“Do we have trackers today? I didn’t make any when we left.”
“No, not yet anyway. Haven’t seen any since last night at the restaurant.”
“Guess they have other fish on the hook.”
“Maybe,” he said, still scanning as they walked. “It’s nice to be here with you.” He looked straight at her then, and made no attempt to hide his feelings. Feelings for her.
And God help her, everything inside her responded.
Her heart leapt up, her gut clenched at the look in his eyes, and her stomach got a bad case of the butterflies. Her body responded, but not in the predictable, hot way.
This was heart. This was soul.
He tugged her hand, started them forward again. “I know you, Cait, even though I don’t. You have shared power with me, been ready to back me up. Committed to it.” He looked down at her, began swinging his hand so that they were twisting, like little kids did when they played. It made her smile. “Ah-ha! I got a smile.”
“Yeah, yeah. Maybe I’m laughing at you?”
“No, you’re not.” He squeezed her hand, and, she couldn’t help it, she squeezed back. “I also know if you’ve committed to it, it’ll happen.”
“Is that enough for you?”
Why the heck did you ask that? She wanted to kick herself, but it didn’t phase him.
“For the moment. Not for a long-term thing, but for now.”
“And if there is no long-term thing?”
“We could get killed tomorrow by a smelly, seven-foot, scaled, clawed, armor-wearing, sword-swinging, bad-breathed critter with a serious effin’ attitude and four-inch claws on each of his four paws,” he said, stopping her again.
“Tomorrow is not promised to us. We’ve both learned that the hard way.” He gazed at the river for a moment, then said, “Look, I want to know about you. I want to ask all those questions lovers ask each other.”
Disarmed by his attitude, she gave in. “Okay. Ask while I take a sample here.”
“What’s your favorite food, besides bagels?”
“Beef brisket with gravy and potatoes.”
He asked more simple questions as he set the pack down on the dirt path and helped her pull out vials and her scanner. She slid down the bank, dipped the tube in the water, and ran the scanner past it while he kept watch for anyone tracking them, or for the Aurelian.
“Anything?” he asked as she pulled herself onto the bank.
“Trace.” She capped the bottles, and she and Aiden moved on.
“When we get back,” she added, “I to do some more research on O’Reilly and Swanson.”
“Okay. What are we looking for?”
“I need to know if he owned cattle or livestock.”
“Livestock? He lived in Chicago. Swanson lived on Bainbridge Island. Not hotbeds of farm production.”
“I know, but I haven’t found any other connection. Hathaway was pro-military, pro-pork. Senator O’Reilly was waaaay toward the dove side, more ‘let’s negotiate some more first’ kind of stuff. He voted to close an obsolete base in his own district.”
“That may have been self-serving, you know.”
“I know, but O’Reilly was all about keeping bases, and finding new nonmilitary uses for them. They were on opposite sides on most issues. And neither one were party favorites, because they voted across the lines.”
“I got that too, in my research. I need to see some footage from the news reports too. There was a guy in a hoodie—tall, new jeans, pressed with a crease—I could swear I saw him the day I moved in. I saw him in the video of O’Reilly’s house after the murder.”
“You didn’t mention it,” Aiden said, his voice neutral.
“I just remembered it. I didn’t remember, then I started thinking about connecting Swanson and O’Reilly. Figured I should look and see if he was there, at Swanson’s, too.”
They walked, chatting about the senators. Cait stopped to sample. A stronger trace this time. They were close. Thanks to the Ty-Op’s tendency to stay in water, she didn’t expect to catch it on a scan. Its body composition was too close to Earth-like to be easily detected.
“You were right about the location,” she said. They were within sight of the Key Bridge and the Whitehurst Freeway.
“Let’s walk just a little further in.”
She was looking out over the Potomac, hands on her hips. Aiden came up behind her and slid his arms through the gap at her elbows, clasping his hands at her belly.
“You know,” he whispered in her ear. “We could—”
“Hey! Hey!” The shouting came from behind them. “Watch out!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
They both spun around, each braced for attack. A faint haze of blue formed around Aiden. Cait had charged her bracelet weapons and had a laser in each hand.
The shouting was accompanied by a flurry of deep, rumbling barks. A pair of burly, romping golden retrievers headed right for them, their frantic owner a hundred paces behind.
Aiden’s blue shield disappeared like a snuffed candle. Cait hastily concealed her lasers.
The dogs, still woofing in deep tones, bumbled and swirled around Aiden and Cait as they hurried to the canal’s edge. Once there, they proceeded to wade in, lapping and splashing.
“Jesus,” Aiden breathed. “Save me from idiots and their dogs.”
“Amen,” she whispered back, putting on a smile for the young man who was panting up the path.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “Really, I am sorry about that. Didn’t mean to scare you. They’re really friendly—too friendly sometimes—but I try to leash up when there are other people on the path. You never know who might be terrified of dogs.”
“It’s okay,” Cait replied for them both. “They look happy.”
“Oh, they’re that, for sure,” the man said, continuing to walk. He gave Cait an appraising look. Incongruously, he winked at her. “You two need any help?”
Shocked by the wink, and the question, she looked at him more closely.
“Help?” Aiden managed to say. Cait caught his eye. Frowned slightly. “No, we’re fine. Just out enjoying a walk.”
Her radar on alert, Cait decided to prod the man. “What about you? Are you all right? Do you need help?” As a cover, she motioned to the dogs.
She heard Aiden draw in a sharp breath, but she couldn’t turn and look at him. She wasn’t turning her back on this guy.
“Nope, not this time. Gotta pass it on, though, when you can.” The man winked again, and Cait felt a twitch of recognition. Had she seen two eyelids?
No. She was just sleep deprived. Stressed. Seeing things. It was the wink that had distracted her.
And it continued to distract her as the man turned away with one last exaggerated wink and a smile for Aiden. Calling “Have a great day” over his shoulder, he whistled. The dogs splashed up the bank and ran after him, bounding ahead to run back into the water at another break in the trees.
Cait put a hand to her still-thundering heart. “Holy shit. I need to get this Ty-Op out of here. I’m so edgy I could cut something.”
Aiden shook his head. “I know. Man, I nearly blasted that guy before I even thought. That and I about had a heart attack when you asked if he needed help. You can’t do that, Cait, when you’re with me.”
“Why?”
He shifted the pack back to his shoulders.
“There aren’t a lot of magical creatures around DC, but there are a few who know me. They sometimes seek me out. If you ask them if you can help them, they might take you at your word and you could find yourself serving a thousand-year sentence.”
“Whoa. What? They can do that?” Shock had her stopping stock still, to stare at him.
“Can and have. Ever heard of the story of Tam Lin?” When she shook her head, he let it go. “Doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say that the Lesser Fae can do it. They don’t often choose to, but they can. There are a lot of old stories about it, but any magical creature can bind you
to a type of contract if you offer to help and they accept. Especially since you have magical ability.”
“Okay,” she stuttered. “I so don’t agree that I’m magical, and the other bit? That’s out there, beyond out there, in the realm of un-possibility.”
“Like aliens?”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Yeah, like that.” Her stomach rumbled and he grinned.
“Right now, I think lunch is a great idea. We can haul the packs back to the car and drive into Georgetown. We’re early enough to beat the crowds. Or we can take the packs with us and walk on down to the Boathouse or one of the delis on this side of the Whitehurst.”
“I vote for the car. I don’t want to run into Mr. Golden Retriever again, and he headed toward the Boathouse. I might bite his head off. Or interrogate him. Neither of which would be pretty.”
“Same here,” Aiden said, shouldering the pack. They turned back down the trail toward the car. “Was there something about him that bothered you? I saw your expression change, as he was leaving.”
“It was…innocuous, really. I don’t think it was important.” He merely continued to look at her. A bit exasperated, and slightly embarrassed, she told him about the wink, and he grinned.
“I’d wink at you too, baby,” he said, snagging her close and kissing her. “Crazy job notwithstanding, you’re hot.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she joked, pushing at him, but he didn’t release her until she’d kissed him again. “But I could swear the Golden Retriever Guy had a second nictating membrane—a second eyelid. I saw it when he winked.”
“Second eyelid. That’s odd. Can regular humans have them?”
“It’s incredibly rare.”
“The Aurelian doesn’t shift forms, does it?”
Her stomach clutched for a moment at the thought, but relaxed. “No, no, they don’t. And the Aurelian wouldn’t have shouted a warning, he’d have just shot us.”
“Too true.” He moved back in, as he had before the interfering guy with the retrievers appeared. When he kissed her, as before, she protested.
“Hey, I’m supposed to be innocuous, dude. Plain. Unnoticed. This is not innocuous.”
“Better stop smiling, then.”
They laughingly moved on, still wary, but able to enjoy the day somewhat. They swapped ugly alien/magical creature stories as they hiked to the car. The banter continued as they picked up lunch and ate outside the little deli where they’d stopped.
It wasn’t until he’d unlocked his condo door, and motioned her inside, that she realized they were going to his place.
“Uh, I really need to get back and…”
He pulled her inside and shut the door, grinning the whole time.
“I know. We both do. I have my scan to do, a report to file with the Council, and I get to dance around the fact that my new neighbor is involved in the doings here up to her elegant, sensitive,” he said, as he kissed the curve of her throat. “Smooth, beautiful, incredibly sexy neck. But since you can’t catch the Opthi-thingie until nightfall, we’ve got a bit of time.
“When I do report,” he added, “I will of course neglect to mention,” he said as he kissed her again. “That my new neighbor is a non-resident human, alien-hunting, totally righteous babe of a Slip Traveler. And since I’m not mentioning her, I won’t have to explain that she’s here to track an abandoned pet which could kill a significant portion of DC’s population.”
He unzipped her jacket and pushed it off her shoulders. The fabric made a marshmallow-y sound as it hit the floor. By the time he worked his way to her boots, she was panting. Their boots thudded on the hardwood.
This time they used the bed. His sheets were smooth and smelled of spices and herbs. They were clean, pressed actually. It distracted her.
“Please tell me you don’t iron your sheets.”
“Huh?” he surfaced from the curve of her neck, where he’d been doing marvelous things with his tongue. “What? Are you nuts? Well, you are, which is why I like you, but to answer you, no. I have a laundry service like any good bachelor. I specify the spray they put on them when they’re pressed, though. I buy it from a friend who’s an herbalist.”
“Good. I was going to worry about your lack of occupation if you had time to do that.”
“Worry I was a metrosexual, more like.”
“Well,” she said, nipping at his warm skin. “That too.”
He growled playfully, pinning her to the bed and wreaking havoc on her senses as he laved her breasts with his tongue. He moved lower, kissing and nipping the curve of her belly, skimming his hands over her legs.
Man-o-man-o-man, was all she could think, over and over.
She wasn’t still while all this was going on, using her hands to drive him crazy as well, rubbing and soothing, exciting and smoothing.
When they came together, it was like hot cocoa after a cold snowball fight. A little too hot. A little too sweet. Absolutely perfect.
He hit her in all the right places, his rhythm and pacing worked to build her to orgasm quickly. She’d never had that with a man before. Lance could go all night, of course, for as many orgasms as she wanted, but it wasn’t all that fun to have it just be about her. She enjoyed watching Aiden’s pleasure build, enjoyed the look of sensuality on his face as she gripped him with her body, caressed him with her hands.
“God, woman, you turn me on so much,” he spoke softly, with intensity as they rose and fell as one. “So hot, so wet.”
“So ready, Aiden, I want you to come for me, with me,” she panted, feeling her own climax rising.
“But I want you to have more.” He grimaced, holding himself back.
“No, come with me,” she demanded. “Do it.”
“Ahhhhhh.” He almost-keened the sound as she arched her hips, meeting his thrust with her own needy impulse. “You undo me, woman.”
“I want you,” she protested, pulling him back in, harder each time. “I want you to share the pleasure with me. Now, Aiden, come now.”
“Now, Cait,” he gave in, thrusting forward with a groan of release. His pleasure drove hers, sending her over the edge into orgasm. Release flooded through her, turning her muscles to water, her breathing to a raspy wheeze.
They collapsed onto each other and the bed, clutching one another, sweaty and satisfied.
“Damn,” he whispered. “It’s better the second time.”
She stroked his back, amused and a little ambivalent about how intensely, and how easily, she’d come under his hands and mouth. He was drawing patterns on her upper arm, swirls and swoops that mesmerized.
One thing kept tickling her mind. She counted in her head. “I think this is actually the third time. Didn’t we manage two last night?”
“First time your place, first time mine,” he corrected. “Second session, first act.”
They finally got back to work. This time, in his office. Since, as he’d pointed out, she couldn’t act on the Ty-Op’s capture until evening, they worked on the murders.
Aiden ran a program to uncover all of Hathaway’s property, and listed property owned by his next of kin as well. He ran the same program on O’Reilly and Swanson. He pulled the results up, side by side on one of his oversized monitors.
“Well, well, well, lookie here.” He pointed at a listing for South Dakota. “Hathaway has this ranch. It’s right on the border of his home state and North Dakota. O’Reilly’s wife has this property. It’s a family ranch. One of her cousins’, looks like. It’s in North Dakota, but not too far away from Hathaway’s, as the crow flies.”
“What do you think, twenty miles maybe?”
“If that. But, here’s the kicker.” He zoomed the screen in, outlined the property lines with his cursor. “Interesting. The property in between is owned by another senator.”
“Shit! Swanson?”
“No, I haven’t found his connection yet.”
“Who is it?” Cait demanded. “He or she could be next on the killer’s list!”
<
br /> “Yeah, I thought about that. The next problem is how do we warn him? It is a he. A Democratic senator from Arizona, by the name of Bartleby. Silas Bartleby.”
“Sounds like a character from a Dickens novel,” she commented. “What do senators from Illinois, South Dakota and Arizona have in common? And from opposing parties? Why would they own property out in the middle of nowhere, but so close to one another?”
“Ah, that I can answer. They all serve on two committees. One of ’em’s an agricultural committee. The other is an economic initiatives committee. Pretty low level, really.” There was a frown in Aiden’s voice. “The ag committee controls beef import and export. The initiatives committee handles USDA contracts. Those mostly affect the northwestern states, but Arizona has plenty of ranches too, which explains Bartleby’s interest.”
“But his property’s in North Dakota? Why? Why not Arizona?”
“He owns a ton in Arizona too,” Aiden said, switching back and forth from one data screen to another.
“Yeah, yeah, but that brings me back to the two key questions. Why would an Aurelian want these guys dead, and how do we warn potential target number three, or four if the other senator’s really a hit?”
“Good question. Any ideas on the why?”
“One. Maybe.”
“Spill.”
She didn’t hesitate this time. “My team checked Hathaway’s ranch books. He has a T-1 line, so they were able to hack in. I also checked his financial disclosure forms through the Freedom of Information Act. He writes off a lot of cattle losses to wildlife, flood, and natural disaster stuff.”
“Well, they do lose some. Isn’t North Dakota one of the last habitats for wolves and coyotes and panthers?”
“And bears, oh my.” She smirked. “Yeah, but it was flagged by my team, so I checked average losses through the cattlemen’s associations for all the surrounding states. This is way out of proportion.”
“What about O’Reilly and Swanson?”
“Haven’t tried O’Reilly, because we left this morning before I could. Stuff’s probably up on my computer about Swanson, but I haven’t checked that either, obviously.”
“Can you do it from here, or do we need to go back to your place?”
Modern Magic Page 114
