by Sierra Dean
Either he didn’t really care what I was doing at six in the morning, or he knew I wasn’t going to like the reply he gave. Sometimes silence speaks volumes, and I was willing to bet Desmond and I would have a bit of a discussion about those volumes as soon as we had both slept.
Sometimes I put my job ahead of our marriage, and not only because I refused to leave California. The funny thing was, it was the same shit I used to get so mad at Lucas for. Lucas had valued his pack above everything else in his life, and couldn’t understand why those around him were upset when he blew them off or betrayed them in the name of doing what was right for the pack.
Realizing now I was becoming the very thing I’d loathed the most about someone else made me feel a weirdly profound sense of empathy for Lucas. It also made me pick up my phone again and type, I love you, I’m sorry I’m late, I will bring you Dean and Deluca’s bagels.
Dot dot dot.
Mini bagels from Absolute, or divorce.
I cracked up. At least he didn’t ask for Utopia. That shit was in Queens, and I was not about to go borough hopping to bribe him for his love.
He couldn’t be too mad at me if he was placing a breakfast order. That was its own kind of relief.
What I had learned from my time with Lucas was that an honest apology could go a long way when you inadvertently hurt the person you love. I was bound and determined not to make the same mistakes with Desmond that Lucas had made with me. With both of us, really.
No one said this would be easy, but I had to be willing to meet him halfway if we were going to make it work.
So mini bagels and apology texts it was.
I made my way to the front steps of the seventy-sixth precinct building and jogged in through the doors that were almost as familiar as those in my old apartment. I’d spent a lot of time in and out of this little police station in my prime, and bless it, the damn thing never changed.
Mercedes knew I was coming—I’d given her a heads-up to make sure she was actually at the office—so when I arrived, she was already waiting at the top of the stairs, two cups of coffee in her hands.
She thrust one at me, then sipped her own gratefully.
“It’s disgusting, but honest to God there’s nothing I missed more when I was pregnant. With Javy I thought I might claw out Owen’s eyes when he told me I couldn’t drink it anymore.”
Like Shane and Siobhan, Mercedes and her bar-owner husband Owen had jumped headfirst into the world of responsible adulthood, one that apparently involved having babies. Cedes and Owen now had two, the first a little girl named Eliza, the newest a baby boy named Javier.
I hadn’t missed any of these milestones, which was the benefit of being back and forth from Los Angeles so often. I’d been with Mercedes when Javy was born, holding her hand because Owen’s flight was stranded at O’Hare on his way home from a bar convention in Las Vegas.
I had been a witness at Shane and Siobhan’s small wedding ceremony.
I had to admit, there was still a lot of life and love here for me, even though I resisted coming back to it permanently.
I could make a happy life for myself here full-time, couldn’t I? I could be Auntie Secret, teaching all the little nuggets hand-to-hand combat.
Hell, I could have one of my own.
I froze at the thought and stuffed it deep, deep down into the dark recesses of my mind, where I hoped it would stay buried for a good long time.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want kids. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to have those kids with Desmond. It was more that I had been pregnant once a very long time ago, and the outcome of that had been so heartbreaking for me I still wasn’t ready to face it, even a decade later.
I sipped my own coffee and it was, indeed, disgusting.
“Did you get out of bed for this?” I asked.
“No, I get seniority now. Day shift, baby. Means that Owen and I can balance the schedule with the kids pretty well. He takes the day, I take the night. We barely see each other anymore, but we still manage to have some really hot sex in the doorway when we’re swapping.” She winked at me.
“Careful, that’s how more babies get made.”
“Ay.” She shook her head vigorously. “No more.”
“That’s what you said after Eliza.”
“I’m here to tell you there’s a giant damn difference between one baby and two.”
I wasn’t about to start picking away at her, suggesting that she didn’t really mean she wanted to stop having kids. The truth was I’d never pegged Cedes for the kind of person to have kids at all, let alone two of them. But she loved her babies, and if she was happy and done with two, those were two of the luckiest kids in the world.
We wove our way through the old metal desks, and I marveled at how few of the faces I recognized anymore. With Tyler off in L.A. with me, Cedes was the only other cop I’d spent any extended amount of time with. I guess a lot can change in any workplace when you’re not really paying attention.
Taking a seat at her desk, she slid the folder across to me without preamble. I gratefully put aside my coffee, which tasted like licking the inside of a canister of engine oil, and started to flip through the document.
“I’m still not used to you being on our team now,” she said idly.
I glanced up. “What do you mean? I was always one of the good guys.”
“I know, I know. But I mean, you’re all legal and shit. You have a badge.”
“Cedes, I even have one of those fancy windbreakers that say FBI on the back.”
“Damn, girl, you’re in the big leagues.”
“Yeah, except I really whiffed it on this one.” I tapped the folder.
“Okay, two things. One, I have never been prouder of you in my life than I am right now that you just made a baseball reference and used it correctly.”
“You try being married to a hard-core Yankees fan for five years. It’s all bound to rub off after a while.” I shrugged.
Cedes put a hand on her chest. “As a hard-core Yankees fan myself, I can assure you, that is entirely our goal. And to point two, you can’t beat yourself up over a mistake like this. I’m here to tell you it won’t be the last. We try our best, Secret, but we’re never going to be a hundred percent right all the time. It’s impossible.”
“We’re only human,” I sighed.
“Hey now, don’t say that like it’s a bad thing.”
I gave her a soft smile and flipped through the pages of the report. Even looking at it now, everything in my blood told me this wasn’t a typical vampire killing. Of course, now I knew Davos was a methodical killer, a trait I typically saw more in human murderers. Vampires did it for food, for protection. It was quite rare for a vampire to kill for the sheer pleasure of the act.
I laid out the crime scene photos, trying to see what I’d missed and to figure out if any of it was going to lead me to Sig.
“Did you really come back early just because of this?” she asked. “I could have couriered the file back to you.”
I shook my head. “There’s more, but I’m not sure I’m at liberty to share the details.”
“FBI stuff?”
“Tribunal stuff.”
She gave a little huff. Cedes hadn’t been a big fan of vampires before the reveal, and now that they were out in the world adding to her workload, she hadn’t warmed to them any. “I thought we got you out of that life.”
I gave my best Michael Corleone impression. “Just when you think you’re out, they pull you back in.”
She wasn’t laughing.
“It’s not that easy to leave this life,” I told her. “I didn’t become human and then decide to become an interior decorator or, like, Instagram lifestyle blogger, or whatever it is women in their twenties are supposed to aspire to being these days. I started doing this when I was sixteen, Cedes. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at, and I plan to keep being good at it.” She looked like she might speak, so I kept going. “And please don’t tell
me you worry about me. I get enough of that from Desmond.”
“Hey, I hear you, I think Owen would love for me to take a permanent desk job. But I do worry, and everyone who loves you is bound to worry. We did it before, and we’re going to keep doing it now. You take a lot of risks you don’t need to, and one of these days it’s going to get you hurt.” Her gaze drifted to the scars on my chest.
“I know.”
“You’re one of the only people I’m aware of where the skeletons in your closet all seem to be literal, and all want to kill you.”
Grinning, I reorganized the photos, hoping to see what I was missing. Nothing jumped out. It was a sad, meaningless murder, and these photos didn’t tell me anything about my missing vampire.
Except…
I held up one of the closeup shots of the bodies. I couldn’t be sure, given that the focus was on the girls, but something on one of the posts behind them gave me pause.
Something vaguely familiar, which nagged at me.
It was probably just graffiti, but at this point I wasn’t about to brush anything off. I’d messed this case up once. I wasn’t going to do it again.
Not with this much on the line.
Chapter Sixteen
I still thought of the Upper West Side apartment as more Desmond’s than mine. Maybe if we had gotten our own place after we got married, then it would have felt like ours. But I had owned so little, and he had such an incredibly nice place, it seemed silly to buy anything new.
He’d hung my picture of sunflowers over the fireplace, and we’d painted the kitchen a warm buttery yellow, my favorite color. Bit by bit we were making the place mine too.
Guiltily, I knew if I were here more, I would be better able to put my fingerprints on it.
My small bungalow in L.A. was all mine. It was made up of brightly lit rooms and vintage, secondhand furniture. This apartment felt so new and clean by comparison. I liked my life a little messier, more worn in.
It was almost nine by the time I got there, a bag full of bagels in tow, and a big coffee from the place on the corner he loved. My white cat, Rio, greeted me at the door, and I pushed her out of the way with my foot so I could lock up.
“Baby?” I set my carb-filled bounty on the counter and gave Rio a vigorous rub down. “I come bearing gifts.”
Back when he’d maintained a normal day job—he’d been an architect in a former life—he would have been long gone to the office by now. The way things were presently, being the King of the East took up all his time and then some.
We also weren’t hurting for money after Lucas died and left everything to Desmond. Even now that he was alive, he didn’t seem too keen to take any of it. I assumed we’d return the upstate mansion to him at some point, but that was more a pack house than a place anyone could live.
Before he’d died, he had lived in one of his hotels. Desmond and I also owned those, and I suspected when Lucas finally returned for good, we could find a place for him at the Columbia, or somewhere he’d be comfortable long term.
If he ever came back.
I moved through the dimly lit apartment, past our big bedroom, where the king-sized bed was neatly made and my robe was hanging from the bathroom door, as if he’d hung it there, knowing I was coming.
I found Desmond in his office, the warm light of morning filling the room. His back was to the window, and his attention was focused on the laptop in front of him.
Of all the rooms in the house, his office was my favorite. It had an old leather couch along one wall from his first apartment in the city, and he’d told me it had been the first expensive thing he’d ever bought himself. It was as worn in as an ancient baseball glove, and sometimes when he was busy with pack work, I would come in here and fall asleep on it just to be closer to him.
It was a very comfy couch.
The room had been painted a dark-charcoal color, but in spite of it being gray, it was still warm. A variety of modern art pieces hung on the walls, including an original Jackson Pollock over the couch.
Desmond glanced up from his work, and my heart skipped a beat.
His violet-hued eyes were offset by his olive complexion, and his dark hair looked longer than it had only a week ago. He wore two days of stubble on his jaw, making him look a little wild, and goddamn I wanted to climb across his desk and have my way with him right now.
He was wearing a soft white sweater, one I had bought for him, and looked so utterly delicious I physically ached to touch him.
“You are a sight for sore eyes,” he declared.
“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
He pushed his chair back, but before he could rise to meet me, I had crossed the room and climbed onto his lap, straddling his strong thighs and burying my fingers in his hair.
I pressed my forehead to his and sat like that for a long moment, breathing him in, smelling his familiar Desmond scent, letting the heat of his body warm me.
His hands skirted around my waist and up under the hem of my shirt. He wasn’t trying to undress me, not right now. That touch felt different. This was his way of being closer.
Werewolves thrived on skin-to-skin contact.
So did horny human women who missed their husbands.
I placed a kiss on his forehead, another on his nose, then finally a soft one on his lips. He returned this kiss with more pressure, tasting of coffee and toothpaste.
After a few minutes of deeply necessary cuddling, I slid off his lap, kissing the top of his head again and marveling at how soft his hair was. I might need to start stealing his shampoo.
“How long before you have to go out again?” His tone didn’t belie any annoyance, but I suspected there was a little bit there.
“Long enough to sleep, shower, and change.”
He checked his watch. “Which one of those do you want company for?”
Four hours later I emerged from the bedroom, freshly scrubbed and somewhat rested. I had opted to share the nap with him, wanting his body behind mine and those big arms wrapped around me. In retrospect I should have asked for the shower, because when I woke from the nap, he had snuck back to work in the office.
I made a mental note to get him to update me on what was going on with the pack as soon as I had a free minute. I was doing a piss-poor job of being a good queen. I should know what it was that kept him so distracted every waking minute of the day, shouldn’t I?
If it had been trouble, I probably would have already known about it. But there were certainly problems that could exist within a werewolf pack without the FBI being alerted.
That was the great thing about being in charge of several hundred werewolves. Something was always going to be spinning wildly out of your control, or someone who didn’t agree with your motives. There was never a day that went by where Desmond wasn’t dealing with an annoyed alpha wolf somewhere.
Drama didn’t need to be life-threatening in order to be time-consuming.
I peeked my head through his office door and took pleasure in seeing the plate of mini bagels near his elbow. He was on the phone with someone, but I gave him a wave and inclined my head towards the front door to say, I’m heading out. He gave a nod and a wink—be still my heart—and just like that I was gone again.
Shane was waiting for me at High Line Park, looking as scruffy as ever. He had the style that suggested he rolled out of bed without trying, but which also implied a very substantial amount of work actually went into what he wore.
He might as well have spent the night as the lead singer of a punk band. Except the dark circles under his eyes were likely related to a restless three-year-old as opposed to rowdy thrash-metal fans.
“You look like you need seven more coffees before you’re totally functional,” I told him.
“Nice to see you too.”
“Sorry.”
“In case you’d forgotten, the whole vampire-hunting thing usually happens at night. Seeing the evil day star is an unwelcome change in my routi
ne.”
“Poor baby.”
His expression remained stoic, and he simply stood there with his arms crossed, waiting for me to make the move.
“Sig,” I prompted.
“Yeah, he came to see me at my place last Thursday, which is weird enough. I mean, I know he paid house calls to you sometimes, but it’s not all that common for the rest of us grunts. So it was the sort of thing that stuck out in my mind. Especially considering he came all that way to tell me not to do my job, you know?”
It was unheard of for the Tribunal to backpedal on a warrant. So much work and vetting went in to confirming someone needed to die that once a card was filled out and the envelope sealed, the marked vampire was as good as dead.
“Did you ask him why?”
He gave me a pinched look. “Of course I asked why. But do you think Sig was in a huge hurry to tell me his innermost thoughts and reasons behind something? No. He told me to mind my own damn business and do as I was instructed.”
Shane sat down on the bench nearest us, and I took a seat beside him. We were only a few feet away from where the bodies had been found, but it was like the tourists milling around had no idea anyone had died here, or didn’t care. They snapped happy selfies and sipped their expensive coffees, totally oblivious to what had happened here only weeks earlier.
I waited until the park was nearly empty, then got up and moved over to the place where the bodies had been dumped. The pillar in the photo was to the right side of the bodies, so I scanned the nearest one from the bottom up, and sure enough, there was a symbol attached to it.
At first glance it looked like a little seagull, which was disheartening, because a wee seagull doodle wasn’t going to give me the answers I needed. But I snapped a photo of it on my phone and zoomed in for a better look.
Magnified, it appeared more intentional, almost like a pi symbol, but upside down. Certainly not a seagull. I texted the photo to Tyler with a request he run it through our database to see if it matched any known symbols that had popped up in ancient texts or other vampire crime scenes.
