A good person would.
With that in mind, Harper did what she knew was right in her heart.
She smiled at him warmly. He leaned in to tuck a loose curl behind her ear.
Then she head butted the bastard.
After all, being a good person was totally overrated.
Chapter Seven
Riddick couldn’t breathe.
If he didn’t find Harper soon, he was going to completely lose his shit and start tearing the casino apart brick by brick.
It was all his fault, damn it. Why the hell had he let her go to the bathroom alone in her condition? She could be hurt. Scared. Anyone—or anything—could have taken her.
“Riddick! Are you even listening to me?”
He stopped pacing the sidewalk outside the casino and loosened his grip on his phone to avoid shattering it. “What?” he snapped.
“I traced her, using her phone, which is still on,” Mischa said way too calmly for Riddick’s liking. “You were right to call me. This would’ve taken the police too long and there would’ve been too many questions.”
He was fucking panicking here, and she was tooting her own horn. Great. “Do you have an address for me, or not?”
“Of course,” she scoffed. “It’s about ten miles from where you are now, off the strip.”
When she didn’t say anything else, he growled, “Well, what is it, goddammit?”
She paused and he wanted to reach through the phone and shake her. After an eternity, she said, “I have something for you to see before I give you the address.”
“Mischa, I swear to God, I will burn this entire God- forsaken shithole to the ground to find her if you don’t fucking—”
“Chill out,” Mischa ordered, sounding surprisingly tough for someone who was all of five-two, one-ten. “She’s not hurt.”
“How the fuck do you know that?” he shouted, startling several people into crossing the street to avoid walking past him too closely.
“I hacked the casino’s security footage.”
That sounded kind of complicated and maybe a little…illegal. “How did you—”
“Don’t ask,” she said, dryly. “But I saw who carried her out of the bathroom. He’s an idiot, but he wouldn’t hurt her. I’m sending you the footage right now.”
It took a hundred years or so, but the footage finally came through to his phone. He watched in stunned silence, heart pounding, as a large man carried a limp, but very much alive, Harper out of the ladies’ bathroom. Riddick breathed a sigh of relief. A very small sigh for a very small bit of relief, but at this point, it was better than nothing.
As the man moved toward the kitchen, most likely planning to sneak out through the employees’ entrance, he made the mistake of glancing up at the security camera.
Riddick’s fear and concern morphed into blind, murderous rage. He let out a half growl, half roar and punched a hole in the casino’s stone façade.
“I’m going to rip that motherfucker’s balls off and cram them down his fucking throat,” he said through clenched teeth, meaning every single word.
Every. Single. Word.
“Yep, that’s what I thought you’d say,” Mischa said. “I’m sending you the address now. Say ‘hi’ to Romeo for me.”
Romeo pressed a wad of tissues to his nose, and Harper was gratified to see his blood quickly saturate them.
“Damn, Harpy,” he moaned. “What’d you have to do that for?”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “And untie me right-the-fuck now!”
He wadded up the tissues and tossed them on the ground. “Aw, sweetheart, I can’t do that just yet. I need to make sure you’re gonna listen to me.” He gave her a reproachful look. “And I need to be sure you’re not gonna head-butt me like a damn billy goat again.”
Harper flipped her hair back and gave him what she hoped was Riddick’s feral grin. She must have done it right, because he flinched. “I make no promises.”
He shook his head, looking a little sad. “You’re different, girl. What’s happened to you? Is it that thug you’re dating?”
“You don’t get to talk about Riddick,” she said, barely able to move her mouth, her jaw was clenched so tight. “He saved my ass after you left. Without him, I’d probably be waiting tables at Kitty Kat Palace.”
No need to let him know that’s exactly what she’d done when he abandoned her.
Romeo Jones had been her partner when they both worked for Sentry. He’d been a slayer like Riddick, only less…naturally gifted.
When Sentry disbanded, Romeo had suggested they go into the PI business together. Since Romeo had been a cop back in his pre-Sentry life, it seemed like a natural progression for him. For Harper? Not so much.
But she’d worked her ass off to get her license and learned as much as she could to run the business, while Romeo generally boozed, gambled, and whored his way through their profits. Then, one day, he just disappeared, leaving only a note.
Harpy,
Just can’t do it anymore. Heading to Vegas. I’m real sorry, babe. Good luck.
Harper would’ve gotten over losing her partner and friend, but Romeo also stuck her with the business’s sizable debt. And without Romeo, folks didn’t seem as willing to hire her.
But Riddick had changed all of that. When he partnered with her, business tripled. (Which just proved how backward folks in her hometown were. Seriously, it was like she’d been living in an episode of Remington Steele until she was able to tell prospective clients that her new partner was a big, scary dude. Sad, really, that in 2015, people still didn’t totally trust a smart, capable woman to run a business without the help of a man.) And unlike her partnership with Romeo, Riddick was willing to let her call the shots for the business.
Romeo had the nerve to put a hand on her knee. “I am sorry I left like that, Harpy. You deserved better. But I was all kinds of messed up. Everything is different now.”
To say she was skeptical was an understatement. And to say he’d been “messed up” was also an understatement. His addictive personality made him susceptible to every vice known to man, and probably a few known only to the supernatural community.
But he did look better than he had in a long time, she noticed, giving him a critical once-over.
His blond hair was still long overdue for a trim and looked like a comb hadn’t touched it in weeks, but it had a healthy luster to it that it’d lacked when he was with her in Whispering Hope. His clothes were rumpled and worn, but clean-looking with no visible vomit stains, which was a bit out of the ordinary for him.
He’d lost a little weight since she’d last seen him, but it looked like he might’ve traded some fat for lean muscle. If she had to guess, she’d say he was about one-eighty, which seemed like a good weight for his six-two frame.
And as much as she hated to admit it, the bastard was still handsome, with the scruffy, blue-eyed good looks of an older Chris Hemsworth.
Which was why she’d never been able to watch either of the Thor movies. It would’ve been too weird to perv on a guy who looked so much like Romeo, the asshat.
“OK, so maybe you’re clean now,” she said, putting particular emphasis on maybe. “That still doesn’t change the fact that you kidnapped me, you stupid jackass! Do you have any idea what Riddick’s going to do to you when he finds me?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I have an idea of what he’ll want to do to me. But you’ll convince him otherwise.”
She snorted. “So, I guess my head-butt wasn’t clear enough. Move a little closer so I can express myself better.”
“Oh, darlin’, I think your boy toy has made you bloodthirsty.”
She ignored the dig at Riddick this time. He’d pay for it when she was free. “You have no idea. Now. Untie. Me.”
“Can’t do it just yet. But I’ll make a deal with you.”
Harper narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t make deals with kidnappers.”
He let his head fall into his hands. “Christ,
girl, you’re gonna make this difficult, aren’t you?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
When he lifted his head, his eyes held a kind of desperation she wasn’t used to seeing from Romeo Jones. It threw her off-balance for a moment, made her feel something dangerously close to sympathy.
But she quickly stomped down that feeling when she thought about how worried Riddick must be about her. He was probably going crazy. She had to end this quick for his sake.
She sighed. “Oh, all right. I’ll listen to what you have to say, but the second you’re done talking, you have to let me call Riddick to tell him I’m OK.”
He lifted his hand, twisting a few of his fingers together. “Scout’s honor.”
“You were never a Boy Scout. And that’s a gang sign you’re flashing there, dumbass.”
He looked down at his hands, a little sheepish. “Oops. Guess that explains why that scoutmaster called the cops on me that one time.”
She rolled her eyes. It also could’ve been that the scoutmaster and his troop had found Romeo naked in the park, masturbating. He’d been so stoned that he’d been sure he was at home. “Get on with it. Why am I here, Romeo?”
“Interesting story.”
Well, hell. In her experience, anytime Romeo started a conversation with interesting story, it usually ended with someone—often her—getting royally screwed.
“What do you know about the paranormal community here in Vegas?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I know there are some here, even though it seems like an unlikely place for them.”
After all, why would vamps who burst into flames in the sunlight want to live in a desert? And while their reaction to intense sun was less…spectacular than a vamp’s, werewolves also tended to stick to cooler, less sunny areas of the world, since their body temperatures ran about twenty degrees hotter than humans.
“There aren’t that many of them, but the ones that are here are ruthless. And powerful.” He shook his head. “They’re mafia, Harpy. Two families: Lykoi and Vrykolakas. Greek names. Lykoi means werewolf and Vrykolakas means vampire. They’re always fighting for control of the territories, which around here, means casinos.”
Harper felt her stomach clench at the word mafia. She pretty much hated Romeo more than anyone on the planet at the moment, but even she didn’t want him dead at the hands of the supernatural mafia, for God’s sake.
“So, let me guess,” she said, her tone desert-dry, “you somehow managed to piss off one or both mafia families at the same time.”
His answering smile was sickly at best. “You always were a sharp one.”
Her chin hit her chest. “Jesus Christ, Romeo. What did you do?”
He shoved both hands through his hair. “I had a little bit of a gambling problem. I owed the Vrykolakas a few bills.”
Which probably meant hundreds of thousands, knowing Romeo.
“They said I could pay them back by participating in the Arena.”
Harper lifted her head. “The Arena?” she asked, incredulous. “The mythical underground, illegal fight club? That Arena?”
“Not so mythical. It’s real, Harpy. Once a month over the course of a few days, the two families pit their fighters against each other. The winning team controls the most profitable supe-owned casinos until the next month, when the losers have their chance to win back control.”
“They let humans fight for them?” she asked.
“Hell, yeah. Humans have long odds against them, so if we’re able to take down a supe, our house wins big.”
This was starting to make more sense. The Vrykolakas backed Romeo in the Arena, and when he won against a Lykoi, he made them shitloads of money. But when he lost…
“You came up against someone you couldn’t beat, didn’t you?”
Romeo dropped his head into his hands again. “I beat—probably—forty supes total in the Arena and barely broke a sweat. They’re mostly amateurs. Easy to take down. They rely too much on their strength and don’t fight smart enough. But the last fighter?” He lifted his eyes to hers and what she saw there raised goosebumps on her skin. “He’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“Shifter?” she asked.
“No. Human…but not, somehow. I can’t explain him. But if I’d won against him, my debt to the Vrykolakas would’ve been cleared, since the odds were heavily against me. But he soundly kicked the crap out of me, I’m afraid to say.”
Grrreeeaaattt. Romeo was an asshat, but he was a good fighter. What he lacked in brute strength he made up for in experience, finesse, and training. Harper would put her money on him against almost any other human fighter, and he’d proven he could take down vamps and shifters. So the mystery fighter was something…else. Possibly something unique.
And in the paranormal world, there wasn’t much that was scarier than unique.
“So you lost the fight and still owe the Vrykolakas a ton of money. Why are you still walking around? Why didn’t they break your kneecaps or something?”
Romeo gestured to their surroundings. “I’ve been getting my Howard Hughes on, darlin’. I haven’t left this place since the fight.”
She narrowed her eyes on him. “Then how did you know I was at the casino?”
“Before the fight, just in case, I wired every vamp and shifter casino in town. I’ve got cameras and bugs all over the place. If anyone is gunning for me, I’ll know it right away.”
“And you risked walking into a casino to grab me? Why?”
He brushed her hair out of her eyes and grinned when she tried to bite his hand. “I need you to do something for me, Harpy. Just one little favor and you’ll never see me again.”
Well, the never seeing him again part actually sounded pretty good, but she failed to see what she could do to help him out of his current situation. It’s not like she had ties to the paranormal mafia, for God’s sake. “Do you need paperwork to escape or something? Because I haven’t made fake IDs in years.”
And making fake IDs, much like learning a foreign language, was a skill you lost if you didn’t use it regularly. Harper had gotten good at it years ago when they helped an abused housewife escape her asshole vampire husband. But she hadn’t done it since. She was pretty sure her lamination machine didn’t even work anymore.
“No,” Romeo said, glancing down, which struck Harper as ominous. After a brief pause, he continued, “I need you to convince Riddick to fight in the Arena on my behalf.”
Chapter Eight
Harper burst out laughing, but when Romeo didn’t even crack a smile, her own smile fell. “You’re not kidding.”
He shook his head, offering her an annoying crooked grin. “Nope. I need Riddick. He’s the only fighter I’ve ever seen that can take on the guy who beat me, the Lykoi’s final fighter.”
“How do you even know the Vrykolakas will let a stand-in fight for you? They might kill you on sight.”
The annoying grin grew. “That’s where you come in. The boss, Archer, is a sucker for pretty little things like you. If anyone can talk him into it, it’s you.”
I swear to God, when my hands are free… “Romeo, you are certifiable. Why on earth would I allow myself—and Riddick—to be pimped out to save your sorry ass?”
His grin faded. “I was hoping you’d feel a little gratitude for getting you started in the business, and lending you that money last year.”
“Oh, fuck you! You didn’t lend me anything. Riddick had to beat that money out of you, and it was money you owed me, anyway.”
His jaw tightened visibly. “So, you’re saying there’s nothing I can do to convince you to help me.”
“No,” she said, more emphatic than she’d ever been in her life. “There’s nothing you can do to convince me to endanger myself and Riddick in an attempt to save you from a mess you created all on your own.”
He glanced away and sighed, and when his eyes met hers again, the desperation she’d seen earlier was back, plus…a little something different. Something co
lder.
He pulled a syringe out of his back pocket.
A chill skated down her spine. “What are you doing, Romeo? What’s that?”
Romeo held up the syringe and flicked it a few times with his index finger. “What do you know about the cleaners who worked for Sentry?”
Harper’s mind raced. What the hell did Sentry cleaners have to do with the paranormal mafia?
“Not much,” she answered carefully. “I know they came in after seers and slayers left and removed the bodies. Destroyed evidence. Wiped the minds of witnesses.”
And they were badasses, she didn’t bother to add. Scary, too. They were cold, robotic, and ruthless. They saw the worst of the worst, and it didn’t seem to bother them in any way. When cleaners walked the halls at Sentry headquarters, people tended to change direction to avoid them.
Romeo nodded, still eyeballing the syringe. “When it became clear that Sentry would be forced to close its doors, leadership decided all the cleaners had to die.”
Harper felt her brow furrow. “Why?”
“Every single one of them was half a bubble off plumb. Loose cannons. No one could predict what they would’ve done without Sentry keeping them in line, giving them orders.”
Yeah, that sounded about like Sentry. Proactive and judgmental and destructive to a fault. “So what’s that got to do with the syringe you seem to be threatening me with?”
He held it up a little closer for her inspection. “They wanted the cleaners dead, but they didn’t want them dead immediately. They ordered them all out on their final missions to wipe out your boy Riddick and anyone known or suspected to be a natural. They gave them a week to get the job done.” He flicked the syringe again. “After they gave them a shot of this.”
Harper’s mouth went dry. Apparently Romeo was more desperate than she thought. “What’s in the syringe, Romeo?” she asked quietly.
“It’s a little cocktail the biochemists at Sentry cooked up. Think of it as a very slow-working cyanide. The cleaners finished their missions, then went gently into that good night.”
Semi-Human (Harper Hall Investigations Book 2) Page 4