“No.” That certainty hadn’t stopped him from wondering where it had come from. If there had been a gateway opening, the resulting temporal distortion would have registered at the field office. Since Quinn’s brush with a Scion weeks ago, there had been increasing hostile encounters, all pointing to the distinct possibility their area was about to become a hot zone for demon activity. Rae had even begun keeping two agents on home turf at all times.
This particular demon, however, had stayed off their radar until tonight.
“If you weren’t tracking one, then what the fuck were you doing at my sister’s in the middle of the night?”
Drew knew every second he remained silent was damn telling.
“Start at the beginning,” Quinn said calmly from the doorway. She laced her fingers through Brax’s, but kept her gaze fixed on Drew.
“I was getting out of the car, heard the struggle. When I reached the back parking lot, it already had a hold of her.” He’d replayed it over and over in his mind, wondering if he’d been just a little bit faster… “I thought I had it covered. I had it under control until another one jumped me.”
“You didn’t see it coming?”
“I was a little preoccupied with keeping the first one from stabbing her,” he snapped. He could still hear the wet slide of the knife as it ripped through her flesh.
“But it did anyway, didn’t it?”
He turned away, knowing Braxton had every right to be scared and angry. He should have been paying better attention. He’d tried not to let his concern for Blair distract him, slow his reaction time, but every sound of confusion and distress that worked past her lips had driven another spike of adrenaline through him.
“And she’d already be dead if he hadn’t been there,” Quinn reminded Brax.
Cold comfort. Drew couldn’t stop picturing the look of calm dread that had filled her eyes before she’d shut them one last time. And when she’d slumped against him…
Christ.
He rubbed his palms against his eyes. He should have taken the storm demon out before the second hostile had come onto the scene. He’d been too slow, and this time the cost of his failure could be more than some nameless innocent in the wrong place at the wrong time.
What the hell had she been doing in the parking lot in the middle of the night? He shouldn’t have left her. Hell, he’d been making the wrong calls where Blair was concerned since being overwhelmed by his attraction to her at the resort.
“What resort?” Braxton growled.
Drew spun around, his warning unmistakable. “Stay out of my head.”
“Stay out of my sister’s pants. She’s deserves better than to be the lay of the week.”
He took a threatening step forward, then held his ground. “She’s a big girl, Brax.”
Quinn planted herself between them. “Cool it, the two of you.”
Drew unclenched his fist and paced to the opposite side of the room. How long had he been in here? Waiting. Turning every time steps echoed outside the room, hoping for news she was going to be fine. She’d lost so much blood. He’d heard them say that already. What if they hadn’t been able to get it under control while they had her on the operating table?
Heels clicked softly down the hall and he knew without looking the snappy footfalls belonged to Rae. His boss paused long enough to turn the full impact of her gaze on him, but he didn’t meet her eyes. She turned her attention to Braxton, and Drew was saved from them teaming up on him as the doctor came through the door. He recognized the resident who had given him an update a short time ago.
“How is she?” Drew got the question out first.
The young woman nodded in his direction. “Minor complications aside, she came through the surgery fine and is being moved to recovery.”
“When can I see here? I’m her brother,” Braxton clarified.
“Someone will let you know once Ms. Murphy is settled in her room.”
“Minor complications?” Rae prompted.
The doctor looked uncomfortable for having admitted as much. “Some technical difficulties, but I can assure you Ms. Murphy was in good hands throughout the surgery.”
Drew moved to the doorway when the resident left, watched her pause at the nurse’s station. Pretending to be staring down the hall, he concentrated until he heard them mention what room Blair would be moved to.
“I think we need to talk.” Rae stepped up beside him.
Drew looked past Rae to where Braxton dropped into a chair. He couldn’t blame his friend for wanting to protect his sister. He’d never hidden the fact that he dated a lot and seldom the same woman for any length of time. Braxton leaping to conclusions that Drew would use Blair for casual sex wasn’t unexpected, but the present situation was too strained to bother explaining otherwise. Maybe later, when his insides didn’t feel scraped to the bone.
“Let’s take a walk,” Rae suggested.
Drew didn’t doubt for a moment it was an order. Knowing it would be a waste of breath to put her off—and he didn’t have any fight left in him for it—he fell into step with her.
“I thought you were taking some time off.”
“You say that like I had a choice.”
She crossed her arms. “And you think I made the wrong call?”
The challenge in her voice had him planting his feet. “She got help in time.”
“This isn’t about what happened to Blair.” Rae glanced in the direction of the waiting room. “Quinn thought she had everything under control when I took her off the roster too.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
He rocked back on his heels, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Adjusting to having Molly in my life is not the same thing as having a master demon with a grudge stalking me.”
Rae shrugged, searching his face. “You met Blair at the resort I presume?”
Annoyance curled through his blood. “Don’t get on my case about my relationship with her.”
Surprise flickered across her face. “I’m not in the habit of telling my agents who they can sleep with.”
He sensed a but in there somewhere.
“Maybe I was too quick to push you into taking some downtime to figure things out,” she continued.
Drew stared at her. It wasn’t like Rae to change her mind, let alone defend her actions. Nothing on her face gave away what was going on inside her head, but he knew his boss undoubtedly had a reason for reassessing the situation. One that didn’t have anything to do with admitting she might have made a mistake.
“I don’t like knowing the hostile that attacked Blair slid in under the radar,” Rae added. “With things heating up around here and Braxton worried about Blair, I need all of you on the clock.”
“What happened to worrying that my job performance might put other members of the team at risk?”
“I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. At least for another couple of weeks.”
Of course there had to be a catch. “And then?”
“You tell me if you’re still with us or hanging up your sword.”
“And your decision has nothing to do with the possibility that Blair’s DNA might have been mutated?”
She hesitated, then finally answered. “We’ll finish this in my office in the morning.” Without another word she returned to the waiting room.
That Rae hadn’t answered his question only confirmed his suspicions. Frowning, Drew headed in the opposite direction. He’d learned the layout of the place after they’d taken Blair into surgery, making it easier to find her in recovery, but trickier to avoid the staff who would question his presence.
He waited until a nurse left, then slipped into the small recovery room, knowing he wouldn’t have long before she returned. He tuned out the beeps and whirs of the room’s many machines and monitoring devices, his anxious strides carrying him to Blair’s bedside.
She was no longer as pale as she’d been in the ambulance, and he brushed the back
of his hand down her cheek. His fingers trembled and he closed his hand into a fist before the tremors spread to the rest of his body.
He should have stayed away from her. Away from her at the resort, away from her place tonight. If she’d left her apartment to look for him…
He’d known she would wind up hurt by getting involved with him, only he hadn’t anticipated a demon being the cause. This wasn’t the first time a hostile had attacked someone he cared about and tonight proved it could happen again. What if next time it was Molly in trouble?
He quickly cut off that train of thought, embracing the bitter anger that coursed through his blood, demanding he find the demon responsible for hurting Blair. He bent and brushed his lips across her forehead. “I’ll be back.”
I’ll be back.
The words drifted through Blair’s mind, foggy and hollow sounding. She wanted to answer back, but couldn’t make the words form on her lips. A dull ache spread across her body, becoming stronger the harder she pushed to open her eyes, to talk.
She stopped fighting and let herself be swept back under, resurfacing when nausea gripped her stomach, and she tried to escape the discomfort by rolling to her right and tucking her legs closer. A wave of pain stormed up her side, and she gritted her teeth until it abated and the worst of the nausea passed.
“Take it easy.”
Braxton?
Blair opened her eyes, blinking against the harsh lighting to bring her brother’s familiar face into focus. Relief slid through her at finding him within reach.
Where was she?
He took hold of her hand, his grip steady and strong. “You were hurt pretty bad so try not to move too much.”
Hurt? Stabbed. The memory of the blade sinking into her skin made her tense up. She fought back the instant panic that nested in her throat. Brax was here. She was safe.
“Mom and the girls are on their way.”
“You told them I’m going to be okay?”
He dragged a chair closer and sat. “You are. Just scared the crap out of us.”
“Drew?” She started to sit up, then cringed. “Is he okay?”
Braxton’s expression darkened. “He’s fine.”
She frowned at her brother’s clipped tone, struggling to piece her memory together. “He saved me.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t know you guys were so well trained.” She remembered the way Drew had fought, his movements gracefully sharp and precise. Deadly.
Thoughts of Drew fighting off her attacker inevitably turned to the man who had stabbed her. The murderous intent on his face, his smile a cruel slash of lips, his black eyes seeing right through her.
“Did they catch him?” The moment the question left her lips, more details came rushing back.
“What?” he asked.
Puzzled, she closed her eyes as though it might clear the fuzzy edges of her memory. Blair ran her hands over her head, hunting for an injury. She must have banged her head. The guy who had attacked her had thrown her into a car, hadn’t he? She could have struck her head and remained oblivious to the pending concussion with so much adrenaline flooding her system. Head trauma would explain why she thought she saw Drew…
Her hand dropped from her temple. “I thought I saw…” She shook her head. “But he couldn’t have. There wasn’t any blood.” Two attackers. She remembered that now. Drew had told her to run and she’d looked back over her shoulder and saw… “Oh, God. He cut off—” The words wouldn’t budge past her lips.
Her gaze darted to Braxton’s and she waited for him to tell her that she wasn’t making any sense. She swallowed hard, the sides of her throat sticking together. Was she losing her mind?
Braxton lifted the glass of water to her lips. “Just a sip,” he cautioned.
The wetness soothed her dry mouth. She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Tried rearranging her thoughts, desperate to sort truth from a traumatized imagination.
“There she is,” she heard her mother say as she crossed the threshold of Blair’s hospital room. Her two sisters crowded in with her.
Her mother paused next to Braxton. “What was the nurse saying about her being moved to a private clinic?”
“You don’t have to worry. I’m taking care of it, Mom. She’ll recover faster.”
Her mother look reassured, but Blair’s attention remained fixed on her brother. He didn’t meet her gaze. He stood back as their mother and sisters fussed, but it was the expression on his face, caught between relief and worry, that stayed with her long after he made excuses about grabbing a coffee and left the room.
“You’re awake.”
A smile that she felt all the way to her toes tugged at her lips at the sound of Drew’s voice.
“Hey.” She managed to straighten up with only minimal discomfort. Whatever pain meds they’d been giving her since she’d been moved to the private clinic Braxton had arranged were pretty damn effective. The ride in the ambulance, against her previous doctor’s recommendation, had been jarring, but once she’d slept most of the day away, she’d been surprised to wake feeling as good as she did. She’d said as much to the staff that filed in and out of her room every half-hour it seemed, but none of them commented on why the stab wound wouldn’t be more uncomfortable.
“You’re not looking too bad for a woman who was bleeding all over me last night.” He delivered the observation with a teasing smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Once I get out of here you can send me the dry cleaning bill.”
He paused at the foot of her bed and gave her a thorough once-over. She shifted self-consciously, curbing the urge to run her hands through her hair. She had no illusions that she looked her best. She’d been stabbed less than twenty-four hours ago and survived. Right now, that was good enough for her.
Satisfied, he took the seat next to her. A tingle of static ran across the surface of her skin, and she shivered from the unexpected reaction to his proximity, dismissing it in the next heartbeat as a side effect of the pain meds.
“You must be feeling better if you’re already talking about going home.” He leaned forward knowingly. “It’s the food, isn’t it?”
Despite feeling much better than when she’d first awakened to find herself in the hospital, food was still the last thing on her mind. “I take it you’ve done some time here?”
“A little.” He played with the edge of her blankets. “I’m glad you weren’t sleeping yet.”
“Had to wait for Braxton to leave, huh?”
He gave her a sheepish grin.
“I hope he didn’t give you a hard time.” Braxton had already broached the subject of how Drew came to be in the vicinity when she’d been attacked. She hadn’t denied that he’d spent part of the night, but didn’t feel it necessary to share all the details. He’d made his opinion on the matter perfectly clear earlier. Unfortunately, that hadn’t stopped him from telling her to stay away from Drew. She’d expected him to be overprotective, but hadn’t anticipated the anger he visibly struggled to keep in check.
“We’ll work it out.”
“The police came by,” she said a minute later, watching him carefully.
“I heard.” All signs of his earlier teasing vanished under an unreadable mask.
“They don’t have any suspects in custody. Not even any injured or dead ones,” she pointed out when he still didn’t say anything.
Drew studied the floor. “Did you talk to Brax about any of this?”
“Seeing as he wasn’t there last night, he wasn’t all that helpful with filling in the gaps.” When he wasn’t avoiding talking about it at all.
At first, she’d just assumed the attack had shaken her brother. When their dad died, Braxton had stepped up to be the man of the house, but had refused to talk about losing their father for a long time. Then she realized that Braxton purposely tried not to be alone in the room with her, as though in doing so he could avoid the line of questioning she’d been working up to b
efore the rest of her family had arrived.
She crossed her arms. Her few waking hours that hadn’t revolved around doctors constantly checking her vitals like she was a prize guinea pig had been spent replaying the events of the night. Part of her wanted to forget it happened, thrust it to the back of her mind where she wouldn’t have to think about it, wouldn’t have to be spooked by the fact that the man had known her. Had called her by name.
But ignoring what had happened wouldn’t help her find the answers to the dozens of questions running through her mind.
“I thought maybe I was crazy at first,” she ventured.
“Everything happened so fast,” Drew cut in. “It knocked you around pretty good.”
She stilled. “It?”
His shoulders tensed and the denial in his eyes reminded her of her brother when he’d started avoiding her questions.
He stood. “You should rest. Don’t want to wear yourself out.”
“I won’t be tossing Brax over my shoulder anytime soon, but I’m fine otherwise, a bit sore.”
“Just a bit?” A deep frown thickened the lines between his brows.
She shrugged. “I haven’t tried to sprint down the hall yet. Something about tearing my stitches…”
He didn’t seem amused by her sarcasm. “Lift up your gown.”
“Wishful thinking on your part if you think I’m showing you what color underwear I have on.”
His gaze softened. “Nothing kinky. Please?”
She rolled to her side and tugged the gown to the side to expose her lower back.
“Did a nurse change the bandage recently?” His thumb brushed her skin above the injury, and a spark zigzagged from her breasts to her belly.
“A couple of hours ago maybe.”
His fingers lingered a moment, then gently traced the corner of the bandage. “Do you mind if I take a look?”
“If the nurse catches you, I’m playing opossum.”
He laughed, the rich sound taking her back to their playful banter over dinner at the resort. “Let me know if I hurt you.”
She winced a little when he peeled back the dressing, but it wasn’t nearly as tender as she expected it to be. She glanced over her shoulder, but couldn’t see anything to give her any indication of how badly she’d be scarred by the attack. “How does it look?”
Storm Warning Page 10
