Shiv Crew (3 page)

During the next two weeks, the
twins settled in as though they’d always been part of Rune’s crew. She could
feel them begin to relax, and better yet,
she
began to relax.

With the twins, anyway. Jeremy was
giving her trouble. He was stingy with any information he’d retrieved from the vampire,
and his reticence was pissing her off.

She strode into his office,
determined that this was the morning he was either going to be straight with
her, or she was quitting. Only that was a lie she couldn’t entertain for more
than a second. Shiv Crew was all she had.

“Am I part of this team or not?”
She wanted to be calm, but they’d had that argument repeatedly, and she was
getting sick of it. “What the hell is wrong with you, Jeremy? You don’t trust
me? You don’t trust my men? What?”

He leaned back in his chair, his
sigh adding to her anger. “Rune. Do we have to talk about this right now? I
have a meeting in—”

“Does this meeting have anything to
do with the vampire? With the girl? Where is she anyway?” She put her hands on
his desk and leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. She was not letting him put her
off again. “I want to see her.”

He stood, and when he came toward
her, she straightened and held a hand up. Damn him. “Stop, Jeremy.”

But he came on, stepped into her
space, and grabbed her upper arms. “Rune. It’s not up to me. I told you that.”

“You’ve told me a lot of shit. I
want to know what you’re
not
telling me.”

His face darkened briefly. Whatever
bad thought had crossed his mind was there and gone in a millisecond. Maybe
she’d actually imagined it. “There are two things I can tell you.” He kept his
fingers wrapped around her arms, but his grip eased to a less painful hold.

“What?”

“First, the girl you rescued didn’t
make it.”

She rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“Fuck.
Fuck.
” God, she hated the monsters.

“Second thing. The director sent orders
for some changes to SCRU. This has been in the works for a few months, from
what I’ve been told.”

Jeremy was handsome. Terribly
handsome with his shiny blond hair and his toned body. His blue eyes were
serious and sensuous and probing, and he knew her better than anyone else on
earth, other than Ellis. Which meant he knew some of her secrets. He had to
know them, because he was the one she’d chosen to deal with them.

But right now, if he opened his
mouth and said what she thought he was going to say, she was going to slug him.

She put her fingertips against his
lips. “No.”

His lips moved against her fingers.
“He’s had a man hired to oversee SCRU. You’re getting a new boss.”

She groaned. “Fuck you!”

His voice softened. “He understands
how valuable Shiv Crew is, Rune. How valuable you are. Without you, even RISC
would be useless. You bring in the fucking monsters.”

She jerked out of his grip. “And
yet you keep everything important from me, and the director has decided to give
my job to some loser who knows nothing about us. About Shiv Crew
or
the
monsters.” She shook her head, fighting tearless sobs of rage and
disappointment. “This can’t be happening.”

He said nothing.

“Who is it? Do we know the
asshole?”

He cleared his throat, and when she
looked up at him, he looked away. That was not a good sign. “It’s Percell.
Mitch Percell.”

“You’re lying.”

But he wasn’t. Oh, the bastards.
Percell was an idiot, a blowhard, a pompous ass, and he was getting her job?
They’d butted heads more than once when they’d worked together on a couple of
particularly disturbing cases. She was a cop, and he was an attorney who seemed
determined to drive her nuts. The man simply would not listen. No one was right
but him. He knew
everything
, and everyone else was simply wrong if they
didn’t agree with him.

“I’m sorry, Rune. Listen, just try
to get to know him. Work with him. It’ll be okay.”

She stared. “You fucking
recommended him, didn’t you?”

He spread his hands. “He’ll do a
good job.”

“What am I, then? What the fuck am
I?”

“You knew when we took you from the
PD you being behind a desk was only temporary.”

“I don’t care about a desk. I care
that with someone else running the place it’s going to go to hell. I’m not
going to take shit from him, Jeremy. You know there will be trouble.”

He just stared at her, his gaze
shuttered. Didn’t matter. She knew what he was thinking. She had two choices. Take
it or walk away.

“You’re part of Spiritgrove law
enforcement, Rune. SCRU isn’t a separate entity that can keep doing such
important work unmonitored.”

“RISC monitors the hell out of us,
Jeremy. So does the state. Why the hell do we need that son of a bitch Purcell?
He’s so full of himself it squeezes out his ears.”

“He’s here. You just have to deal
with it.”

“He’s here fucking now?”

“Yes. He’s in that meeting I’m
going to be late for.”

Everyone was in the know but her.
“You people think I’m nothing but a blade, don’t you?”

“I’m sorry. For now, it’s what it
is. Don’t fuck up and maybe…”

He didn’t finish his sentence, and
she didn’t need him to. There was nothing she could do about it. Not yet. But
someday, things were going to change. She had to hang on until then.

Finally she shrugged. “Fine. Let
him deal with all the paperwork. I hate that shit anyway.” But the unfairness
of it was nearly too much. Rage ran in silent rivulets through her body.

His relieved smile came through
like the sun through clouds. “That’s right. And you’ll be freed up to do what
you do best. Bring me the monsters, and…” He slid his fingers over her ribs,
stopping just short of her breast. “Other, better things.”

She shoved him away hard, her hands
clenching into fists.

He hit the wall, his eyes narrowing
in a dark look she knew so very well.

He came at her fast and jerked her
against his chest. His mouth was hot as he opened it over hers, but she kept
her lips shut in angry defiance. She shuddered as a thrill of desire shot
through her and wished like she’d wished a million times before that she was
whole enough to get away from him.

But God, how she craved what he did
for her.

He buried his hands in her too-long
hair, holding her head still as his teeth mashed her tender lips, insistent and
punishing.

He insinuated his knee between her
legs and rammed it up hard against her sex, wringing a small moan of pain from
her.

She opened her mouth to him at last
but only to bite his lip. And the moment she tasted blood, she was his. She
sucked the wetness away and welcomed his invading tongue, digging her
fingernails into his back.

Jeremy Cross was the type of man
more than happy to give her exactly what she needed.

Subconsciously, she’d known what he
was when she’d chosen him to deal with her. With her hated, horrible monster.

After all, Jeremy hated the
monsters—as much as he might try to pretend otherwise. Her monster recognized
that hatred.

Someday he might go too far and
kill her, but that knowledge wasn’t enough to fix her. To make her stop.
Allowing herself to be hurt, to be punished, was the only way she could get
through life. The only way she could deal with the pain and guilt of the past.

Did she need psychiatric help?
Yeah. Would she take it? Not in a million years. A bunch of self-important
assholes couldn’t fix her.

She whimpered beneath his bruising
teeth, leaving the choices to him. He knew she was at work. If he marked her
and her men saw, they’d tear him to pieces.

He tightened his fingers around the
back of her neck, leaving bruises her hair would cover. He was good at knowing
where to leave marks.

Whatever getting hurt did for her,
hurting did the same for him.

She wasn’t sure what that made
either one of them.

He cupped her breast and began
squeezing—slowly, relentlessly, waiting for her sign that it hurt her.

Finally, when she was afraid he was
going to crush it beneath his merciless grip, she screamed into his mouth. Panic
and pain and release. Relief. That’s what he gave her.

He made her okay, at least for a
little while, with who she was,
what
she was. And most important of all,
with what she’d done.

He pushed her away from him. He was
breathing hard, his face flushed, eyes hot.

“I’m late for my fucking meeting. Maybe
I’ll visit you tonight.”

His words were more of a threat
than a promise, and as she watched him walk out the door she wished for the
millionth time that she could beat the hell out of him and walk away forever.

Jeremy Cross was a monster. Human,
but a monster nonetheless.

But the things he did to her helped
her. If not for him she’d go back to the dangerous encounters with strangers,
and even in her darkest moments she knew that was fucked-up.

Jeremy understood her.

He
did
.

God knew she didn’t understand
herself.

Fuck me. I’m pitiful. And he’s a
psychopath.

Her cell rang, yanking her out of
her thoughts. “Yeah?” Her hands shook as she held the phone to her ear, and she
realized as she answered that she’d forgotten to look at the display.

“Rune.”

Raze.
She took a deep breath
and pushed Jeremy—as well as the worries about how fucked-up she was—to the
back of her mind. Neither was going away completely, and there was always time
for thinking about them both when she lay trying to sleep. “What’s up, Raze?”

“I broke into the twins’ apartment.
You need to get over here.”

“What is it?”

But he’d clicked off. This was not
going to be good. Dread made a fist in the pit of her stomach as she left
Jeremy’s office. She was already becoming attached to those boys but had a
feeling she shouldn’t have let her guard down quite so fast.

She walked quickly down the hall, eager
to get out into fresh, cold air. The sun was hiding, so she didn’t bother with
dark glasses. She and the sun weren’t exactly good friends.

She rounded a corner fast, and
slammed into what felt like a brick wall. She bounced off it and landed on her
ass, skidding back a good six feet before finally coming to a stop. Embarrassed
and pissed off, she jumped to her feet.

“Matheson! Can’t you watch where
you’re going?”

Strad Matheson was Jeremy’s lackey,
although he and Jeremy both argued that point. All she knew was that he skulked
around and did Jeremy’s bidding…if someone as big and freaky as Strad could
actually be described as
skulking
.

On the outside he seemed calm,
quiet. But when one looked a little deeper, Strad’s energy was almost visible and
just waiting for an opportunity to explode upon the unlucky person standing
close to him.

He wasn’t even human, not
really—not in
her
eyes—yet had proven himself a faithful addition to law
enforcement. Jeremy relied on him for everything. Jeremy also argued that Strad
was indeed human—he just channeled the bad boys of his ancient ancestry when he
got mad.

Strad was a berserker. When he was
just lurking in dark alleys and the like, he could be as still as a vampire.
But when he got angry…

She’d seen him in a battle only
once, and he’d scared the bejesus right out of her. And she didn’t scare
easily.

He’d seen that fear in her eyes,
and that was just one more thing that made her hate him.
We hate what we
fear.

He didn’t like her either. Sometimes
she got the feeling his dislike stemmed from his suspicion of
her
Otherness.

She wasn’t even sure exactly what
she was. Her adoptive parents hadn’t lived long enough to help her understand.
They’d snatched her from the small River County orphanage where she’d been left
when she was three, and then they’d died and left her an orphan all over again.

God, she still missed them. Missed
that unconditional, all-enveloping love and acceptance.

It was her fault they were dead.
Her monster had killed them.

She nearly moaned aloud as the thought
slid through her mind. Strad stood watching her, his blue eyes contrasting
beautifully with his long black hair, and she grasped gratefully at the
distraction.

“Would you mind moving out of my
way?” She kept her tone even but was sure he could see the contempt in her
eyes. She never tried to hide it from him.

Not a flicker of emotion lit his
gaze. He studied her as though she were a strange animal behind a glass window.

His lips parted in a small smile,
or smirk, rather, and she could happily have pulled a shiv and stuck it into
his heart. “Well? Out of my way, Berserker!”

There, that struck a nerve. He
narrowed his eyes, and it seemed as though the entire building went silent,
holding its breath at her stupidity and Matheson’s famous rage.

He did not like being called
Berserker
,
and would like it even less when it was said with such derision. Not many would
have dared provoke the giant. He was at least three hundred and fifty pounds of
pure muscle, and taller than Raze by close to an inch. He was a mountain of
intimidation.

And when he was pissed…

She yanked her gun from her side
holster as his big hand moved—she thought he was going for the seven-foot-long
silver spear that rested in a sheath at his back. He merely rubbed his chest,
then raised an eyebrow as she pulled her gun on him.

Fuck him for always making her show
her fear.

From behind her came the sound of
nothing, and she could feel the stares stabbing her in the back.
Dammit.
This little scene was going to make the rounds, and by tomorrow, they’d have
her running and screaming. Or shooting him. Probably both.