by Jenn Stark
Beside her, Warrick snorted derisively—too derisively. Cedo narrowed his eyes at him. “You got a problem with that, brother?”
“I’ve got no problem with family,” Warrick said, his words clipped. “But family doesn’t let family get the shit kicked out of them. You let Maria here get attacked. I still want to know why.”
“Aw, give that a rest, man,” Cedo said, sounding genuinely surprised—and even more relaxed in a weird way. He waved at Maria. “She was barely scratched, actually ended up looking a lot better than I expected she would, based on the hits the guys said she took.”
“Hits they could’ve done something about,” Warrick countered.
Cedo waved off the suggestion. “They were under strict orders not to intervene. I don’t want Takio getting any ideas about how dangerous the Guardia is. Let him focus on selling his wares to you,” he said, pointing to Warrick. “While Maria here sees as much as she can and reports back. Because depending on what she brings back, maybe you don’t need to work only with Takio. We do have all the raw supplies, after all. Everything he’s got comes through us. That could be worthwhile, yeah?”
Maria’s brows went up. That was…bold. Cedo actually sounded like he was open to cutting a side deal with Warrick, the kind of deal that would immediately get him killed if Takio knew about it.
More intriguingly, Warrick seemed on the same wavelength. He leaned forward slightly, holding Cedo’s gaze.
“What is it, Cedo? What is it you think we’ll find?” Warrick’s voice was low, tight. Like he already knew what the lieutenant was going to say. Which was a good thing, because Maria didn’t.
Cedo also leaned forward conspiratorially, almost eager to please, and once again, Maria wondered how Warrick had that kind of effect on the men around him. Was he affecting her too, somehow? Was the attraction she felt for him real…or some kind of mind trick?
The lieutenant’s next words refocused her, as he gave up all pretense of vague generalities. “Rumor has it that La Noche is about to corner the market on technoceuticals.”
Maria straightened, able to credibly feign ignorance despite the fact that she’d heard that word more in the last few days than she had in the last three years combined. “Technoceuticals?” she said, making a face. “Tell me that is not as sci-fi nutball as that sounds.”
Cedo’s smile was grim, but he didn’t take his eyes off Warrick. “It might be sci-fi, but it ain’t nutball, not by a long shot. The drugs have been pouring into La Noche’s warehouses, getting stockpiled for distribution. But nothing—not a single vial—has leaked out. Especially not this new mix Takio is working on. We have no idea what kind of drugs these are, what the effects are, what the fallout will be. We don’t know who Takio is going to be targeting, and if this is happening only in LA or if it’s cropping up all over the country. And the fact that we don’t know this shit is getting on my nerves, frankly. That’s not how you treat your lieutenants, and we deserve to be in on this.”
Warrick was sitting back now, watching Cedo intently. “You think he—what? Is setting you up for a fall?”
“Man, I don’t know what to think.” For the first time, Cedo seemed less angry and more legit worried. “But it sure as hell looks like that could be the case.”
Warrick scowled as Cedo focused more on the problem that Takio—Holkeri—presented, and less on Maria. He didn’t miss the way the lieutenant had been staring down her chest, as if the demon had never been that close to a good set of breasts. But that was bullshit. Cedo had been alive for every bit as long as Warrick had. He’d fallen, he’d sinned, he’d been damned…but here he was, making his living off the backs of humans, a strict violation of everything they both had once stood for. Warrick didn’t know Cedo personally from the days of the great Flood, but he knew the type.
Cedo shot another glance at Maria’s neckline, and Warrick finally got it. The cross. He didn’t know where Maria had gotten the thing, but the same way he had wondered, he suspected Cedo was also trying to decide if there was some special divine intercession that Maria had merited to make her less susceptible to the demons Takio had sent after her. Where Takio no doubt seemed to be taking the possibility as a threat, however, Cedo was clearly viewing it as an opportunity.
He got to the meat of that opportunity a moment later. “Takio’s going to be all up in your grill, Maria. I hope you got a good stomach, because he ain’t the prettiest thing to ever crawl out of the Citadel. He looks like road rash on a good day, and on a bad day…” He grimaced. “You won’t be able to look at him straight on. Not if you’re not prepared for it.
A surge of grim pleasure shot through Warrick, though he knew he should be bigger than that. Knew it and didn’t care. That he’d screwed up Holkeri enough over the years to damage his ability to project a true glamour to another demon, even a far less powerful one like Cedo…pleased him more than it should.
Maria paled a little at Cedo’s words. They’d never gotten a good description of Takio, even from eye witnesses. The man changed his appearance like most people changed shirts. “What happened to him? I know he tends to avoid cameras…but that’s all I know.”
Cedo shrugged. “You’d avoid ‘em too, if you looked like him. As to why, there’s been a ton of theories. That he was caught in some kind of acid fire, that he got up close and personal to an explosion, even that he disfigured himself. On purpose.”
Warrick’s lips twisted into a hard smile. The truth was far simpler than that. Holkeri had been one of God’s most precious Fallen. When he’d first been banished to the other side of the veil, Warrick had been tapped to do the honors. And Warrick had had his own axe to grind. He’d only newly been minted as a demon, after all…and he’d been condemned because of Holkeri.
Warrick had taken his payment of rage for that debasement out of the demon’s skin.
The fact that some meat sack of a human kept opening the door to let Holkeri back in simply proved how stupid God’s children could be.
Cedo continued, his eyes fixed on Maria. “What’s important, though, is that you’re eventually going to have to look at him, and it’d be better if you didn’t flinch.”
Maria shrugged. “I won’t flinch.”
“Good,” Cedo said. “Because while he’s sizing you up, I need you to size up the room he’s sitting in, and I’m going to need it as accurate as you can remember it.”
“Like, his office?” Maria frowned.
“His office, his bedroom, his playpen, I don’t really care about the room itself. Most likely, it’ll be in Building D, from our intel. But what you have to find is some of this newest tech drug. He’ll have it out on display, to show it off to Warrick here. You score some of it yourself, it’s gold.”
Maria nodded, her lips pursing as she considered Cedo’s words. “What do you want us to do with the drug once we get it? They’re not going to let us walk out of there with it stuffed in our pockets.”
“You got that right. Our intel is that they do a search of everyone leaving the place—but not a thorough one. And not an internal scope or MRI of any kind.”
She wrinkled her forehead. “An internal scope?”
“Like I said, they’re thorough, but they’re not that thorough. You swallow some of those pills, especially if you can take them out of a larger vial to do it, they won’t think to check.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Maria said, holding her hands up. Warrick knew better than to raise an objection. Jack had been part of the Guardia for nearly two decades. He knew how they worked. And what he knew, what he could remember, Warrick now knew too.
“I’m no drug mule,” Maria said, turning, almost wild-eyed, to Warrick for support. She was too panicked suddenly. Too nervous. He could read it in her eyes. Another flash of memory burst briefly into her mind, a pretty, dark-haired girl bleeding in Maria’s arms.
Now Warrick needed Maria to play it cool, though. “It’s an easy enough process,” he said. “I’ve done it.”
She curle
d her lip, looking genuinely disgusted. “You’ve done it?”
“Sure. You put the pills in a larger case, swallow it, move through security. As long as you don’t need to take much…”
“You won’t,” Cedo said. He held up a shrink-wrapped plastic oval, then tossed it to Maria.
She held it like it might bite her. “You can’t be serious,” she protested. “What if it’s an injectable—or a powder?”
“Nope,” Cedo said definitively. “Takio likes pills. Easier to keep track of, easier to measure, easier to transport. You get out of there with the drugs, and you get them to me—aces. I don’t care how you do it. But it needs to be you, not him,” he said, jerking his thumb at Warrick. “Takio is nervous around you, but taking some piece-of-shit buyer apart bit by bit to find some missing drugs ain’t going to be a problem for him.”
Warrick snorted internally, but Maria looked genuinely concerned. “Cedo…”
“Maria. Don’t break my heart here, yeah?” Cedo’s words had taken on a placating tone, but there was no denying the steel in his voice. “You knew when you joined the Guardia, hell, when you fell in with Jack, that sometimes family requires that you make sacrifices. That you do things maybe you wouldn’t ordinarily do for the betterment of the family overall.”
“Yeah, I got that. Like that part when you left me to fend for myself rather than sending your guys to help me out. That’s some serious family shit right there.”
“We were watching you, Takio was watching you, but Takio was also watching us,” Cedo said. “We passed the test. So did you. He’s going to feel better about us, and he should. We’ve given him nothing but our utmost loyalty, and we want to make sure we’re not getting screwed in the process. If he’s planning a payday with these new drugs, the Feds are going to be all over us, and while we’re willing to deal with that, there better be a payout. That’s all.”
“If you say so,” Maria muttered.
A bell chimed in the depths of the club, and the lights came on, a swirling kaleidoscope of color. Cedo’s face burst into a smile. “Ah! Excellent,” he said. “Tonight, we’ll dance, we’ll drink, we’ll celebrate,” he said. “Takio is sending more of his lieutenants to us, no doubt to keep an eye on us—us and you. So we’ll do him one better and throw him a party.”
Maria had gone still again. “Why is he sending his guys? He still has his doubts?”
“The man has survived as long as he has because of those doubts,” Cedo said, nodding. “The Guardia has survived as long as it has because we have doubts too. But we have something better, something I’m not sure Takio fully understands. We have family.”
Beside him, Maria stared stonily at the Guardia lieutenant. “I think your idea of family needs a little bit of an adjustment,” she said. But while her words were bitter, they were also resigned. She would do whatever was asked of her, Warrick knew. Up to and including ingesting illegal substances if she couldn’t come up with any other way to smuggle them out. She knew the long-term advantage of this. Her team at the LAPD would have to make sure that she was intercepted before she got three feet outside the Citadel, but they could arrange that—if it was even necessary. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be.
All he needed was to get inside Holkeri’s lair, and a lot of things would be taken care of quite differently than either Cedo or Holkeri could imagine.
Cedo, however, was happily watching a waitress set several bottles of chilled tequila in ice buckets on his table.
“Excelente!” Cedo grinned. “Tomorrow, you fight for the Guardia. But tonight, we dance and we drink. Most of all, we enjoy the life we have been given, yes?”
Warrick smiled at him, all teeth. He’d enjoy sending Cedo to his reward when the time came. He’d enjoy it a great deal.
Chapter Nine
Maria leaned heavily on Warrick’s shoulder, grateful that at least some of her drunkenness was feigned. But she hadn’t been able to completely get out of the constant rounds of tequila that Cedo and the rest of the Guardia lieutenants had been forcing her way.
Warrick seemed completely unimpaired, though he’d done his level best, at least as far as she could tell, to drink everyone under the table. How was it possible for him to consume that much liquor and still require her to remind him to stumble as they weaved their way home?
And the reminder had been necessary, she thought. Throughout the night and even as they’d escaped back into the finally cool December evening, with the incessant hum of Christmas music in the air, Maria had felt like there’d been eyes on her—on them both. Watching, assessing, judging.
Warrick had carried off his role beautifully. He had laughed when it’d been called for, been remote and intense when anyone got too familiar. And he’d never left Maria’s side for longer than a few minutes. It was becoming all too easy to imagine that the two of them had already started a passionate affair, never mind that they’d just met.
It became even easier every time she touched him.
They’d had to do that several times over the course of the evening, Warrick casually slinging his arm over her shoulders, Maria reaching out to touch his hand. They’d even kissed a couple of times, fortunately able to keep everything light and easy, but she hadn’t missed the increased focus of Cedo and the same shifty-eyed lieutenant she’d first seen in the back room of the strip club the night Bonnie died. Why would they care so much if she and Warrick were a legit item unless they doubted one of their stories?
Warrick, for his part, seemed completely at ease with the scrutiny, though of course, she hadn’t specifically pointed it out to him. She hadn’t said anything to him that she wasn’t completely okay with being overheard, and even now, as they finally made their way up to her apartment, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched.
“Drunker,” Warrick murmured beside her, and she complied immediately, leaning so heavily on his arm that when her feet gave way beneath her, she merely grabbed hold. Warrick laughed, the sound bright and almost buoyant, the laugh of a happy drunk. He’d gotten that right too.
“Oh, c’mon!” Maria squealed as Warrick reached out to steady her, setting her down on her feet again as if she was a rag doll. “Maybe I wanted you to carry me.”
If it’d been Jack, he would have shot back a laughing response, but Warrick didn’t hesitate. He turned and, with one quick motion, scooped her up in his arms like she didn’t weigh anything more than a bag of groceries.
“Warrick!” she spluttered, and he grinned down at her.
“You’re heavier than you look,” he teased.
“Hey!” As she pounded her hand on his chest, he laughed again, and then they were at her door and pushing inside.
Out of force of long habit, Maria swept the room with her gaze, every careful pile of magazines and old mail, every exposed wall socket and light switch plate. She’d made the place almost completely cameraproof—at least for conventional units. She’d plugged bright pink covers into all the exposed wall sockets and switched out the light switch plates for the same garish pink; she had lamps that were all one piece, with LED lights; she had absolutely no knickknacks, books, or other objects that could hide a camera. Her tablet was out but looked untouched, and the papers on the coffee table were stacked in exactly the same way she’d left them, but on the kitchen counter…
She forced herself not to pause. The tissue box. It was empty, of course—had been for days. Only now, it was no longer upright, but on its side, its opening facing the room, with a clear view of the entire space. They hadn’t left it that way—she knew they hadn’t. Despite the apparent clutter in the room, she was completely OCD about her apartment, had even taken pictures in the beginning of how it looked when she left it and when she came back, to make sure nothing was changed. Whether there was a camera tucked inside the tissue box or not, didn’t even matter anymore.
Someone had been in her apartment.
All at once, Maria was intensely glad for Warrick’s presence, for the way he
held her so tight and in such an unusual position, so that no one would think it strange that she shrank against him, her eyes darting around the room. “It looks so different from this height,” she offered, ending on a hiccup. She looked up to Warrick, prayed he would see the intensity in her eyes. “Put me down?”
“Not unless you kiss me first.” He grinned, cuddling her close. Obligingly, she stretched her head up toward him, their lips meeting hungrily.
She spoke her fear against them. “Someone was in here.”
Warrick went still for a brief second, then kissed her again, more thoroughly this time. “Agreed,” he murmured at the end. He shifted, and she eased down his body, her mind moving at breakneck speed. Had someone come into her apartment while they were at the party, knowing where they’d be—and installed cameras—or at least bugs? Why? Because of her, or Warrick?
Had to be Warrick, she decided as he stepped away from her. Or maybe how quickly they’d apparently hooked up. Clearly, someone wasn’t buying his capital C charisma. And even worse, she couldn’t look for the damned things, not and tip off the watchers. But she absolutely knew that someone had been in her apartment. For that reason alone, she needed to continue to act the part she and Warrick had carefully set up.
“I cannot even believe you don’t have beer in here.”
Maria glanced up, realized Warrick was now standing with his head inside the fridge, both hands rooting around inside. She frowned in real confusion. “Are you drunker than I think you are?”
She moved toward him, barely remembering to act drunk herself, but Warrick did little more than shuffle out of the way so she could squeeze by him and pull out the bottle of beer. Warrick swiped for it, missed, and half collapsed on her, his head dropping down near hers to hiss in her ear. “One camera that I’ve picked up so far. Two bugs. Tissue box, microwave, door hinge.”
