“He came to my house a few months ago,” Lester said haltingly. “He told me I should leave town.”
My eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“I don’t know. He was talking crazy. Said my name showed up on some kind of list. Said I was in danger.” He snorted, glancing around at the forest. “Guess I should have listened.”
I stepped closer, my thoughts racing back over what I read in Starla’s file. But all it had revealed were notes about portals being opened. What did Dad know about Lester being in danger? And how could he have possibly known Lester would be framed for a crime that hadn’t happened yet?
“Lester, this is important. What kind of danger did he say you were in?”
“He said there was a blacklist. Supes who were being targeted by someone bad. Someone who wanted to do bad things and pin them on innocent people. He told me to leave before they could do that to me.”
“But you didn’t.”
He shook his head. “I called Jax, and he told me to just lie low. Even let me stay with him for a while so he could look into it. But months went by, and nothing happened. We thought whatever was going to happen must have been stopped.”
Suddenly, Jax’s knowledge of my dad—and of me—made more sense.
I had so many questions but none of them for Lester. I needed to talk to Jax.
“Thanks,” I said, “And listen, if you remember anything else—”
“I’ll tell you,” he said impatiently, dancing from one foot to the other.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“I have to pee again.”
We spent the day in the woods, keeping out of sight of the SSF search teams between pit stops, thanks to Lester’s fragile bladder. My questions for Jax were bordering on desperate, but I wasn’t about to march either of us in through the front doors of Jax’s home base with a wanted fugitive on my heels. Not with the Nephilim council in the mood to blow up all their problems. A day of wandering the Louisiana bayou with a vegetarian werewolf wasn’t exactly thrilling, but it was better than being dead.
At sunset, I shifted back to two legs as Lester and I made our way carefully through the alleyways toward Jax’s headquarters. Without a cell phone—too easy to track, so I’d ditched mine when I’d shifted into a four-legged beast earlier—it was impossible to gauge the level of alert they’d gone to in an effort to apprehend Lester. Or me.
I just hoped my mom and Gran hadn’t totally freaked out and dropped bombs on the entire SSF headquarters to find me.
Once it was dark enough to move again, our progress was slow. Partly out of vigilance and partly because Lester couldn’t go faster than “tortoise” speed.
Finally, we made it past the roadblocks and armed SSF agents doing sweeps and into the neighborhood where Lester claimed Jax lived. One look at the quiet street with gated homes bordered by exotic rose bushes, and I rolled my eyes. Of course Jax lived here. He wasn’t the type for subtlety, but still.
“Figures,” I muttered when we rounded the thick hedges bordering the fence and the house came into view.
Whoa.
Not house. Mansion.
“What’d ya say?” Lester asked way too loudly, and I spun to glare at him.
“Nothing,” I hissed. “Shh. Come on.”
Lester stuck close behind me, and I knew that because the old guy wheezed when he breathed. He also smelled mildly of kale which was off-putting in a way that felt judgy even for me.
Up ahead, I noted the two sentries standing guard just inside the gate of what was either Jax’s house or some kind of shifter embassy. The place was monstrous.
A breeze prickled my skin, and I glanced upward, searching the night sky for movement. Adrik still hadn’t returned after flying off to duke it out with the level six hundred lizard-man from earlier. I was starting to worry—and I didn’t like how much I didn’t want him to be dead.
But nothing moved overhead.
I pressed my lips together and crept closer to the wrought-iron gates. Behind me, Lester gave an audible grunt as he only barely caught himself from tripping over his own feet. The sentries straightened, suddenly alert, and I resisted the urge to shove one of the exotic roses down Lester’s vegan throat.
“Can I help you?” one of the men asked.
Their scowls softened when they saw me, and I rolled my eyes, wondering if it’d be less annoying to change things up and walk in as a man. Or something without breasts. Maybe I’d pretend to be Jax and watch them scramble to do whatever I ordered.
It was tempting. But I had a feeling boss-man would have something to say about that. And since he was currently babysitting my demon spawn, I decided not to push him. No doubt that little bundle of murderer he was watching already had.
“I’m here to see the boss,” I told them.
The first guy frowned. “Uh, I’m not sure what you—”
“Jax McGuire,” I said, impatient.
Beside me, Lester leaned in and whispered loudly, “I have to go to the bathroom.”
Of course he did. Maybe all that kale wasn’t good for the bladder muscles.
“Now,” I added when the men didn’t move.
“We’ve never heard of a Jax McGuire,” the second man said, and my patience snapped.
I reached for the gate and wrapped my hands around the bars. Calling up my griffin, I let it surge far enough to the surface to offer a boost of brute strength. My fists tightened around the cold iron, and I pulled, baring my teeth in a snarl. Metal creaked and groaned as the bars began to bend.
The men’s eyes went wide.
Lester began crossing and uncrossing his legs. His breaths were heavier now. More wheezing.
“Look, I have something your boss wants,” I said, nodding at Lester. “And he has something that belongs to me. Radio him and tell him his baby mama is here.” I smiled viciously, bending the iron bars another inch for effect. “Or, I’ll walk in and tell him myself.”
The man with the radio lifted it to his mouth and began talking fast. I caught the words “baby mama” and “not messing around.” The reply from the other end was almost instantaneous.
“Let her in,” Jax snapped. “Now.”
I watched as the guard with the radio turned and nodded at his partner.
The second goon reached over and punched a few buttons on the keypad mounted to the brick post. The gate slowly swung inward.
I motioned for Lester to follow, and we both marched past them up the stone driveway.
“See, boys, was that so hard?” I asked.
They kept a wide berth as they escorted us toward the front door.
The house was ridiculous. Fancier and more expensive than that immaculate lobby at the SSF office in the French Quarter. Then again, this was the Garden District. The only kind of money that could afford to live here was the big kind. Old, new, didn’t matter. But the pockets had to be deep.
Apparently, Jax’s were—and then some.
I’d expected some kind of log cabin maybe? Or a man cave with beer cans littering the yard. Though, truth be told, Jax’s wardrobe had been pretty put together. Not beer cans. Maybe top-shelf whiskey bottles.
But definitely not this.
A circular drive led past a marble fountain and up a set of white-granite porch steps. The columns on either side looked Roman or Greek, and the foyer just inside looked like the damned Smithsonian had been gutted and relocated.
The guards kept walking, and I forced myself to stop gawking and follow their lead. Lester was still close behind, doing his own version of a walking pee-pee dance. Or a pee-pee strut.
I whistled as we passed from the foyer, a large, open space done in clean lines and muted tones, into a well-appointed living room that managed to look designer and cozy at the same time. A fire crackled in the hearth, and mounted over the mantle, a stuffed lion’s head stared ferociously back at me. Its mouth was open, frozen in an eternal snarl.
A panther shifter that hunted cats.
Funny.
Behind me, Lester wheezed, and I turned to see him hopping from one foot to the other. I frowned, ready to tell him to find a bathroom—this place had to have at least forty of them—but one of the guards remained in the doorway, watching us.
He didn’t look inclined to allow a potty break.
Before I could offer some sort of diversion—probably involving chucking the lion’s head at the guy—a door opened then closed somewhere nearby.
I turned to see Jax step through a doorway at the far end of the room. A familiar creature wrapped in some kind of sling was attached to his torso.
My jaw dropped as I took in the whole picture.
Jax, in pressed slacks and a perfectly ironed shirt. Expensive shoes. A predatory gleam in his sexily crinkled eyes. And a gurgling, mumbling demon baby in some kind of daddy sling wrapped around his middle.
“What the fuck,” I said.
“Language, darling.” Jax leaned in to press a kiss to my cheek, and I let him, too stunned to move away. When he straightened, an amused smile tugged at his perfect mouth.
He was that parent everyone hated. The one who had it all together all the time.
My eyes narrowed at how clean he looked. “Did you pay someone else to watch her then carry her in here to take all the credit?”
He had the grace to look offended. “Of course not.”
“Why aren’t you covered in gummy bear drool or human flesh?”
He shrugged. “We bonded.”
As proof, I watched my secret demon baby glance at me before moving blankly on to checking out Lester as if I weren’t her adopted mama and the only thing standing between her and annihilation.
“Traitor,” I muttered.
“Fuckery,” she cooed.
Good. At least she got something from me.
“Les,” Jax said. He leaned in to clap a hand on Lester’s back in a loose hug. “Glad to see you here.” Jax’s gaze slid to me. “I’ve been worried.”
There was just enough of a lilt to his words to make me believe it.
Huh.
Jax had worried—about me?
And why did hearing that make my insides feel all gooey?
“Gem thought it would be best to wait until nightfall to return to the city.” Lester’s expression turned from a friendly hello to a sudden wince. “Err, may I use the restroom?”
“Of course. You know where it is.” Jax waved a hand toward the hall. “When you’re finished, let Otto know, and he’ll take you to the kitchen for something to eat.”
“Thanks, boss,” Lester said and hurried off.
“You’re wanted, you know,” Jax said when Lester had gone, taking our chaperone with him.
I smirked.
“I don’t mean that sexually although that’s true as well,” he said, and a warmth spread immediately into all my most important parts. “The SSF put a warrant out for you. Aiding and abetting and something about stealing Nephilim property.”
His words were casual, but I could see his expression studying, gauging.
“Well, I hope they used the picture of me from the Christmas party. The one from my intake exam was not my best angle.”
His eyes narrowed. “I tried to call you.”
“I ditched my phone.”
“What happened out there?”
“An ambush,” I said, moving toward the fire.
Now that I’d made it here unscathed, the weight of it all had begun to hit me.
A secret demon baby. The explosion. My fugitive status.
How had my life gone to such shit in just a day?
Trying to process it made me restless. Or maybe that was the exhaustion. From the sling, the baby continued to gurgle in some language only she could understand. At least she wasn’t trying to eat anyone.
“Gem,” Jax said, and I jumped at the sight of an arm reaching around me.
Jax held out the glass, and I took it gratefully, a little shocked I’d been too distracted to hear him pour it. Or approach me.
I downed it and handed it back.
“Another,” I said, breathing through the burn left behind by the brandy. Good brandy, too. My father would have approved.
Jax poured another, and I took it, letting it slosh a few times.
Jax waited, giving me space to arrange my thoughts.
“Did you know my father?”
Jax blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Lester told me about the blacklist. And that you knew his name was on it. You want to tell me why you kept that from me?”
He stared back at me, unflinching. “I have to protect my pack above all else. Above even my personal feelings.”
I decided to sidestep the land mine that was Jax McGuire’s feelings. Instead, I said, “What does protecting your pack have to do with me?”
“After Lester called me, I went to see your father. He showed me a list of names—proof of his claim. He said someone inside the SSF was planning to use those names as patsies for whatever they were planning.”
“Which was what?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. But it’s clear now they planned to frame Lester for the crimes committed by the lupine demon.”
“My dad knew it was coming,” I said, breathless with the realization that whatever got him killed ran a hell of a lot deeper than I could have imagined.
And so did Jax’s interest in me.
My stomach tightened as I realized the truth about him.
“Our meeting at The Monster Ball wasn’t a coincidence, was it?”
He hesitated. “After your father was killed, I did some digging. Had some of my informants keep an eye on things. But we heard nothing. The entire thing was a dead end—until I heard you’d joined the agency. I had to know if you were involved in his investigation.”
I set my drink aside and glared. “You should have told me.”
“I needed to know if I could trust you.”
My eyes widened. “You thought I was on the wrong end of my father’s murder?”
“I didn’t know anything about you. After our interaction that night—” I snorted at that, “I came home and did some digging, kept an eye on where you were placed—”
I didn’t even want to know how he was privy to classified information like where I was assigned. “So you weren’t sure if I was evil, but you were fine with a little quickie in my kitchen anyway?”
He sighed. “I’d already decided I could trust you. And I was going to tell you everything I knew this morning, but you got that call and ran out.”
“How?” I asked. “How did you suddenly know you could trust me?”
He hesitated, and I realized it a second before he said the words, “The child.”
I glanced at the baby still gurgling happily from her daddy-sling.
“You sent me home with literal demon spawn just to test my moral code?” I glared at him, my beast imagining what he would look like when I bit off that perfect jawline of his. But that image only led to other kinds of biting. Sexy biting. Not helping, imagination. “You manipulated me into motherhood?! You bastard.”
I took a step forward, but Jax didn’t move. His eyes were sharp on mine, but otherwise, he didn’t react to my predatory advance. Ten points for balls of steel. Anyone else would have cowered.
I called up my beast’s magic and let my hands morph into talons.
Jax eyed them shrewdly as I approached.
“Your father of the year award has officially been revoked,” I said.
When I met his gaze, amusement shone back at me. Amusement. I was about two feet away from clawing the amusement right out of those bedroom eyes.
“You’re breathtaking when you’re angry and protective.”
“Then I’ll be drop-dead gorgeous in a moment. Except you’re the one who will be dropping dead.”
Jax grinned. “Don’t be mad, darling. Take comfort in knowing my plan backfired.”
I paused. “Backfired how?”
His grin slipped, and he watched m
e with that same expression he’d used earlier. The one that had made me forget everything and let him kiss me senseless on my kitchen counter. “I meant to test your loyalty and your ability to care for the good-hearted and innocent.”
“So I can’t say no to an ugly baby,” I snapped. “How did that backfire on you?”
He paused long enough to unhook the baby sling and set her on the couch. From his pocket, he produced something that looked suspiciously like a dog bone. The baby snatched it with a little t-rex arm and began gnawing happily.
When he turned back to me, his gaze softened even more. “Because when you fell for the demon child, I fell for you, love.”
My mouth went dry.
My beast betrayed me by retracting its talons and, instead, unleashing a cloud of arousal that I was positive Jax inhaled with his next breath. Clearly, my griffin was a traitor. Just like my vagina.
“You fell for me,” I repeated, a little too breathless to keep up my murderous charade.
Jax’s mouth curved. “It’s true, little beast.”
I found myself leaning forward, his mouth like a beacon calling me toward it. Just a little farther and—
Somewhere in the house, a door shut. I blinked, stepping back before the siren call that was Jax’s mouth lured me into insanity once and for all.
I marched back to retrieve my drink. Taking a healthy gulp, I let the alcohol steady me. When I knew I could resist the pull of the predator behind me, I turned back. “No more secrets,” I said. “Co-parenting is hard enough. No lying or keeping things from me. Got it?”
“It’s a deal.”
I nodded.
Disappointment flashed in Jax’s eyes. “Since it looks like we won’t be having angry makeup sex, why don’t you tell me what happened today.”
I pretended his words hadn’t just given me the dirtiest mental images—or that said images hadn’t made my lady parts snap to attention.
Down, girl.
“I met Raguel this morning.”
Jax’s teasing expression grew instantly serious.
“From the Nephilim council?” he asked.
I nodded.
Jax’s shock was replaced with wariness. “What did he want with you?”
“He took over Lester’s case. Told Adrik and me to clean up and deliver the prisoner to SSF headquarters for interrogation.”
Knock Em Dead (Supernatural Security Force Book 2) Page 11