by Nancy Gideon
“Thought I’d give you a lift in.”
A growl vibrated silently through Max. She patted his rough cheek. Down, boy. “Thanks.”
Her partner dropped the morning paper on the table as he settled into a chair. “You made the news.”
She reached for it. “I hope they got my good side.”
“A rather flattering shot of me, don’t you think?” Max commented as he saw the prominent photo in an article on last night’s event. It showed them dancing, with her hand very obviously copping a feel of his butt.
Babineau cleared his throat as if to get out an unpleasant taste. “Tina wants you two over for lunch tomorrow.” He added grimly, “She said no excuses. She wants to say thanks, and the boy’s been asking to see Max.”
“What time?” Max asked.
Babineau met his gaze with thinly veiled distaste. “Noon. It’s going to be outside, real informal.” No need to get up close and friendly.
“Am I supposed to bring something?” Cee Cee asked in horror. “Like some kind of Jell-O salad thing?”
Babineau laughed. “No, don’t make us suffer that. Tina’s got it all under control.”
Tina, the perfect woman, wife, and mother. “At least we can talk about the case,” Cee Cee said.
“Ah, no. She made me promise no shop talk.”
“What the hell are we going to talk about, then?” Her dismay echoed his.
“Polite things that civilized people discuss,” Max asserted. “I’m sure we can think of something.”
She eyed Max doubtfully, picturing a long, horrid silence in which they gobbled up the food and snuck out as fast as possible.
She turned the topic to something more agreeable. “What did you find out on the street?”
Babineau’s gaze touched on Max. “We can talk about it on the way in.”
“I want to know now. Come on up with me. You can fill me in while I change.”
She was off his lap and the two of them had gone inside before objection hit Max between the eyes like the slug of a SIG Sauer. She was taking Babineau upstairs to his bedroom— their bedroom. And she was going to get dressed just as comfortably as you please in front of a man who wasn’t sharing that bed with her.
Alain Babineau and I were lovers.
Images of them together filled his mind, and for a moment he was plunged back into the hot madness that plagued him the weeks before he and Charlotte had bonded. That same dark, furious need to claim and guard her as his own snarled through him with teeth-bared possessiveness, startling him with its intensity and his inability to just shake it off.
He’d been taught only one way to deal with a threat that came into his yard. And for a moment, he considered killing Alain Babineau as if it were a rational solution.
“SO, WHAT’S THE story?”
Babineau hesitated just inside the room, trying not to look at the big unmade bed. Savoie’s bed, where he’d been sleeping skin to skin with Charlotte.
“Like I figured,” he began, awkward at first, then falling into the familiar pattern, “no one is eager to give anything up to the cops. I tapped a couple of my usuals, asked them to sniff around. We’ll see where it goes.”
Cee Cee snagged a pair of black jeans out of a dresser and carried them into the bathroom, leaving the door open so they could continue their conversation.
Babineau watched her reflection as she stepped out of the shorts and wiggled into the stretch denim. She had the most amazing legs he’d ever seen. That hadn’t changed.
“Dovion should have a report for us this morning,” she continued, rummaging through her makeup bag. “We need to stop there first. Hopefully they’ve ID’d the vic by now and we’ll have some photos to circulate.”
“There’s something we need to talk about first.”
“Yeah? What’s that?” When he hesitated, she called out, “Don’t be shy. Spill it.”
“Ceece, the guys were wondering . . .”
“What?”
“What to do about Savoie.”
Her head poked out of the bathroom, her eyes narrowed dangerously. “What do you mean, ‘do’ about him?”
“It’s been bothering us. All of us. We didn’t want to say anything until you were back to one hundred percent.” His hand raked through his sandy blond hair, his bewildered relief over her amazingly quick recovery evident. Then his expression tightened. “It’s not like we can forget what we saw him do. What we saw him . . . turn into.”
“Your point?” she snapped out, anger covering her sudden leap of alarm.
“Ceece, I don’t know what to tell them. I don’t know what the hell he is. What do you want me to say?”
Charlotte felt blindsided, though she should have seen it coming. She’d been aware of Max’s world long enough to accept it without the doubt and confusion she saw in her partner’s eyes.
He had seen what Max was. How he reacted to that information had to be carefully controlled before any damage was done.
Her response was forceful and fierce. “You tell them that Max Savoie saved your son when no one else could have. You tell them that I owe him my life several times over. You tell them that if they have a problem with him, they’d better bring it to me first. And they’d better keep their mouths shut about what they think they saw.”
“Think?” His tone said there was no mistake about what took place before their shocked eyes. “Or what— they’ll end up in an alley minus throats and hearts?”
“No!” She had to get them to see Max as an ally, not as a monster. There was nothing natural about Max, but that didn’t necessarily make him a threat.
“No, Alain,” she continued with an exasperated laugh, as if the very thought of violence was ridiculous. “He would never harm them. But I’m not going to let them”—or you— “harm him, either.”
Cee Cee watched her calm, rational partner trying to make sense of the unbelievable.
“Did he kill Cummings’s daughter?” Babineau asked.
“No. It was another of his kind.”
“Another?” He latched onto what she hadn’t meant to give away, then anxiousness jumped in his eyes. “There are more of them here? How many more?”
She grew guarded and vague. “Max protects them, I protect him. That’s all you need to know.”
“There are these . . . these creatures prowling our streets, and you don’t think I need to know? What are they? How are we supposed to act around him, now that we know?” His chiseled jaw worked for a long moment before he got right to it. “How can you—be with him, now that you know?”
She went stiff with outrage as she saw his disgust. “Excuse me?”
“He’s not human, Cee Cee. He’s a fucking animal that kills and eats those who get in his way. He’s—I feel like I’m going nuts, just saying it—a loup-garou, or some damned thing like that. How can you be okay with that?”
“Answer him, Charlotte. How can you stand to have something like me touch you?”
Babineau had a healthy respect for Max Savoie the mobster, but the figure circling behind him with smooth, lupine grace scared the spit dry in his mouth. He, two other detectives, and his son had watched Savoie physically shape-shift, had seen him rip the beating heart from another’s chest and devour it. Had stood in stunned horror as he’d latched onto an exposed neck with huge sharp teeth to slash through tendon and cords in a fountain of blood.
And he’d said nothing, because he’d also seen Savoie take two bullets to the chest to rescue his stepson, Oscar. He and Joey Boucher and Junior Hammond had gone back into the swamp later that day to tidy up the mess left behind, but none of them had felt good about it. None of them rested easy.
They’d all shivered at night to think that something like Savoie was out there.
And there were more.
Alain’s nape crawled just being in the same room as him.
Max didn’t bother to disguise his preternatural power, that quicksilver speed and sleekness of his species, letting Babinea
u see him as those of his kind did: a cruel force of nature, destructive, deadly, unstoppable. He growled low in his chest as he stalked up behind Cee Cee to slip his arm about her middle. As he rubbed his cheek against hers, his eyes glittered with hot gold and ruby flashes. As his tongue drew a long damp line up her neck, her hand lifted to cradle the side of his face. He smiled at Babineau with teeth as sharp as the point he was making.
“I’d be very, very careful if I were you, Detective Babineau. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. I control more than Jimmy Legere’s interests in this city. If any hint of what you saw leaks out, I’d hate to think what that would unleash upon you and your friends.”
He stepped away from Cee Cee to select a crisp white shirt from his closet. Louis Vuitton, for the up-yours attitude spoiling through him. He stripped off his sweatshirt, letting Babineau see the hard strength of his body and the scars on it. Deep tears in his upper arm. The pucker of bullet wounds; two to the chest with one exiting the back, and one to the stomach. Fatal shots no man could have survived.
“Leave my house, Detective. You can wait for Charlotte in your car.”
As Babineau began to turn, Max continued, “We’ll be there tomorrow at noon. I wouldn’t want to disappoint your wife or your son—my brother.”
Babineau’s expression hardened at that reminder. He spun and was gone.
Then there was just Cee Cee and her fierce glare.
“Are you quite finished with all the big dog posturing, or do you plan to piss on me to stake your claim a little more dramatically?”
He proceeded up his shirt buttons. “What do you want from me, Charlotte? He comes into my house, insults me, threatens those I care for, and I’m supposed to do nothing?” He grabbed a jacket with enough violence to send the coat hanger flying. “You know what I am, and now so do they. How am I supposed to be comfortable with that? They could crush everything I value with one careless word.”
“I’ll talk to them.”
He was far from comforted. “Sure. Smooth it over like it was nothing more than a social blunder. Talk.” He flung the jacket onto the bed and peeled down his jeans.
For a moment she said nothing. Even knowing what he was, she continued to think of him as a man. He looked human. He sounded arrogantly, maddeningly, like an everyday, testosterone-fueled male of her species. If she got closer to him she’d smell man next to the pulse at his throat, she’d taste man all hot and salty when she took him in her mouth, she’d feel man as her palms moved over him in restless appreciation. When she parted her lips beneath his, she wouldn’t be thinking of creature feature monsters.
But that didn’t change the fact that he wasn’t a human male. Something else flickered behind his unblinking stare. Something different, something other. Something more.
And it was this difference that drew her, not the sameness he tried to project.
She loved him and trusted him with all that she was precisely because he wasn’t a man. Men had failed her, harmed her, betrayed her. They didn’t possess the singular, all-consuming sense of loyalty intrinsic in Max Savoie. When they said forever they meant until next month, next week, next commercial, next orgasm.
When Max said it, he meant for eternity.
He’d been raised to mimic humans, but what prowled through him was wild and unpredictable. Max didn’t look at things the same way she did. He didn’t react to the same circumstances with socially acceptable actions. And it would be foolish and dangerous to assume she knew what he was thinking at any given moment.
So she asked him.
“How would you handle it, Max? Would you kill them to keep them silent?”
“Yes.”
She took a step back before he gripped her elbows to hold her in place.
“That’s what everything I am tells me to do. To eliminate the threat quickly, completely, without thought or conscience. To come at them from the shadows and end their lives, before they take mine and threaten the safety of all I’ve sworn to protect. It’s what I am, Charlotte.”
“But it’s not all you are, Max.” Her need to believe that glimmered in her eyes.
“Only because of you, sha. Otherwise they’d be dead right now, and I’d be safe.” His thumbs brushed across her cheeks. “I stop myself from doing what I should because I love you and it would hurt you. It would make you look at me differently, and I won’t take that risk. Not ever.”
She made a soft sound.
“But you have to understand, Charlotte. This involves all my kind, Oscar, and even you—because you know and have said nothing. It’s a secret truth that will damage all of us should it become known. Are you willing to take that risk with these men?”
Her eyes cleared. Her chin lifted. “Yes.”
He said nothing for a long beat, then told her, “Finish up. I’ll walk you down.”
He went out onto the porch with her, wearing the sleek guise of a powerful businessman. His glance touched on Babineau in his car before he turned to Cee Cee. His hands brushed over the sleeves of her long raincoat, the gesture intimate and sheltering. His lips touched her brow and he asked with quiet intensity, “If the risk becomes unacceptable you will tell me, won’t you, cher?”
“Yes.” Soft, firm. Enough for the moment.
“Be careful on the streets.”
“Be careful in your meetings.”
They shared smiles.
He wanted to grab her up for a passionate display, almost more than he wanted to tip that car with the pretty boy detective inside over onto its roof.
“Max?”
As his brows raised in question, she whipped her arms around his neck and planted her mouth on his hard. Then she whispered against his lips, “I plan to take that rough ride tonight. Be ready.”
He smiled. “Thanks for the warning. I’ll pace myself today at work.”
He watched her jog down the steps to the car, while the cold beast inside weighed the risks he’d spoken of.
And found them unacceptable.
Five
THEY RODE INTO the city in silence. Alain stewed in his pride and outrage, while Cee Cee sank into somber reflection.
He’d been partnered with Cee Cee for years. They’d had each other’s backs, covered each other’s asses, and held each other’s head over a toilet more than once. They’d agreed to disagree, and had gone toe-to-toe, on many an issue.
But never, ever, had they had doubts about the other’s ability to do the job—to be there, to hold the line, to take a bullet if necessary.
The minute she’d stood over a mangled corpse and covered up for Max Savoie, all that had changed. And now she was asking them to sweep up after him as well.
The job and her coworkers were no longer her first priority. And Alain resented the hell out of it.
It was Savoie, the spooky hit man—Jimmy Legere’s ferocious pit bull, who’d broken his chain to stand over the city’s throat with sharp bared teeth. Mobster, monster, he was exactly what Babineau protected decent folks from.
It had nothing to do with the snarky way Savoie had once turned to him to ask, “Can I call you Daddy?”
“Hey!” Cee Cee’s shout cut into his moody thoughts. “That’s our turn. Dovion’s first.”
Babineau hauled on the wheel, sending his economy import into a skidding turn.
Gripping the dash and the—oh, shit—handle above her door, Cee Cee scolded, “I don’t care what’s got your panties wedged up your ass, pull ’em out and pay attention.”
Something inside him snapped. “Oh, so you’re the only one who can corner on sidewalls, hanging on to gravity by the fingernails, Ms. Big Balls. If you think you’re going to neuter me so I’ll roll over and beg like your boyfriend, what you’ve got up your ass ain’t your silky drawers.”
She grabbed the wheel and yanked hard, forcing him to stand on the brakes or go up over the curb.
Babineau slammed out of the car to stalk across the street.
Putting up her hand as a stop sign,
Cee Cee ran after him, tugging him to a halt on a triangular traffic island.
“What the hell has gotten into you, Babs?” she shouted, furious and alarmed. Her heart was beating like crazy as she wondered what possessed him to pull such a stunt, yet she was afraid to find out.
Her partner turned on her with bulletlike fury. “Don’t you mean what the hell have you let get into you? Why don’t you stop pretending to be a cop, and go whelp his puppies under a porch someplace.”
Her adrenaline-fueled punch connected squarely and had him seeing stars.
Shocked and furious, she snapped, “Whatever little macho hissy fit you have with Savoie, get the fuck over it. You don’t have any say over who I invite into my personal life.”
“I do when it slops over onto the job,” he retorted, wiping the blood under his nose. “He’s got you concealing evidence, making false statements, and looking the other way while he goes all ‘Monster Mash.’ He’s a criminal, a killer, and . . . and I don’t even know what the hell else. But whatever it is, I sure as hell don’t want it at my table with my family.”
She gaped at him, her pulse pounding in her ears, battering her judgment. “Is that what this is about? Your white-freaking-bread suburban family? So it’s okay to let Max throw himself off a causeway full of bullet holes to save them for you, but he’s not good enough to sit at your crappy little table? And you preach fire and brimstone about me in his bed, but it’s okay when you’re taking the same thing into yours?”
Alain Babineau’s face went slack—and in that explosive second, Charlotte realized what irreparable harm she’d just done.
He knew his stepson was the product of a rape Tina never spoke of, and he’d assumed her attacker was a Shifter. It had obviously never occurred to him that what made Oscar so different came from both sides of the family, and it hit him like a flaming meteorite.
“Oh, hell,” she muttered miserably as she fished in her coat for a wad of tissues. He took them in a shaky hand to swipe the blood from his face, his eyes glassy. She took a tight breath. “Maybe it’s time I got a new partner.”
