Cipher

by Moira Rogers

  He pulled away carefully and eased her upright. “Better?”

  “No.” She slumped back against his chest and turned until her lips brushed his throat. “Giddy.”

  Her skin was hot against his, her heart pounding. “Not just from the head rush, I hope.”

  She bit him with a playful growl. “Not even a little.”

  Just to be sure, he pulled back and met her gaze. “You’re not still mad, are you?”

  A tiny furrow appeared between her eyebrows. “No,” she said after a moment’s pause. “I’m not mad. This time. If you do it again…”

  “I won’t. Next time—” A single deep breath eased some of the tightness in his chest. “Next time, I promise I’ll talk to you.”

  “And I get to pick my own damn bodyguards.”

  Maybe she didn’t like hanging out with Miguel anymore—or maybe Anna was getting under her skin. “Was there a problem tonight?”

  “No. But there’s a difference between spending time with friends and my friends having to spend time with me because I can’t be left alone.” She tilted her head. “Do you understand? If this is real, and necessary…it can’t just be people we know. I don’t want to be a personal obligation. I want to be a professional job.”

  “Okay.” It would entail searches and interviews, but surely Jackson knew people who did that sort of thing. “For what it’s worth, it sort of is Anna’s job. Not with you, obviously, but in general. Maybe we could hire her for the time being, if it’s not too weird.”

  “Anna’s okay. And I can hang out with you and Julio.” She wrinkled her nose. “And Miguel, if he’s a suitable deterrent to the cranky shapeshifters of the world. The Mendoza name, I guess?”

  “That’s part of it.” She probably wouldn’t believe the rumors circulating about him, the whispers that the ritual magic that had awakened his wolf had left him half-feral and dangerous as hell.

  “It’s fine, until we can find someone permanent. I just don’t want my friends stuck babysitting me forever.” Her eyes grew serious. “I’m going to put up with it. Because if someone’s around…maybe that’s deterrent enough, and no one will get hurt.”

  There it was, the very real worry that she would have to use her abilities to hurt, to wound. “Better to head off trouble before it starts,” he agreed.

  Kat eased away and started straightening her clothing. “Next time I poke you into fulfilling my dark fantasies, I’m going to strip first. You ripped my snarky T-shirt.”

  “Just go ahead and tie me to a chair.” Intuition and instinct drove the words. He could easily break any bonds, but that would be part of the draw for Kat. She would like that, having his strength barely leashed and him not quite at her mercy.

  Her sudden thoughtful expression proved him right. Abandoning the shirt, she swung a leg over his thighs, straddling his lap as she braced both hands on his shoulders. She smiled, as wicked as her eyes were curious. “Tie you to a chair, huh?”

  “If I let you.” The words were a bluff. He’d let her because he didn’t have it in him to deny her anything she wanted, and he’d love it—because it was her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Julio’s loft wasn’t so different from Andrew’s, with the glaring exception that Julio had an excuse for the place to be completely undecorated. Unlike Andrew, Julio had only moved to the warehouse recently, after Alec had funded the renovations and Andrew had finished the plans for them.

  Kat dabbed the paintbrush into the corner and squinted her nose at the beige color. “You could have gone with something more interesting, you know. If I owned my apartment, I’d paint it purple and blue or something.”

  Julio made a face. “I don’t think I’m really the purple type.”

  Laughing, Kat rocked up on her toes to smooth the brush over the last bare spot. “Red? Red’s manly, isn’t it?”

  He stepped back and considered the wall with a tilt of his head. “Green might not be so bad. Something dark.”

  Meddling was bad, but sometimes Kat couldn’t resist. “You could ask Sera. She’s good at decorating. Before she moved in, all I had on my walls were posters I hung up with thumbtacks.”

  “Probably not the greatest idea ever.” He grinned and laid his paint roller aside. “Your roommate avoids me like the proverbial plague. I figure she’s got her reasons.”

  “Well, yeah.” Kat waved the paintbrush at him. “You’re all hot and growly, and she’s on the wagon. Sera wants to be independent, and you’re the top-shelf liquor of dominant shapeshifters.”

  “Uh-huh. That, or she doesn’t want her father to murder me in my sleep.”

  A valid concern. Sera’s father had been a trauma surgeon and a mercenary before settling down to run New Orleans’ supernatural clinic. But of all the years Kat had known Franklin, her clearest memory was his hands coaxing hers away from Andrew’s torn body as she sobbed and Andrew bled and bled—

  She pushed away memory with rigid self-control and turned back to the wall. Andrew was whole. Andrew was hers, finally, and some day she’d stop having the nightmares where he bled to death and she never got to say goodbye. “Franklin is a scary man,” she managed. Too little, too late, but the best she could do.

  Julio remained silent for a moment before snatching away her paintbrush. “Enough work. Time for fun. What do you want to do? And don’t say play cards, because you cheat, and don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

  “I don’t cheat,” Kat retorted, grateful for the chance to laugh. “You just suck. How can a precog be that bad at poker?”

  He huffed. “As if I’d be so self-serving with my visions. I’m here for the good of mankind, you know.”

  It was a joke, but it was Julio, and she knew that somewhere underneath the smiles and the teasing, he was just like Andrew. A hero, the kind who’d laugh about it and claim it wasn’t true, but who’d quietly do the things that needed doing. Whatever it took to keep the people around him safe.

  Julio probably wouldn’t be any more comfortable with the praise of the truth than Andrew was, so Kat let him have the joke. “Yeah, yeah. You’re God’s gift to something, all right. How long have we got until Andrew’s done with shapeshifter politics for the day, anyway?”

  “Hours. He promised he’d pick up some of the stuff I’ve been handling.”

  “Huh.” She’d avoided Andrew—and, by extension, Julio—so adeptly for the last year that she barely knew the scope of what the two of them did every day. “If I buy you a beer or three, will you tell me exactly what a council member does?” And how I can start helping?

  He didn’t consider it for long. “Hell, yeah. I’ll drive.”

  It didn’t take long to clean up the brushes and paint supplies, but Kat made good use of the time, pestering him with questions about the day-to-day running of the wolves’ territory. She was still going as they stepped out onto the sidewalk, wiggling her way toward finding some place she could fit. “What about the changed wolves? I know Alec used to look after them, but is there a formal support system now?”

  “Not quite.” His keys jingled as he dug them out of his jeans pocket. “There have been plenty of inquiries, though. People putting out feelers about Andrew, seeing if he’d be up to the task.”

  She’d suffered through Derek’s transformation with him, unwilling to abandon the cousin who’d been unwilling to abandon her. Andrew hadn’t been able to accept her help, but Miguel had, and she’d watched him struggle with the same problems. She’d struggled with him, with an understanding only empathy could provide.

  Excitement sparked inside her for the first time, the sort of excitement she’d never felt with her endless job searches. “I could help with that,” she offered hesitantly. “I mean, help Andrew. I know I’m not a wolf, but I can feel the things they feel. I can know who needs help, and when.”

  “I guess you could, huh?” He locked the outside door behind them. “Talk to him about it.”

  “I need to talk to you, too. And Alec.” She waited un
til Julio turned, so she could meet his eyes. “I want to be a part of it. Not Andrew’s girlfriend or Alec’s secretary. I want to help people who went through what Derek and Andrew and Miguel did.”

  “Good luck with—” A pained grunt swallowed the words as he stumbled and pressed his fingers to his forehead with a grimace. “Damn it.”

  “Julio?” Instinct drove her a step closer to him. Training prompted her to go for her phone, urged on by the sudden flash of Julio’s fear. Get the phone, call for help. Better to feel stupid if nothing was wrong than to—

  “Run.” He blindly shoved the keys at her. “Get the car and go.”

  His fear vanished, swallowed whole, and the abrupt silence was so unnerving she fumbled with the keys. Something tingled over her skin, like getting in the way of one of Jackson’s spells, and Kat shuddered as her phone slipped from her fingers.

  Silence. Stillness. The calm before the storm, and she made it three steps before magic snapped through the air, painful enough to drive her to her knees. Physical discomfort faded under a wave of suffocating claustrophobia, and Kat screamed as she threw herself against the harsh cage that had snapped shut around her mind.

  With Alec stuck in New York most of the time, Jackson had to work twice as hard to keep up with the clients at their small investigative firm. Alec’s name was still on the window, but it was a one-man show these days.

  Andrew fidgeted in the office chair and looked at the piece of paper Jackson held out. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a cashier’s check.” He waved it harder, then sighed and laid it on the desk. “Alec had me get a couple for Patrick and Anna, and they deserve it for the work they did in tracking down that cult. I already sent McNamara his, but I thought you could just give this one to Anna.”

  “Okay.” Andrew picked it up and blinked at the amount printed on it. “The Conclave pays well for that stuff, huh?”

  “Didn’t come from the Conclave.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “They wouldn’t pony it up because Anna’s still persona non grata up there. They consider her a defector, at best, and we all know how they feel about rogue threats. Alec paid up.”

  “It’s hard to think of her that way.” It didn’t matter that she hadn’t done anything. The Conclave had trained her to be an assassin, and she’d quit on them. She wasn’t a person to them, not anymore—she was a time bomb with legs. A sobering reality, and a reminder that things in their world weren’t always what they seemed.

  “The Conclave’s ineffective,” Mackenzie pointed out from her perch on Alec’s abandoned desk. “Do you know how long it takes for them to work through their so-called justice system? It’s been a year and a half since the mess went down with the cougar Seer, and they’re still holding the wolf who worked for him. Alec told me some of the people in their holding cells have been there a damn decade.”

  “A big reason Alec and Carmen had to get up there,” Jackson drawled. “Even if it left me holding the bag here.”

  Andrew tapped the edge of the name placard on the desk. “Can you hire someone to help you?”

  “I’ve got some feelers out,” he admitted. “With the kind of cases we get, it’s not really as simple as hiring a newbie with a fresh PI license. I need someone like McNamara.”

  He was practically brooding. Andrew hid a smile. “So ask him to join up.”

  “Can’t. He’s not one for operating inside the normal boundaries of the law, you know.”

  “Right, that might be an issue.”

  “You’ll find someone, baby.” Mac’s fond smile faded. “In the meantime…can I give Mr. Council here a piece of my mind, yet?”

  “Only if you promise to keep it civil, darlin’.”

  “I’m always civil.” But when she turned her gaze on Andrew, she looked damn near feral. “You know how Jackson and I have been chasing down rumors of orphaned cougars? Turns out it’s not as easy as it should be, because this country is lousy with orphaned shapeshifters.”

  That he could believe. “What sorts of situations are you finding?”

  “A lot of wolves. Some who have one or both parents who were turned, then ended up on the wrong side of the local pack structure. Some who are on the streets, or group homes.” She glanced at Jackson. “We found one in an orphanage last week.”

  Andrew sat straighter. “Shit. How old?”

  “Eight.” Mackenzie’s voice took on an odd note—almost like the protective purr of a mama cat over her cub. “Once Jackson’s got everything tied up here…I think we’re going back for him.”

  If he grew up alone, there was no telling what would happen to the boy. “I think it sounds great. Where’s the orphanage?”

  “Colorado.” She leaned forward again. “But it’s not enough. Even if we save one of them…we need something here, in town. While you and Alec are throwing around all this money, throw some at all the damn kids who get left behind because our screwed-up world keeps killing their parents.”

  “I’ll check with Alec, see what we can do. When it comes to orphaned kids, though, finding the money might be the least complicated part of it all. Those kids can’t just disappear from society, so it’s all got to be legal.”

  “People have been throwing money at problems like this for years,” Mackenzie replied. “And there’s Carmen’s cousin, Veronica. She’s got a legal degree from a top school and understands. I bet I can talk her into helping me. But the wolves are the only ones who can protect and fund it.”

  “Kenzie’s already got it figured out,” Jackson said affectionately.

  His wife smiled. “Because you helped.” Turning back to Andrew, she raised both eyebrows. “I was lucky. I got adopted by people who loved me and took care of me. Even if we can’t give them all families, we can give them chances. So help me make it happen.”

  “All right. I’ll try.” Andrew’s phone vibrated and then rang, and he tilted his head toward the back room as he dug it out of his pocket. “May I?”

  Jackson waved him back, his attention on his computer. “Knock yourself out.”

  It was Patrick calling, and Andrew’s gut clenched as he answered. “Hello?”

  “We fucked up, Callaghan.” Patrick’s voice was rough. Choked. “We missed something.”

  The knot in his stomach seized. For one breathless, agonizing second, he was sure he was going to puke all over the boring office carpet, but his voice—when it came—sounded steady enough. “What happened?”

  “Ben is missing, and I found his girlfriend in their apartment. Her neck’s broken.”

  Lia. “Fuck.” Andrew’s hands started to shake. “Does it look like a burglary gone bad? Anything like that?”

  “What it looks is well-planned.” A motor revved in the background. Patrick’s voice evened, turned cold and detached. “I’m about to get on a plane back to New Orleans. Can you call Anna and have her start trying to track down properties attached to any of the IDs we found? Or anyone related to them? Once I’m in the air, I’ll send her what I’ve got.”

  “Right after I’ve called Kat,” he promised. “We’ll regroup when you get here. We’ll—” His throat closed. “We’ll find Ben. I swear that we’ll find him.”

  Andrew had already speed-dialed Kat’s cell phone by the time he reached the doorway back into the office, and the pale faces that greeted him removed the last of his hope that Ben and Lia had run afoul of some new and unknown threat.

  Jackson held up a faxed page. “My contact in Biloxi says the ME’s office started the autopsies on the bodies from Pass Christian. Two of them had already been autopsied once, so they rushed tissue samples through the toxicology lab and found significant amounts of embalming fluid in seven of them.”

  “That’s why they burned them.” The numb words seemed to come from someone else. Somewhere else, miles away. “Most of them were already dead.”

  “And they staged it to look like a group suicide.” Jackson swore.

  Andrew started as the ringing in his ear g
ave way to Kat’s outgoing voicemail message. “Try calling Julio. He’s with Kat, he’s—” Stupidly, he ended the call and redialed her number. “He’s with Kat.”

  Mackenzie already had her phone out. “On it. I’m sure they’re—”

  Her voice cut off. Julio’s outgoing message spilled out of her earpiece, quiet and even more damning because the phone hadn’t rung at all.

  Andrew moved without thinking, straight for the door. “Get Anna on the phone. She and Patrick have to run down the leads they have left, see if they can find out where the cult might go to ground.”

  Jackson swore again. “Fuck. Someone should stay here where we have database access just in case they come up with something.”

  “I’m going to check the lofts and a few more places.” His heart was splitting apart, but he sounded so calm that he couldn’t help but marvel absently. “If I don’t find Kat and Julio, I’ll come back, and we can figure out where to go from there.”

  “Shit, all right.” Jackson snatched up his phone receiver. “Be careful, damn it.”

  “Yeah.” He took a deep, bracing breath as he stepped out into the chilly, early evening air. Kat was smart—even if she and Julio had gotten snatched, she’d know what the cult was really after. And she’d tell them whatever was necessary to keep them hanging on, waiting, hoping for a chance to trade her for their precious collar. They had Kat, but she—

  They had Kat.

  His key chain shattered in his hand, and the metal teeth lining his keys dug into his palm along with the shards of plastic as he sagged against the rough brick building.

  He had to pull it together and hold it together, because the one thing more important than anything else was finding them soon—and alive.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Her head hurt.

  No, scratch that. Her whole body hurt.

  Kat groaned, then wished she hadn’t. The noise set off a throbbing in her skull, an impressive feat when her brain felt about as solid as cotton balls. The only thing that registered was pain—her wrists, her arms, her ankles, everything ached—and the fact that she couldn’t seem to pry her eyes open.