“What the hell?”
He shoved up her short sleeves. An intricate design circled Chiana’s flesh, an imprint burned into her skin.
“Not your problem.” Chiana yanked away and pulled down her sleeves.
In his eyes, Chiana saw concern, confusion and uncertainty, and she knew she had to get rid of him. Mick was a company man. The agency provided everything he’d wanted in life—discipline, security, a sense of belonging. His first instinct to call in and ask for help would become a fixation. He wouldn’t rest until he’d told someone, and she couldn’t risk that.
“Get out.” She shoved his cell phone into his jacket pocket. “Call for that ride.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Fine, then. I’ll go.”
She pushed open the door and swung her legs out. She thought she could stand. She was almost right. She held onto the open door for support in a desperate attempt not to show weakness. Mick had to believe she was okay.
“Come on, get back in here.”
“No.” Taking a deep breath, she started to move, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. Her muscles ached, and she had to concentrate hard to stay upright, but she kept going.
“Fine then,” Mick said. “Suit yourself.”
Chiana turned. He leaned against the car’s front fender, hands in his pocket, staring at her. She read his anger in the set of his shoulders, the hard tap of this foot against the ground, the narrowing of his eyes.
Tough shit.
She returned to the Mustang, patted Mick’s cheek and said, “You’re off the clock, remember? Enjoy that blond.”
She dropped into the driver’s seat, revved the engine and was gratified when Mick moved away. He was right. She had no business driving. She probably shouldn’t be alone. But there was only one man who knew what she really was, and she needed to get to him.
Fast.
* * * *
“Taking my break now!” Caroline Morton called through the window separating the diner’s kitchen from the customer area. She took the cook’s grunt as an assent and slipped out the back door into the morning. She leaned against the storage building at the back of the lot, wishing she still smoked. She could think better with a cigarette in her hand.
Ignoring the streets awakening around her, she replayed the scene from the parking lot in her mind. It might have been nothing more than an argument. That happened a lot. She’d long ago quit being surprised by what people did in public.
Yet it felt hinky to her even though she hadn’t seen the whole thing. She’d begun watching when the guy in black high-tailed out to the lot. At first, she thought he took off because someone was trying to break into his car. Then she saw the woman, and the shape of something taller, wide-shouldered and bulky, something that faded into a shadow and vanished.
She hadn’t paid much attention to the woman as they ate, except to wonder how anyone could look so good that early in the morning. She definitely hadn’t noticed anything unusual about her. Not in her looks, not in her actions and certainly not the dim rainbow of reds, blues and blacks that enveloped her.
She’d only gotten a glimpse of whatever waylaid the woman. Someone had yelled for a refill, and she headed for his table with a coffee pot. By the time she got back to the window, the Mustang was rolling out of the lot.
Caroline wondered if it was a hallucination, that she imagined the vanishing figure. The medical cocktail that kept her functioning had funky side effects. Besides, the early morning light could play tricks with shadow and light.
A garden-variety lovers’ spat, that was all. Except the man and woman had been talking and laughing over breakfast. And she thought she’d overheard the woman ask the guy if he needed a ride, like they weren’t really together.
She studied the ground, picking at her apron hem while she replayed the scene in her mind. Every instinct screamed trouble. Every bit of common sense said let it go. Her days of worrying about other people were over. Not only had she closed the door on that chapter of her life, she’d locked it.
The part of her that had nearly gotten her killed by a seven-foot tall black man thousands of miles from here itched to find out what had happened in the lot, even though that part of her life was long over.
Sighing, she stood, stretched and started back inside. She’d leave it up to fate. If someone was sitting in booth six, she’d make the call. If it was empty, she’d take it as a sign to keep her head down and mind her own business.
* * * *
Mick watched the Mustang roar out of sight before walking back toward the diner. Nothing felt right about letting Chiana go. They were partners. He was supposed to watch her back, no matter how misguided and bullheaded she might be. The good thing was there was a tracer on the Mustang. It could be activated one of two ways, either through his transponder or by the agency. No matter where she went, it would be easy to find her. All he had to do was get the tracker from the glove compartment of his truck to pinpoint her location.
As soon as he got his truck back, that was. Running through a mental list of women likely to pick him up this early in the morning, he walked back into the diner and dropped into the first empty booth. He waited after the waitress poured him a fresh cup of coffee to call for a ride and text the agency. Busy with his call, he didn’t notice the waitress walk to a wall phone, drop in a quarter and dial, or that she huddled against the wall to speak.
* * * *
Creed Davies woke with an agonized cry, sitting bolt upright in bed and drenched in sweat despite the air conditioning chilling the room to refrigerator level. He’d had the dream again, the memory he’d forbidden his conscious self. The quiet night was giving way to the brilliance of another day. He tossed off the thin cotton sheet that covered his naked body and headed for the shower.
He didn’t bother with a light. He knew where everything was. Some might call his tiny apartment Spartan. He preferred the phrase minimalist. What did a man need, anyway, except a bed to sleep on, a chair to sit in and a cabinet to hold the liquor that dulled the pain inside him?
The water drilled against his back like fine needles, a sharpness he welcomed. Hands against the tiled wall, he leaned forward to let the water sluice across his head and down his body.
If it wasn’t for the dream, he could almost forget his wife had disappeared on a night like this, hot and sticky and so black it was as if a veil covered the sky. Could almost forget he’d slipped up and lost everything he cared about.
With that mistake, he’d been damned. He’d lost all that mattered to him. He had committed the unforgivable sin of drawing innocent blood and mortgaged his very soul.
Creed stepped out of the tub and dried himself in front of the door that still had the holes from a full-length mirror. He’d busted the mirror one night when the agony in his soul had been too much to bear and never bothered replacing it. He knew what he looked like.
Broad-shouldered and muscular, he had the kind of build that made people wonder if he used to be a pro football player, and if they ought to know him. Scars that served as souvenirs of his many assignments decorated his flesh, paralleling the wounds on his soul. Just under his shoulder blade was the tattoo of his calling, the flaming sword and skull, hiding the chip that would send out a signal when he eventually got killed.
He was almost dry when he heard his cell phone through the closed door. His first response was to ignore it. No one called him to chat about the weather or ask if he was busy on Saturday night. He’d deliberately narrowed his life to work and sleep, and if he could get away without the latter, he would.
Work he needed. Working as a free agent for Guardian Protective Services was perfect. No one told a free agent what to do. They told them when and where, and backed off until the job was done.
He strode naked across the small living room, grabbing the phone on the fourth ring with a terse “Yo.” After that he listened.
“You know where to send the money,” he finally said. “Half now, half after.”
Creed’s days as a husband and father might be over, thanks to his carelessness, but he believed in living up to his responsibility. The money would go to a lawyer and on to a trust fund for his family, one that continued to draw interest and remained unclaimed. Someday, maybe, his wife or daughter would be desperate enough to take it.
Shaking away thoughts of everything but what lay ahead, he quickly dressed. Color coordination was easy. Every piece of clothing he owned was black. The wife-beater he wore beneath his body armor, the tee he pulled on over it, the commando pants that had a place for his knife, his gun and the blowgun with specially tipped darts.
Once dressed, he yanked his weapons bag from under the bed and began a mental inventory. Some of its contents were standard fare. A half-dozen guns, knives with a variety of blades, military-issue grenades, pepper spray, Tasers.
Then there was the stuff the agency provided. The special bullets for use on demons and goblins. The half-dozen vials of holy water, stakes for vampires, chemical sprays to subdue a variety of imps and other hell rats. He might not need any of it. He might need all of it. He leaned toward being over prepared when he was walking in blind.
Creed closed the bag and lifted it from the bed, appreciating its heft. It should be enough.
Shoving a few days’ worth of clothes into a canvas duffel, he grabbed his phone and took one last look around the place. Two years here, and it still felt as impersonal as a motel room.
It was all he wanted. Or deserved.
Chapter Two
The pain began in Chiana’s bones and radiated outward. This, she imagined, was what radioactive poisoning felt like, the sensation of muscles melting while the nerves strung across them sang a macabre opera of agony. Gasping as a new wave soared through her, she pulled the Mustang off the road in a spew of gravel, braking from sixty to nothing in seconds. The car perched at a right angle to the highway, its front end nearly in the ditch, the rear end bare inches from the white line that marked the shoulder. Lost in agony, Chiana was oblivious to the rain that started as a mist twenty miles ago and the curtain of squalling wind and pounding rain limiting visibility to mere yards.
If Wil had been going any faster, he could have missed her. As it was, he was nearly past the Mustang before he realized the poorly parked car looked like Chiana’s. He braked and made a U in the road, pulling up behind her. Only a few yards separated the vehicles, yet he was completely soaked by the time he reached the Mustang.
His expensive loafers sinking in the muddy gravel, he yelled her name and pounded on the window.
Chiana didn’t respond. Wil yanked on the door handle, bracing himself when she tipped out toward him. His heart sank at the lines of pain and fear etched in her face and the sobs escaping from her on tiny breaths.
Wil wasn’t a strong man. He feared he couldn’t support Chiana if he got her out of the car, let alone carry her to his sedan. He decided not to try.
“I need you to move over,” he said, crooning the words. “You slide over, I’ll get in and we’ll go where I can take care of you.”
She didn’t seem to understand. Again he said, “Move over, Chiana,” and this time she tried to slide sideways over the gearshift to the passenger side. Wil leaned in to help her, hoping his hands under her shoulders wouldn’t worsen the pain.
An eternity later, she was in the other bucket seat. Wil slid behind the wheel, fastening his seat belt but not hers. In her condition, the pressure of the nylon band across her body would add to her agony. He was an excellent driver with no intention of killing himself, or her.
She needed a particular form of help that only he could provide. But not here, along the side of a road where anyone could see. Even in a blinding rain, there was a chance a cruising trooper or concerned motorist might stop to make sure everything was okay. He eased the Mustang back onto the road and looked for a more private spot.
Wil found one a couple of miles down the road. The wide spot that opened into a farm lane looked like the kind of place where someone afraid of driving in the storm would pull over. He fumbled along the steering column until he found the four-way flashers and started them blinking.
The red flashes against the rain outlined the surrealism of the moment as he prepared to undertake an experiment in the very worst of conditions. He wished they were in the sterile environment of his lab, with an array of equipment to fix whatever went wrong and easy access to his records. The leather interior of the car would have to do.
Even so, he could attempt to follow medical procedures. He felt Chiana’s sweat-slicked forehead, attempting to guess her body temperature. Really hot, which wasn’t a scientific description but would have to do. He moved his fingers to the side of her neck to catch her pulse and was startled at how fast and thready it was.
He pulled the sheathed syringe from his pocket and studied its yellow contents in the gray light. Untested and perhaps dangerous, it might be her only hope.