Renegade (14 page)

The woman relaxed and smiled, launching into some story about a coupon and a clearance rack. I made all the appropriate noises and nods, even throwing in a comment about the matching headband in her hair.

Sam walked in a few minutes later and nodded. I finished my conversation with the lady and gave her a wave as she went out the door. Then I marched over to the desk.

“Where did you put it?” I demanded.

“The less you know the better.”

Was he serious? Like I already didn’t know enough to do twenty-five to life. “Sam.” I protested.

He shook his head.

Sam,
I said more forcefully through our Mindbond.

We’ll talk about this later,
he said as a few more people passed by and one approached the desk.

I sighed. “I’ll see you at home.”

He nodded and went to help someone while I went back out into the night. Thankfully, I saw no more dead bodies.

Chapter Eight

Sam

I stepped outside and expelled a long breath, feeling my chest begin to cave with the lack of oxygen. It felt good. And I stood there a moment doing a mental check of the hound inside me. I seemed to be in control. My training session with Heven must have helped. But it hadn’t come soon enough. I could’ve used this control just a couple hours before.

Maybe if I hadn’t been so distracted, perhaps I would’ve been able to do something about whatever went on in that locker room. But I did manage to keep from shifting and running off so that was a good sign. Maybe that meant I was finally gaining back control.

But right now I had bigger things to worry about.

Like a dead body.

I did a quick sweep around the building, making sure there was no one lurking, no one watching from the shadows. I stayed in my human form but tried to tap as far into the honed senses the hound in me possessed to make certain the area was clear.

It was, so I doubled back through the parking lot, avoiding the direct glare of the lampposts, and headed for Heven’s car. A pit of dread knotted into my stomach and sat there like a heavy rock. It wasn’t because I had to see a dead body. It wasn’t because I had to hide it. I’d done those things and worse. Really, I was thinking about the condition of the body.

I told myself it probably wasn’t gruesome. Heven had been upset, but not freaking. Granted, she’s seen her share of nasty stuff too. I couldn’t shake the image of someone slinking through the parking lot with a body they then stashed in Heven’s front seat. Like she wouldn’t notice.

Not that I thought this was random. Oh no. This was deliberate. And so was whatever went on in the locker room earlier. I wanted to kick myself for not sensing something was up. Right when I started to feel her panic, she reached out to me. Maybe if I sensed something sooner I would’ve seen something, heard something, been able to
do
something.

This had Beelzebub written all over it.

That guy had powers and abilities that seemed unmatched. If anyone could come around and torment Heven without me sensing it, it was him.

But he was trapped. He wasn’t able to do something like this from the confines of a cell. He didn’t even have a body…

It was energy. Dark energy.

Heven’s words sliced through my head, drawing me up short. Isn’t that what a soul was, really? Energy? Power? Of course it was because otherwise, the Princes down there wouldn’t be chaining souls to the floor of hell. They fed off the energy, the raw power.

Had Beelzebub managed to get out? Had he come for Heven before he even got himself a body?

No. Impossible. Beelzebub wouldn’t go two seconds without finding himself someone to use. Besides, Riley would’ve called if they got out.

Standing between my truck and Heven’s car, I yanked my cell and dialed Riley. Voicemail. Big surprise. “Call me. I have a dead body to discuss.”

I hung up and smirked. That would get his attention. Riley couldn’t resist something as entertaining as a dead body.

Shoving the phone back in my khaki’s, I glanced around making sure I was still alone. Then I pulled open the passenger door of Heven’s car. With trepidation in my limbs, I looked down.

It was a man. Tall. Blond. Wearing jeans and a black coat. His face was unmarked, and I expelled a breath. I looked at his hands, which were resting in his lap. Unmarked. I reached in and unzipped his coat and spread the fabric to look at his chest. Besides a T-shirt sporting the logo of a really lame band, it was unmarked. No sign of injury or cause of death.

I felt relieved. My knees weakened from the intensity.

Yes, I believed this had the makings of something Beelzebub would do, but I also worried about something else. Another idea formed in the back of my brain.

What if I’d been the one to leave this body here?

Usually I was sure of myself. Normally, I never would have thought something like this about myself. Yes, I have killed. But I am not a killer. The only times I’ve killed were when I had to, when someone I loved was threatened. But shifting, blacking out, and then waking with blood all over me, waking in places I didn’t remember… It made a guy wonder.

Maybe when I lost those couple minutes and ended up in the alley, I’d somehow dragged a body here.

No.

That was just insane.

I might be hurting people during my lost time, but I would never hurt Heven. Never. And leaving a dead body in her car wasn’t exactly the same thing as leaving a love note.

I forced all thoughts of my responsibility in this out of my head.
Now, what does a guy do with a body in the middle of a public parking lot?
I didn’t exactly have a lot of options. I reached behind me and opened the driver’s side door of my truck. It was a very old truck so it had wider floor space than a lot of the newer ones.

I grabbed the guy by the front of his coat and lifted him out of Heven’s seat and then quickly put him in my truck, on the floor. He was stretched almost all the way across with his feet almost falling out, so I used my foot to shift them forward and then slammed the door, peeking through the window. It was dark inside, but I could make out the body. But if no one was looking for a body, I didn’t think they’d see it.

I sensed something above and looked into the onyx sky. There was some movement, a shape flopping through the dark.
Just a bird.

A car pulled into the lot and parked in an empty spot in the middle, and I figured that was my cue to leave. I headed back inside to finish my shift. I wondered what I was going to do with the body when I left. I wondered where it came from and if Riley would call me back, but mostly I wondered when I was going to stop blacking out.

Heven

Gran was in the kitchen, cutting up a thick loaf of Italian bread when I walked through the door. My stomach growled at the sight.

“Just in time for dinner,” she said with a smile.

“Do I have time to take a shower first?”

“Yes, the homemade macaroni and cheese is still in the oven.”

“I’ll make it my fastest shower ever.”

Gran laughed. On my way out of the kitchen, I paused. “Kimber didn’t happen to come by, did she?”

“No,” Gran said, looking up. “Was she supposed to?”

“I kinda asked her to come and stay with us.”

“You did?” Gran set down the knife and turned her full attention toward me. “I thought after everything, you weren’t really friends anymore.”

“We aren’t. Well, I think we aren’t.” I sighed. “I feel bad for her.”

Gran nodded emphatically. “I understand. Her parents aren’t very loving.”

I snorted. That was an understatement. “Well, Cole has taken it upon himself to be her knight in shining armor,” I said, making a face. “I was hoping if she came and stayed here he wouldn’t have to spend every waking moment with her.”

“Cole’s a good boy. He’s like his father.”

Is that a good thing?
Sometimes I wondered if my dad only married my mother because he felt compelled to protect her—and me. I wondered if Mom never got pregnant, would Dad have stayed with Cole’s mother? If that were true, I didn’t want Cole to end up like my father, with a woman out of responsibility, not love.

 I felt awful for thinking such a thing, like I was somehow insulting everything my father did for me. My father was a good man. I never, ever doubted it. But did his goodness cost him the life he really wanted? Gran said he loved Mom, and they always acted like they were in love.

“Heven?” Gran said, pulling me out of my thoughts.

“Hmmm?”

“Everything okay?”

I nodded. “Is it okay that I asked Kimber to stay here?”

“Sure, honey. You know this house is always open.”

I went upstairs to take a shower, rifling through my drawers for some clean clothes. I was rummaging through my panties when there was a loud thump at the window. I stood up, hands full of lace and cotton, and glanced at the window.

I didn’t see anything but the night sky, so I shrugged it off and threw all the underwear back into the drawer, except for my favorite (they were pink) and then I yanked open another drawer for some sweatpants.

Thud.

I looked up again.

Thud.

This time I saw a dark shape hit the window and bounce back. Almost as if a bird had hit the window and then flew away. But it seemed awfully large to be a bird.

I went over to the glass and looked out. There wasn’t anything there. I waited for long moments just looking out into the dark, watching for shadows, for movement, for anything.

After a few minutes of nothing, my stomach growled and I gave up. I was hungry. I was sweaty. I had enough of weird occurrences for the day.

Thankfully my shower was uneventful.