by Vivi Anna
“Well, Agent Braxton, I believe the only ego we have to worry about on this case is yours. There’s hardly enough room in here for the four of us.”
The redhead looked from Olena to him and back, then gathered her camera and shoved it into her crime-scene kit. “Ah, I’m going to go take a break and see if I can catch Kellen before he interrupts this, um, conversation.” With a backward glance at Olena, she made her escape.
It was obvious the vampiress wasn’t going to make this easy on him. She stared at him, venom in her eyes, her arms crossed over her chest. She struck quite a menacing figure. Power radiated off her like a sonic beacon. Most humans would be cowering by now. But he wasn’t like most humans. He’d been trained to work with Otherworlders. Trained in ways to combat their supernatural powers. He’d tangled with a lot of powerful folks both in and outside the Otherworld communities. He’d battled with terrorists and evil men bent on destroying the world. He could handle this one woman.
He hoped.
“Could you turn down the power, Ms. Petrovich?
I hardly think it’s necessary, considering we’re on the same side.”
Her eyebrow rose again. “Are we really?” She gave him a slow, sly smile. The potency of it punched him in the gut. “I’ll tell you what. When you show me some respect, I’ll reciprocate.” Her Russian accent thickened as she spoke.
Sighing, he pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. His head was starting to throb.
As were other parts of his anatomy. “Let’s start over, okay?”
She regarded him expectantly but made no move to concede to him.
“Interpol would like to help in this case. I can’t tell you right now why that is, but if you could bring me up to speed on the particulars, I may be able to divulge certain aspects that we are interested in.”
“Hmm, that looked like it hurt.” Olena let her arms fall to her sides, and her smile became more genuine.
“It did, a little.”
“Now we can get down to business.” She approached him with a swagger in her step and filled him in on the details. “As far as anyone can tell, they only took whatever was in those boxes. Henri, the bank manager, will do a thorough inventory of their money reserves, but so far that doesn’t look like what they were interested in.”
“Do you have a register of who owned the boxes?”
“Not yet. But Henri assures me he will get me one as soon as possible.”
“I’m sure with a little pressure we can make it even sooner than that.” He walked around the vault, taking in the damage. They were smart, these thieves. They knew exactly what they were doing and exactly where to place their explosive charges.
They weren’t amateurs.
“Do you know what they were looking for?”
Olena asked from beside him.
“Maybe.”
“You know but won’t tell me, or you don’t know quite yet? Or is it all above my pay grade?”
Cale glanced at her. She was eyeing him with one elegant eyebrow arched. Most women couldn’t pull off a look like that, but Olena did it with style.
“It’s not important right now. Right now, we need to establish a timeline, and we need a list of names.”
“The timeline’s been established.”
“Okay, then maybe you could go talk to Henri again about those names.”
The temperature in the room dropped by at least six degrees. He shivered inside his suit jacket. The look Olena gave him was one of bitter fury. If he’d been another man, he might’ve been afraid. But he’d been around a lot of tough people in his life, so one angry vampiress didn’t scare him too much. He knew she could end his life in a matter of seconds, but he also knew she wouldn’t. She was a professional. He could tell that about her the moment he met her gaze in the bank lobby.
“Do you always get your way, Agent Braxton?”
“Yes.”
“Well, so do I.” Her eyes flashed green fire at him. “You’re what, thirty-four? I’ve had at least two hundred and forty more years of practice at it than you. So who do you think is going to win this battle in the end?” With that, she walked out of the room.
He watched her leave, struck by the intensity of her power. He’d never met a vampire that old before. He should’ve known she possessed that much force. He’d been trained to figure out the ages of vampires by the amount of sway they had on him and others. Olena just about had him on his knees. It probably irked her to no end that he could control his reactions to her as much as he did. He was only human, after all. That was probably what angered her the most.
Shaking his head to clear her from his mind, Cale glanced down at the metal shrapnel on the tiled floor. Now that he was alone, it was time he got to work. This was something he had to do without an audience. He wasn’t ready quite yet to let others know what he could do.
Crouching, he reached for a piece of one of the safety-deposit boxes and carefully picked it up between two fingers. He closed his eyes and let his mind go.
Chapter 3
Trying to control her anger, Olena caught up with Sophie and Kellen in the bank foyer. They were both drinking coffee. She could use some caffeine herself right about now.
As she neared, Sophie handed her the third cup, which had been waiting for her on the marble table in the foyer. “That bad?”
Olena took the offered drink, sipped it and sighed. Sophie knew her well. “Do you think Interpol would really look for an agent if he just vanished into thin air?”
“I know some killer places to hide a body. No one would ever find him,” Kellen said after taking a sip of his coffee.
Sophie gave her fiancé a skeptical look. “You’d better be kidding.”
“Of course I am.” He hugged the spitfire lycan to him but winked at Olena over the top of Sophie’s head.
“I saw that.”
“Saw what?”
Olena left the newly engaged, squabbling lovers and wandered off to find the bank manager. She could at least accomplish something on this case. If she was being forced to work with Agent Braxton, at least she could uncover a piece of evidence before he did. She hated that he made her feel competitive. She didn’t usually act that way on a case. No matter who cracked what, the crime-scene investigation team was always the one to benefit. No one member stood out among the others.
But Cale wasn’t part of her team.
Henri, the bank manager, was busy at his desk answering the phone. When he saw Olena approach, his face brightened. He hung up the phone as she stepped into his office.
“I was just going to come find you.” He grabbed a piece of paper off his desk. “I have that list for you.”
Olena went to take the paper, but at the last second she sensed movement behind her. She turned to find Cale standing at her left shoulder, reaching for the list just as she had been.
He grasped it between his fingers. “I’ll take that, thank you.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
“My job.” He folded the piece of paper and slid it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
She was speechless. She’d never met a more infuriating male, human or otherwise, in her whole life, and she’d had a lot of years and men to choose from. Even Rasputin had more manners than Agent Cale Braxton.
“We’re done here.” He turned and walked out of Henri’s office.
Olena followed behind, her hands fisted at her sides. She had to bite down on her tongue to stop herself from calling him some choice names.
“We are certainly not done here. The scene still needs to be processed, the evidence from the explosion collected and transported to the lab.”
“It’s being done as we speak.” He stopped at the front doors of the bank and glanced back at her. “I already sent your team in to finish up.”
“You ordered my team?” She couldn’t stop the quiver in her voice. “You?” She pointed at him, fighting the urge to actually stab him in the ches
t with her nail.
“There is your kit.” He nodded toward the corner of the foyer. “Now you and I can go back to NMPD headquarters and get to work on this list.” He reached into his suit jacket, pulled out a pair of black sunglasses and slid them on. “Do you have a car?” He pushed through the revolving glass door.
After quickly grabbing her crime-scene kit, Olena followed him out, fuming and at a loss for words. She had a couple of options, she figured. Suck it up and play nice with the human, or switch the game to her rules.
“I have a car.” She pointed to the black sedan parked half a block down. “Over there.”
He looked at her sideways, then nodded.
She led him to the car. Taking the keys out of her jacket, she unlocked the driver’s door and the trunk with the remote. “I’ll just put this in the car and we can be off.”
Olena went around back, dropped her kit in, slammed the trunk closed, then opened her door. She slid into the driver’s seat and put the key into the ignition. Cale stood on the curb waiting for her to unlock the passenger door, fiddling with what looked like a BlackBerry.
Time to change the rules.
She opened the passenger window. He glanced down at her through the open window, one eyebrow raised in question.
“Hey, Braxton.” She smiled sweetly at him. “I’ll see you at the lab. If you can find your way there.”
With that, she put the car in drive and sped away from the curb. Cale didn’t even have a chance to reach for the door.
It was a juvenile thing to do, but as she watched his stunned reaction, then his slow, sexy grin in the rearview mirror, she knew it was worth it. Smiling to herself, she slid in a Paramour CD and put on her black-tinted sunglasses. It was turning out to be a perfectly beautiful, sunny day.
Chapter 4
It took Cale forty extra minutes to secure a ride to NMPD headquarters after the vampiress left him stranded on the curb. She’d taken him by surprise when she’d driven off like that. He wasn’t usually surprised by people, having trained extensively in human behavior. But Olena Petrovich wasn’t in any way human. Again, he had to remind himself to be ready for anything around the vampiress. She was, to say the least, unpredictable.
And he had to admit that intrigued him about her. Probably more than it should have. He’d known vampires before, interacted with them, worked with them, and he’d found most to be very ingrained in their ways, not open to change. He found that to be a contradiction, since many of them had seen centuries of change over their long lives. On the other hand, maybe that was why most held on to their old ways so tightly.
He didn’t sense that with Olena.
When he arrived at the NMPD headquarters, he was impressed with the facility. It was a bright, open building, aesthetically pleasing, and by the looks of the equipment he’d seen in some of the rooms as he walked down the hallway to the lab, very well-equipped with up-to-date technology.
He was pleased about that, since he’d had some concerns about working this case outside of Interpol offices.
But add in one distracting vampiress and he still had some doubts.
Another few strides down the hall and he found what he’d been looking for. He gave a few quick raps on the door, then entered Inspector Gabriel Bellmonte’s office.
The man, a lycan, Cale had heard, was behind his desk. He glanced up as Cale walked into the room, seemingly not surprised at all by his appearance.
“Agent Braxton, I presume.”
Cale nodded. “Yes. How did you know?”
Gabriel tapped his nose. “I could smell you coming down the hall.” Leaning forward, he placed his elbows on his desk and motioned Cale toward a chair. “Plus I saw Olena earlier, and she informed me that you’d be on your way here.”
“Yes. It seems your investigator has forgotten the meaning of cooperation,” Cale said as he slid into the offered seat.
The inspector smiled. “Oh, she knows what it means, Agent Braxton.”
Cale kept the lycan’s gaze. It was fierce, and a lesser man might have bent to the predator’s will.
But Cale wasn’t a lesser man. He’d dealt with lycans on several occasions. He liked most that he met. He considered them a stout and loyal species, and Gabriel was no different. Cale suspected he’d fight to the death for one of his own—and for the investigators on his team, regardless of whether they were lycan. That obviously included Olena. Cale would get no help from him in dealing with the vampiress.
After a few more seconds, letting the inspector know that he wasn’t afraid of him, Cale lowered his gaze. He gave the encounter up to Gabriel. He was in his territory, so it was only wise that Cale show deference to the man in charge.
“Do you have a room I could use to set up a base for this investigation?”
“Of course.” Gabriel stood and came around the desk.
Cale followed the lycan out of the office and down the hallway. When they reached another closed door, the inspector opened it and gestured for Cale to go through.
“I was wondering when you’d get here.” Olena sat in a chair behind one of the three computers in the room, never taking her eyes off the screen as she spoke.
“I’ll let you two get reacquainted,” Gabriel said. “I’ll go see if Kellen and Sophie are back with the evidence from the scene.” He shut the door behind him.
Cale moved to stand behind Olena. He noticed she was doing a name search in a database. “What are you looking for?” He reached into his suit pocket and slid out the paper the bank manager had given him.
“I’m running the names from Henri’s list in a bunch of different databases to see if anything comes up.” She glanced back at him and gave him that seductive grin of hers. “I had Henri fax me a copy of the list. I don’t like to be idle.”
He slid the list back into his pocket. “Clever.”
“I know.” Reaching with her long leg, she hooked the chair at the next computer station and rolled it closer to her. She patted the cushion. “Here. Why don’t you take off that stuffy suit jacket, loosen your tie and have a seat. This may take a while to run through.”
The way she was looking at him made him want to do more than take off his suit jacket and sit beside her. Carnal thoughts raced through his mind like quicksilver. They came so quick, so fierce that he had trouble putting together a coherent sentence.
He’d never met a vampire who possessed that much seductive power. The muscles in his legs clenched as he forced them to stay put, a safe distance from Olena where he could not react to his inner desires.
But as quickly as she’d given him that look, it disappeared when she gave her attention back to the computer screen. Once more he could breathe easily and not think about the twenty different ways he could take her right here in this room.
Rolling his neck to loosen the tension he felt there, he shucked off his jacket, hung it up on the back of the chair and sat down, careful not to brush up against Olena.
She glanced at him sideways. “Is there something wrong? You seem really tense.”
“I’m sure you know why.”
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t think I know what you’re talking about.” She said the words with innocence, but he caught the flare of her eyebrow and the coy lift of her mouth when she turned her head.
Before he could respond, something popped up on the computer screen.
“We got a hit.” Olena typed in a command and the full-screen photo and information appeared on the screen. “Looks like one of our safety-deposit box owners has a criminal record.”
Sliding closer to the computer, Cale read the information on the screen. Marie Morgan, age 45, lycan, arrested and convicted of assault causing bodily harm. The facts were interesting, but from the information swirling in his head, he knew Ms. Morgan wasn’t right.
He shook his head. “She’s not the person we’re looking for.”
Olena glanced at him. “How do you know?”
“I just do. She doesn’t fit the profile.
”
“What profile? I didn’t know there was one.”
He didn’t answer her, but rolled back in his chair, painfully aware of how close he’d been to her. Her scent tickled his nose.
“What is it that you’re not telling me?” After a moment, she put up her hand. “Forget it. I know what it is you’re not telling me. Everything.” She pushed away from the computer desk and strode to the door.
Before she could open it, he asked, “Where are you going?”
“To work on another case,” she replied without turning around. “It’s obvious you don’t need me on this. I’m sure you can manage on your own, Agent Braxton.”
Running a hand over his jaw, he sighed. The woman knew exactly what buttons to push. “The item that was stolen from the bank is a matter of international security. We have reason to believe that the people responsible for the theft may have terrorist connections.”
Olena turned around and walked back to the desk. She sat down. “Can you tell me what exactly we’re supposed to be looking for?”
“No. In truth, we’re not completely sure, but we have our suspicions. And those will remain top secret.”
“So, we don’t know what was in the box, to whom the box belongs or who robbed it.”
“That pretty much sums it up.”
She eyed him carefully. He had the sense that she was probing him, could see right through him to the other side. After another second she grinned. “You’re here on your own, aren’t you?”
That statement took him aback. “I’m not sure I get what you mean.”
“I bet if I called the main Interpol office they wouldn’t have any idea that you’re here and working on this case.”
“I’m not sure why you would think that.”
“Because I know a rogue when I see one.”
