by Lisa Kessler
That last part was meant to be in her inside voice.
Callie and Clio shared a quiet look before Callie stood. “Maybe he’s your Guardian.”
“What?” Mel frowned. “Seriously?”
Callie glanced at Clio and back to Mel, then raised her eyebrows. “Well, he could be. You said you felt a connection with him.”
She was stretching, but Mel couldn’t help but think about the night he took her back to her condo. Something had left him physically shaken up, but he wasn’t sharing what. He also came to her with pages of Kronos masks out of the blue. And after she’d kissed him, he asked if she’d seen anything.
What did he see? Maybe he was seeing visions.
Holy crap. Clio might be on to something.
Mel pointed to the scrolls. “How do I tell if he’s my guy?”
“Your Guardian.” Clio slipped her glasses back into place. “All it references is being ‘marked by the gods.’”
Mel started to smile. “I guess I’ll have to get him naked and check for any markings.”
Callie groaned. “Hey, we made a pact.”
“That was before we had this information.” They both turned toward Clio.
Callie frowned. “What are you saying?”
Clio shrugged. “I think I’m saying if these Guardians find us, there may be a reason we need to keep them close.” Then she quickly added, “Maybe he’s the key to finding Nia’s killer.”
“Exactly.” Mel nodded. “And once we’re safe, he might be able to help us with the theater, too. He did say he would look into helping us get the permits.”
Callie threw her hands up. “I give up.” She glanced between the two of them. “But I intend to keep our pact and stay focused.”
“I know, I know. Inspiration before intercourse.” Mel chuckled.
Clio giggled, and Callie shot her a glare. “This isn’t a laughing matter.”
“If we don’t laugh, we’d cry. Would that be better?” Mel crossed her arms, her gaze locked on Callie. “We’ve already lost Nia, and if Nate is right, they could have all our names on a list.”
Clio picked up her books. “Why would they want to keep us from opening the theater?”
Mel shrugged. “Nate thinks it’s a way to hurt our ‘father’, to punish him for imprisoning Kronos.”
Callie raised a brow. “But you don’t think so.”
“Zeus isn’t exactly around to weep for us. I think there’s another reason, and it’s got to be connected to the theater. We just need to figure it out.”
Callie nodded. “And until then we all should be very careful.”
Nate checked his cell while he waited for the doctor to come in. The nurse left him a paper gown but they let him keep his pants on, so covering his chest with the flimsy thing seemed silly. His doctor knew about his scars anyway.
He scrolled through his e-mails and clicked on one from the city planner’s office. Nate helped him with a trespassing neighbor a few years back and called in a favor to see if he could figure out who was delaying Mel’s building permits.
The reply was simple. There was no paper trail, but the building commissioner’s largest campaign donor was Belkin Oil.
Why would an oil company care about restoring a theater? There had to be someone else putting up roadblocks.
The door opened, and he tucked his cell in his pocket.
“Hey, Nate. How’re you feeling?”
Dr. Lee had been Nate’s general practitioner since high school. If Nate was seriously going crazy, he figured his longtime doctor would be able to tell. And if the thing on his back was skin cancer, maybe he could get it removed while he was here.
“I’m all right. Worried about my birthmark on my back. It looks angry.”
The doctor finished with noting something on the chart and pulled on some latex gloves. “Have you been wearing sunscreen when you run?”
Nate nodded. “Yeah. But I usually wear a shirt anyway.”
Cold hands on his back had his nipples shrunken to sunflower seeds. Dr. Lee hummed, poking and squeezing. “Does it itch? Have you been scratching it?”
“No, but sometimes it burns.”
It started the night he took Mel to the precinct. He frowned. And it got worse when he was researching the connection between the muses and Zeus.
Usually when I’m worried about Melanie Jacoby.
The doctor came around to the other side. “I’m going to give you a referral to a dermatologist. It doesn’t look like skin cancer, but it could be some type of rash.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
While Dr. Lee typed the referral into the computer, Nate rubbed his hands on his pants and forced the words from his mouth. “There’s something else, too.”
His doctor looked up. “All right.”
“I’ve been having these…visions. Like sometimes I touch something and…see what happened, I think.” He shook his head. “Am I losing it?”
Dr. Lee typed something and met his eyes. “Any headaches or blackouts?”
“No.”
His fingers tapped the keyboard. “Are the visions painful?”
“No.”
“And you’re not falling asleep when they come on?”
Nate chuckled. “Definitely not.”
Dr. Lee started typing as he spoke. “I’ve known you a long time, so I’m going to share something off the record.” He crossed his arms and rolled his stool back. “There are things medical science can’t explain. Why a father can suddenly find the strength to lift a car off his child, or how a mother can sense when her baby is in danger.” He stood up. “A good detective can become very dependent on his intuition, and maybe these visions are an extension of this. Unless you start experiencing pain, blindness, or loss of consciousness, the fact that you recognize that this is irregular tells me that you’re not ‘losing it.’”
The weight of worry lifted from Nate’s shoulders. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how afraid he’d been that he might have had a brain tumor. “Thanks, Doc.”
Dr. Lee reached for the door. “The mark on your back is another story. Don’t ignore it.”
“I’ll call the dermatologist.”
“See that you do.” He smiled and left the room.
Nate put his shirt back on. So he wasn’t crazy or dying. But if the visions were real, Mel was in danger, and he had to figure out how to use the visions to help, and fast.
Melanie. He sighed. It seemed to always come back to her. He was teetering on the border of obsession. He ran a hand down his face. This had to stop.
He headed back to his place, eager for a run. He needed to clear his head and think, trace the webs and find the spider wearing the golden Kronos mask.
The beach was crowded, but he popped in his ear buds and the noise faded away. His running playlist had a driving beat to help him keep his pace. He stayed on the boardwalk to keep the sand out of his shoes, and the breeze from the ocean kept him from overheating. The ritual helped, every step brought his mind more in focus.
Why did he only have visions sometimes?
He needed to do more research, but maybe thinking about a crime brought them on, or maybe whatever he touched had a story to tell. But he gripped the torqued wheel of the bicycle at the scene of the hit-and-run and nothing. Then when Mel kissed him, so many places had flashed before his eyes that he couldn’t keep up. The connection had to be the muses and that theater.
And it ended in Crystal City.
What was he missing?
He pumped his legs faster, sweat rolling down his face. Shifting his focus, he worked backward from the theater. The building commissioner delayed the permits, and the biggest supporter of his campaign was an oil company. It made no sense. Why would they care about a theater?
The muscles in his calves and thighs began to ache and his side cramped, pain stabbing his lungs. He slowed his stride and lifted his gaze. Goose bumps prickled his arms. He was in the shadows of a run-down theater. He turned around, frown
ing. How far had he run?
Chest heaving, he crossed the street to the chain-link fence surrounding the building. He never asked Mel for an address. And yet, he ran all the way to the door. Miles. No wonder his legs were like giant sequoias.
He walked the perimeter, scanning the area. There was a “No Trespassing” sign, and a banner for a contractor, but no mention of Muses Anonymous, LLC. So how could this cult—if there even was one—know Mel’s roommate had been involved in restoring the theater? Maybe they were watching it, stalking the sisters?
Around the back of the building, a cracked parking lot with faded white lines sat forgotten, except for a single silver sedan at the far corner. He frowned, walking in its direction. Suddenly the engine came to life and the tires squealed as the car raced out of the lot.
He’d only had time to grab the first three numbers on the plate. He pulled out his cell phone and typed in Silver Honda Accord – 358. It wouldn’t be enough to find the car, but he would at least have a list. It was a starting point.
Not that he had any proof to link that car to the crime. Maybe the driver had been smoking weed and didn’t want to be bothered. But they also could have been waiting to see if Mel and her friends were going to show up to work on the building today.
Nate tucked his cell back into his running armband and leaned against the fence to rest. A vision exploded in his head. A man dressed all in black squeezed through a hole in the chain-link. He had a toolbox in his hand.
Then as quick as it came on, the vision was gone.
Nate cased the fence line until he found a clipped opening hiding at a corner post. Just like the vision. Adrenaline laced his bloodstream. He tugged the fencing back and slid inside. Without his badge, he had no business trespassing, so he jogged to a smashed door and disappeared into the shadows. The last thing he needed was to be seen and have someone calling the police.
Not only would his boss hand him his ass on a platter for going in without a warrant or a badge, but John wouldn’t leave him alone again if he discovered Nate was still working this case.
Without the lights on inside, his eyes struggled to adjust to the thick shadows. The musty scent added to the atmosphere of dread, putting his senses on high alert. He retrieved his cell and turned on the flashlight app. Cobwebs and dirt lined the rows of seats leading up to the stage. He had no idea what he might be looking for, but if his vision was real, someone else had been in here.
As he reached the front row of seats, his gut twisted into a tight knot. He didn’t need a blast of pictures in his head to know something was off; he just needed to spot it. He ran the flashlight beam along the stage and swung it back again. Although most of the stage was covered in dirt and debris, there was a clean spot in the middle.
He was pressing his hands on the stage floor to boost himself up when another vision hit. The man in black. He’d been here. Nate’s heart raced. The man opened the case he had been carrying and took out two gray squares of putty.
Explosives.
“Oh shit.” His voice echoed through the empty hall.
He hopped up, wishing like hell he had his gun—not that a weapon was going to help him if the building collapsed. He circled the clean area and knelt down to run his fingers over it. There was an edge. He set his phone down, tracing the cut in the floor. The square popped up exposing two blocks of C-4.
He grabbed his phone and called the station. “I need the bomb squad out here now.” He told dispatch what he’d found, as well as the cross streets for the theater.
Then he got the hell out of dodge.
The SWAT team rolled up ten minutes later. Nate was at the back of the parking lot when John parked and got out of the unmarked sedan. He stared at the dilapidated theater and then back at Nate. “What in the hell were you doing all the way out here?”
“I went for a run.”
He cocked his head, crossing his arms. “And you ran through a hole in a chain-link fence, into an abandoned building, and just happened to pull up the floorboards and find explosives inside?”
“Well, when you say it like that …”
John chuckled and sighed. “Talk to me, Malone. What the hell is up with you?”
Nate shook his head. Even if he understood what was happening, this was one thing he couldn’t share with his partner.
“I was running by and noticed an idling car back here. When I approached, they peeled out and drove away. I got a partial on the plate, but I thought I’d better investigate.” He cleared his throat. “Any chance you could give me a lift back to my place?”
John pulled off his sunglasses. “You really ran here from your condo? Christ, Malone, that’s about fifteen miles. You training for a marathon or something?”
No wonder his legs were like limp spaghetti noodles. “I was trying to figure things out. I guess I lost track of how far I’d come.”
“Get in. The bomb squad’s got it from here.”
CHAPTER 6
The police detective was becoming a problem.
The leader of the Order wasn’t going to be pleased. The enforcer carried his toolbox into his tiny apartment and locked the door. He’d barely gotten out of the parking lot unseen, and by the time the detonators were set to go off, the bomb squad had already completed their work.
The theater was still standing, an affront to the Order of the Titans.
If he couldn’t take down their precious theater, he would cross another muse off his list. He opened the cupboard by the sink and carefully removed the paper taped under the shelf. Nia was blacked out. Next in line, her roommate, Melpomene. The Muse of Tragic Poetry went by Melanie Jacoby now.
And her demise would definitely be poetic.
He sat in his stark living room envisioning scenarios. He could crack her head with a bat while she graded term papers. Or maybe poison her tea. He rocked in the chair with a warm smile on his face. Time was on his side. Their leader had blocked the building permits on the theater for at least a month. Plenty of time to thin out the herd.
Mel waited at a back table in Gracie’s, unable to sit still. Detective Malone, Nate, had discovered explosives planted inside the floor of the stage of the theater. Impossible on many fronts, but somehow he’d found the theater, gotten inside, noticed an uneven floor, and called the bomb squad in before all her and her sisters’ work went up in flames.
He was like Superman with a gun.
His broad shoulders filled the doorway as he tugged his sunglasses free. He was in a T-shirt and shorts: tan, muscled, and walking toward her table.
Yeah, the no-dating pact was flying right out the window.
He sat down across from her, but he wasn’t smiling. “We have to talk, but not here.”
“Okay.” She stood and grabbed her messenger bag from the chair. “You told me to meet you here, right?”
He nodded. “So we could meet up. Not to stay here.”
He spoke quickly, agitated. Before she could respond, he caught her hand, his fingers lacing with hers, and instead of being shocked or annoyed at his alpha tendencies, her pulse kicked up a notch. She followed him out and across the street toward the shoreline. He donned his shades again and walked her to a bench overlooking the beach.
“We need to lay some cards on the table,” he said as he sat.
She stared at his profile, but he didn’t turn her way, his bright eyes hidden by his sunglasses. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I ran to your theater even though I had no idea where it was.” He finally turned her way. “How is that possible? And this…” He raised their joined hands. “This is the first time I’ve been able to breathe in two days.”
Mel gnawed at her bottom lip. Could he truly be the Guardian Clio found in the scrolls? It wasn’t like she could just ask. But she had to do something. “This is going to sound crazy…”
He gave a soft chuckle. “You wouldn’t believe how crazy my life has been since I met you.”
“Okay.” She pulled her hand free of
his, readying herself for him to run. “Do you have some kind of odd mark on your body anywhere?”
He slid his sunglasses off, cringing as if she’d suddenly grown a third eye. “A mark?”
“I told you it would sound crazy.”
He shook his head, staring at the waves crashing on the sand. Finally, he tensed and faced her again. “Wait a second.” He tugged his T-shirt over his head, exposing a rock-hard six-pack. Before she could get a good look, though, he turned the other way, putting his back toward her. He reached around and pointed up to his right shoulder. “I have a birthmark that’s been feeling strange. My doctor thinks it might be a rash, but I’m leaning toward skin cancer.”
On the back of his right shoulder blade was a crescent of color, like a waxing crescent moon. It was raised and bright red.
“Has it always been this color?” she asked.
He pulled his shirt back down in a hurry. “No.” He faced her again, suddenly very close. “It started burning the night I met you.”
It was him. Her Guardian. He had to be.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Have you noticed anything else strange since we met?”
A muscle jumped in his cheek, his green eyes cold. “My cards are on the table. I showed you the mark. Now tell me what it means. Does this have anything to do with how I ended up at your theater even though you never told me where it was?”
“I don’t know, but it probably has to do with the mark.” She lowered her voice. “You’re a Guardian.”
“I’m a police detective.”
Mel sighed. “Yes, you are, but being a Guardian means you have a latent ability that only surfaces if you find your muse.” She pressed her lips together, trying to recall the exact wording. “Clio found a scroll that mentioned Guardians, mortal men marked by the gods to protect the daughters of Zeus. When he finds his muse, his abilities are revealed. Or something. That’s not the exact translation.”
He opened his mouth to speak and stopped, then shook his head. “You’re telling me you’re my muse?”
