “Skiing accident in Vail. Two weeks ago. I need surgery to fix the ligament.”
Delilah nodded with satisfaction. “Where were you last night between the hours of one a.m. and three a.m?”
“Asleep. The pain meds knocked me out at nine.”
Delilah opened her mouth to ask her last question, but Cole cut her off before she ruined his one chance. “Did you cheat me out of the winnings at the Texas Hold ‘Em Reno tourney?”
Delilah glared at Cole. This was clearly not part of her investigation.
“Yes,” Sean admitted. “Not just that one but seven others. I had men on the inside rigging the card deals.”
Cole snapped his fingers. “I knew it!”
Sean blinked against the daze and grabbed his phone from his pocket. “You know what? I’m feeling generous. Leave now and I’ll give you another week to pay me what you owe.”
Cole stood up. “No, you won’t. Because I owe you nothing. Including this.” He snatched the leather case off the table and made a mad dash for the door, tugging Delilah along. When he exited, he braced himself for the swoop of Sean’s henchmen but only hot sun and a nearly empty parking lot greeted them.
Delilah’s breath came heavy. “That was extremely dumb.”
He grinned at her. “But it worked.” He tilted his head to her. “It’s not him, is it?”
She shook her head. “That was truth powder I blew on him with a dash of compulsion mixed in.”
Cole blinked at her. “Truth powder is a real thing?”
She laughed. “How else do you think I get the answers I need during depositions?”
Cole liked her, this woman who spent her nights crusading for innocents, but didn’t mind cutting corners and cheating to get what she wanted. A girl after his own heart.
“Who was the other guy on your potential hit list?” she asked.
“Derek Hamel, my best buddy. Or I guess possibly my former best buddy.”
She nodded. “Good. He’s next on our interrogation list. Call him. We only have an hour left until sundown.”
But before Cole could, his phone rang. It was Britta Sinclair. “Britta?” he asked, his stomach filling with dread.
She sighed into the phone. “I guess it didn’t work.”
CHAPTER SIX
DELILAH
Delilah’s pulse amped as Cole’s face turned graver and graver the longer he listened to Britta. “Wait, but—what didn’t work?” he asked her for the third time.
Through the phone, Delilah could hear Britta’s high-pitched wails.
“I’m not mad, okay? Calm down,” Cole told Britta before listening again. “Okay. Stay at your house. Let me check it out and I’ll get back to you.” He hung up and let out a shuddering sigh before turning toward Delilah. “Derek’s missing.”
His words set her teeth on edge.
“Apparently he and Britta have been seeing each other behind my back.” He winced, Adam’s apple bobbing. “He was supposed to go over to her place last night and didn’t and now his phone is disconnected.”
Delilah nibbled on her inner cheek. “And Britta’s calling you because…?”
Cole raked a hand through his dark hair. “I’m his best friend. Or used to be. But I guess Britta hoped I might have heard from him.”
Something seemed off about this. If Britta had put Cole under a love spell…then why was she seeing someone behind his back? And why was Cole the first person she called? Not to mention Cole’s repeated question to her.
“Why did you keep asking her what didn’t work?”
Cole sighed. “That’s what she said to me when I first picked up the phone. Because apparently she’d logged into my email with the password I hadn’t changed.”
Delilah gave him a look.
Cole’s cheeks turned red. “She contacted Derek with a desperate message sent from my account hoping he’d call me since he wasn’t calling her. But I guess she could tell instantly from my voice that he hadn’t.” Cole straightened. “Anyway, I promised we’d go check out Derek’s place since we were going there anyway. I still have a key.”
But when they pushed open the door to Derek Hamel’s apartment, Delilah sucked in a breath. It was abandoned. No sign of life. No sign of struggle. No furniture. Only dust bunnies once hidden behind couches, now exposed. She tried to place one foot over the threshold to enter, but her leg slammed into an invisible barrier that propelled her backward. She stumbled until her shoulder blades crashed into the hallway wall behind her.
Cole’s eyes widened and he stuck his hand into the doorway only to reel back as if punched. “Protection spell?” he asked, panting.
She nodded, sidling close to Cole. They were handcuff-free now, but a part of Delilah wished they weren’t. “Did you know he was moving?”
A grimace tightened Cole’s lips. “Obviously not. I also didn’t know he knew how to do magic.”
Apprehension knotted at the base of Delilah’s throat. Maybe it wasn’t that simple. Britta was magically inclined and could have performed the protection spell.
The door opened across the hallway and an old woman hobbled out, clutching a cane. She glanced up at them and stiffened. “Stay away from me!” She brandished her cane like a weapon.
Cole lifted his hands in surrender but Delilah wheeled on the woman. “Do you know what happened to the guy who lived here?”
The woman pushed out her wrinkly lower lip. “He was here yesterday and gone by the morning. Good riddance. I heard he got evicted for rowdy behavior, but I don’t believe it. There was something strange about him and if you’re friends of his, then I don’t trust you either.”
Cole and Delilah exchanged glances. “What was strange about him?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure if she was addressing Cole or the old woman.
The woman answered. “He only came out at night, reeking of alcohol and something else. Sage maybe.”
&n
bsp; Delilah’s stomach dropped at that news.
“And the sounds. Every night, all night, it was like someone was screaming…or maybe wailing.” The woman shuddered. “Leave. Or I’ll call the management company.”
Delilah tugged Cole into step. Derek was gone and this woman was scared of him. That was enough evidence for Delilah to guess he was involved somehow. And she guessed he had an accomplice named Britta.
“Come on.” Delilah waved Cole toward the car. “It’s time I met your ex.” She fluffed her hair for good measure. Her eyes flicked to the sky, now tinged with pink. Only forty minutes until sundown. Until she had to get far away from Cole. Her chest tightened at that thought.
In the car, Delilah relayed her theory to Cole as she drove a few miles above the speed limit. “Britta and Derek were in cahoots. She performed the magic, he did the dirty work. It was his shoes we saw in the surveillance.”
Cole shook his head. “The guy’s a deadbeat poker player. He doesn’t own any nice shoes.”
Delilah dismissed that with a wave of her palm. “All part of the facade.”
“What about this counter theory?” Cole readjusted his long legs in Delilah’s tiny car. “One of them acted alone. If it was Britta, then she kidnapped Derek and made it seem like he was missing so we’d suspect him of fleeing. That’s why she called me. To make sure I found his empty apartment. In fact, I bet she knows you’re with me so she purposefully created a protection spell for us to detect. And I bet she’s got a rock solid alibi.”
Frankly, his theory was equally as plausible. Nothing would surprise Delilah. “And if it’s Derek?” She raised a brow.
“He’s got Britta fooled. He faked his own disappearance, but I bet when we get to Britta’s, we find planted evidence that links her to the curse.”
Cole was a betting man, after all.
All of a sudden, Cole grabbed the wheel and swerved the car. The tires skidded and the vehicle spun like a tilt o’whirl. Delilah gripped the wheel with white knuckles, turning against the spinning until the car slowed to a stop. Cars honked. Delilah’s chest pumped raggedly.
Sweat dripped down Cole’s brow as he stared at his hands in horror. “I’m sorry. I thought I was in control but all of a sudden the pull came back in full force.”
He lunged for the wheel again but Delilah held him back as she pulled off onto the side of the road with one hand. Once the car was in park, she braced both hands on his beating chest. “Your nephews,” she reminded him. “Think about how much they need you. A father figure. You need to stay strong for them.”
He swallowed hard and a look of pure pain crossed his face. “I can’t.”
“Favorite hobby,” Delilah shot at him. “Besides poker.”
“Rock climbing,” he spat out. “I’m a homebody who loves the outdoors. I’m a walking contradiction.”
Delilah laughed. He was the first person to make her laugh in a long time and she didn’t want to stop. Clients usually only came to her out of desperation or depression and often their emotions rubbed off on her. But he was taking his upcoming demise in stride, making the best of it, and in that way she felt solidarity with him. She’d been alone for years now, ever since her parents passed away and her friends had all moved away to towns with far less glamour and far more corporate job opportunities. Cole was the first person she’d met in Vegas that she could have a conversation with that didn’t involve cursing exes, either via magic or under the client’s breath.
Even though she’d started throwing out random questions to distract him, she clung to every answer he gave. She loved uncovering all these little pieces of him. In her heart, she taped them together, making him whole. “How long have you been climbing?”
He squirmed in his seat and gasped out. “Ten years. I started as a boy scout.”
Delilah resisted the urge to say, “Awww.” “Greatest fear,” she said instead.
“Crawling into a grave and burying myself alive.” As the words left his lips, determination grew on his face.
She reinforced the locks with a quick incantation. “Okay, not the best question to ask you.”
He was panting heavily now, a low whimper beating in the back of his throat. Delilah stroked his face from temple to chin and he stilled beneath her touch. With her other hand, she trailed her nails over his bare forearm. His eyelashes fluttered closed.
“What about you?” he whispered, tilting his arm into her touch. “Hobby. Fear. Desire. Go.”
Desire? She hadn’t actually asked him that one but her desire was there, pulsing between her thighs. Delilah traced concentric circles over the back of his wrist. “I don’t have time for hobbies. But if I did, I would cook.” She kept her voice calm, the hint of a joke playing behind her words, but when her eyes caught on the clock, a strangled cry rose and died in the back of her throat. Soon, she’d succumb to the same pull of a different curse. Soon, Delilah wouldn’t be able to protect Cole anymore.
She might abandon him in search of someone else.
She’d learned long ago that she had no control over her vigilante spidey senses. When her curse struck, it chose whom she needed to help, regardless of proximity, regardless of her own desire. Once she’d been in the middle of helping an old woman cross the street when her curse kicked in. She dropped the woman’s arm and raced away like a mad woman, running seven miles until she reached the person in need. Another old lady in the process of being mugged. And the night her parents passed away, she’d been by their bedsides, squeezing their hands as the hospital monitors beeped steadily. They’d been in a terrible car crash but were in stable condition…until the curse pulled her out of their room, out of the hospital. She found out later they’d both taken a turn for the worse the moment she let go of their hands. They’d needed her, and her curse wouldn’t let her save them.
That was her greatest fear. That she’d be Cole’s downfall. But instead Delilah said something less scary, something that would distract him, not give him more anxiety. “I’m afraid of not being able to help everyone. That one day, I won’t be enough.” She sucked in a shaky breath.
His eyes popped open. “You make me look like a little shit. Here I only want to save three people and you want to take on seven billion.”
“Hence why I never sleep,” Delilah said, laughing.
He leaned forward and her hand fell away from his bicep. “I think I’m okay now. But I’m seriously not opposed to those handcuffs.”
She drove the last few miles to Britta’s, and then slapped them on his wrist, partly because she didn’t trust the pull of the curse. Partly because she didn’t trust her own.
But also because she liked the way his body leaned close to hers when they were attached.
“Do you have more of that truth serum?” Cole asked as Delilah knocked on the door of Britta’s quaint little house. White shingles hung above mint green siding, offering them brief shading against the torrid Las Vegas heat.
“Yes, but if she’s a witch, I can’t risk it. If she’s part of this, she can’t know we’re onto her. She has to believe we’re honing in on Derek.” Delilah straightened her shoulders. “We have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
The door swung open and a tall, perky blond answered. She was gorgeous, but Delilah sensed something magical lurking beneath Britta’s veins. A glamour spell, perhaps. Cheaper and way less risky than plastic surgery. Only a powerful witch could maintain it for months.
Icy blue eyes landed on Cole, then on Delilah. Her stare turned hard. “Who is she?”
Delilah extended her hand. “I’m Delilah York. A friend of Cole’s.” Her voice hitched on the word friend and she hoped Britta didn’t take the wrong meaning. She hoped her heart didn’t either.
“Wait, I know you. You’re a—” She glanced at Cole, clamping her mouth shut against whatever she wanted to say. She finished with, “Lawyer.”
“Witch lawyer,” Cole corrected. “I know about the love potion.”
Delilah elbowed him in the
ribs. So much for keeping a poker bluff.
Britta’s entire body stiffened. “I can explain. Come inside.” She waved them in with a sweep of her long red fingernails. Her house was decorated in a way Delilah could only describe as “cute as a button.” Mauve pink walls, pale yellow carpet, framed photos of cats lining the mantel. It was like a gumball machine threw up. Even Britta’s perky face seemed to fit in as if she was specifically purchased to live here as well.
Britta gestured to two gaudy flowered chairs, white with pink roses. Delilah raised a brow at Cole as if to say, “Really? Her?” But then she remembered it wasn’t his choice. He’d dated Britta against his will.
He slumped into the sofa, his breath heavy, and Delilah perched on the edge to keep their hands dangled between them. Her back straightened. Ready to strike. The vigilante in her was welling up, gearing to surface. Her senses were growing sharper, her instincts more in tune with the world. A low hum beat under her breastbone, an itch Delilah couldn’t possibly scratch. Not until she saved someone.
Britta paced the floor, her heels making divots in the carpet. “The love potion wasn’t my idea. It was Derek’s.”
Delilah raised a brow. This seemed almost too convenient. Too fake.
Britta spun to Cole. “I really did like you. I had a huge crush on you. We chatted a few times at Ephemeral Bar but you never remembered me. You were always with Derek and he must have picked up on my—my magical dabblings—because he made me an offer.” She sighed, her whole body shuddering. “He wanted me to brew a love potion and give it to you. I’d get to date you like I’d wanted. And you’d be distracted enough to pull away from poker and give Derek the opening to swoop in and earn the spot in the tournament.” She lowered her head. “I hoped that after the spell wore off, you’d have actual genuine feelings for me.” Her voice hitched.
