Lauren was still scowling as she considered what I was asking. “It’s illegal to reveal details about an ongoing case.”
I shrugged and didn’t say anything.
“And this is what you want in exchange for finding my nephew?”
“Nope. I’ll find him anyway.” I grinned because there wasn’t anything she could do about it, and it clearly pissed her off. Okay, maybe I do sometimes like confrontation. I still would never have made a good cop. I don’t follow rules well at all, and I really don’t like getting shot.
“Why?”
“Because I can and because kids don’t deserve to be pawns in Tyet games.” I hated the way the Tyet used kids and families to leverage people to do what they wanted. They left a lot of dead bodies and broken families littering the city. I couldn’t do a lot to stop them, but if I could keep the kids from dying, it helped me sleep at night. Sure, a Tyet faction wasn’t involved in every case, but nine out of ten of the kids I’d looked for had been taken by or because of the Tyet.
“Even though my nephew is trying to commit a crime?”
“Sure. Don’t get me wrong—there’s no worse drug than Sparkle Dust. As far as I’m concerned, the dealers and the creators of it should all be dumped into a vat of boiling oil. Trevor is stupid, but then so are most teenagers. He shouldn’t have to die for it. He deserves a chance to learn better. He just needs a good kick in the ass. I’m willing to bet you’re going to make sure he gets one.”
“Good Lord willing,” Lauren murmured as she thought over my words. Finally, she sighed. “I’ll think on what you’ve asked.”
“Take your time. I’m going to go upstairs and collect a few things. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I ran up to Patti’s apartment. She had a bedroom set aside just for me. I decided I had time for a quick shower. Actually, I didn’t care if I had time, I was taking one. I needed to wake up and get my brain moving better. I wrapped the bandage on my arm in a plastic sack I found under the counter and hopped in. Despite the glory of the hot water, I was in and out in five minutes.
After dressing in jeans, a long-sleeved green shirt, a brown fleece vest, and heavy wool socks, I slid out the box of nulls that I kept under my bed. I’d been working on upping their power levels, but had been pretty hit or miss about getting that done. Recovering from my near-death experiences had taken a lot of my strength, and then I found myself unable to say no to all the paid work suddenly coming my way. The truth was I’d been in full-on avoidance mode. I was trying to pretend that everything was normal and all that death and murder stuff had been a fluke. But reality kept poking at my pretty little fantasy. I was on the wrong end of danger way too often.
I groaned, rifling through the bin. It looked like a thrift store “Free” box. It was full of Legos, marbles, polished rocks, glass figurines, and a variety of other knickknacks. Plastic, stone, glass, and metal were best for making nulls. They held magic best. The more magic they held, the bigger the object needed to be, though I was pretty good about cramming a whole lot of power into a small thing. I picked out some of the strongest nulls. Most of them were cat-eye marbles and a few ball bearings.
Tracing tends to be a defensive sort of talent. I can null out magic, but there really is no good way to attack an enemy beyond that. I can take an enemy’s magical weapons away, but that does me precious little good if he’s still left with all the normal ones like guns and knives and whatever else he might be carrying. At least, that’s the way things have always been. I’ve got some theories on how to target someone and kill them. I just need to make time to figure it out.
I was going to have to work on it quick, though, because now that the word was out on me, sooner or later some Tyet asshole was going to come after me. Probably more than one. When I refused to do what they wanted, they’d go after my family to force me. I wasn’t going to let that happen. Or at least, I didn’t plan to, but the way I was taking jobs and ducking my deadly magic project, I was going to run out of time before I had a solution. I’m betting a psychiatrist would have plenty to say about avoidance or sticking my head in the sand or whatever.
“I’ll get to it as soon as I find Trevor,” I promised myself. I’d hole up at home for a week or so and do some experimenting.
“Talking to yourself?” Patti asked from the doorway behind me. “You know that’s a sure sign of insanity, right?”
I twisted to look at her. She leaned against the doorjamb, hands hanging at her sides. Darkness shadowed her eyes, and her brow furrowed. She chewed her upper lip.
“What’s wrong?”
Patti never loses her cool. When she worries, she snaps and snarls. It’s only when things get really bad that she starts to look uncertain.
“I don’t know if I should show you,” she began.
“What?” My voice sharpened.
She drew a breath in and blew it out. “You know that since you got caught up in that Tyet business, I’ve been keeping an ear to the ground for news. I keep feelers out for information on Savannah Morrell and her Tyet buddies, Gregg Touray, the FBI, and of course, Price.”
I breathed slowly to calm the sudden fear curdling the food I’d eaten. I clenched my fingers on the bedspread. “So?”
“So I get an alert when one of my search terms pops up somewhere interesting.” She held still for a moment, then said. “There’s been an explosion.”
My heart clenched, and I could barely breathe. “Not Price,” I said hoarsely, as if saying it could make it true.
She nodded. “A house that belongs to his brother. That’s all the news is reporting.”
I leaped to my feet and staggered a few steps and stopped. Where was I going? The next thought almost dropped me to the floor. What if he’s dead?
No. I wouldn’t go there. Price was tough and smart. He wasn’t going to let himself get killed easily. But I wasn’t worried about the easy; I was worried about the hard. Like getting blown up.
“Where?”
“Uptown.”
“How bad?”
She held out her phone. The video didn’t show much more than clouds of billowing smoke, emergency vehicles, and emergency personnel.
I dug in my pocket and typed out a text: Are you all right? I tapped Send.
I stared down at the screen, silently begging Price to reply. The bastard phone refused to do anything but lie there like a corpse.
“Maybe he doesn’t have his phone on him,” Patti suggested, taking pity on me.
“He should be out investigating crimes. If not for me, he wouldn’t have become a partner in his brother’s syndicate,” I said hollowly. “He only did it to force his brother to stay away from me.”
I’d wanted—I still wanted—to stand on my own two feet. Now that my secret was out, I needed to learn what I was capable of without relying on someone else to protect me. The irony that I was letting Dalton and his team do just that wasn’t lost on me. I hoped that once I was able to protect myself and my family, I could find a way to fully trust Price. That I could protect myself against him if—when—he chose to turn on me in favor of his brother.
The words rang hollow in my mind. They’d made so much sense a month ago, but now the flaw in the logic stuck its tongue out at me with overflowing disgust.
It had come to a choice for Price, and he had chosen me. He’d blackmailed his brother into letting me go, and he’d sacrificed his police career to join the Tyet. To buy me time. What more proof of his loyalty and love did I want? Why the hell was I spending so much time feeling crappy about being apart and wondering if he was falling for someone else? Lately my dreams had been divided equally between erotic images of the two of us together that left my thighs aching and the rest of me more frustrated than an impotent priest on free fuck night at the local brothel, and erotic images of Price tonguing some other woman
to screaming ecstasy, which left me wanting to skin him alive. I really have mental problems, I swear.
Interrupting my thoughts, Patti snorted at my charitable interpretation of Price’s choice to join his brother. “Don’t go rewriting history. He was always a part of his brother’s organization. With or without you, Price could easily have been in that house just now. If he was, which there is no saying he was,” she added, apparently by way of reassuring me. “And it’s not like being a cop isn’t a dangerous job, especially in Diamond City.”
That was true enough, but I wasn’t ready to be done tripping on guilt or wallowing in self-pity. “Still, he could be dead and it’s all my fault.”
“You are fucking kidding me. How could you possibly be responsible for some jackass setting off a giant weenie-roast in Uptown?”
Okay, she was right. The guilt was more about the time I’d wasted. The real issue was I wanted him. I missed him. I’d been smothering myself in work to avoid that particular truth. I’d probably sell my soul to have him back, which is why I couldn’t trust myself before and why I second-guessed myself even now. “I should never have pushed him away.”
“Are you nuts?” Patti snapped her fingers in front of my face like I needed waking up, then dropped her hands to her hips. “Really? You decide not to date a man who could get you killed or who might even kill you himself, and that’s a mistake? For fuck’s sake! Avoiding him is probably the smartest thing you’ve done in your life, besides being my friend. He’s too dangerous to be with,” she declared.
“Maybe. Okay, probably,” I said when she just stared disbelievingly at me. “But it’s been damned boring without him.”
“You’re saying you’d risk your life for entertainment?”
“No.” I shook my head ruefully. “It’s more than that. I don’t seem to like my life much without him. There’s no flavor.”
“Who are you and what did you do with Riley?” Patti demanded. “You sound like a mental patient. Why don’t you take up skydiving or bullfighting. Hell, try Russian roulette. You’d be safer.”
“Probably.” I shrugged helplessly. “I miss him, Patti. I’ve been missing him so hard. This bombing—what if he’s dead?” The words nearly choked me. No. He was alive. He’d damned well better be or—I drew a harsh breath, refusing to even think of any other possibility. “I fell in love with him. He fell in love with me. Maybe it’s doomed. Maybe we’ll be fighting like cats and dogs by the end of our first date. But maybe not. All of a sudden I realize that I really want to find out whether we can be anything. This might be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Why waste the time we have on what-ifs?”
Patti cocked her brow and crossed her arms. “The Riley I know doesn’t usually throw caution to the wind. Are you sure this isn’t your libido talking?”
“I already decided I didn’t want to live in fear anymore. I’m tired of hiding in the shadows from all the big bad wolves of the Tyet. Then I went back to doing it all over again with Price.” I looked down at my hands, then back up at her. I didn’t talk about my dad much. “When my dad disappeared, I got cold, put up walls to keep people out. I didn’t want to get attached to anybody and get hurt. Then I went and fell in love with Price, and half the reason I do love him is that my heart trusts him, even if my head isn’t there yet. If I love Price, I have to believe he’s not going to disappear on me. I’ve got to choose to trust him. He’s not my dad, and keeping away from him is just another way to put up walls so I don’t get hurt. I didn’t really realize that before, but now—” I gave her a lopsided grin. “It seems I’ve gained a whole lot of clarity in the last few minutes.”
Patti tipped her head, examining me. Finally, she nodded. “Okay. So long as you’re sure he’s worth it, I won’t argue anymore.”
“He is.”
She closed me in a tight hug. I wrapped my arms around her.
“Thanks,” I whispered. I knew I was doing the right thing for me, and I didn’t need her approval. All the same, it was nice to know she had my back in this. My family was going to go nuclear.
Just then my phone chirped. I pulled away from Patti and read the text, my heart pounding in my chest.
Banged up, but safe.
I drew in a shaky breath and let it out slowly, sinking down onto the bed. I read the words again. Then I grinned. Time to jump into the deep end.
I typed out a text:
Dinner at my stepmother’s a week from Saturday. Pick me up at the diner at 5:00.
I tapped Send.
A moment later he sent his reply.
About fucking time. And all it took was a bomb.
Chapter 3
I collected myself and returned downstairs to the diner. Hearing from Price made me both happy and itchy. I’d never had what anybody could call a boyfriend before, so I had no idea how to feel, except that I was suddenly nervous about seeing him again. I decided that was ridiculous, and in light of the missing kids, too stupid to even give brainspace to. I pushed it out of my head and hoped I’d get over it in the meantime.
Leo had arrived earlier than I expected. He sat at the counter talking to Ben and sipping coffee. When Leo saw me, he jumped up and wrapped me in a bear hug. I clutched him tight right back, ignoring the burn of pain in my arm when I lifted it up.
At last he pushed me back, hands on my shoulders, examining me closely. His hands and forearms were covered with burns, scabs, and scars stemming from his work with jewelry.
Leo was four years older than me, and about that many inches taller. He’s my stepbrother, so we look nothing alike. He’s über handsome, for one thing. His dark hair is thick, and he combs it back in sexy waves. His eyes are hazel with long dark lashes. He’s got one of those chiseled up-to-something faces that make women pant. If he’s got a flaw, it’s that the bridge of his nose is flat and the whole thing is a little crooked. That, and he can’t grow a beard to save his life. When he tries, he looks like he has mange.
I endured his scrutiny as long as I could. “What?”
“You said you were all right, but I haven’t seen you since—” He tipped his head in a silent “you know what I’m talking about.”
“Since I almost got killed?”
He winced and gave me a little shake. “Yeah, since then.”
“You can see for yourself—I’m totally fine.”
“Except for the stab wound she got today,” Patti added as she stepped up beside me. “How’s it going, Leo? Been too long.”
He scowled at me. “Stab wound?” His fingers tightened on my shoulders.
“You’re going to crack bone if you keep squeezing like that.” I wriggled out of his grip. “It’s not a big deal. A tinker will have me fixed up in no time.”
He looked exaggeratedly around. “Where is this tinker you speak of? Because we sure as hell aren’t going under the mountain until you’re healed up.”
I rolled my eyes at his kingly command. Like I was his peasant-girl servant to order around. “Yes, we are, because five kids are missing and they can’t wait.”
“Riley—”
“I have a heal-all,” Dalton chimed in, having managed to come in the door without ringing the bell. Didn’t he know that the whole point of a bell was to warn people he was coming?
I glared at him. “Mind your own business.”
“Who are you?” Leo demanded at the same time, turning so that I was behind him.
They faced off like two bulls about to charge each other. If they did smash heads, it wouldn’t knock a lick of sense into either one of them. I resisted the urge to kick Leo in the ankle. Instead, I pushed him aside. Rather, I tried to push him aside. He’s slender, made of not much more than skin, sinew, bone, and muscle, but I had no more effect on him than a fly on a dinosaur. He might as well have been a boulder. I stepped around him.
Dal
ton was staring back at Leo with that shuttered look he liked to wear. He was like a book written in unintelligible code. Not for the first time, I itched to slap him, just to see if his expression would change. Being the smart cookie that I am, I didn’t follow through, as I prefer being alive.
That’s when I noticed that the edges of his silver irises glowed faintly blue. What the hell? Obviously he had tinker-mods, but I had no idea what exactly his eyes could pick up. Another reason not to trust him. For all I know he had Superman’s X-ray vision and was looking right through my clothes. I have to admit that while the possibility squicked me out, it also made me want to go shave my legs and other more personal bits. I hadn’t had time when I showered upstairs.
Oh hell. I should be in a loony bin.
I pushed aside all thoughts of my pubic hair and focused on taking control of the situation.
“Leo, this is Dalton. He’s my bodyguard. Or possibly a stalker, I haven’t entirely decided yet. No, I didn’t hire him. No, I don’t know who did. No, I can’t get rid of him. So far he’s a pain in the ass, but otherwise neither he nor his team has tried to kill me. Dalton, this is my brother, Leo.”
“This man has been following you?” Leo asked in an icy voice.
“Him and his team,” I said. Then anticipating his next question, I added, “ever since I found Josh.”
Josh was a sore subject with Leo, and now he had his underwear in a wad over Dalton. Not that I could blame him, but he was wasting time.
“Before you two decide to go fight a duel or make out in the back of the diner, can I remind you that there are five kids who need our help? If we don’t find them soon, they might not survive. Dalton, do you have the gear?”
I wasn’t getting away with the change of subject so quickly.
Edge of Dreams Page 4
