by PJ Friel
“Ms. Ullman works just fine,” Bryn retorted.
Grimm smirked. “Ms. Ullman, you were ordered to leave Gideon Shelton’s case to the police. This is your last warning. Stop interfering in our investigation or we’ll bring you in on obstruction of justice charges and anything else I can throw at you. Are we clear?”
Bryn opened her mouth and I slapped my hand over it. “Crystal, Special Agent Harbard. We were just leaving.”
Harry clapped a hand on the back of Grimm’s neck and smiled. “I think we’ve done all we can do here. Let’s go, partner.”
Grimm started then nodded. “After you two,” he ordered.
“Ouch!” I pulled my hand from Bryn’s mouth and examined the teeth marks in my palm, surprised there wasn’t a chunk of flesh missing.
“Stop trying to control me.”
She flounced down the hallway towards the berserkers and it was everything I could do not to run after her and tuck her behind me again. Rationally, the thought was ridiculous. She wasn’t in any danger from them. They’d hired me to save her when she was seven years old. They had no reason to kill her now. She was still the great-granddaughter of the entity they served. I was in more danger than she was.
That didn’t stop my heart from exploding in my chest when Harry’s hand disappeared into his inner jacket pocket. I readied myself to pounce, but he just came back with a business card. If he thought I’d ever call him for anything, he was crazy.
When I got alongside Grimm, I drew in a deep breath through my nose. The man’s shoulders tensed, but he kept his game face on. In spite of that, I knew he was aware of what that deep breath meant and what I could do once I captured a person’s scent.
Grimm’s particular scent was now catalogued inside my brain. If I needed to track him down, I could, and the man would have a hard time sneaking up on me in the future.
“If you have any questions, feel free to give me a call,” Harry said, grabbing my hand and slapping the card into it.
His voice resonated inside my head. “Grimm wants to talk to you alone. Come to the Hilton in Fairlawn at six o’clock tonight. Third floor. Use your nose from there.”
I gasped and jerked my hand away.
Harry chuckled softly.
Shit. Goddamn Harry and his mental manipulation bullshit. As long as he was touching me, he could read my emotions and thoughts as well as push his own thoughts into mine.
I nodded.
“See ya around, Mackenzie.” Grimm’s voice was soft and yet dangerous.
The look in his eyes made my hair stand on end and I seriously considered not showing up. Inside an hour’s time, I could make it back to Mordechai’s, pack a bag, empty my bank accounts, and disappear.
“Are you coming?” Bryn called out from the front door.
Of course I was, and that quickly, I knew I wasn’t packing anything or going anywhere except the Hilton in two and a half hours, no matter how much I didn’t want to.
“Coming, princess,” I bellowed, giving Grimm a smirk.
Yeah, asshole, I know who she is and you know that I’m the reason she’s still walking this earth.
He didn’t look pleased, which brightened my mood.
Bryn’s Challenger roared to life as I scanned the street on my way to the car. Still quiet, no one lurking, the scent of fear had dissipated. We had to have just missed Abigail.
I got in and barely had the door closed before Bryn peeled out.
“What in the farg was that all about? I had those two jerks right where I wanted them,” she snapped.
“Where was that, exactly? The booking room of the local police station with you in handcuffs? Because that’s where you were headed.”
I was full of shit.
Just add another lie to the list, Mackenzie.
Now that I’d been summoned by Grimm, was there really any reason for me to lie to her about who and what I was?
“You’re an idiot if you really believe that,” she sneered.
My nostrils flared and heat flushed up my chest. I clenched my fists. I was an idiot regardless. If I wanted to keep avoiding Odin then hanging with his great-granddaughter was the last place I should be.
But I wasn’t going anywhere until I had my fill of her. Maybe this whatever it was I felt about her was coming from the berserker. Fine. I wasn’t letting that fucking thing call all the shots.
I controlled me. No one else. So, the game was going to go like this: I take what I want from Odin’s little princess and then I walk away. The Monster can suck it.
“No. I’m an idiot for getting into a car with you,” I said, because if I was going to be pissed off, I wanted company.
She blew through a stop sign, cranked the wheel to the right, and barreled up the on ramp to the highway. We hit ninety by the time we got to the end of it and I grabbed for my seat belt.
Sure, I was immortal, but a face full of shattered glass would still hurt like a motherfucker.
“Slow down, damn it!”
“The driver drives,” Bryn said, jabbing the center of the steering wheel. “And the passenger shuts his cake hole.”
She gave me the finger. Then she jerked the wheel and merged with traffic—almost literally—sliding into a space between two cars that I wouldn’t have tried to put my motorcycle in, let alone this behemoth.
“What is your problem, Bryn?”
“My problem is you and your inability to keep your nose out of my business. I was handling the situation back there just fine until you stepped in.”
“They were going to arrest us.”
I was nothing if not consistent, right? Stick to a story long enough and eventually you’ll convince yourself it’s the truth. I should add delusional to my list of faults.
“Bullcrap. There’s something not right about those two. I don’t think they have the authority to arrest anyone.”
I gripped the door handle and kept my mouth shut this time.
“What? No argument?’ she mocked, her sarcasm thick enough to chew on. “No telling me that I’m crazy?”
“Crazy? No. Paranoid? Yes.”
She gasped and actually took her eyes off the road to stare at me. That alone told me that I’d gone too far. The naked hurt on her face stabbed me in the gut and all the anger leaked out. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t force words out.
What kind of asshole was I? She wasn't paranoid. Yet I'd thrown her trust issues in her face like she didn't have every right to them, especially because she was on the nose with this one. Grimm and Harry didn’t have the authority to make arrests, but they had Odin’s authority to do whatever the hell they wanted. That was worse than any FBI agent.
“Whatever.” She turned on the radio and pushed the gas pedal to the floor.
I wisely, and belatedly, kept my ignorant mouth shut while I listened to some guy sing about begging his woman for mercy. I would have told him he was barking up the wrong tree, if I wasn’t so tempted to throw myself at Bryn’s feet and do some begging of my own.
I swear she was going to drive me insane.
An unknown number of hair-raising minutes later we pulled up in front of Bryn’s office. She slammed the car into park.
“Get out.” She didn’t even look at me.
“Bryn—”
“I said get out!”
Goddamnit.
I had a choice to make. Plan A, I could force her to talk to me and spend the next however many hours telling her the truth and trying to convince her to forgive me and probably still end up on the outside of this investigation...and her bed. Or Plan B, I could get out of this deathtrap and go to the hotel as ordered.
The berserker was howling for Plan A.
Fuck it.
I opened the door and got the hell out.
CHAPTER 22
BRYN
There was something off about those two feds. I didn’t care what Trygg said. I was going to verify their credentials. That wasn’t being paranoid; that was being smart.
Driving my motorcyc
le like a lunatic wasn’t.
I didn’t care. Riding calmed me down. I could whip in and out of traffic easier than in my car, so there was less chance of road rage adding to my anger. And believe me, road rage came easily for me. Most people had no idea how to effectively operate a two-ton vehicle. They could barely figure out how to use their turn signals, let alone merge into heavy traffic.
Fifteen minutes later, I pulled up in front of Dezi’s house. Where else would my subconscious mind take me to talk through my frustrations? I parked my bike beside Jace’s truck and groaned. Too bad I didn’t think to call first.
Tonight was DJ Cuddle Day. I rolled my eyes. The name was ridiculous, but so was the couple that spawned it. Dezi was my best friend and I liked Jace a lot, but their relationship was so sweet it was nauseating. I’d have to risk blowing chunks, though. I was desperate.
I pounded on Dezi’s front door. I could have just let myself in—I had a key to her place and vice versa—but I’d never do that on Cuddle Day. There were some things that I just didn’t need to see. Tiny Dezi getting busy with her giant of a boyfriend was one of them.
My bestie yanked open the door and immediately clutched her chest. “Oh, god. Did your house burn down?”
“Huh? No.”
She slammed the door in my face.
“God—” I growled and hammered it again.
“Something better have caught on fire in the last five seconds,” Dezi said, hands on hips covered by a cheerleading outfit.
“What are you wearing?”
“We’re reenacting ‘The Replacements’. It’s a football movie. Jace was on the two-yard line when you knocked.”
“I’ve seen the movie and I really didn’t need to know about Jace’s rush for the end zone.”
Dezi popped her hip and snapped her fingers. “Then don’t knock on my door on Sunday.”
Her sass could win awards, but I had no time for trophies. “I wish I hadn’t, but I need your advice. It’s about a case.”
“Oh...shit. Come in, honey,” Dezi held the door open while she yelled out, “Jace, Bryn is here, but don’t bother getting decent. I just need about twenty minutes of girl time.”
“Twenty minutes? Putting me on a timer?”
“Sorry, babe. Jace has to be somewhere at six so that leaves me with less than two hours to score a touchdown.”
“Cheerleaders don’t score touchdowns.”
Dezi waggled her brows at me. “This cheerleader scores all the time.”
There was a crash from the direction of Dezi’s bedroom. I gave her a questioning look.
“He probably knocked over the tight end.”
Part of me wanted to ask, but the other part of me wasn’t that brave. Or that stupid.
I just shrugged. “Of course he did. Stupid scabs should leave the game to the pros.”
“Just don’t tip over his truck, okay?”
“As long as he doesn’t shoot my motorcycle, we’re cool.”
Dezi pulled me into a hug and then led me into the kitchen. We’d solved a lot of problems around her breakfast bar. None of them had ever been about a murdered nineteen-year-old boy, though.
“Spill. What’s going on?” Dezi pulled out a bottle of orange juice and poured me a glass.
I drained the glass a swallow at a time, organizing my thoughts. This is how it always played out with us. Dezi waited patiently while I sorted everything in my head and decided what questions to ask.
When it was Dezi’s turn to ask my advice, the drink would be tomato juice with a splash of tabasco and a rub of jalapeno around the rim. Dezi said that the jalapeno loosened up her lips and got her fired up to talk. I thought she was nuts, but that didn’t keep me from having fresh jalapenos in my refrigerator at all times.
“Okay.” I sat my empty glass on the counter. “I’m just going to lay it all out and then we’ll break it down.”
“Go.”
“David’s son, Gideon, is dead.” Dezi gasped, but didn’t interrupt me. “I just left Abigail’s—David’s ex-wife’s—house. Checked out Gideon’s room. The kid was gay and had a boyfriend. And I think David is in the dark about that. Oh, and I’m pretty sure I’m being followed by fake FBI agents.”
“Whoa. I don’t even know where to start with all that.” She blinked at me for a moment, then tears filled her eyes. “Gideon is dead?”
“Murdered. It was bad, Dez. You don’t want details.”
Dezi grabbed a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. “This was the crime scene you got called to Friday night?”
“Mhm.” Memories flooded my brain and I blinked them away.
“I’m sorry you had to see him like that.”
She wiped a tear from my cheek that I hadn’t realized I’d shed, and handed me a tissue of my own. After a few ladylike sniffles from her and a couple of honks from me, Dezi nodded.
“Okay. Tell me about Gideon and the boyfriend.”
“His name is Drew.”
“Do you think he’s involved in Gideon’s murder?”
“Unknown, but I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because from the vision I had, he and Gideon were very much in love.”
Dezi’s mouth formed a perfect O and eyebrows raised. “Vision?”
“Yep.”
I loved doing this with Dezi. It was like we were in each other’s heads and at the end, I always knew what I needed to do. Sixteen years of friendship could do that, but we’d been like this since our first conversation.
“So, you can’t exactly tell anyone about the boyfriend, because you shouldn’t know. You’re sure that David doesn’t know any of this?”
“From things that were said in the vision, yeah.”
“Fuck.”
“Took the words right out of my mouth.”
“Psh. You don’t cuss.”
“You shouldn’t cuss, Ms. Devout Catholic.”
“That’s what confession is for.”
“Whatever. I cuss when the situation calls for it and this particular situation is wailing like a banshee.”
The smile melted from her lips. “How is David right now?”
“Feeling guilty and useless. I’m worried about him.”
“And you want to know if you should tell him about Gideon.”
I nodded.
“You know you can’t. Not yet. It’s going to drive an even bigger wedge between him and his dead son, one that he’s powerless to do anything about. When you have solid information that you can hand him, like the actual boyfriend and not just a name, then you can open that wound.”
“I hate lying. I won’t do it.”
“Bryn…” Dezi looked away, staring out of her kitchen window and into the backyard. “Sometimes the truth doesn’t do anyone any good. Telling him this right now would be like kicking a man when he’s down.”
And this was the one thing that Dezi and I disagreed about. I demanded honesty from the people I cared about, but Dezi was okay with white lies and lies of omission as long as the intent was pure. Intent was bullcrap. Good intentions just meant the person knew that what they were doing was wrong, but they decided to do it anyway and were too much of a coward to see the situation for what it was—the easy way out.
My one and only exception to that rule was sharing knowledge about the Outlander world and my abilities. Even though I understood the reasons I had to keep the secrets, it still made me feel like a hypocrite keeping that stuff to myself. That was another reason I didn’t have many people I considered close friends. Better to be a hermit hypocrite than honest deathtrap. It was bad enough that Dezi knew.
I didn’t need that worry with Trygg.
I mentally snarled at that little voice and focused on what Dezi was saying.
“I know you and I don’t see eye to eye on this, but there is a time and a place for everything. Besides, how would you tell David about his son without lying about how you know?”
Dezi had me there. I couldn’t explain it wi
thout coming clean to him. I trusted my friend David with the knowledge of what I could do. But could I trust David the grieving father with information that could get me killed? I had an autopsy report in my inbox that proved he’d already gone against his captain’s orders and put his job at risk for this case. What else was he willing to do?
I rubbed my throbbing temples. Earlier, he’d looked like he was one piece of bad news away from eating a bullet. Did I really want to load the gun for him and possibly aim it at myself?
“I’ll have to avoid him then.”
Dezi reached out and put her hand over mine. “You’re doing the right thing.”
“No, I’m not.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I’m taking the coward’s way out.”
Arms slid round me as Dezi hugged me tight. “That’s not true. I know you care about David and consider him a friend. Friendship isn’t easy.”
I rested my chin on top of her head. “It is with you.” She tensed and drew in a deep breath, held it for a long minute. A weight settled in my chest. “Dez?”
She shrugged. “That’s because I’m awesome.” She clung to me for several long moments. “I love you. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know.” I frowned, worried that something was wrong. “I love you, too. Is everything—”
Dezi pulled back and smiled up at me. “Anything else you need to talk about before I go sack the quarterback? What about the fake FBI agents?”
“Nope,” I said, dodging her gaze, because suddenly I didn’t want to talk about my argument with Trygg. At. All.
“I can tell you’re lying to me. You know this.”
And this was the thing I hated about my best friend. I could never pull anything over on her. Dezi was what the body language experts called a natural. She had a business degree with zero training in reading people, yet my bestie could read me like Bruce Lee sparring with a yellow belt.
My face heated up. “I...um. I’m kinda working with Trygg on this case.”
“Is that what they call it now?”
“Oh, my god! I’m not talking about…” I flapped my hands.
“You mean you’re not talking about…” Dezi made a loose fist with one hand and pushed the index finger of her other hand in and out of it.
