Vigilante Mine

by Cera Daniels

  "Please watch your heads," Ryan said when they crossed the halfway point, a treacherously low support beam.

  With a swish of green, Lilah motioned for him to man the obstacle from one of the many alcoves that pitted the trail and she led Lieutenant Dale and the media pack onward. Ryan smiled as her tour guide voice faded with distance. Lilah would pass around the collection plate along with private label bottles of wine before circling the party-goers safely to their limos.

  A ragged gasp of breath from the back of the line plucked at Ryan's ears. Scrambling heels, like someone dragged backward. His lungs froze. Amanda. Nails scraping on fabric and flesh.

  His feet bolted ahead of his brain.

  "I never guessed it'd be you," she said.

  Fear pulsed like a living creature in Ryan's throat as he dove back through the stream of guests. Too slow, too many people clogging the hallway.

  "Thanks for the gesture, but really, you don't have to do this. Let me go."

  Screw public image. "Amanda!"

  Her breathing hitched.

  He couldn't be too late to save her. Not on his own turf.

  "Of course he noticed," she said.

  Ryan dodged a cameraman and spotted a dip in the wall to the right. Rumpled blue, tumbling curls, and a uniformed officer's hands locked around Amanda's forearms.

  "You didn't think my date would mind another man moving in?" Amanda's eyes sparked with simmering fury.

  "What can I say? Drinkin' gives me courage." A muscled officer in his dress uniform, short, stocky, way out of line.

  "Drinking makes you an asshole," she gritted out, her biceps flexing. "Remove your hands. Now."

  "Before I remove them for you." Ryan's internal caveman pounded a flurry of fists on his ribcage.

  The other man wasn't ready for a fight, the eyes that glanced up at him glazed with something far more potent than champagne. His hands snapped into the air. "Fine, fine. But I'm not done apologizin'."

  "Yes, you are." Amanda's eyes narrowed. "Go home, Hunter."

  Ryan drew her close as the officer staggered toward the improvised exit. She was safe. Safe. He rubbed his thumbs over her arms and his lips parted, but she was ahead of him, her voice low.

  "Hunter Williams. He was at the bar when you dropped me off, and something tells me he went back today." She tipped her head back with a smile and smoothed her hands over his jacket. "Quite a timely rescue."

  "Did he hurt you?"

  "No. He surprised me. I didn't want to give News 9 an opportunity for negative coverage, or I would have stopped him sooner. How did you know he had me cornered?"

  His hands faltered a moment too long, but he tried to cover it, flipping a loose curl behind her ear. "You left your mic on."

  One of her eyebrows shot up. "Funny. No one else came running."

  Like a rescue beacon, Jay's mission flared through Ryan's brain. "Hunter's in the Organized Crime division, isn't he?"

  Amanda cocked her head to the side. "Yes."

  "Does he seem like the kind of man who'd take his job description to the extreme?"

  "No. He's one of the good guys, when you take away the alcohol." The lush depths of her whisper stroked like a balm over his healing ears. "Hunter isn't the zealot."

  Ryan let her believe his motives as he contemplated Klepto's odds of making contact with Hunter—once the man sobered up. Once he recovered from the fists Ryan planted in his face.

  Okay, so it'd be a better plan for Jay or Zach to pass Hunter the Shaw intel.

  Ryan could punch him later.

  Handsy scum or not, Hunter would have to be conscious for a day or two longer if they wanted to catch the syndicate with the illegal shipment. The man would be well-backed by his department. OC would have the Shaw Family syndicate behind bars—one less combatant on the battlefield, one step closer to ending the turf war for good.

  A camera flashed in his peripheral and Ryan reluctantly stepped out of the relieved embrace. He pressed a kiss to the back of each of Amanda's hands. "Let's get these people out of here."

  The rest of the evacuation went smoothly. No shots were fired, his and Lieutenant Dale's people found no one suspicious inside or out, and the bomb squad made good time. Zach directed them to each of the devices, the emergency seemed contained. His brother claimed not to sense anything. Amanda's phone didn't ring again. Even the weather cooperated, warmer temperatures keeping the sidewalks bone-dry. A welcome reprieve. Still, the hair on the back of Ryan's neck prickled with unease.

  A small brown bat swooped at his head as he trusted the last group to Lilah's capable hands. Ryan rolled his eyes and whispered, "Drak's following your lead, idiot. Control your temper."

  Zach growled over the private line. "An audience means I don't get to touch anything."

  "Tough. People's lives are at stake and you're not a hundred percent. It's too risky to cater to your curiosity. Your job is babysitting only. Babysitting as in, eyes on the bomb squad boys next to you and don't let them scratch our building. And chill, or I send you first class back to Jello-ville."

  Jay chuckled. "Two hundred bucks he sneaks one out anyway so he can play with it after the press takes off. Is the ballroom empty, Ry?"

  "Press is outside. I'll do a final sweep of the premises. Then garage."

  "Good. I'll meet you there to collect."

  Too bad for Jay, Ryan knew both of his brothers well enough not to take that bet.

  "I'm coming with you." Amanda cracked her first smile in an hour, her eyes flooding with warmth and something wicked enough to overheat his brain.

  Ryan slipped his palm over Amanda's. "Shouldn't take long to double-check the ballroom."

  "Good, because I've been jonesing for another chance to drool over those paint jobs—"

  A laugh caught him by surprise. "I knew it. You just want me for my cars."

  "The garage is a nice perk."

  "Not quite what I had in mind for the rest of the night, but we can start there." Ryan was so preoccupied by thoughts of where the rest of the night would lead that he didn't register the rest of his brother's words until he and Amanda neared the end of the passage to the private garage.

  " . . . and get this: They wiped their accounts and borrowed heavy to afford this load. If we can step in tomorrow night, they won't recover."

  The syndicate intel. Ryan jerked to a stop. Had his brother changed into a suit, or was he still wearing . . . "Wait—"

  Jay ducked inside the tunnel clad in Klepto's mask, trench coat, and fisting a distinctly police-issue gun. His brother's shoulders slumped. "I wish he'd mentioned you were with him."

  "Fuck, Jay." Ryan caught a glimpse of Romeo on his brother's heels, and so did Amanda.

  She saw everything.

  Jay awkwardly holstered her service weapon and Amanda flicked her gaze from her gun to Jay's mask, then slowly—so damned slowly—turned an impassive slate of a poker face Ryan's way, hiding every thought and emotion from him. Not shock, not anger, not disappointment, not the familiar evidence of her calculating, detective-branded thoughts. Nothing.

  Guilt pounded inside his head, his chest, his heart. Amanda.

  What could he say? What could he do? A gust of chill air battered her honeyed curls and a loose tendril shifted over her eyes as she glanced between him and his brother. She released his hand to swipe the hair back, lace rasping from his grip.

  Silver glinted in her fingers. Her earpiece tumbled end over end toward the ground. Jay gasped, wincing as he yanked his receiver out right as the mic collided with the pavement. Feedback blasted Ryan's eardrums anew. The pulse of sound stabbed and burned to his core, and still he said nothing. He'd been a fool to think he could ever share this truth. She had the final piece to the puzzle, and it didn't matter that she would wrongly put him in a serial killer's shoes; his greater sin was shooting her.

  Hope for redemption crumbled like the city sidewalks.

  "Spiritwalker . . . "

  No, Romeo. He'd earned every bit of
this wordless rejection.

  A hint of censure overtook her expression. She hitched her shoulders and stepped into the garage. Her footsteps snapped like firecrackers as she walked away.

  Anguished reality hammered his lungs and landed a knockout jab to his solar plexus. He'd lost her. No, he'd never truly had Amanda. Any chance to win his Spirit-mate's forgiveness—her heart—had died the night he'd followed up their fated kiss with a bullet.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The faded blue strap suspended from the ceiling of the express rail dug into her palm. Jay was too short to be the Klepto she'd faced off with in the dark. No. Her Klepto was Ryan. Ryan was Klepto. If Jay took up the mask, then Zach probably did, too. She bet all three of them didn't have an alibi for every murder.

  Serial killers? Plural. Her mind reeled, rejected, rebuked the ugly words with facts.

  Fact: Ryan had been by her side during at least two of the murders. But he'd been out of sight during the zealot's phone call.

  Fact: Zach, despite his explosives expertise, had been checking out of the hospital while those bombs were fixed to the ballroom doors. But Dale's wife could have made a mistake. His grim stance could have been mistaken for a cop's.

  Fact: Jay didn't know how to hold a gun. He'd have fired too wide to kill, left more bullets for the lab techs to find. But—

  But nothing. They weren't murderers.

  Amanda had been chasing the wrong man, and Ryan knew it. He'd steered her away from the truth. Her shoulder twinged with a bone-deep ache.

  He lied. She banged her fist on the tattered interior of the rail car. I went to the man who trounced my career, for a freakin' alibi.

  "I draw the line at vehicular abuse," Charlie said.

  She whipped around with the fist tight to her chest and the strap in her other hand pulled taut with an audible snap. Her red-haired friend settled in to the bounce of the express rail. Charlie's shined-up dress shoes planted wide in the aisle and he leaned on the edge of a grimy seat for balance. His arms crossed over his barreled chest as if he could care less that the rail's ancient brakes could hurl him across the car.

  "Didn't mean to startle you." He lifted one shoulder. "Dale saw you take off, 'suggested' I watch your back."

  "I didn't see you board." Amanda hadn't even heard him enter.

  "I'm not surprised. You've been growling since you left the party, and you just missed your stop."

  She shot a glance at the digital sign that announced the next subterranean terminal and she cursed under her breath. "Guess I'm visiting my mother."

  His barely-there smile flat-lined. "At least tell me what he did, so I can teach him some manners."

  "He lied." When Charlie did nothing but watch her, she added, "I let him get away with it."

  "You're here, not back at his place."

  She chewed on her bottom lip, then plucked at the strap around the run in her once-pristine lace gloves.

  Charlie hitched his shoulders. "The man's a corporate playboy. He's practically got a patent on the 'different girl at every sunset' gig."

  "He wasn't two-timing me." He'd simply deceived her, even as he'd courted her. The man did love his games.

  "Worse, then." His eyes widened. "He tried to talk you into a three-way with that rocker chick."

  "Geez. Only you would go there." She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. "He broke a promise. Charlie, can we not do this here?"

  Bushy red eyebrows cut a V of brotherly concern. "Promises, secrets, that's your zone. Whatever he's done, you of all people should have seen it coming."

  "I did. I just . . . let him slide."

  Her instincts had called it. "Sweetheart," said too affectionately, Ryan's tone not quite deep enough or taunting enough for her to give credence to the way her brain cells had roared.

  Even her body had recognized him.

  The scent and taste of mint from his choice tea, the hard, unyielding press of his lips—the way she'd craved both Klepto and Ryan like an addict.

  The rail car jerked forward, then shuddered to a full stop.

  "I'm getting off here," Amanda said. "I know Dale told you to follow, but this guy's still out there, and he had eyes on me tonight. I don't imagine you'll want to be seen fraternizing."

  Charlie frowned at whatever he read in her eyes and walked her as far as the mechanized doors. Worry etched deep in the pale angles of his face. "Call me if you need anything. I'll find a way to help."

  "Thanks."

  "Isn't that your stray?" He caught her arm and she squinted into the station.

  Romeo. Dark as shadows, the German shepherd waited on the landing for her to step out. His eyes glinted with a keen, unnatural intelligence. She waved Charlie off and left the car despite the way her blood rushed to her ears, part panic, part fury.

  "I wouldn't insult you with an offer of escort—"

  "He doesn't even have the decency to come after me himself?" Amanda asked—was she really talking to a dog?—over the grinding squeak of the engine pumping into motion. Skirting the furry interloper, she headed for the turnstiles.

  "The Spiritwalker didn't send me." The dog fell into step beside her. "Actually, he threatened me with a trip to the vet if I followed you."

  "And yet, here you are, risking your doghood anyway." She sighed, pulling her ID from her glove. "Why?"

  "Your dress gives little protection."

  "It's not supposed to. It's a dress. But that doesn't answer my question, now does it?" It took two swipes of the metallic strip through the reader, then the stile clicked.

  The dog didn't answer.

  "What happens when he comes looking for you?"

  "New hire has a flirty little poodle . . . "

  "Gross. Never mind. With a name like Romeo, I should have guessed Ryan McLelas's dog got as much tail as he does."

  A hiccupy-snort came from Romeo's throat.

  "Are you laughing or having a stroke?"

  The dog lifted his nose high. "I am glad you are comfortable near me now."

  She started. She wasn't afraid. Her nerves came out with acerbic humor. But fear? The usual knot of tension at the base of her spine eased the longer she dealt with Romeo's candor.

  "Despite his orders, he'd rather have you safe."

  A shiver claimed her spine and she hugged her wrap tighter around her shoulders. These streets used to be more secure after dark. Drug traffic had a significant uptick in recent months, creeping ever closer to the main roads in residential areas, overtaking them in some formerly clean business zones. She should have asked Charlie to walk her the few blocks to her mother's two-story greystone.

  Hand-to-hand combat might feel good—and burn off the anger muddling her thoughts—but Mrs. Byron had threatened to cut off her home-cooked meal ticket if the gown came back with so much as a thread out of place.

  "That's a good one." Amanda watched Romeo wind his way through the bars. "He's the reason some syndicate pervert broke into my house. A pervert who didn't know I existed until Klepto took me down this very same stretch of road, I might add. He lied to me, betrayed my trust, and—hell, now I'm yelling at a dog."

  "I didn't say he handled things well. You'd never have been involved with them if the Spiritwalker would listen once in a while." The dog huffed his displeasure. "I will watch over you until morning."

  "By doing what? Falling asleep?" Amanda snapped her mouth shut at the way his muscles bunched under the rich, black fur. Taunting him was a bad idea. Her cheek reminded her proof even a small dog could do damage, and this one was every inch a warrior.

  "When I hear trouble, I will warn you."

  As he'd done with Shiv's hired sniper.

  Her feet paused, but her brain revved like the engine in Ryan's favorite Mustang. Romeo. The hearing. It explained so much of Ryan McLelas's mystery. From the very beginning, Ryan had . . . known things. Like tonight, when he'd come to rescue her from Hunter's awkward, drunken apology.

  "You're t
he reason Ryan knew Hunter tried to manhandle me. You heard the attack and told him."

  "He did not listen through me."

  "So he's got what, super hearing, all on his own?"

  "Perhaps you should ask him."

  She frowned as something else clicked in her head. "His ears, when my security alarm—"

  Romeo sighed. "Yes."

  "He heard the phone call across the room. He has super powers." She turned the corner onto her mother's street. "This is crazy by every definition of insanity. Unnatural abilities, talking dogs—"

  "You're the one talking back."

  Romeo's tongue lolled out of his mouth. A grin, perhaps, but the sparse placement of streetlights glinted off sharp canines. Amanda sidestepped closer to the row of houses.

  "I saw that."

  "I've had a lifetime to perfect the maneuver." She sucked in a deep breath. "I'm sorry. By now, it's . . . instinct."

  "It's habit. Your instinct knows I won't hurt you."

  "Instinct and I haven't been getting along this week."

  A too-knowing glint flared in his eyes. "The Spiritwalker isn't the only one with hearing problems."

  "Why do you call him—No. I can't do this." She kicked the bottom step that led to her mother's greystone and turned to face the dog. "I need space, Romeo. Give me time to think, and stay out of my head while you're at it."

  Romeo's nose hung low enough to brush the ground. "If you give him a chance to explain . . . "

  "That's not how this works. There's a killer on the loose, and I can't—I won't—be distracted this time."

  Her mother answered the door and wasted no time hauling her into the tiny foyer. Amanda imagined a concrete barrier in her mind as she shoved the door closed in the dog's face. A white-hot burst of pain marked the severed connection, then it was gone.

  Immediately wrenched into an interrogation and a not-so-subtle hunt for injuries, she didn't have time to examine the strange sensation.