Ronnie yawned for the second time in as many minutes. She rubbed her eyes. “I know it’s boring to be tired so early on a Friday, but it’s been a long day.”
Funerals and all that. He understood. “It’s not boring. I’ll take you home.”
It felt odd to land in front of the door instead of inside, but also appropriate.
She unlocked the condo. “Do you want to come in for a while? I mean, I guess you could come in anyway, it’s your place.”
“It’s just a building. And I’d love to stay a little longer.” That wasn’t a completely accurate statement; it was more than a building.
They stepped into the living room. Though she hadn’t changed the furnishings, her essence lingered on most of the things in the room—the couch, the coffee table, and he knew from earlier, the bed in the master suite. From the room to her, everything was so familiar, and at the same time, foreign. He felt out of sorts and wasn’t sure what to do with the sensation.
Not suffering from the same hesitation, she tugged him to the couch and settled next to him when he sat.
“You never got a TV.” He wasn’t sure why he said that, but he couldn’t sort out the rest of his other thoughts enough for something better.
“Why would I? You’ve got a kickass stereo system, and I stare at a screen enough at work all day. I was surprised by your music collection, though.”
“Not modern enough for you?”
“Eh...” She fiddled with the frayed edges of her cutoffs. “Nirvana. Hendrix. Lennon. Joplin. Richie Valens. You notice there’s a theme there?”
He had. They all died at the height of realizing their potential. A bittersweet notion that felt right but so wrong at the same time. “What would you prefer?”
“It’s not a matter of preference. I expected you to have a wider assortment of classical, or something like that. Chinese opera? I don’t know.”
“There’s Mozart in there.”
“That’s one guy.”
“My tastes have grown and changed with time. It doesn’t do to be stuck in the past.” As he spoke, he watched her expression shift into something pained and sad. She smiled, but it didn’t wash away the ache in her gaze. Did she think he meant her? The evening with her wasn’t what he expected, but it was better—comfortable, friendly, and mostly angst-free. He wanted her smile to be genuine, though. “Would you replace it with something loud? A pounding beat?”
“Some days. Most of the time, I plug in my phone, pull up a random station, and let it play what it wants. I like it all.”
He held out his hand. “So let’s do that now.”
She gave him her phone, and he crossed the room to hook it up to the stereo. “What do I choose?”
“Little blue button on the home screen, telltale U on the logo. Let it shuffle.”
He did as instructed and returned to the couch. When he was seated, she scooted closer and rested her head on his shoulder. In the background, the music faded from country to rap to R&B, with a sprinkling of metal and some gorgeous orchestration mixed in.
They talked long into the night, and yet somehow managed to avoid sharing how they spent the last few months of their lives. Somewhere along the way, a nagging voice reminded Michael why he left the first time and asked if his reasons were still valid.
He didn’t have an answer for that, especially with her distaste regarding how he eliminated the threat. If it came down to picking between keeping her in his life or continuing to do what was needed, would he be able to walk away again?
Chapter Nineteen
Ronnie was aware of two specific things, and had no interest in figuring anything else out at the moment. Falling asleep with Michael was as comforting as she remembered, but waking up with him still next to her was better. She didn’t remember drifting off. Now the sun glared through the balcony window, and she was distinctly aware of lying with him on the couch, his arm draped over her hip.
And someone upstairs was moving furniture around or something. “Your neighbors are loud,” she mumbled.
“Your neighbors. And that’s someone at the door. Want me to get it?”
She never had visitors. Lucifer preferred to call and meet in a neutral location, and she didn’t think anyone else knew where she lived except every delivery place in the city. The realization tugged at sadness in her chest, but she didn’t linger on the feeling. “Probably not the best idea if it’s for me.” She forced enough consciousness into her brain to be able to stand, and made her way to the door.
Irdu stood on the other side, drumming his fingers on his leg, gaze shooting up and down the hallway. He looked at Ronnie, and the concern in his gaze gnawed at her. “I didn’t know how late a nigh you had, but this is important. And you’re not answering your phone.”
“What is it?” Ronnie let him in.
Irdu stalled when he saw Michael. “I should have considered you’d still have company.”
Ronnie didn’t need to deal with Michael and Irdu glaring at each other on top of whatever this was. “What’s going on?”
Why didn’t she hear her phone ring? She wandered over to check the device for messages. Michael hadn’t plugged it into a power source when he hooked it up to the stereo. Of course. It was dead now. She set it to charge and turned back around.
Michael sat on the couch now, hair a little rumpled—God, that was sexy—but otherwise composed.
And Irdu still lingered near the door.
“Irdu?” Ronnie prompted.
“This is about the stuff we’ve been dealing with. That Tia’s been tracking?” Irdu darted gaze to Michael, before he focused on Ronnie again.
Ronnie hesitated. Not because she was worried about Michael hearing—the odds were in the high nineties she’d tell him anyway. But did she want to filter the information first?
She was tired of secrets, and if this was so urgent it had Irdu on edge, it would come out soon enough anyway. “No. We’ll talk here.”
Irdu let out a long breath through clenched teeth. “There is a series of explosions. Separately, they don’t look big, and the details on the news don’t make them seem significant. But there have been twenty, all identical, and all uploaded to U-View in the last two hours.”
Shit. “Where are they happening?”
“Everywhere. Australia, Egypt, Hong Kong, Tokyo... The list goes on.” Irdu’s phone chimed, and he fished it from his pocket. “We’re up to twenty-two.”
Every profanity Ronnie knew, in every language she spoke, crashed into her thoughts in a burst. “We need to get to the office so we have access to locations, data, and anything else we need.” She glanced at Michael. His help would be valuable, but the moment he walked into the Ubiquity building, cameras would know. Lucifer would find out. It might come out sooner rather than later, but something made Ronnie want to keep this quiet. “I have to cut the morning short.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He was already on his feet. “Call me if you want to continue our conversation.”
Ronnie was grateful he left the request vague.
“We can do it from here,” Irdu said. “You’ve got a laptop, right?”
Even better. She crossed the room, stood on tip-toe, and brushed her lips over Irdu’s. “Thank you.”
She turned to see Michael giving her a questioning look, and she said, “Stay?” She wasn’t sure how to define what was going on between them, but having him around would make it easier to figure out. She was tired of him walking out the door.
He nodded.
She turned back to Irdu and pointed to the desk near the back of the room, where her laptop sat. “I don’t have the VPN installed.”
Irdu made a pft noise. “Log in. I’ll do the rest.” He made a couple swipes on his phone. “You there?”
“Yup.” Tia’s voice drifted from the speaker. “You in?”
“Two minutes. Tops.” Irdu slid into the seat as soon as Ronnie let him, and his fingers flew over the keys.
Ronnie crossed her arms
, tapping her tow as she watched. How were they going to track something like this? How would they stop it? “Do we know if it’s the same person causing them every time?”
“No. Every shot is a few seconds of calm before the destruction, but no people—agents, whatever.”
Michael rested a hand on her shoulder. The simple touch was nice, but it didn’t help untangle the knot in her gut.
“And they’re not streaming?” Ronnie asked.
Irdu pulled up a remote connection to another computer. “No. Tia’s nabbing them as fast as she finds them. They’re not hidden, so that part is easy.”
“They’re not trying to mask their location.” Tia’s words mingled with the clack of keys.
“Who else knows?” Ronnie’s questions weren’t helping, but she had to do something.
Irdu spared her a glance. “No one. Well, anyone who saw the videos, but I didn’t trust anyone else to deal with it.”
A warm spark spread in Ronnie’s chest, despite the stress. She sifted through her cluttered thoughts and forced them into some sort of order. “If we assume this is a demon or an angel, having the location where the video was shot or uploaded from won’t matter. They’ll be gone before we get there.”
“You think?” Sarcasm filled Tia’s retort.
Ronnie raised an eyebrow at the out of character retort. Not that she blamed Tia. “Give me the complete list of cities we’ve seen so far.”
“None of them have anything in common,” Tia said. “We’ve got single floors in the middle of downtown metropolitan areas. Rural farms.”
Irdu pointed to a list on the screen. “There’s one connection. They’ve all been abandoned within the past six months, as far as I can tell. Though I’m still checking. A warehouse in Beijing that collapsed in on itself two months ago. A grain silo in Uruguay that hasn’t been used since its contents caught fire. A hotel in the middle of Nevada, condemned after lightning tore through it.”
With each item she ticked off the list, Michael’s grip tightened on Ronnie’s shoulder. When Irdu reached the hotel in Nevada, Ronnie knew why. She reached up to lace her fingers with Michael’s and try to get him to relax. That had to be where he encountered Azazel the first time. “Where are they going next?”
“If we knew that, we would have told you.” Tia’s frustration was clear.
“Not you,” Ronnie said as kindly as she could. She turned to Michael. “And how many are there?” The question summoned a surge of nausea. If she was right, if each of these was a place Michael had taken out a rogue agent, then he’d eliminated more than twenty. Would it be better or worse if he gave her an exact answer?
“They’re not in the order I executed them.” He winced. “Poor word choice. I’m sorry. There are only twenty-seven total.”
Only. The qualifier dug deep.
“And we just hit twenty-four,” Irdu said.
Ronnie’s gaze never left Michael. “Explosions in every single place you’ve hunted someone down and eliminated them. A message for you?”
He frowned. “With videos of someone destroying those spots now? I’m not a big U-View guy, so they’ve missed their target audience.”
“But Ronnie is,” Tia said. “Her obsession with tracking incidents like this is the reason we found them while they’re hot.”
Ronnie didn’t like that implication. If none of this held a deeper meaning unless the perpetrator knew she and Michael were together as it happened, then it was either random after all—the locations a coincidence—or scarily calculated.
“You know I don’t believe in coincidence.” Michael seemed to be thinking the same thing.
Ronnie nodded at the list of locations on her computer. “Where are the last three? We’ll divide. You and I will restrain one each, and Tia and Irdu will get the last one.” She didn’t want to do that to them. Irdu had never been trained to fight—Lucifer didn’t want that—and if this was anything like Vine, Tia demon was no match for her elder. “You only have to be there long enough to call me, and we’ll join you, if you find whoever this is first.”
Irdu shook his head. “And what if they hit more than one spot at a time?”
“So far, it’s been single locations.” Ronnie didn’t believe her own reassurance. If she had more time... If she trusted anyone besides the people in this room... “I don’t know what else to do.”
“It’s okay. I’ll be okay.” Tia’s confidence wavered over the speaker.
“No.” Irdu’s voice was hard. “You’re not going.”
“I am, and I’m going alone. You need to be online to monitor, and I can hold my own for two seconds.”
Ronnie didn’t like this, but she didn’t have an argument.
Irdu looked between her and the phone. “All right. I’ve got your back. Be safe.” He focused on Ronnie. “If anything happens to her...”
“I know, you’ll never forgive me.”
Irdu shook his head. “I won’t blame you. I will make what Ariel did look like child’s play, until I find whomever is responsible. Just like I would for you.”
“Then we’d better not fall that far.” Ronnie let out a shaky breath. “Where are we going?” She asked Michael.
“I can’t give you anything like GPS coordinates, but I can take each of you to a spot.”
Ronnie grabbed her phone. “We need to keep in touch. If you both ring me, I’ll open a group text, and we’ll go voice activated.” And she’d hope the fifteen percent battery her phone had picked up in the last few minutes held out until they were all back in the same place.
Michael vanished to get Tia, and seconds later, he returned for Ronnie. “She’s in L.A. I’m hoping that’s not where they hit next, because there’s a lot of nearby traffic.”
Ronnie gave him a grateful smile, not sure what she could say. In a blink, green and mountains replaced the condo. “Do I dare guess where we are?” she asked.
“Toronto.” He placed a finger under her chin, and a shock of heat raced through her, in contrast to the chilly morning. He pressed his lips to hers, and then stepped back. “Good luck.”
Where did that come from? It wasn’t fair leaving her with that when she didn’t have time to linger on how such a simple gesture could fill her with giddiness. Her tension chased the flutters away, the muscles in her neck tightening as seconds and then minutes ticked away. Irdu used their phones to share everyone’s locations. She hated this entire setup, but knowing he was watching was as comforting as anything could be right now.
According to Tia, there had been a new video every five minutes, and Irdu said local news supported that timing. Ten minutes passed, and then thirty. Ronnie’s phone beeped with another low-battery warning.
Why hadn’t anything happened? Did Michael miscount? Remember the locations wrong? It was twenty-seven spots. What were the odds he knew every single one? Ronnie would remember. She’d be haunted by all of them. He probably recalled them too.
Do we call it a day? Tia asked.
Not yet. Ronnie reminded herself not to fidget. The cabin Michael set her near was isolated. Trees for as far as she could see in every direction. The sun crept higher—that was pleasant. Her phone gave one more pathetic chirp and blinked off.
“Fuck.” Her curse echoed off the landscape. What was she supposed to do now? Tia had Michael on the line, and if Ronnie went to either of them, she left this place unguarded. Damage would be minimal, but it would still be caused by her inability to wait things out. In a flicker of desperation, she held her thumb to the charger slot and pushed the tiniest pulse of electricity through. She had no idea how much was too much, or if she was using the right voltage.
Her screen flickered on and connected to the network, and she allowed herself a second to breathe a sigh of relief.
Then Tia’s message arrived. He’s here.
Ronnie’s phone shattered in her hand as too much juice flowed through her, pieces flying everywhere. She relocated to Tia without another thought. The sign out front read El Cam
ino High School. She didn’t want details about what happened here the first time. The sizzle of water meeting flame caused her to spin. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, but at the same time too quickly to process.
Vine blasted Tia with a rush of flame, and she slammed into the wall behind her. How the hell was he here? He would need interference from someone near the top of the ladder in hell to be allowed a physical form again. And he was flying toward Tia, not blinking in and out—that was something.
Ronnie’s swords appeared in her hands, and she blinked out of sight to close the distance.
Michael was there first, glowing as bright as the mid-morning sun, wings spread and hand grasping Vine’s throat.
“No.” Michael’s command shook the ground and the nearby building.
Ronnie felt it more than saw it. Vine’s essence didn’t flow into Michael and then out again; it simply vanished, and so did his body. So that was what it looked like.
She was going to be sick. She respected Vine. Learned from him when she was a cherub. He was gone now, because he’d been willing to take others’ lives to further his own. She saw it with Cassiel, and Tia almost suffered the same fate.
“Owie.” Tia’s complaint cut through Ronnie’s haze.
Michael helped Tia stand. “Are you all right?”
“He ruined my shirt.”
Ronnie didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or sob that Tia didn’t seem to comprehend Michael had killed Vine. Or didn’t care. This was all wrong. The timing was too perfect, the string of events too much to be a coincidence.
It wasn’t only that someone knew she was probably with Michael. Vine just happened to show up where they were weakest, breaking his timing pattern to do so moments after Ronnie’s battery died?
“Irdu set us up.” Michael’s words jarred her.
No. Not in a million years.
“He didn’t.” Tia slid into a defensive stance.
“Someone did.”
Ronnie clenched her jaw. “It wasn’t him. Why the fuck would you think that?”
Soul Betrayer (Ubiquity, #2) Page 17