Karma Patrol (11 page)

“Shut up,” Jade snapped, a combination of frustration and anger and fear pushing her over the edge. “Don’t you dare tell me this isn’t going to work out, Tallulah Rose Bailey. You’re off flitting around Paris, drinking your way through the city and sleeping with every cute guy who so much as looks in your direction, and I have spent my entire life doing the right thing and waiting for my turn. It’s finally my turn. I’m not going to let you ruin it.”

She jabbed blindly at the phone, cutting off the call, and dropped the device onto the bench next to her as she took several deep breaths and tried to get herself under control. She knew Talli had always hated the concept of soulmates. This wasn’t the first time her sister had railed against the idea of an externally imposed bond between two strangers. She saw it as a violation of their free will, an effort by the Fate Divisions to force extra controls onto the people who were chosen for the honor of being paired. Jade had sat through plenty of awkward holiday meals with her father voicing his support for her future soulmate and her sister gleefully playing devil’s advocate.

What she didn’t know was why her sister’s attitude was affecting her so dramatically today. Some of it was legitimate envy; a part of her had always resented her sister’s ability to go out and date whoever she wanted while Jade kept waiting for her elusive soulmate to come along. Now that she’d managed to calm herself down a little, though, she realized her tirade was unreasonable. Talli was just trying to help, even if she did it in a way that made Jade want to punch her in the nose.

She hated to admit it, but there was a chance Talli was right. Not about the soulmate bond turning dysfunctional; Jade knew if there was even a hint of a problem with the bond, Shannon would be all over it until it was repaired. Midtown West’s Cupid wouldn’t risk her friend’s happiness or her own spotless track record that way. Still, it was well documented that soulmates tended to react aggressively when their relationship was threatened. There were theories about why that was, about whether it was related to the overwhelming strength of emotion between them or whether the bond itself made them more sensitive to threats as a way to protect itself from harm. Regardless of the reasoning behind it, soulmates becoming irrationally jealous or defensive about their relationship wasn’t a revelation.

Her phone rang again, jolting her out of her thoughts. She knew she couldn’t talk to Talli yet without biting her head off, but it was unlikely that Talli would want to talk to her so quickly after they’d argued. When they fought, which wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence, her sister usually gave her a couple of days to cool off before calling her back.

The caller ID said it was Celia, and Jade managed to stifle a groan as she accepted the call. The last thing she needed now was a reminder that her area’s karmic balance was still too high.

“Hi, Celia.”

“Oh, good. You’re alive.”

“I… yes.” Jade frowned. “Am I not supposed to be?”

“Well, the Karma Division app says you’re alive, but I know it’s been malfunctioning today, because there’s no way that one of my enforcers ended up as the subject of an imminent danger alert and then didn’t bother to call me to tell me she was okay.”

Jade flinched. “I’m sorry, Celia. I was sort of in the middle of something.”

“At the police station? Because my app said you were there for a long time. Do I need to give you the lecture on why we don’t get involved with the local police?”

“I didn’t go voluntarily.”

“I don’t like where this is headed.”

Jade said nothing, knowing Celia would like it even less when she heard the whole story.

“I’m waiting, Bailey,” Celia prompted, and Jade sighed.

“They sort of questioned me. About the shooting.”

“Questioned you? Damn it, Jade, we’re supposed to stay under the radar. We can’t do our jobs with the cops watching our every move. Are you a suspect?”

“Maybe?” Jade’s tone turned it into a question. “But I think my soulmate is the only one who believes I’m involved, and when his end of the bond starts to kick in, I’m sure he’ll change his mind.”

It was amazing, Jade reflected, how Celia could make silence speak so eloquently.

“Also, I met my soulmate today,” she added belatedly. “He’s a cop. And it’s… there might be some complications. Shannon’s working on it. You know Shannon Carter, right? From Interpersonal Relations?”

“Shannon Carter isn’t my problem. You’re my problem, Bailey. You’re rapidly turning into one hell of a big problem.”

“I’m sorry,” Jade apologized, knowing she was probably giving Celia the headache of a lifetime. Keeping her enforcers safe and productive was a big part of an account supervisor’s job, and Jade hadn’t been particularly safe or productive today. Combine that with the fact that Jade’s promotion was now hanging in the balance, and the result was a very unhappy boss.

“Bailey. Go home.”

“But my area’s balance is still—”

“Bailey. Go
home
. We’ll deal with it tomorrow. I need a few hours of peace and quiet, with no imminent danger alerts and no angry calls from Destiny Division about my enforcers interfering with their business.”

“I will,” Jade lied, gathering her belongings. “Don’t worry about me, Celia. I’ll stay out of trouble from now on.”

“You’d better. I like you, kid, but if you keep trying to give me a heart attack, I may just kill you myself.”

Jade put her phone away and got to her feet with a sigh. Any chance she’d had of spending a nice, relaxing afternoon in the park was gone. She thought about heading back down to the police station and loitering outside, but she resisted the powerful urge to stalk Luke in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. Talli had been right when she’d said there were plenty of soulmates whose pairings ended badly, and a big part of preventing that was simply making an effort not to act like a crazy person. She would drown herself in her work instead, burning off her frustration by chasing down every last interrupted karmic path in Midtown West. Maybe by the time Jade got her catchment area’s balance down to a perfect zero, Celia would be ready to forgive her for today’s transgressions, and she’d be calm enough to call her sister and apologize.

Or maybe not.

he next morning, Luke found out he’d been right about the FBI’s response to the case. They’d already wanted in on the first shooting due to the political ramifications, but now that there was evidence the shooter was on a killing spree, they were practically salivating over it. They swooped in just after sunrise, took all of the evidence the NYPD task force had collected with perfunctory thanks and the superior smirks directed by federal agents at lowly city cops, and then swooped back out in their black SUVs to the FBI field office.

Aaron was upset about losing the case, but Luke was inclined to be pragmatic about it. They’d lost the evidence that had been posted on the crime boards, but Captain Hawkes hadn’t forbidden them to keep working on the case even though it was technically under federal jurisdiction now. Luckily, they’d interacted with the FBI enough to know what was going to happen ahead of time, and Aaron was already reconstructing their boards from the photocopies they’d made before the FBI got there. Luke only stayed a few minutes before telling his partner he needed to go follow up on a lead, and Aaron made a face that suggested he knew exactly where Luke was going and thought his partner was out of his mind. Luke didn’t care what Aaron thought. He had a gut feeling about Jade Bailey, and his gut had never let him down before.

Her address had been on her driver’s license, which he’d pulled from the computerized DMV database the night before, and now he waited outside her apartment building for her to leave. He’d been there for over an hour, not wanting to miss her and uncertain what her morning routine was. Although there was the possibility that she was an exceptionally early riser and had beaten him anyway, his gut told him she was still in there.

Ten minutes later, he was proven right as an impeccably dressed Jade Bailey stepped out of the side door to the complex, blonde curls bouncing as she walked. Contrary to popular opinion, he could appreciate a beautiful woman when he saw one, and he took the opportunity to appreciate Jade all the way down Ninth Avenue and then back up Eighth.

He had no idea where she was going, and the longer they walked, the more he suspected that neither did she. He would have guessed that she’d spotted him and was trying to shake the tail, but she wasn’t doing anything to shake him. She just wasn’t going
anywhere. If he’d had to make a comparison, he would’ve said her pattern was closest to what beat cops did while they patrolled. She meandered down one avenue after another, her gaze always scanning the pedestrians in front of her. She occasionally stopped to talk to someone, but it was never for long, and the only big difference between her and a patrolling cop was that she never seemed to look back at the territory she’d already covered. If she had, she might have spotted Luke slinking along behind her like a shadow.

She started to cross Eighth Avenue, hesitated, and then stepped back out of the crosswalk and onto the corner. This was the first time she’d wavered, and he watched with interest from the relative cover he’d found behind a hot dog cart as she stood on the corner. Her gaze was fixed on a woman approaching the crosswalk from her left, coming up the sidewalk on Forty-Sixth Street. Luke expected her to greet the woman, but they didn’t acknowledge each other at all. The pedestrian traffic had hit a momentary lull in its ebb and flow, and Jade and the other woman were the only ones standing on the corner.

The pedestrian light to cross Forty-Sixth Street changed to the ‘walk’ symbol, and the other woman started to step into the intersection, but was stopped by Jade’s hand on her arm. The woman turned, looking as suspicious as any native New Yorker would be when approached by a stranger, but her expression softened when she saw Jade. Now he expected some reaction, a sign of acknowledgment that the woman knew Jade, but there was nothing but pleasant politeness in both of their faces as the woman checked the watch on her wrist and—he assumed—gave Jade the time.

That was strange, because he knew for a fact that Jade had been wearing a wristwatch when she’d left her building. She’d donned her sweater after walking half a block, and its long sleeves covered the watch, but he’d seen it clearly and remembered it because it had been a particularly obnoxious shade of pink.

Then the whole scenario suddenly became a lot more interesting. Jade kept her hand on the stranger’s arm when she started to pull away, and he saw uncertainty flash across the woman’s face. He was so engrossed in their interaction, he almost missed the car that came speeding down Forty-Sixth Street and shot through the intersection at about sixty miles an hour. Both of the women noticed; it would’ve been hard for them to miss, since the car blew past them close enough to ruffle Jade’s curls. The unknown woman pressed a hand to her chest, visibly startled, and Jade gave her arm a pat before releasing her and stepping out into the crosswalk to her right, crossing Eighth Avenue against the light. The woman hesitated a moment, and was careful to look both ways before stepping out into the crosswalk perpendicular to Jade’s.