“But he looks so good in shackles,” Leo protested.
She gave him a dry look. “Don’t be petty.”
“I like being petty.”
Gregg started when the null around his wrist wriggled. He pulled up his sleeve to see it better. The padlock was gone. Now the bracelet was a thick, solid band with no visible way to get it off. As he watched, words inscribed themselves across the top: I’m the ugly brother.
“That’ll make it easier for us to find you,” Jamie said, passing Gregg the phone.
“I’ll be surrounded by magical security. You’re not going to get through it.”
“Sure. If you say so,” Leo replied, winking at his brother.
Gregg sighed inwardly. He’d have to have his head of security beef things up. But damn, he wished he could get these miscreants on his payroll. He had a feeling once they gave their loyalty, it stayed given. They couldn’t be bought. He’d have to take comfort in knowing that at least he wouldn’t be fighting against them. He had no doubt they could cause him serious headaches.
There wasn’t much else to say, and while he wanted to go to Clay, their reunion would have to wait. He’d decided long ago that the city mattered more than himself, more than any one person, no matter how important they might be to him. Gregg had to get back into the driver’s seat of his organization and figure out just what he was going to do with Vernon Brussard’s offer. To start with, he’d have to learn just who the fuck the man was, who he worked for, and what he wanted. And then—
He wished to God he knew what happened then. Hopefully, it wasn’t Armageddon.
Chapter 10
Riley
I HALF EXPECTED TO wake up as a new resident of the spirit realm. How many times could I get shot and not die? At least twice, apparently, because I woke up flat on my back on the diner’s main counter.
I opened my eyes and groaned, swallowing my nausea at the sensation of healing magic worming through my wound.
“Riley?”
I twisted my head to see Taylor. She had hold of my hand and was squeezing it so hard, I thought maybe I’d get gangrene. I frowned. Was she supposed to be here? Had I whacked my head too? “What are you doing here?”
“We got done at the safe house and came here to see you.” She clipped off her words, blinking fast. A tear escaped, and she angrily brushed it away.
I blinked at her, letting my sludgy brain absorb her words. “We? Leo and Jamie are here, too?” I sounded stoned. Even I could hear it.
She shook her head. “Dalton came with me. The boys had some other things to take care of.”
“Oh.” I let that sink in. “Where’s Patti? And Price?”
“Right here.” Price’s voice on the other side of me sounded wire thin.
I twisted my head to find him standing beside me. Worry and tension radiated off him in palpable waves. Tremors shook him, and sweat beaded on his forehead. He held my other hand in both of his.
“You okay?” I asked him.
He snorted and then held still like he feared if he did anything at all, he might shatter. “You got shot.”
It sounded accusing. “I didn’t mean to.”
He gusted a sigh, his grip tightening. My bones might have actually creaked.
“Of course not.”
“Who did it, do we know?”
He gave a faint shake of his head, his jaw hardening. “They won’t hurt you again, though.”
The grim chill in his eyes told me he’d made sure of it, and I was willing to bet he’d used the wind to do it. That was a positive sign. He’d controlled his talent. Unless he’d also leveled half the city to do it. I decided I didn’t want to know yet.
I glanced around for Patti. She stood just beyond Price, her arms folded, her eyes narrowed. Her cheeks were pale with hard slashes of red indicating fury. When our eyes locked, she stepped forward and jabbed her finger into my thigh to punctuate her words. “You do not get shot. Ever again. Do you understand? I will so kill you if you do this to me again.”
“Okay. Maybe you could tell the bad guys that, too. I’d like them to stop shooting me.”
She let out an unwilling laugh. “I’ll take out an ad in the paper.”
“Please do.”
The wormy feeling was starting to let up, and the pain I’d been feeling went with it. I sat up, Price and Taylor helping me. I realized then that I had a healing pendant around my neck and four more wrapped around each of my wrists and ankles. Overkill much? My head spun with wooziness.
“Make the room stop,” I said, closing my eyes.
“You lost blood. Dalton’s pendants can’t help with that,” Taylor told me.
I nodded and then looked around. “Where is he?”
“Outside. Patrolling.”
I’d have to thank him. Again. I had no idea where he kept all the pendants stashed or how he kept such a good supply of them, but they’d sure come in handy more often than I cared to admit.
My brows crimped as my brain started working more clearly. I remembered Dalton stepping into the alley and Price demanding to know what he was doing there. Then the shooting started. “Who shot at us? And here of all places? I mean, how did they know where to find us.”
“Not us,” Price grated. “You. I was the bigger target and more out in the open. They aimed at you.”
I blinked at him. “Why?”
“Vernon was at the safe house,” Taylor said, as if that was an answer.
My head whipped around. “What? How? Why?”
“He was there when we got back with Touray. Wanted to talk to him. Privately.”
“What about?”
“Touray said he wanted to make a deal.”
“For what?”
“Didn’t say. Wouldn’t have believed him if he did. Vernon said he killed Savannah Morrell.”
“What? When?”
“Had to be after she let Touray go.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. None of this made any sense. Maybe I had hit my head. I couldn’t have heard that correctly. “Did you just say she let him go?”
“She expected him to bring her back the Kensington artifacts. She blew up half the city to motivate him.”
“Fucking hell.”
“Amen to that. Anyway, sometime after we picked up Touray, Vernon had her killed.”
“Why? And why now?”
“Wish I knew.”
I tried to bring my brain back to the present. “You think he had me shot, don’t you? Why would he?”
“Who knows how he thinks? He tried to kill you before. Maybe he figured it was time to finish the job.”
I tried not to let that hurt. I already knew that everything I thought I’d known about my father was a lie. That he was a cold-blooded bastard and that he didn’t love me or Taylor or anybody else. Still, an ached bloomed in my chest, and a lump hardened in my throat. Parents were supposed to love their kids. What was wrong with me that he wanted to kill me? Hell, what was wrong with him?
I swallowed and shoved all thoughts of Vernon aside. He wasn’t worth my time or energy.
“Let’s get you down,” Patti said, taking charge. “You need to clean the blood up and change.”
I realized that my shirt was clammy against my back. Ew.
Taylor and Patti removed the nulls from my wrists and ankles, but left the one on my neck.
“To make sure,” Taylor said.
“How long before Emily and Luis get here?”
“They’ll be here anytime,” Patti said.
Price pulled me off the counter and into his arms and carried me upstairs to Patti’s apartment. I had my own room and clothing there.
Price didn’t set me down until we were in the bedroom. Then he shut the door and started stripping m
e. He never said a word. He turned me to face away and pulled off my coat, my shirt, and unfastened my bra. His fingers ran lightly over my back, like he wanted to be sure the wound was gone.
“How do you feel?”
“Tired, but no pain.”
“Okay.”
His arms came tight around me, and he pulled me hard against his chest as he buried his face in the crook of my neck. We stood that way for a good five minutes. I covered his hands with mine and pressed against him. I didn’t bother to point out that he was getting blood all over his own shirt. He wouldn’t have cared.
Finally, he loosened his grip. “You should get cleaned up,” he said hoarsely.
I turned in the circle of his arms and pressed my lips against his. “I love you.”
“You’re going to break me.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m sorry.”
He nodded, his hands tightening on my hips. He let go. “You’d better get in the shower.”
TAYLOR AND PATTI were waiting downstairs. Ben, Patti’s partner and cook, made delicious things in the kitchen.
Seeing me, Patti dropped the cleaning towel and bottle of bleach spray she’d been holding and came over to hug me. She smelled of coffee, bacon, and her favorite perfume. The scent of home. I squeezed her tight.
She let me go at last and stood back. “You’ve lost weight. What have you been eating?” She looked at Price. “You’re not any better. God, let you two go off by yourselves and you forget how to eat. I hope you remember how to tie your shoelaces. Come on then, get sat down. Ben will put something together for you.”
She bustled away up the hallway and into the dining area. I groaned even as my mouth watered. Ben’s food was to die for, and Patti made the best coffee on the planet. We weren’t getting out of here until we’d eaten our weight in food. Just at the moment, that sounded perfect.
“I hope you’re hungry,” I said to Price. He still wore that brittle look, like it was everything he could do to keep himself from shattering apart. I took his hand, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “I’m okay.”
“For now.”
I gave him a steady look. “It’s not going to get any better. This is our lives.”
He scraped his teeth hard over his lower lip. “I’m not sure I’ll survive.”
“I’ll try to understand if you need to bail.” Even though that would kill me faster than any bullet.
He pulled me tight against him. “Never going to happen.” He bent to give me a fast, hard kiss, and then pulled me toward a seat.
“Not there,” Patti said. “In the back. More private and no windows.”
She shepherded us into the overflow dining area beyond the stairs. We went through the double doors under the stairway and into a large room. Booths with red vinyl seats and gray tables lined the sides. Chrome and gray tables with chrome chairs and red vinyl cushions made a checkerboard in the middle.
I scooted into a booth. Price sat beside me, and Taylor sat opposite. Patti handed out coffee cups. She set a jug of cream on the table and a sugar shaker, and then sat down beside Taylor.
Just then Dalton came in. “Perimeter is clear,” he told Price before grabbing a chair and sitting at the end of the booth. He cocked himself so he could see the door. Patti poured him a coffee. He murmured thanks.
“So, we don’t know who shot me or how they know I was here, except Vernon is looking like a good bet. Is that about right?” I stirred cream and sugar into the black elixir that was Patti’s coffee. I did it one-handed, since Price had my other one tangled in his, and that was just fine by me.
“Did you see anything outside?” Taylor asked Dalton.
He shook his head. “Found some brass. That’s about it. Nothing to tell us who was behind it.”
“But we all know it was Vernon,” she challenged, a belligerent edge to her voice.
“Could be. I don’t know.”
Her lip curled. “Don’t you?”
He gave her a long look. “Could be him. But better to work on facts. There might be another player stepping up and if we don’t consider it, we take a chance of getting blindsided. And maybe somebody else gets shot. Maybe somebody gets killed.”
It was all said in a mild tone, but the rebuke was clear. Taylor flushed and bit her lips together. I thought she’d explode at him. But then she just nodded.
“You’re right.”
Her willingness to be reasonable in the face of her well-deserved hatred of Vernon surprised me. Dalton made sense, even if it annoyed the fuck out of me. I’m not sure I’d have been willing to admit it.
He nodded back at her without even a flicker of a smile to indicate triumph that he’d won the point. Good thing, too, or she’d probably have decapitated him.
I could feel Price getting antsy. Antsier. A breeze had started up in the closed room. His iron control was slipping. I leaned my head against his shoulder and tightened my fingers on his.
“Easy,” I whispered. “We’re safe.”
“For now.”
“Now’s all that counts. Try to relax.”
He snorted, but took a slow breath and let it out, forcing his shoulders to relax. The breeze settled. I decided to change the subject.
“What happened with Touray? How did he get free?”
Taylor described retrieving Price’s brother. Dalton sat silent, nodding once in a while. His gaze was restless. It skipped from each of us to the door, around the room and back to us in an endless circuit. The colors at the outer rims of his silver irises cycled from orange to green to blue and back to silver. It was damned creepy.
It wasn’t long before Ben dinged the bell. Patti jumped up and dragged Dalton with her. It took them both two trips to haul all the food. Only newbies to the diner ordered. Patti gave the rest of us what she thought we needed. If you refused the offering, your next meal or twelve would be inedible. I’d never had a bad meal in all the years I’d been eating there.
She deposited bowls of baked potato soup in front of me and Price with a basket of crusty bread and crock of honey butter. Dalton got a steak smothered under mushrooms and onions and accompanied by a mound of garlic green beans and rosemary mashed-potato patties. Taylor received a halibut sandwich with a mound of onion rings and a Caesar salad.
Patti glared at me and Price. “Eat it all. Don’t dawdle.”
I dug in, knowing this was only my first course. Taylor paused between bites to finish the story on Touray, and then switched to an update on us.
“Far as we can tell, the FBI is still sticking with the story that Price died in the explosion. Mom’s been declared missing.” Her brow clouded with the memory of Mel’s death. She visibly forced the memory away. “I don’t know if they actually believe any of that. They’ve seized all our houses and businesses, so chances are they don’t believe the story they’re selling. Haven’t seen hide nor hair of Arnow since we got back, so she’s been zero help with FBI intel.”
“I bet Vernon knows where she is,” I muttered, glancing at Dalton from beneath my brows.
He stared back. “I can ask,” he said after a few moments.
“Why bother?” Taylor asked. “It’s not like he’d tell the truth. Even if he did, we couldn’t trust him. It’s pointless.”
That assumed that Dalton would tell the truth, which I highly doubted.
Dalton’s lips tightened like he knew what I was thinking, but he stayed silent. As usual, his expression revealed nothing. I wondered if he practiced that bland look in the mirror.
“Anyhow, we’ve been staying off the radar. I expect that now that you two are back and Touray is free, that’s likely to change.”
I nodded. None of us planned to hide forever. Just long enough to rescue Touray and then go to war. Touray was determined to gain con
trol of the Tyets in the city and force a peace. Only now that Savannah Morrell was dead, I wasn’t sure what would happen. Maybe without Savannah in the picture, he could control the Tyets without a lot of carnage.
Regardless, I had to help Emily and Luis and then go find Arnow’s missing people like I’d promised. ’Course, Touray might have different plans for Price, and that meant mine were based on maybes and mights. At least we knew who’d set the bombs and that she’d got her just deserts.
“What do you think Vernon wants with your brother?” Taylor asked suddenly, tipping her head to the side as she eyed Price.
He shook his head, his mouth tightening. “Whatever it is, I doubt it’s good for Gregg. Or the rest of us.”
“He has an endgame,” Dalton volunteered suddenly.
We all looked at him.
“What does that mean?” I asked when I’d overcome my surprise. It was like having your cat suddenly spout words. Highly unexpected and almost surreal.
Spots of red bloomed along his high cheekbones. He didn’t like the attention. “Your father plots. Always. He has something he wants and everything he does and has done is to get it.”
“What does he want?” Taylor demanded, facing him, her eyes blazing.
“He’s never told me,” Dalton said, setting his silverware down on his plate and resting his hands on the table. “But it drives him relentlessly.”
I snorted. “That’s one word for it. Pathologically obsessed is another.” So it was two words. He could sue me. “Why are you telling us this? Or is this part of one of his plans?”
Dalton’s face hardened, his nostrils flaring white. “I do not work for him anymore.”
“Of course not,” I drawled and rolled my eyes. None of us were that gullible.
He sat back in his chair, folding his arms and tipping his head back. He’d not shaved recently, and five o’clock shadow highlighted the hollows and contours of his jaw. He wasn’t exactly handsome. He wasn’t ugly either. More like he’d been roughly carved from rock, and the artist hadn’t had time to refine the blunt line of his nose, the sharp slants of his cheek bones, or the uncompromising jut of his chin. Combine that with the eyeball tinker mods, and he was not at all reassuring to look at.
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