by V M Black
“I told you, it was a graze.”
Harper lunged for the collar of his jacket, and this time, she caught it despite his attempt at a dodge. She pulled the leather open with a single jerk. The heather t-shirt underneath had a matching hole, a blossom of crimson around it, right in the center of his shoulder. That couldn’t possibly be a graze, but the blood splotch was far too small for a direct hit. Hell, it was too small even for a graze.
She dragged the collar of the shirt down. There wasn’t even a scratch under the smear of blood, just a slight puckered mark, like a very old scar. She prodded the muscle there, and he flinched slightly, making a sharp sound.
“Do you mind?” he snapped. “That hurts.”
“There’s no entrance wound,” she said.
“It still hurts,” he said.
“Where’s the graze, Levi?” she demanded. “There’s nothing here. There’s blood, but there’s no wound.” She looked up into his face.
He seemed to make a decision. “And what if there isn’t?”
“Then I’d ask, what the hell are you?” she said.
“And I wouldn’t tell you,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no way that you’d believe me.”
She snorted. Arguing didn’t seem to be worth it. “All right. Fine. Why are you running, then?”
“I have something that somebody wants really bad.”
Harper let go of his shirt and sat back. “Hmmm. Twenty questions. Could it be…that you’re the real-life Wolverine, complete with insta-healing, and the research lab wants you back?”
That coaxed a grin from him. “Not exactly.”
She snorted. “Come on, Wolverine. Out with it. You can at least tell me whether this thing you have is really yours, all legit and everything.”
Levi shook his slightly shaggy head. “Fine, then. I stole it. But I wouldn’t say that what I stole was legitimately his or anyone else’s, either.”
“Oooh, a riddle. I like those. Not,” she said. “I’m going to find everything out eventually, anyway, if I’m coming along. You might as well tell me.”
Levi shook his head. “No, you won’t. Not unless everything goes terribly wrong. But I’ll tell you that the man I stole it from is a bad, bad guy. And what I took will mean that he’ll leave me and a whole bunch of the rest of us alone for a very long time.”
Without warning, he hit the brakes and swerved down a narrow, unmarked dirt road. Harper peered out the windshield, but all she could see was more cornfields and a group of outbuildings, an old-fashioned Pennsylvania barn with overshot walls above a stone foundation with prefab storage units and various sheds around it.
“What do you think you’re doing now?” Harper demanded.
“There’s a barn ahead,” he said. “We can hole up in there.”
Of course. Hole up. Why didn’t she think of that? She shook her head. This was like something out of a bad action flick. “Sure we can. Until what?”
“Until they’re looking ahead of where we are. They’ll pass by, and we’ll be behind their search line.”
Harper frowned. “Just how many people are we talking about here?”
They neared the barn. It might be empty this time of year, late spring before any of the harvests were in. She bet that Levi would know that, too—she bet that he knew a lot of things.
“Not a clue. Probably? A lot. He’s got the Baltimore police in his pocket, and I have good reason to believe that his influence crosses state lines.”
It just got better and better. Of all the cars out there, why’d he have to take hers?
He pulled to a stop in front of the barn. “Well?”
“Well, what?” Harper returned.
His amber eyes were laughing again. “Well, open the door. We can’t get in through a closed one.”
“Go ahead,” she returned, folding her arms across her chest.
“Fine,” he said. He put the parking brake on, killed the engine, then waggled the keys at her before stepping out of the car and shoving them into his pocket.
Well, it’d been worth a shot.
He sauntered over to the barn, and she couldn’t help but admire the long lines of his body as he walked the big doors out of the way. He didn’t seem to hold the fact that she shot him against her—though, of course, it had mostly been his fault. Then again, he didn’t seem to stay shot, either.
What was he? She wasn’t the type to get freaked out by much of anything, but the magical healing thing still threw her for a loop.
Levi could be some kind of cold-blooded killer, as well as a superhuman healing machine. And here she was, going into a barn with him. But she didn’t think so. When it came to men, her judgment didn’t exactly have the world’s greatest track record, but she was good at steering clear of the guys who were really bad news—the ones who hit girls or got into serious kinds of trouble, dealing hard drugs or boosting cars for cash or doing dirty work for anybody.
Killing girls in barns would definitely fall into that category, and though she barely knew him, she couldn’t believe that Levi was that type. After all, he’d stopped the car because he was afraid she’d hurt herself.
And anyway, at least she still had her knife.
Levi returned to the car, started it, and let the transmission’s idling speed roll it into the shadows of the barn in first gear.
The interior was dark except for the big rectangle of sun from the door and the thin lines of daylight that gilded the cracks between every board in the upper levels of the barn. A massive pile of tools and the skeletons of old furniture leaned in a tangle against one wall, taking up a third of the interior. Other than that, the vast, echoing space was empty, waiting for the harvest.
“You gonna close it for me?” Levi asked, cutting the engine.
Harper realized that he meant the door. Right.
He wasn’t going to take off without her from inside the barn, and she certainly wasn’t going to trick him into leaving the keys in it, so why not?
She rolled her eyes at him but unbuckled and got out, walking through the haze of dust that danced in the yellow block of light. Harper reached the door and squinted at the horizon. The sun was high overhead, glaring down on the fields and the distant ribbon of the road, where a single car glinted on its way south.
She pulled one door, and it moved easily on its rail. A few seconds’ effort brought them together. She returned to the car in the sudden dimness and bent down at the driver’s side window, resting her forearms on the edge of the door.
“Now what, Superman?” she asked.
He narrowed his eyes, taking her in with a long look that lingered on her cleavage. “I thought I was Wolverine.”
“Well, you certainly aren’t Batman,” she said. “When he’s hit by a bullet, he keeps bleeding.”
“I’m not telling you a thing, babycakes, so you can stop fishing.” He pulled out a cell phone and waved it at her. “And what happens now is that I have a little chat with my friend. In private.”
She sighed and pushed away from the door. “You should trust me.”
“And why’s that? Because you shot me?”
“So you admit it now.” Harper put a hand on her hip.
“Mmm,” he said noncommittally, swinging open the door. “Why don’t you stay out of the car while I have my chat?”
“Maybe I’m tired. Maybe I want to sit,” she said.
“More like you want a chance to hotwire this car, too,” he said. “Stay out of the car. I mean it.”
Damn. Was he a freaking physic, or was she just that obvious? She sighed and walked to the front of the car, where she braced her legs to perch with her rear on the bumper.
“Happy now?” She looked back over her shoulder at him.
He flashed her that smile again, the one that made her heart skip a beat. “Sure.”
Levi went into the shadows of the barn. Harper strained her eyes as he slipped between the tangle of old furniture, di
sappearing into the darkness. She shifted against the bumper, considering whether he could see her.
Yeah, probably.
Hot biker dude had taken her along for a ride, after all, even if it was in her car. And, well, after that kiss, the prospect of sex was definitely still not out of the question. So looking at it from one perspective, she’d gotten what she’d wanted. Just not quite in the way she’d been expecting.
Harper began to suspect that nothing about him would be.
Chapter Six
“Hey, Beane,” Levi said into the burner cell. He watched the girl, Harper, lean forward and scratch her ankle just above the edge of she short black boot.
“What’d you do this time, Harris?” Chay Beane sounded wary.
“What makes you think I’ve done anything?” Levi said defensively. The girl straightened and appeared to stare at the toe as she tapped out a staccato rhythm.
“Because when you call me out of the blue sounding that cheerful, it’s always because you need me to save your ass. Always,” Beane returned.
“Maybe I’m just happy.”
“You don’t call me when you’re happy, Harris,” said Beane.
He had a point there.
“Okay, so maybe you’re right,” Levi admitted. “You know that job I talked to you about last time?”
“Yeah, the one that I told you to forget about, because there was no way that you’d survive?”
“That’s the one.” Levi paused for a moment to admire the line of the girl’s body as she stretched luxuriantly back against the hood of the car. What he’d like to do to her there…. That kiss, seized so impulsively, had only whet his appetite for more.
“Harris.” There was a warning in Beane’s voice.
He was going to find out sooner or later. “Well, I did it. And I’m still alive, thanks.”
“God, are you a complete idiot? Mortensen owns half of Baltimore, and he’s got a controlling stake in the Newark port. The Genovese are in his pocket, and so’s half the law enforcement on the East Coast.”
“Look, it wouldn’t work if we didn’t go after someone big like him,” Levi returned. “The major players are the only bloodsuckers with enough pull to make a difference. I’ve got the package, but if I’m going to do anything with it, I’m going to need your help.”
“I’m not much help against mobsters or police,” Beane said. “Not that there’s any difference when there’s a vampire in the mix.”
“I’ll handle that. I always do. I need technical support, man. That’s it.”
Beane sighed. “Okay, so it’s a dagger.”
Levi pulled it out from his waistband. “Right.”
It was absurdly ornamented, a tacky, impractical thing, the sheath and hilt chased with curlicues and inlaid with gems and pearls. An obvious fake, though the gems were real enough, except they were lab-created.
Some people took Levi to be stupid. After all, as a werewolf, he was often hired to do jobs that relied on stealth or brute force, rarely finesse. And he had to admit that he had made rather a habit of going off half-cocked.
But he’d discovered a few years ago that he had a knack for observing small details, the little things that told him whether something was what it appeared to be. He’d had almost a sixth sense for sniffing out lies and frauds, and his natural talent had been honed when he’d started taking cases to verify the provenance of unique and expensive art and memorabilia.
Levi credited his wolf senses for a good part of his success. He looked at things differently than ordinary humans did, and the parts of an artwork that appeared most strikingly unique to him were rarely the same things that humans concentrated on. Forgers always made the wrong things look good, and with a substantial education to both back up and better inform those observations, he’d made a thriving business.
But it was a business that few who knew his true nature had heard about. To most nonhumans, he was Levi Harris, tracker, muscle, and general problem solver. And as long as there were those out there in that world who would like to use his werewolf relations to manipulate him, that was all they needed to know. If he’d let his worlds mix, he would have been dragged into smuggling by some bloodsucker with grandiose plans, lending his good name to a disreputable enterprise until it was discovered and he was ruined.
The vampire would, of course, get off scot-free. They always did.
Until now.
“Have you opened it yet?” Beane asked.
“Not yet.” Levi held the phone against his cheek and turned the knife in his hands, his sharp vision able to pick out slight inconsistencies and imperfections on the surface even in the shadows. “I’ve been kind of busy.”
“When you say ‘kind of busy,’ it usually involves people with guns,” Beane said, his voice dripping with disapproval.
“Not this time. I swear.” There it was—in the most obvious place. Levi snorted. He should have guessed. He held onto the grip and twisted the pommel carefully. It gave instantly, unscrewing from the knife. “The guards were werewolves. It’s hard to hold a gun in your paws.”
“One of these days, I’m going to get a call, and it’ll be from your sister, telling me that you pushed your luck too far and now you’re a wolfskin throw.”
“Nah. I’d have to be turned into a lampshade. We always turn back human when we die.” The pommel came loose. Levi shook the hollow sphere over his hand. Nothing. He peered into the body of the grip. There was something white stuffed inside. Cotton wadding. He tried to shake it out, but nothing happened, and his fingers were too big to fit inside. He could use his own pocket knife, but he didn’t want to risk damaging whatever was inside it.
He made an impatient noise. Just his luck.
“What’s wrong now?” Beane asked.
“Temporary setback. I’ll call you right back,” Levi said, then flipped the burner closed and shoved it into his pocket.
He walked over to stand in front of the girl. She peered up at him, then at the knife in his hands. Damn, but she was tempting, all curves and pretty gray eyes.
“If you’re looking for a virgin sacrifice, you’re a number of years too late,” she said, nodding to the ornate dagger.
“Very funny. Got a pair of tweezers in that deadly purse of yours?” he asked.
She pushed off the car. “I thought you wanted me to stay out of the car.”
“Just get the damn purse,” he said.
She did, rummaging around in its depths before handing over a pair of steel tweezers with slanted tips. Perfect.
He grasped the edge of the cotton and pulled it carefully, sliding out the whole wad from the hollow grip. She watched, curiosity naked on her face, as it came out. He handed back the tweezers and pulled the wadding free, shoving the knife back into his waistband and then carefully unrolling it on his palm. A flat black shape emerged.
“An SD card? That’s what you stole?” she said, sounding disappointed. “I hope it has like nuclear launch codes on it or something.”
Levi smiled and pulled out an empty coin pouch, slipping the card into it and zipping it closed. The micro SD card was exactly the kind of thing he’d hoped to find. Until that moment, there was still a chance, however slight, that he’d been wrong, that all the intelligence that he’d gathered had been compromised and he’d fallen for a decoy.
“Something even better,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows. “And you’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“You wouldn’t believe it, anyway.”
“I’d believe a surprising amount from a guy with superhuman healing,” she said.
He grinned at her annoyed expression and decided, against his better judgment, to give her a small teaser. “The jewels on the knife? They’re all real. And the whole reason for the knife was just to disguise this puppy. ’Cause it’s worth that much more, in the right hands.” He patted his hip. “For you, it’d mean very little. For me, though, it’s freedom.”
He pulled out the phone, flipped
it open, and hit redial, turning his back on her as he headed back into the furniture pile.
“Got it now?” Beane asked.
“Yeah. Just like we thought,” Levi said.
“Look, you might as well just tell me everything,” Harper called. “I’m going to get it out of you eventually.”
“Who is that?” Beane demanded.
Levi winced. “Just a tagalong I picked up.”
“Look, dude, if there was ever a bad time to pick up a chick—”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s complicated. Look, I’ve got a micro SD card here. How do I get the contents to you ASAP?”
“Got a tablet or phone with a data plan?” he asked.
“I’m calling you on my burner, but yeah, I’ve got my full kit.”
“So what you need is a micro SD to micro USB reader, if your phone will take that. Then Dropbox, and share it with me, and you’re good. If it copies.”
“What do you mean, ‘if it copies?’” Levi repeated, turning so that he had the girl in view again. “It’s on the card. Of course it will copy.”
“Look, if you bring it here, I guarantee that I’ll be able to copy it. But there are ways to make standard readers ignore data. It’s mostly so people don’t copy over files that are needed to make cameras use a card right and things like that, and so the important stuff isn’t lost if they reformat it, but that kind of data’s invisible through a regular reader.”
Levi let out a puff of air. “Great. Fabulous. So I can either try to make it all the way to your dungeon of paranoia, or I can just take a little trip to the store, like I don’t have people on my ass wanting my head, and take a gamble on whether I can use a card reader with it.”
“You could always mail it,” Beane suggested.
“Right. Let me do that. That totally won’t get intercepted at any point along the route.”
“Security through obscurity really does work most of the time,” Beane said.
