by Tes Hilaire
Jessica stepped out of Logan’s embrace, crossing the short expanse to lay a hand on Alex’s arm. “Alex, Warren isn’t the enemy here.”
Alex eased back, dropping his arms. He closed his eyes as he ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. That was frustration talking.”
“Whatever, man.” Warren turned, tossing the bracers into the cabinet. “Knock yourself out with the self-flagellation. But leave me out of it, okay?”
“I think, maybe, we need to hear the whole story,” Logan suggested, pulling out a chair for Jessica, then sitting beside her.
Alex nodded, sitting in one of the well-worn wooden chairs across from Jessica. The chair creaked under his substantial weight, but held. Still, Jessica couldn’t help but think the redheaded warrior looked kind of like a haggard laird being forced to play at tea party. Tall, with a muscle builder’s physique, his face hadn’t been shaved in days and his outfit was rumpled and stained. In truth, Warren didn’t look much better, though he looked like he’d made it home at least once in the last forty-eight hours to change and shave.
“You want to tell this, or should I?” Warren asked as he plopped down next to Alex, his actions speaking more than the earlier words of his forgiveness.
Alex sighed. “I will. I was first on the scene.”
He went on to tell them about their encounter. How Alex had felt a pull of dark power that led into Grand Central. He wasn’t sure where in the station though so he and Warren had split up, coming in from different entrances. It just happened that he’d come across the man first. A human male, holding a woman at knife point in the central market.
Alex had watched as he’d dragged her into one of the hallways. He hadn’t dared try and take him out in the market. Not with the crowd so thick. Instead he’d slipped out another door into the parallel hall. Less than a hundred yards down the hall the man was spinning in circles, slowing dragging the woman, each jerk in direction slicing a new line of blood into her pale throat. The woman wasn’t even screaming, her eyes wide and devoid of anything but terror.
Alex had tried to talk him down, hoping he could break through whatever seductive powers the blade had over the man. It was at the same time that he concluded he was not going to be able to do so before the man killed his hostage that a train emptied, the hallway flooding with commuters. And then the massacre had begun.
“Did you try and intervene?”
“God, yes,” Warren put in. “I showed up right as the commuters stumbled on the scene. Both of us jumped on him like fleas on a dog, but he’d already taken down the hostage and four bystanders. I got there first, but the sucker knocked me right on my ass. Alex at least got to dance with him for a whole minute before he clocked him hard enough to be seeing stars.”
“A human did that?”
“I swear he was human, but he fought with inhuman strength. And after seeing what that blade did to Matthais…” Alex shook his head, his hands fisting before him.
“Crap, here we go again.” Warren sighed, leaning forward over the table. “Not acting suicidal is not an example of failure. You said it yourself, he was jacked high on the power of that blade. If he’d struck either of us we would be lying in the infirmary with Matthais, and where would that get us?”
“Maybe we would have the blade,” Alex answered.
“Maybe, but at what cost?”
“Not a cost I can live with,” said Logan, his tone firm enough to have Alex snapping his gaze to him. “Enough of my brothers have fallen during my lifetime. I don’t need to be worrying about you pulling some heroically suicidal stunt as well.”
Alex nodded, indicating he understood, but his eyes still held shadows in them.
“What happened then?” Jessica asked.
“The cops came. Did some screaming about putting the weapon down. Instead he took another human out before they shot him full of holes.” Warren swallowed. “They were closer to the knife at that point than we were and there were seven dead humans between. We didn’t think wrestling them for the knife at that point was a good idea.”
“Probably wise. Though unless you happened to be in an area without cameras…” Logan left that hanging, not needing to expound.
“Bennett is working on that now,” Warren said, though he didn’t sound confident in the computer guru’s abilities.
“We’ll deal with it if it becomes an issue. Right now we need—”
“—to get a hold of that blade,” Jessica finished firmly. Before it was too late to save the dying Paladin. Before it corrupted someone else.
“Sounds like a grand idea,” Warren said as he leaned back in his chair. “Except for the part where the cops have it locked up in evidence somewhere.”
Jessica tapped her fingers on the table. “If I were still at the station, I could ask around, find out which evidence room the knife ended up.”
“Wouldn’t it be logged?” Logan asked.
“At the station it ended up at, yes. But to get into the database for anyone to pull from.” Jessica shrugged. “Depends on how backed up they are.”
“Well unless you want to scare the shit out of your former buddies, I wouldn’t suggest breezing in and asking questions,” Alex told her.
“I know.” But her eyes meet Logan’s.
“No.” He shook his head, his absolute dislike of the unspoken suggestion striking her across the bond.
“What are you thinking, Jessica?” Alex asked, leaning forward over the table.
“I’m thinking we may have a contact we can use.”
Warren’s brow wrinkled, his head tipping inquisitively. “What sort of contact?”
“A Paladin one. Or, at least, a human with Paladin blood.”
“You’re talking about your old partner,” Alex guessed.
“Yes, I mean Mike.” And okay, wow, Logan really didn’t like her old partner. Her mate was going to have to get over this possessive jealousy thing sometime. And didn’t this seem the perfect time to train him out of the habit?
She turned, smiling at Logan through a fake grin. “What do you think, honey? Think he’ll be happy to see me after all this time?”
“Oh he’ll be ecstatic.” He fake smiled back, though he didn’t quite manage to shield the thought…. But if he touches you, he’s a dead man.
Chapter Five
“What is a Paladin?” Mike asked for the second time, this time shifting off her to sit on the far end of the loveseat. Katrina winced, her core clenching in a combination of physical soreness that had come from their rather impressive gymnastics and loss. Loss of his warmth, loss of the opportunity, and loss of her hope. He can’t help me. He doesn’t even know what he is. How could he possibly help me save Mia?
“Katrina, tell me.”
Mikes sharp reminder had her shaking her head, pulling the sheet draped across the back of the loveseat across her exposed breasts. “You have no idea who you are, do you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“By Lucifer, you have no idea.”
Silence was her only answer, that and the firming of his mouth as he ground his teeth.
“And you don’t know…” she bit her lip to keep herself from saying the rest. You don’t know you’ve just slept with the enemy.
“I don’t know what?” He sat up, his hand cupping her cheek as he held her gaze imploringly. “Tell me, Kat. I can’t help you find your daughter if you keep me in the dark.”
Tell him? She’d thought him a loner Paladin. One of those rare ones who didn’t see everything in black and white. Or not much better, but still workable, a Paladin whose beast got a thrill off of playing in the shadows. But really he just had no idea who he was…and more importantly who he was meant to kill.
She opened her mouth, closed it, her mind racing to come up with something to say to distract him. She needed time to process this turn of events. Needed time to figure out just what and how much to reveal without losing him. Maybe she could salvage this. Maybe this could still work. B
ut nothing came to mind, nothing that would sway the intense focus of his gaze.
A phone rang.
Expect that. Still he hesitated, his eyes searching hers.
She pulled in her lips, her gaze darting to the pile of his jeans tossed halfway across the rug.
“Hold on a sec.” The loveseat dipped and sprung as he pushed off it and bent down to dig through the pockets of his jeans. It was a measure of how clueless she was as how to deal with this that she couldn’t even appreciate the view as he did.
He finally extracted it, swiping the screen as he turned his body to face her, as if afraid she might have bolted in the time it took him to cross the room. “Yeah?”
She watched his pupils dilate, then his eyes narrow, face closing off completely as he spun so his back was towards her, his body vibrating with barely controlled fury. “What the fuck do you want, you bastard?”
Kat gripped her knees tight to her chest as his emotions slammed into her; hurt, fear, disappointment and frustration mixing. She didn’t know what she was going to do now that her plans had been all shot to hell. But one thing she did know: whoever was on the phone was more of an enemy to Mike than she ever could be.
***
Katrina followed Mike like a docile lamb through the pathways of Fort Tryon Park, her gut gnawing a path of worry through to her spine. What was she doing? Was she insane?
As soon as the phone call had ended, Mike tossed her clothing on her lap with a curt order to get dressed, then taken off into the bowels of the house. In hindsight she should have run then, but her mind had still been swirling with the revelation that Mike had no idea who and what he or she was, and she’d remained rooted to the spot. By the time the thought to escape while the getting was good had finally penetrated the fog of confusion and she’d yanked on her clothing, Mike was back, decked out in fresh clothes, new brown colored contacts…and what amounted to an arsenal.
Um, yeah. Running from the man with a half-dozen knives and at least two semi-automatic handguns was not a good idea.
She wasn’t sure what she expected at that point. A quick bullet to the head, perhaps, but that hadn’t come. Nor had any sort of conversation. His orders—get on your boots, get in the car—had been delivered with no emotion and as few words as possible. The fact that he hadn’t handcuffed her again and that he wasn’t accompanying those orders with weapon in hand, was a good thing. Or at least she told herself that. What she couldn’t explain away was the hurt.
She hurt. Oh not physically—well other than a little residual soreness—but mentally and emotionally. Her brain was fried, her plans destroyed, and sometime after the big reveal she’d picked up another stabbing pain in her chest to accompany the already aching organ.
He’ll kill me if he finds out who he is and what I am.
Which meant she had to get away from him.
Why? Why do you even need to tell him?
She gnawed her lip. Could she do it? The Paladin hadn’t bothered to track him down yet to tell him who and what he was, so it stood to reason that she was truly his only source of information. If she could convince him they were fighting on the same side, which, kind of, they were, and if she could come up with something close enough to the truth to not set off the instincts of the beast...
Why couldn’t it work? His beast obviously knew how to fight. Nothing had changed all that much. Other than the fact that she was basically asking him to go on a suicide mission…and he had no idea.
Her gut twisted, her chest tightening down so her breath caught, making her wheeze like an asthmatic.
Mia. She was doing this for Mia. She’d do anything for her daughter.
***
Mike stalked through the park behind Katrina, trying to temper his urge to push her into a run. Her heeled boots definitely weren’t made for walking, let alone anything faster, and frankly, running through the park at dawn would not be a good idea. Too much possibility of drawing attention. And this was one meeting he wanted no witnesses to.
Logan Calhoun had called him. Logan, the man his partner, Jessica, was “dating” when things had gone south and she’d died. Her case was unsolved, though the higher ups were leaning toward an inside job, all kinds of interesting coincidences involving another cop, Damon, sifting up through the sludge. Damon had been the one to take her from the hospital. And hadn’t been seen since. Either he’d been taken (and probably killed) by whoever had ended Jessica, or he was the killer.
Mike had another theory: Logan Calhoun.
See Damon might not have been Mike’s favorite cop in the station, but he was a brother in blue, and his concern for Jessica had seemed legit. Logan, on the other hand, had no such credentials. He was not a cop. And if anything seemed obsessive over Jessica.
Logan had also been the one who’d popped into Jessica’s life right when the stalking had started. Logan had been the one who’d messed with Jessica’s head so bad she’d taken herself off the case. Logan had been the one who the obscure note had been to. And Logan, and his big-ape lawyer buddy, were the men who were on the tape Jessica had turned in for evidence. Mike was sure of it, even if the DA had said that the video was far too grainy to bring to trail.
And now Logan, the elusive Logan, was asking for a meeting.
The coincidence that the meeting was at the Cloisters was not lost to Mike. One of Logan’s ancestors, grandparent perhaps, had been the curator to the museum when it had opened. The fact that they’d shared a name and were spitting images of each other had given that away, even if Mike hadn’t been able to find any hospital records to trace the actual lineage. Still, it would give the man an edge, and most likely a way into the building at this hour. Privacy, familiar ground…all the things Mike would want if he were setting something up for a cop who was becoming a thorn in the side. The question was why? Why now? Mike had been tracing the leads for months and if anything the trail had gone cold.
In front of him Katrina stumbled a bit. He started to reach for her, but she caught herself. He frowned as he realized that her breath was wheezing in and out of her lungs. They weren’t setting that grueling of a pace. And the Dyckman Street station wasn’t that far from their destination.
“You okay?” he asked anyway.
She spun on him, the liquid pool edging the bottom lip of her eyelids catching and flashing in the early morning light. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be? I mean, first I witness a slaughter. Then I’m kidnapped. Drive over an hour to what I figure is going to be my last resting spot. Instead I get the best lay of my life and think that maybe I finally found someone who is willing to help me. Instead I’m forced on another hour-long trek on another mission that has absolutely positively nothing to do with rescuing Mia. Who, oh, is still at the mercy of her asshole dad. I mean, why wouldn’t I be okay?”
Well shit. When she put it that way. He reached up, swiping away an escaped tear before it could slide all the way down her face. And wow, what a way to make him feel like a dick. Which he totally was, even if he truly wasn’t trying to be. “I’m sorry, Katrina. I will help you find Mia. First I need to take care of this though.”
“And that’s the other thing. You haven’t even told me what this is.”
“It’s complicated.”
She sighed, turning forward. “Isn’t it always?”
They walked in silence for a while. Every occasionally, as they passed through the forested sections of path, he’d catch her glancing off to the side, as if measuring her chances if she were to try and duck into the undergrowth. The thought of her trying to run on him set his teeth to grinding. He couldn’t blame her, not really. This side venture wasn’t important to her at all compared to the driving need she must feel to find and take back her daughter. But he didn’t like the idea of her trying to face down what sounded like a friggen mob boss on her own.
And he still needed her. Tit for tat, remember? She was going to be his witness if the evidence didn’t go in his favor.
Fuck. He rubbed his hands
down over his face. When had this all gotten so complicated?
When you let the beast come out to play.
Mike took a deep breath, trying to calm the racing heartbeat behind his ribs. He’d always known he was different. Had feared the beast that he suspected rode his soul, but until last night he hadn’t known for sure just how different he was. Truthfully he still had no idea what he was.
But Katrina did. What was that she’d called him? A Paladin?
“Listen, I know you have other things on your mind. And I know that you don’t know me from Adam.”
She shot him a look, her brow arching pointedly as she dragged her gaze over his body. And okay, maybe that had been a bad analogy seeing how they had already kind of skipped much of the getting to know each other to the end game in male-female relationships.
He cleared his throat, trying to think before he blurted this time. “What I mean to say is that you’re withholding information that is making it difficult for me to help you.”
“Oh? And how so?”
“You know things like who I’ll be dealing with when we go to find Mia. And things like…”
“Like what?”
“Like what is a Paladin?”
It was her turn to suck in a breath. Her face paled. He reached for her again, but she skittered away, recoiling from his touch. His beast roared at the rejection, but he forced himself to clench his fist, bringing it back down to his side.
“Katrina…”
“Listen,” she cut him off. “The Paladin take great pains to hide their existence. It’s kind of a secret club thing.”
Secret club, that didn’t sound too good. “Like a mafia thing? Or a cult?”
“Not exactly. It’s more like a group of like-minded individuals who are very devoted to a cause.”
“Beauty, that is practically the definition of a cult.” And she’d thought him to be part of it. What? You haven’t been showing a bit of the crazy these last twelve hours?
She sighed, shaking her head. “The key part here, and why I thought you were one of them, is that all these individuals have special abilities.”
