“We need to talk about it,” Jackson told him. “I don’t want to surprise you with it later so I just thought I’d warn you. If you don’t want to know what I’ve found out, I won’t tell you, but I think you need to.”
“Okay,” Kieran agreed. “We’ll discuss it later.”
He made his escape while he could. Kieran needed the peace and quiet of his own space. Even if that was in a hotel suite that didn’t really belong to him.
Alex stood up from one of the reception chairs when Kieran stepped back out of the office. “I can take you back to your room from here so you’ll know how to get back and forth in the future,” he offered.
“I’d appreciate it,” Kieran said. It was hard to look at Alex since Kieran didn’t know what he had witnessed during his flashback, but he refused to show any weakness.
“This way.” Alex waved him toward the elevator.
Kieran followed him, grateful when Alex didn’t try to make conversation. The ride up to his floor was quick and silent. When the elevator doors opened, Alex held the door open for him.
“I hope to see you again,” Alex told him.
“I’m sure you will,” Kieran replied. He shuffled forward, his legs feeling like they weighed a ton. At his door, he fumbled with his key card but finally saw the green light allowing his entrance.
He sighed as he pushed inside before he locked the door behind him. Luckily the housekeeping crew had already been in and the suite smelled fresh and clean.
Kieran ambled straight for the bedroom. Once he passed the threshold of his room, he began to undress, dropping his clothes on the floor. He pulled the blankets down and crawled inside before yanking them back over his head. He was safe in his little nest. Kieran closed his eyes as fatigue began to take over him.
Chapter Eight
Dakota nervously fingered the key card as she stood in front of Kieran’s suite.
She’d enjoyed her run in her jaguar form and was now a lot calmer so she hoped Kieran would listen to her before he tried to send her away. Dakota understood that Kieran was dealing with his boss going back into the field and a transfer but she was not going to allow him to push her away because things were changing for him.
If he’d just let her in with what he was dealing with she could help.
Now as she held the plastic card up to the reader she really hoped her lover was inside. “Come on. Be here,” she murmured as she slid the key to his suite through the reader. She’d had to use her credentials to get a copy but she wasn’t worried about breaking protocol.
The suite was quiet and dark. All of the lights were off and the curtains closed. After she’d taken a long run, she’d showered, dressed, packed a bag then headed here and it was already past noon. Unless he was somewhere else in the hotel, he should be here. He hadn’t slept the night before and he had to be exhausted.
She closed the door silently behind her before she slipped the key card back into her pocket. The living area had been cleaned and smelled of lemon cleanser and wood polish. Just to make sure she was alone, Dakota strolled to the bedroom. As she got closer, she could hear a soft sound coming from inside. The noise was so faint it was hard to pick up even with her enhanced hearing.
Dakota peered around the corner of the threshold. In the center of the bed, under the covers, Kieran was sleeping. His head and one shoulder were bare but the rest of him was buried below a large pile of blankets. The picture of the big, bad Walker nesting was enough to have a smile blossom.
Kieran was such an interesting man. At first he was rude and sarcastic but he really just was afraid to let anyone close. His attempt to push her away earlier was a clear indicator of this. She leaned against the wall and watched him. She didn’t think she’d ever get tired of seeing Kieran like that. She wanted to climb up beside him and cuddle close but Dakota knew he needed his sleep and that she couldn’t wake him. That didn’t mean she was going anywhere until Kieran and she spoke, and he accepted that she was not leaving him.
Every part of her wanted Kieran, from her human heart to her Jaguar instincts. Sure, they had a lot to work out together, but she was a fighter and Kieran was hers.
Admitting the claim on him made her feel powerful.
Kieran turned onto his stomach while he made a low whimper. She narrowed her eyes as her protective instincts rose up. The man she’d decided to claim was not happy. She might not be able to scent him but it was obvious by the way he kicked his legs and grunted that the dream he was having was not a good one.
“Shh,” she whispered as she walked to the far edge of the bed and sat. Dakota laid her hand against the back of his neck, finding Kieran cooler than usual. As a matter of fact, she now remembered that at the agency he’d been very pale. She was pretty sure that Walkers didn’t get sick—or maybe they did, she still didn’t know much—but it was unlikely due to the supernatural healing that rumors claimed they had. Still, something was off with him.
He grunted again, kicking his feet out, so she toed off her shoes before cuddling up to his side and murmuring softly. Once her body brushed his, Kieran calmed and settled. Dakota wrapped her arm around his waist before she laid her head on the back of his shoulder. Kieran’s breathing changed and she knew he’d woken up.
Kieran turned his head so his face wasn’t buried into the pillow but he didn’t otherwise move. “I thought I told you I was leaving,” he said, his voice rough from sleep.
She snorted. “And I thought you knew me better than that,” Dakota responded.
He sighed and she already knew that she’d won. Oh, Kieran might make another attempt at getting rid of her but he didn’t really want her to go anywhere. If she had any doubt, she wouldn’t be chasing him, no matter how much her shifter instincts would have tried to make her. But Kieran wanted her just as much as she did him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised. If she repeated the words over and over, someday she hoped he’d realize she was telling him the truth.
Kieran began to roll over, which made her have to sit up slightly. She waited until he was on his back before she covered one of his legs with hers and put her chin on his chest. The look she gave him was pure challenge. She was not leaving the bed, suite or him.
He shook his head. “There is some stuff going on around me that I don’t want you involved with,” he told her.
Dakota lifted an eyebrow. “Illegal?”
“No,” he answered. “I wasn’t sure at first but now I’m pretty certain no laws are being broken.”
“Then let me help,” she pleaded. “We might not have known each other for long but the connection between us is strong. I know you feel it.”
“Of course I do,” he said.
When Kieran looked away, Dakota gripped his chin so he had to meet her gaze. “You have to stop running eventually. You can trust me.”
“I want to,” he whispered then shook his head again. “This was supposed to be a stupid vacation to waste time until my partners were ready to get back to work. Now everything in my life has changed.”
“That doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” she said. Dakota waited a few moments to see how he would reply. When he just continued to peer at her, she decided to push in a direction that shouldn’t cause him stress. “You haven’t told me about your partner before. I saw him in the office earlier.”
“Remy,” Kieran said. “He was headed here to do me a favor but after your boss had me locked up, he came to check on me.”
Dakota decided to ignore the ‘your boss’ comment for now. He was opening up to her and she didn’t want to jeopardize anything by reminding him of one of those big changes. “He’s a shifter.”
“Yeah,” Kieran said “Wolf. But we’ve been working together for so long that I don’t even think about it anymore. He’s my best friend.”
“So your best friend and the woman you’re sleeping with are both shifters,” Dakota said. “For someone who seems to hate shifters so much that’s very interesting.”
“Or a cosmic joke on me,” Kieran said.
She laughed. “Perhaps.”
“I didn’t want to be partnered with him. I fought it for several months. I was already teamed up with Angel and we were doing just fine.”
“Angel?” She hadn’t heard that name yet.
“She’s a Day Walker like me,” Kieran told her. “When I first went into the field, Caspar thought it would be better if I didn’t work directly with shifters or humans. I was still a little uneasy around people.”
Not much had changed in Dakota’s view but she didn’t say what she was thinking.
“Angel handled all the contact with anyone other than Caspar but allowed me to do tracking and to handle any problems,” Kieran said then chuckled. “Back in the beginning, the Organization didn’t care how we took care of paranormal killings or gaining attention from humans.”
She nodded. “So I’ve heard.”
He was still grinning. “I was good at that so Angel and I were sent out more and more all over the country. She helped track down our suspects and once we were sure that they were guilty, I took care of them. Since there are a lot more shifters out there than Walkers, we mostly ran into rogues who were breaking both human and shifter law. Our problems increased after we kept coming up with shifters whose leaders didn’t want to work with Walkers. Caspar added Remy to the team so he could ease the tensions, and so the shifters didn’t feel like a couple of Walkers were just hunting them down.”
Oh yeah, Dakota could picture Kieran’s reaction. That must have been something to see. “And yet you didn’t quit.”
“I’d never leave Caspar,” Kieran told her. “He saved my life.”
“Your boss?” Dakota questioned. “Isn’t that his job?”
Kieran shook his head, which dislodged her hold. But he didn’t pull away. Instead Kieran grasped her forearms and yanked her on top of him more directly. Dakota smiled. Her legs bracketed his, and his body under hers just felt right. Maybe she could even share some of her heat with him.
“Are you sure you want to know this?”
The serious tone surprised her but she didn’t hesitate to nod.
“When I was eighteen years old, I was captured by a group of shifters that kept me in a cage and experimented on me,” Kieran told her.
Dakota gasped. “You’re the Walker they saved from Mount Fauna!” Everything fell into place. Kieran’s loyalty to his boss, his feelings about shifters, and even the way he pushed people away.
Kieran jerked when she said the name of the facility where he’d been held. “So you’ve already heard about it?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” she admitted. “It was before I joined the Organization. I was still in school and training but my uncle was on the rescuing team. He’s the only one in my family I still see and he told me about it.” Dakota couldn’t believe it. The Mount Fauna case was the biggest investigation that anyone in her family had ever been involved with. The worst case of abuse ever recorded against a Walker from a shifter.
Her stomach rolled and she felt slightly ill. Her lover had been the one who they’d found. She could still remember the description her uncle had shared with her father.
“Your uncle?” Kieran asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “You might know him from then.”
“No,” he replied. “I don’t really remember a lot from the first days except Caspar. Everything else is still a blur, and I really try not to think about that time in my life. Ever.”
She couldn’t blame him. If she’d been in his shoes, she’d probably never leave her house again.
“I was just surprised when you said uncle. Most agents I’ve met have no contact with their family that are not also inside the Organization. Remy is the only exception that I’m aware of,” Kieran said.
“My uncle is the only one I have any contact with. I’ve run into him on some cases in the past.”
She was lucky her uncle had been on that case otherwise she wouldn’t have any information at all. All records were sealed on the case. Once she was in the field, she’d tried to read about the rescue, curious about the biggest Organization rescue in history, but had been unable to get any new intel.
It was crazy to realize that Kieran had been the Walker saved from ten years of torture. Her eyes filled with tears as she thought about everything he’d been through.
Dakota sat up, still straddling Kieran’s waist and cupped his face. “I’m so glad you made it out of there.”
He nodded. “Caspar was the one who got me out of the cage. He took me to his house while I healed, then brought me into the Organization. I don’t know what I would be doing if it wasn’t for him.”
“I understand,” she assured him. And now they wanted Kieran to transfer away from the man who’d saved him. “Have you spoken to Caspar?” She really didn’t want to tell Kieran that his boss would be taking on a very dangerous mission. Although he probably already knew if Sparro had told him about the transfer.
“Not yet,” Kieran said. “I plan to call him later. I want to know about this case he’s taking.”
Relief swept through her. She was glad that Kieran seemed to know as much as she did.
“There’s more I need to tell you,” Kieran said
“Sure,” she said. Anything he wanted to talk about she was willing to listen to.
“This doesn’t have to do with the Organization. Or it might actually,” Kieran shook his head as he spoke. “I’m not sure how all this is connected.”
“Tell me,” she urged. “I might be able to help.”
Kieran gripped her waist as he sat up and scooted to lean against the headboard taking her with him. Once he’d settled, Kieran positioned her inside his legs up against his chest. She rested her cheek against his chest as she peered up at him.
She also suspected that he was buying himself some time. If he needed to gather his thoughts, she wouldn’t rush him.
“When I found out that Caspar asked Dean to keep an eye on me, I switched hotels. You know that,” Kieran said. “I picked this one from the Internet. I could have chosen any on the Strip.”
“Okay,” she encouraged him to continue.
“And I picked the one run by Walkers,” he said.
This had to be the group that had been talking to Dean. As pissed off as she was at her partner she could see why he’d been doing what he had. Dean had never wanted the night-to-night patrols or tracking down suspects. He had loved the science classes at school and had excelled in the labs. But this wasn’t just about Dean. Somehow Kieran had gotten involved.