Stilettos, Inc.

by Lexi Ryan

  “Hell of an ability,” Chrissie muttered. She turned to Darian. “What’s going on here?”

  “I’ll explain later,” Darian lied. Fernandez would press the guy for information. With any luck, tonight would have served two purposes. They’d learned Stilettos, Inc. was still on the up and up. If they were lucky, they’d learn if the large influx of threats picked up by SIA intelligence had something to do with Collin Raines and the election of President Winston.

  “Whatever,” Chrissie said before stepping onto the roof.

  Darian turned to Paige. “On a scale of one to ten, how pissed are you?”

  Judging from the fury in her eyes, he was guessing an eleven. Maybe a twelve.

  Darian didn’t care. Everyone was safe, and Stilettos, Inc. was still working for the good guys. At the end of the day, that was all that mattered.

  She released a long exasperated sigh before finally speaking. “You were supposed to be waiting for me in the office. What happened?”

  He let a slow smile curl his lips. “I don’t have to be an empath to know when you’re full of shit.”

  * * * *

  Paige’s anger was punctuated by the sharp click of her heels as they struck the dark sidewalk.

  What was it about Darian that got under her skin? Sure, he was cocky, but the SIA was like the CIA meets Marines with superpowers thrown in. When she dealt with them, she expected cocky.

  She clenched her jaw, remembering his explanation for following them.

  “We have some intel that this case might be a little more than you can handle.”

  Stilettos, Inc. had been handling things just fine before Darian’s crew had started breathing down their necks. In fact, they’d been on the case for weeks now, while the SIA had been twiddling their thumbs trying to decide whether or not they should get involved.

  Stilettos, Inc. could take care of it better than SIA pigs.

  Paige wanted to growl. If he had put it in any terms but those, she would have welcomed their help. Specials were vanishing—whether they were being kidnapped and held somewhere or murdered, no one knew. The case was too important. But he hadn’t put it in other terms. Instead of the importance of the case, it had been a question of their competence. Too valuable, he’d told her. Then he returned to his favorite topic of why they should join the SIA and work safe little intelligence jobs the rest of their lives.

  It was natural that she’d be a little bent out of shape by the suggestion that she and her girls couldn’t do their jobs without getting themselves killed.

  But, if you’re honest with yourself, you have to admit you’re not nearly as irritated with the other two guys. If you’re honest with yourself—

  Paige grunted, cutting off her own thoughts. So what if Darian got under her skin for reasons she didn’t want to analyze too closely? That wasn’t why she’d stomped off. That wasn’t why she was walking alone through the frigid streets of D.C. when the only other people out were the homeless, who had no choice, and the drunks, who had no clue.

  “I don’t want to see you hurt, Paige.” Those words had been uttered softly amid the chaos and bitching. The other girls were no keener on the guys interrupting their mission than Paige had been. Once the threat had been neutralized and they all met up on the roof, everyone wanted to say her piece.

  All the girls wanted to know how Darian’s unit had even known where they’d be tonight. Chrissie had accused them of knowing about the bomber and holding out intel. Of course, the guys hadn’t taken too kindly to that. But Darian had whispered those words to her quietly, for her ears alone. “I don’t want to see you hurt, Paige.”

  Darian thought himself the knight in shining armor rescuing the damsel in distress. But Paige always saw those old stories differently than everyone else. The women in those stories probably had the situation under control before some pompous ass rode up on his white stallion.

  She exhaled heavily and watched her breath steam in the cold January air. Right now the mid-twenties temps were good. They cooled off her frustration, helped her think. She didn’t want to admit it, but sex fogged her brain as much as it fogged the next guy’s. Thanks to Darian Lorring, she had sex on the brain.

  She welcomed the cold air, let it swirl around her bare toes and up her skirt. She did nothing to stop it from sinking into her skin and wrapping its chilly fingers around her bones.

  Behind her, fireworks hissed, crackled, and banged. She breathed a sigh of relief. The good guys had won tonight. It wasn’t over. She knew that. There would always be threats, always be people who wanted to destroy what America stood for. But getting through this day was an accomplishment in itself, and she was going to let herself enjoy the feeling.

  As soon as she allowed herself to feel relief, it was pushed aside by gnawing worry. They hadn’t learned anything new about the vanishing Specials. They still hadn’t a clue who was behind it or who would be next. Would someone vanish tonight?

  Another set of footsteps sounded behind her and she slowed. It was a man’s stride, muffled, solid and flat, next to the sharp clicking sound of her steps.

  She stopped and closed her eyes. “What are you doing here, Collin?” It was the female in her, not the Special, who sensed her old lover on her heels. Collin Raines.

  He stopped behind her, and she braced herself for his touch and the disconcerting lack of sight that came with it. She steeled herself and prayed she’d have enough self respect not to throw herself into his arms.

  He turned her around. She felt nothing but the pressure of his hand against her back and the weakness of her own heart in her chest. The sight of him made her throat tighten. The light of the streetlamps cast shadows across his face, exaggerating the appearance of the long scar that cut over his forehead and across his left eye. He wore a long black trench coat and black leather gloves.

  His eyes swept over her. “How have you been, my love?”

  She took a breath, but it entered her lungs in jagged pieces, not the long, cool, refreshing stream she needed. “I’m not your love.” Not since you left.

  “Have things changed that you can read me now?”

  She closed her eyes. “You know they haven’t.”

  “Then you wouldn’t know.” His ran a gloved finger along her jaw, back and forth until she opened her eyes.

  “What do you want from me, Collin?”

  “I miss you.”

  The words tore through her center with the slow and merciless sawing of a dull blade. Tears filled her eyes, and she looked to the clear winter sky so she wouldn’t say the words that rested on her tongue. Then why did you leave me?

  “Don’t cry, my love.” Slowly, he pulled off his glove and held his bare hand palm up. “May I?”

  She didn’t acknowledge the question. There was no point. He’d do as he pleased anyway. Always had.

  The first contact of his cool fingertips against her cheek was deliciously painful. It was always like that. She couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t read him. But, worse, she knew he could read her. She set her jaw and let him suck her power.

  “You do miss me too,” he said softly. “But you still don’t understand...” His lip twitched. “I see you had an exciting night.”

  “Thanks to you? Are you sending others to do your dirty work now?”

  He frowned and dropped his hand. Her power came back in a rush. Not that she would be able to feel him. Collin wasn’t only a Power Sucker, he was a Blocker. No Special Paige had ever known could use his power on Collin.

  “Who is he?” Collin asked.

  “Who?”

  His eyes looked sad. The icy blue that went straight to her heart, the worry lines from a hard life softening around them somehow. “Under everything else, it’s still there. Your arousal. It’s fading, but I know your arousal like I know my own. I can still taste it.”

  “Collin—”

  “You were with someone tonight? Or thinking about it?” He gave a self-deprecating chuckle, but there was no real humor be
hind it. “I guess I can’t expect you to waste the years of your prime pining away for me.”

  “You can’t honestly think that I’m going to feel soft toward you after what your friends tried to pull tonight?”

  His lips quirked. “You always feel soft toward me.”

  “Go home, Collin. Wherever that is.” She turned and had taken five steps before he stopped her with little more than a hand on her shoulder.

  “I wasn’t a part of what happened tonight. Not intentionally at least.”

  She nodded. She believed him. There hadn’t been enough planning or power behind the threat for it to come from Collin.

  “Are you still on the missing Specials case?” he asked.

  “You know I will be until we have answers.”

  He turned her slowly. “Leave it alone, Paige. You’re putting yourself right into their clutches if you keep on this.”

  She shook her head. What a night for chauvinistic men. “You’re wasting your breath, Collin. Unless you have some information that will help with the case, you might as well stop.”

  Collin frowned. “Nothing you find is going to bring your mom back.”

  She winced.

  “I need you to trust me.”

  “I’ve fallen for that line before,” she said.

  He studied her. “Please take yourself and the girls off this case. I’m worried for you.”

  “Still using fear tactics to recruit, Collin?”

  He tipped her chin so she was looking at him, and she saw it there, the sincerity in his eyes.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Ah, that might work on other people, but I know better. I feel it.”

  She knew he did, and she hated being so exposed to him. Especially now.

  “I know you’re not very happy with me, but I still care for you.”

  She shook her head, but he held it between his gloved hands.

  “Promise me you’ll think about it,” he said. “Promise you’ll consider that, after all our years together, you should trust me. You should move on to some other case.” He lowered his head and brushed his lips against hers, and again she felt the pain and pleasure tonic of him leeching her power.

  He ran his tongue against the seam of her lips, and she instinctively opened to him. His kiss was sweet—soft and patient. She didn’t kiss him back, but she didn’t deny him either. Instead, she focused on her heartbreak, remembered how she felt the day he left her, and used his power-leaching ability against him.

  He pulled away and rubbed his gloved thumb over her bottom lip. Pulling a card out of his coat, he said, “If you need me, this is where I am now.” He tucked it into her hand and she let him. “I wish I could explain. I wish you could believe that this is the way it has to be.”

  * * * *

  Tanner Wiley tucked his cell back into his pocket and slipped into the shadows.

  Darian was convinced their intel was wrong, was convinced that, even though the members of Stilettos, Inc. refused to join the SIA, the private firm worked toward the same goal as the government agency.

  Darian would take their mission a little more seriously now that he had photographic evidence that Paige was sleeping with the enemy.

  Collin turned the corner, and Wiley followed him, allowing his power of invisibility to cloak him.

  After half a block, Collin stopped and turned, looking straight into Wiley’s face. “Don’t bother, kid,” he muttered. “I can see you.”

  * * * *

  When Paige got back to Stilettos, Inc. Headquarters, Josie was in the shower and Chrissie was slipping into her jeans.

  “What took you so long?” Chrissie asked. “Please tell me you had a repeat performance with Mr. SIA.” She crossed her arms, her face a mask of seriousness. “I worry about your vibrator, you know. Even the trustiest vibrating pals need a break sometimes.”

  Paige forced a smile, the image of Collin standing under the streetlamp still buzzing around in her mind. “Hook up with Darian? After what they pulled tonight? Not likely.”

  Chrissie settled on the edge of the bed. “What was that about?”

  “Apparently the SIA decided they want to work this case after all. They’re worried we can’t handle it.”

  Chrissie snorted and zipped a knee-high boot over her jeans. “Bunch of chauvinist assholes over there,” she muttered.

  “Yeah, I know,” Paige said, reaching around to unzip her dress. She let the dress fall to the floor and began pulling pins from her hair.

  “Did they have any intel regarding the bomber?”

  “No, it was a surprise to them, too.”

  Maybe what happened tonight was more complicated than they thought. She’d touched the explosion-master Special, and she felt more than she’d expected. The darkness inside terrorists was always overwhelming. It was a hatred that surged up from their very soul and devoured anything good left inside them. When Paige touched them, it threatened to devour her.

  She’d felt that darkness in him. Around the darkness, covering but not smothering it, she’d felt the grief and despair Darian had projected. But she’d also felt pride, and hope. Hope for more to come. A belief that, if he didn’t succeed, his mission would be completed by someone else.

  The office shower squeaked as the water turned off.

  “Chrissie, did you get any reading off the terrorist at the party?” Paige asked.

  “Sure did.” Chrissie grinned wickedly.

  “Was he working alone?”

  Josie stepped out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped under her arms and another around her head.

  “Alone tonight, as far as I can tell, but he wasn’t the mastermind behind the plan. I saw a memory of him talking to a man. He called him Scott in the memory. They were here in D.C. I’m sure because I could see the Lincoln Memorial in his memory, and Scott was giving him his fake ID and tickets for the inaugural ball.” She yanked on the other boot.

  “I think we should check it out,” Josie said, stepping in front of the mirror and grabbing her facial moisturizer. “The whole thing was a little too close for comfort.”

  Paige nodded, plans turning in her mind. “I agree.”

  “You don’t think Collin had anything to do with what happened tonight, do you?” Josie asked tentatively. “I mean, I know you probably don’t want to talk about him, but he was so upset when Winston was elected and...” The rest of the sentence hung unspoken in the air. And he left you so he could do something about it, didn’t he?

  “It’s okay. It’s a valid question.” She remembered Collin’s face as she’d talked to him tonight. Maybe she couldn’t read him, but she knew that face, knew that man. “I think that if Collin were behind what happened tonight, it wouldn’t have been so easy to stop.”

  Josie nodded and turned to Chrissie. “Anything else on this Scott guy?”

  A slow smile curved Chrissie’s lips. “Only the name of a strip club from another memory. The way he was talking to the employees, I think he might be the owner.”

  Paige’s smile was sincere this time. “You kick ass. You know that?”

  Chrissie bounded off the bed, ready to party. “Sure do.”

  Josie turned to them. “So, do we go after him tonight or tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow,” Chrissie said. “I’m near useless tonight anyway. And Rider’s coming.”

  “Where’s he been, anyway?” Josie asked.

  Chrissie frowned, then shrugged. “Probably looking into a potential case for the firm.”

  “Good,” Paige said, but she hadn’t missed the discomfort on her friend’s face.

  “What about you two?” Chrissie asked. “How are you feeling after tonight?”

  “Totally sucked dry,” Josie said.

  Paige winced. Her encounter with Collin had literally leached her powers.

  Josie combed her fingers through her wet hair. “But I’m hooking up with an old friend tonight.” She wriggled her eyebrows. “Don’t expect me back until morning.”
/>   “Paige, are you game for tomorrow?”

  Paige nodded. After tonight’s case, her powers would have been a little weak anyway, but when Collin used his powers on her, it left her damn near useless. Damn near...normal. If normal included a mild case of the flu. “Tomorrow would be better for me too.”

  She looked up at her friends. Josie was bent at the waist, hair flipped over her head, combing some styling product into her hair.

  Maybe Paige should pay as much attention to her appearance as her two best friends. Maybe...shit.

  Maybe then Collin wouldn’t have left her? How absurd was that? And what was she, sixteen?

  “There was a message on the voice mail from the secretary,” Chrissie said.

  “Administrative assistant,” Paige corrected. “What’s up?”

  “He wanted to let us know another Special was reported missing tonight.”

  Paige’s stomach dropped.

  Josie’s hand went to her mouth and she chewed on her thumbnail for a moment. “That’s—what?—twelve this month?”

  “Twelve that we know of,” Paige corrected. Who knew how many Specials lived on the streets after being rejected as “crazy” by their families? No one noticed when street rats went missing.

  “There’s no clear pattern, though,” Chrissie said. “They’re disappearing from all over the country.”

  “What was this one’s power?” Paige asked.

  “Another Blocker,” Chrissie answered.

  Blockers were Specials who kept other Specials’ powers from working. Some had to touch the Special to stop his power, some could stop powers of anyone in the same room. Some Blockers—like Collin—had other powers as well.

  “There’s your pattern,” Paige muttered. Even though the girls knew two—Collin and Rider—Blockers were rare among Specials. Yet, more than half of the Specials who had vanished this month were Blockers.

  Chrissie slipped into a leather bomber jacket. “Paige, you look like hell.”

  Paige gave a humorless laugh. “Thanks.”

  “Are you all right?” Chrissie stepped forward.

  Instinct had Paige backing away. “Sorry,” Paige muttered when hurt flashed across Chrissie’s face. “I’m fine.”