“Just my luck. Plug that address into your GPS, and let’s go find a mistress, huh?”
Carrie Todd was utterly normal in every way.
The woman didn’t invite them into the little bungalow, and Anna didn’t ask, just stood on the porch and heard the damning words that took Oscar Ochoa’s situation from bad to worse. “How long?”
“Two weeks.” The woman’s voice trembled, fear and desperation carving deep worry lines in her face. “He called me from New Mexico to tell me he was almost finished with his business there. That was the last I heard from him.”
“All right.” The frightened set of her mouth said it all—this woman, not Emily Jacobson, was the one who’d spent long, anxious nights pacing the floor. “Does he have a private cell number? One only you have?”
Her gaze drifted from Anna to Patrick again, rife with suspicion and unease. “You’re not going to tell his family, are you? The trip he was on—his father didn’t know about it.”
Times like this, there was no room for lies. “I’ll talk to Jorge if I have to, if it helps me save Oscar’s life. Otherwise, I’m not going near him.”
Patrick spoke for the first time, his voice set in a soothing tone. “We don’t have anything invested in his father’s politics. Oscar’s business is his business.”
Carrie nodded jerkily and turned away, ducking just inside the door. She turned back with a phone in her hands. “He has a cell number. I can give it to you, and the name of the hotel where he was staying.”
Before Anna could respond, a mechanical bark echoed through the house, followed by uncontrolled childish giggles. A toy dog rolled across the foyer behind Carrie, chased by a laughing toddler with bows in her curly dark hair.
Shit.
Oscar’s kid, no doubt—she looked just like him, especially when she stopped and stared up at them.
Carrie paled but stepped forward, edging the door almost closed behind her. Something blazed in her eyes, a protectiveness echoed by her body posture, and a challenge reinforced by the suddenly square set of her shoulders. “He’s always called to say good night to her every night,” the woman said stiffly. “He’s a good father.”
“And we’re going to do our best to find him.” Patrick slipped a tiny, battered spiral notebook from his back pocket. He flipped it open and offered it to the woman, along with a broken-off stub of a pencil. “Any numbers you have. They’ll help.”
“I’ll wait at the car,” Anna muttered before taking off down the walkway.
The woman couldn’t be expected to know, not really. Oscar might have explained his situation to her, but the truth was impossible to grasp—no matter how important Carrie and the child were to Oscar, no matter how much he cared, duty and power would always trump that love.
Assuming she and Patrick found him alive, he’d still go on to marry Emily Jacobson and step into his father’s role on the Southwest council. He could call this kid to say good night, but he’d never
be
there. Eventually, he’d have other children, ones that would grace Christmas cards and society page write-ups.
Calling him a good father was meaningless. They were just words.
Patrick followed her five minutes later, tucking the notepad into his pocket as she watched. He leaned against the car beside her in silence and stared at the lawn for a long time before sighing. “These selfish bastards never fucking learn.”
“No, they don’t,” she agreed numbly. “I guess they all think they’ll do it differently. That they won’t have to abandon anyone.”
“And they leave a bunch of broken, bitter kids behind them.” His voice sounded too raw, too
angry
for it not to be personal, and he seemed to realize it. “Look at Carmen and Julio’s kid brother. He let some crazy fucking witch tear the wolf out of him, just because he wanted his dad to love him.”
And sometimes, not even that was enough. Anna shook her head. “It’s a long drive to New Mexico. Did she say where, exactly?”
“Albuquerque.” Patrick was still staring straight ahead, his jaw working, and she could see him putting his careful mask back into place. “Only real city in the damn state, so I’m not surprised. At least we’ll have an in with law enforcement.”
“Your detective friend, right.” Anna dragged her gaze from the neatly trimmed hedges outside Carrie Todd’s house. Oscar was dead—he had to be. He might have blown off his debut society event as Emily’s fiancé, but he wouldn’t have let the personal shit slide. And after
two weeks
… “We should have already been on this, damn it.”
“Yeah.” Patrick straightened. “What sort of meetings would a guy like Oscar Ochoa be hiding from his family? He’s the heir, isn’t he?”
“Not for long, maybe, if he’s making deals with someone Daddy doesn’t like.”
“Fucking fantastic. What are the chances we’re about to wander into a cover-up?” He tilted his head. “Or a frame job. Is Ochoa capable of setting this up and using it against Alec and the Southeast council?”
“Maybe.” The only way to know for sure would be to find Oscar, dead or alive.
Chapter Six
“You don’t have super healing. You know those things’ll kill you.”
“I don’t have
shapeshifter
healing,” Patrick corrected, waving his gas-station hot dog at her. “I do have superhuman healing. Maybe it can’t handle bullets, but it can handle chili dogs.”
“That’s not a chili dog. It’s a weapon of mass destruction.” Anna hopped up on the stone picnic table near his bike and twisted the cap off her soda. Soon, they’d have to stop for real food—provided Patrick’s stomach didn’t detonate.
For now, he seemed perfectly happy to live on gas-station crap. He was straddling the bench, a fine selection of junk food spread out at his elbow. He popped open a bag of chips and nodded to his motorcycle. “I was thinking… Once we hit Albuquerque, maybe I can drop my bike at my friend’s and ride with you.”
It was so absurd she had to laugh. “That bike’s your baby, McNamara. You’re not leaving her anywhere.”
“Hey, she’s protected.” He pointed to a series of charms wrapped around the handlebars. “Anyone who doesn’t already know she’s there isn’t likely to notice her. There are nastier surprises for anyone who tries to steal her.”
And the safety of his property was really beside the point. “Honestly?” She took a deep breath. “I can’t imagine why you’d want to be stuck with me in my tiny little car for hours on end.”
“Because I like you.” He held out the bag of chips without looking at her. “I don’t have to fake it with you.”
“Fake what? Being normal?” She took a chip. “Being
harmless
?”
“All of the above.” He’d shed his jacket, and now he looked at the tattoos winding around his left arm. “When I started getting them, I didn’t give a shit. I just wanted the power bound, and looking scary was a nice bonus. Now they’re all anyone sees.”
“Not
anyone
.” Not her. Anna reached out and touched a curl of ink that swept down from beneath his shirtsleeve. “What sort of power do they control? Are you a spell caster?”
“Kind of.” His muscles tightened under her fingertips, but he didn’t pull away. “My father was a caster.”
“So why the tattoos? Is it a focus thing?”
“I don’t cast spells.” His voice went rough. “I never got training. By the time my magic manifested, it was too late. The tattoos bind the power and channel it into protections and enhanced abilities.”
His expression hadn’t changed, but the pain in his voice made her ache to soothe him. She rubbed the backs of her fingers over his upper arm and pulled away. “I’m glad you were able to. I’ve seen that kind of thing drive people nuts.”
“The Ink Shrink’s grandfather pretty much saved my life.” Patrick flexed his arm and smiled. “Did you ever meet him? That was one badass magic man.”
“Did he let you pick your own? Because the Shrink did mine, and that bastard just inks you with whatever he wants.” She lifted her shirt, high enough to show him part of the line of cherry blossoms marching up her side. “I mean, I’m not exactly a pretty-pink-flower kind of woman.”
His lips twitched as he studied the tattoo. “If he put them there, you must be. Sometimes he’s subtle, sometimes he’s not, but he’s always right. At least a little.”
“Uh-huh. You didn’t answer the question.”
He smiled. “No. I didn’t pick a damn one of them.”
“Then the Shrink’s grandpa was real nice to you.” There wasn’t a single tattoo she’d seen that made him look anything less than hot as hell, unlike her ridiculous pink flowers. “They look good.”
“Most of them.” He winked at her and picked up his chips again. “I keep the less manly ones covered up. Don’t want to ruin my fierce reputation.”
“Right.” She opened her soda, but a shiver of magic hit her as she held it to her lips. “Did you feel that?”
He swung his leg over the bench and rose slowly. “Yes.”
Anna cocked her head, but there was no distant buzz of engines, no crunch of gravel under tires or shoes. The gas station was exactly as it had been—deserted except for them and the tired-looking clerk inside. “Patrick.”
“Too quiet,” he agreed, though she hadn’t spoken the words. He reached for one of his guns, but his eyes stared straight ahead, fixed on nothing.
She abandoned the table and made her way toward the front of the block building. One side of the double glass doors was standing open, and the scent of blood drifted out of the convenience store.
Inside, a small rack of snacks had been knocked over, and a pale hand stretched out from behind the edge of the counter. Anna ducked behind the display, careful to avoid the growing pool of blood under the woman’s body. “She’s dead. Did you hear
anything
?”
“No.” Patrick hunched down next to her, his gaze still unfocused. “I’m trying to pin down the magic. At least one spell caster…but it feels off. Almost like blood magic.”
Blood magic, death magic, the black arts—whatever they called it, Anna didn’t give a damn. Until the puddle of blood beneath the clerk began to recede, almost as if flowing in reverse slow motion. “Blood magic. How literal
is
that, exactly?”
He glanced down and bit off a curse. “Yeah, that’d be the Morgan brothers. Can you catch a scent? They’re used to going up against other spell casters, so they didn’t mask their scents last time I chased them.”
Anna closed her eyes. Besides Patrick—whose scent by now she knew almost as well as her own—she could only smell the clerk and two cooling trails that were already fading into the mélange of people who must have filed in and out all day. “Unless they’re masking now—”
A two-liter soda on a rack above her head exploded.
Patrick was already moving, diving to drag her behind a row of candy bars and snack chips. Anna snatched one of his guns as she spun to a stop behind a drink cooler. “What’s their game?”
“Revenge. I took out the oldest about five years back.” He checked his pistol before peering around the edge of the stand. “There’re three left. They prefer magic, but they’ll shoot you in the back with a smile. No bullshit ideas of supernatural honor.”
“Obviously,” she muttered, though his words made her tense. If they wanted revenge, they wanted Patrick, and that was one thing she’d stop, no matter what. “Smart or dumb?”
“Dumb but crazy.”
“Damn it.” You could run end circles around dumb, but crazy was the number one thing likely to get you. You couldn’t depend on it to make sense, so there was no place to start. But they’d fired their first shot from outside, which either meant they were scared to come in or… “They want us to come out so they can all see you die.”
“Probably.” He glanced at her. “With the right ritual, Bud Morgan could drain my power. If they think they can get their hands on me, they might not shoot me. We can use that.”
“Want to give yourself up, tough guy?” She almost managed to keep the tremor from her voice. “If you want to play pretty bait, you have to trust me to keep you breathing.”
“Damn right, I do.” His smile came so fast, so easy, she had to avert her gaze because it hurt to look at. “I wasn’t lying to Emily, babydoll. You’re the best.”
She opened her mouth to call him an idiot, but one of the men outside bellowed his name. “McNamara! Get your ass out here!”
He handed her his second gun. “Take them both. They’re just going to make me drop it anyway.”
“I’m going out the back.” Anna wrapped her fingers tight around the butt of the pistol. “Try not to get shot before I find a good position, all right?”
“Wouldn’t dare inconvenience you.” He half-twisted and raised his voice. “If I come out, you leave the woman alone. Deal?”
Anna snorted and started for the back room without straining to hear the answer. It didn’t matter what they said. All that mattered was what they assumed.
Woman
equaled
helpless
, even if she was a bounty hunter armed to the teeth.
The door was marked with an unlit
exit
sign and a push bar with a broken lock. She eased through it and crept to the corner of the building. From this vantage point, she could see one man crouched behind the front fender of her car. Another stood near the gas pumps.
She couldn’t see Patrick, but she heard him. “You know how it is, Bud. Business is business. Johnnie Ray was licking shapeshifter boots and taking their money to torture rival packs. Wasn’t personal, and I never came after the rest of you.”