Nikita met her stare with a level one of his own. “Because you know everything.”
“I’m flattered.” Her voice was no longer musical, just straight-up New York, completely done with them and their bullshit. “But I don’t need the drama, Captain Baskin.”
“No drama. Just information.”
She glared at him a long moment, then sighed and turned away, retreating toward her table. “Fine. You have ten minutes. No more.”
“We don’t need more,” Nikita assured, sitting down across from her, the glowing crystal ball between them.
Sasha sat next to him. “We’re sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” she said without heat. She propped her elbows on the table, her chin on her linked hands, and swapped a look between them. “How have you gotten involved with Gustav?”
“We haven’t, Nikita said. “But he’s murdering civilians, and that’s not tolerable.” He gave her the brief rundown of the situation.
She listened without comment, expression carefully guarded. “So you have no proof,” she said, at last, when he was done.
“I have his scent. I have bodies on tables in the morgue. That’s all the proof I need.”
She sighed. “He runs a bar for immortals. He is well-known and popular among wolves and vamps in this city. If you kill him with your human evidence, that will be a step too far, Nikita. The immortals of New York won’t ignore that.”
“Let them come,” he said, chest puffing up. “I’ll kill whoever challenges me.”
She groaned and massaged the place between her brows. Then she looked at Sasha, smiled at him sweetly. “Sasha, hon, will you be a dear and run go get the whiskey? It’s upstairs in the kitchen. Bring glasses, too.”
Sasha glanced at Nik, worried, wondering, but got to his feet. “Sure.” When Nikita nodded, he set off on his errand.
Colette waited until his footsteps had receded, Nik tensed and waiting for whatever she wanted to say, and then pinned him with a look. “What are you doing?”
He said, “I just told you–”
“No.” Her eyes flashed, her jaw set. She looked nothing like the palm-reader now, and every inch the ferocious warrior Nikita knew she’d once been. “Do you think I can’t smell it on you?”
Nikita stilled. He felt his face blank, and dread shivered deep in his belly.
“Nik,” she said, head tilted, tone softening a fraction. “It isn’t a bad thing.”
“I know.”
“You’ve always loved him,” she said, a true smile breaking through. “And I know it’s always been reciprocated. I’m happy for you.”
“Yeah, well…” He felt a blush come up in his cheeks, and ducked his head.
“Nikita.” Earnest. Pressing. When he glanced up again, she was staring at him with eyes wide and imploring. “I’ve never steered you wrong before, so trust me now when I tell you that Gustav is bigger and more powerful than you know, and that it’ll only get one of you or yours hurt if you go after him. Random human civilians are not your problem.”
He frowned at her. “If he’s killing–”
“People get killed every goddamn day in this city. It’s not your job to make sure vampires behave. You aren’t a detective, and one day, that massive guilt complex of yours is going to get you killed. Is that what you want? To leave him alone?” She gestured toward the door Sasha had gone through.
He growled, softly.
“If Gustav isn’t coming after you, then don’t go after him. Love your boy, mind your business.”
~*~
The case turned out to be a regular homicide.
Regular homicide. Trina hated herself for that callous thought. But a gangbanger shot, and rumors milling on the street meant it wasn’t the sort of case to occupy too much of their time. They had a lead on a suspect, and they’d talked to a woman who twisted her hands together in her lap, and cried freely, and told them what they needed to know about the vic. Open and shut. All over but slapping bracelets on their perp.
They sat at their desks. Lanny tossed his stress ball into the air and caught it, over and over, his movements reflexive and deft. He’d always been athletic, but there was a new ease and quickness to everything he did now that was the result of vampirism; Trina felt sure that no one else noticed. Only her, who’d spent years staring at him.
His bruises had all but faded, just faint shadows beneath the skin, now.
But someone had put them there, and she didn’t buy the mugging story for a second.
“Well, that was–” he started.
“Don’t say boring.”
“’Kay.” He didn’t say anything else, still tossing and catching the ball, gaze flicking over to hers across their pushed-together desks.
“This is our job,” she said. “We solve murders. No matter how interesting.”
“Yeah. I know.”
She bit her lip, and held back what she wanted to say. What she maybe wanted to scream. They hadn’t had a chance to say anything that wasn’t professional all day; work jargon, careful interview questions, reports to Abbot and a quick call to Harvey about their vic, who wouldn’t be autopsied until the morning. There’d been no time for vampires, or rogue werewolves, or family stuff, or whatever the hell that text he’d gotten last night had been about – the one that was undoubtedly related to the marks on his face.
Mugging her ass.
“What?” he asked. She’d been staring.
She swallowed her frustration with difficulty; it scraped her throat on the way down. Wanna grab an early dinner? she intended to ask.
Instead, she said, “You called your mom yet?”
His expression closed off, like a door slamming: jaw clenched, lips compressed, eyes black under the tube lights. “Haven’t had the chance.” He glanced away from her, hand tightening on the ball until it squished down to nothing.
“The–” she caught herself before vamps could slip out. “Guys who messed up your face. You think we ought to find them?”
“Why?” A humorless smile appeared. “So they can kick my ass again?”
“How many were there again? Two?”
Her tone brought his head around, his gaze narrowing. Too late she realized she’d slid into her interrogation voice; that benign, half-cool, half-friendly voice that promised she was on someone’s side, definitely, only curious.
At another time, the realization would have disturbed her; that wasn’t a voice you used on your lover. But right now, she leaned into it.
“Four,” he said, without inflection, unblinking.
“I thought it was three.”
He spun his chair so he faced her fully, and leaned forward to put his elbows on the desk. “Okay. So it was three.” He bristled with aggression, challenging her.
And she was done avoiding conflict. “What does ‘aftershave’ mean?”
His brows drew together, a muscle ticked in his jaw, and she was looking at Lanny the fighter, and not Lanny the cop.
Fighting, she thought, and it clicked into place in her mind, then.
“You went through my phone?” he asked, deadly quiet.
“The text came in while I was sitting there. I saw it.”
“You really gonna do this?”
“I’m–”
Harper shuffled past, hangdog tired, a cup of coffee in each hand.
Trina let out a slow breath that did nothing to abate her anger. This had been building for weeks – Lanny had been acting weird for weeks – and she wasn’t going to let it fester anymore. “You didn’t get mugged,” she said, just a whisper, when Harper was past. “You were the strongest guy I ever met as a human, and now you’re a vampire, and you’re gonna tell me you can get jumped? That you didn’t think to protect your face? No. Those bruises? You got hit boxing.”
His eyes widened, so fast she would have laughed at another time. For half a heartbeat, he looked absolutely stupid with panic. Then he doubled down on his scowl.
Gotcha, she thought, without any
sense of victory.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake–” he started. Put his hands on the desk, pushed back. Looked at her from beneath half-lowered lids. Considering. He was debating something, and that surprised her. He finally said, “What’s it matter to you?”
“Wow. Wow. I know you suck at romance, but really?”
“I suck at – what the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
I love you more than you love me. The thought popped, unbidden, into her mind, and once there, she found she couldn’t easily shove it aside. Even worse, it felt very, very true.
If he hadn’t been dying, if he hadn’t been out of time and options, and if he then hadn’t been turned…would he have ever kissed her? Would they even be together, risking their careers? Or would he have kept meeting women in bars, and–
She cut off the mental image that conjured. Shut her eyes, and took a sequence of deep breaths. What was happening to her? Why was she so insecure?
She could envision her mother’s face, the way she would cluck, and put an arm around her shoulders, and say, “Oh, honey, don’t let anyone bring you down like this.”
When she opened her eyes, Lanny’s indignant glare had melted into an expression of confusion edged with panic. She took a tight hold on her emotions – imagined them as tangible things, writhing snakes, that she could squeeze between her fingers until it was hard to breathe – and composed herself. It was a mental effort, and a physical one.
She said, voice as cold as she could make it, “Clearly, you’re engaging in something you don’t want to tell me about. Fine. I’m not controlling. You can have your secrets.” She stood up. “I need to take a walk.”
She was halfway down the stairs, boot soles loud against the old hardwood treads, when he caught up with her.
~*~
The voice in the back of his mind, which he guessed was his conscience, sounded uncomfortably like Jamie. You’re ruining things, you dumbass.
And then a voice that really was Jamie’s: You guys are all I have.
He watched Trina’s expression lock down. Watched all the hurt and anger get smoothed away beneath a mask she’d only ever worn around suspects, and never around him. Because right now, he was a suspect. Someone who was lying, who wouldn’t give her straight answers, and who she couldn’t trust.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He opened his mouth to say something, still wrestling with his own anger and frustration – and she just…got up. “I need to take a walk.” And did just that, walking away from the desk, from the bullpen, from him.
Two reactions occurred within him, simultaneously. That had happened before, in the past – when he was human – but never quite like this. This…this almost frightened him, it was so intense.
The first was a petulant kind of anger: that she’d left. That he hadn’t expressed himself with any kind of elegance. That she didn’t believe him; that this conversation had happened at all. The kind of reaction that usually left him kicking a chair leg or swearing nastily just to vent.
The second reaction was pure vampire. Half-fury, half-panic, because his mate was abandoning him. A snarl built in his chest, and he clenched his teeth to keep it in check. His hands flexed on top of his desk, tendons standing out stark, throwing shadows. His vision sharpened, and he wondered what his eyes looked like now; if his pupils had tightened to catlike slits.
He was on his feet before he registered moving. Out of the bullpen – he collided with someone, and growled.
“Jesus, what the–” A voice faded out behind him as he kept going. Fast. Faster than he should have.
Her scent filled his nose as he went; crisp, bright, fresh. His brain tagged it as Trina, yes…but also as mate. As his. Mine. Mine, mine, mine, you can’t run away…
He was horrified, well and truly. But it was a secondary emotion, one overburdened by the driving need to catch her, and stop her from leaving. To make her understand.
Bad at romance, sure, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love. That he didn’t want, and need, and couldn’t go without.
He jumped over the rail of the second-to-last landing and hit the vestibule floor with an echoing smack of his boot soles on old tile. The desk sergeant looked up with a start, and a tired group ranged across chairs jerked and gasped and exclaimed.
Trina’s scent trail led out the front doors.
He followed.
She stood at the base of the wide concrete steps at the front of the precinct, hands on her hips, throwing a hostile vibe down the sidewalk. He looked that way first, already growling – but no, there was nothing there but regular, bustling foot traffic. The hostility was for him, for their argument.
Too bad he couldn’t tap into any kind of gentleness right now.
He was in front of her before she’d registered him, and then her face went blank with shock, for one moment, mouth open, eyes wide. She closed it down fast. A damn good detective, his mate.
“I said–” she started.
He growled.
Her mouth closed, but her eyes blazed.
Lanny choked it back, and swallowed with difficulty. “I – I don’t know why I did that.”
“I do,” Trina said. “Because you’re an asshole.”
He growled again, louder.
Her brows lifted. “Really?” she asked, too deadpan to mean she was unaffected. She wasn’t just furious, he knew, but disappointed, and that was the most dangerous thing of all.
Right now, though, he had trouble seeing through the red, vampire haze. When he opened his mouth, he felt the impossible length of his fangs. The growl built in the back of his throat, and vibrated along his tongue. “You can’t leave,” he said, and his voice was not his own.
“Excuse me?” she asked, expression growing stormier. She looked a hell of a lot like Nikita when she got like that, eyes translucent in the sunlight, normally-soft lines of her face hardening into a stark mask.
“You can’t leave,” he repeated, more growl than words.
She shifted her weight – didn’t walk off, but prepared to. And for the first time, he saw it flare in her eyes: fear. That was what kept her rooted, that fear that he might do something violent. Something inhuman.
“Lanny,” she said, and some of her anger mellowed into reason. “This isn’t helping. I’m taking a walk – we both need to cool off – and when I come back we can start over.”
He didn’t know what his face did, but it made his jaw ache. She couldn’t leave. She couldn’t. She was his mate, and she was his, and–
He moved toward her, making an awful big cat sound.
And she put her hand on her gun.
He froze, his hand hovering in front of her, fingers flexed so they looked like claws. It was like a slap, the sight of her gripping the butt of her Smith & Wesson, that obscenely big .45 she insisted on carrying. The holster was big, too, and so obvious. No one ever wondered if she was carrying.
And right now, she’d reached for it in response to him.
He staggered back a step, and his growl turned into a gasp. “I – I–”
She ducked her head, and struck off, nearly jogging.
With a great effort, he took hold of all his baser instincts, and let her go.
16
“You’re smiling at me,” Nikita observed over a lunch of fajitas at their favorite – well, Sasha’s favorite – little Mexican restaurant. A string of plastic Dos Equis flags looped from the ceiling overhead, low enough that Nik’s hair kept brushing the very tip of one. In the wash of sunlight through the window, and the dazzle of colored Christmas lights threaded along the rafters, he glowed with good health: well-fed and brighter than he ever looked.
“Because you’re so handsome,” Sasha said, and Nik turned red. “And because you’re eating.”
Nikita rolled his eyes, face still red, but loaded up another tortilla with grilled steak, onions, and peppers.
Sasha happily fixed himself another chicken one, and nodded when their server hustled past with a poi
nted look at their glasses in question. They were drinking soda – soda. And not vodka. He couldn’t remember the last time Nikita had been able to eat without the help of at least a little alcohol.
“So, what now?” Sasha asked around a huge mouthful.
Their server stopped by to top off their cups, and Nikita thanked him. Then, in an undertone, after the man had walked off, he said, “Dunno,” and glanced out the window at the passing foot traffic.
Sasha swallowed and frowned. “What are we going to do about Gustav?” he clarified, but had the sense he hadn’t needed to.
Nikita shrugged. “We can’t find him. Maybe we should just quit looking. Waste of time, really.”
Nikita set his fajita down, and wiped his hands on a napkin. “Nik.”
His lover didn’t turn his head, but his eyes cut over, icy gray in the sunlight.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Nik said, blank-faced, plainly lying.
Sasha kicked him lightly under the table. “What did Colette say when she sent me out of the room?”
“She didn’t.” Drop it, Nik’s tone said, not aggressive, but firm.
Even just a few weeks before, Sasha would have dropped it. Not wanting to get Nikita upset, not wanting to create tension between them. But all that time there’d been tension anyway, and now Sasha was going to be insistent.
“You don’t ever want to call off the hunt,” Sasha reasoned. “So what changed?” When Nik’s gaze narrowed, back bowing up to resist, he said, “Colette didn’t even drink the whiskey. She wanted me gone so she could say something. Something about me? Does she think Gustav will try to” – he lowered his voice, a whisper too soft for human ears, as the first kernel of dread took root in the back of his mind – “bind me?”
“No.” Much too loud. People from the neighboring table craned to look over their shoulders. But Nikita didn’t seem to care, forearms planting on the edge of the table as he leaned low over it, eyes flashing. Again: “No.”
Sasha sighed. “You heard what Trina said. What Will Scarlet told her: people will try to do it. You not liking it won’t prevent that.”
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 16
