Riley’s eyes lit up, and she leaned further around the edge of the entryway. “Ooh, really? Where?”
“He’s inside,” he snapped, dragging her back into cover. “Get back before you’re seen. The last thing we need to deal with is a lot of questions about what we’re doing here or the risk of us being recognized. I don’t want to end up in a jail cell tonight.”
“Oh, come on, I’m loads of fun in jail,” Riley said, laughing. “I always have tons of fun figuring out how to break out.”
“I didn’t need to hear that, and I’m going to pretend I didn’t.” He looked back out again, grimacing as the ache in his arm settled into a dull, constant throb. “I’d give so much money for my painkillers right now,” he admitted.
“Where are they?”
“Where else? In our former hotel room.”
“Shit.”
That must have been Riley’s favorite swear word, because she seemed to be saying it an awful lot lately.
“It’s got my name plastered all over it,” he reminded her. He patted his pockets down and added, “And my IDs are all in there, too.”
Riley scowled, dug into her own pockets, and said, again, “Shit.”
“Yours are gone, too?”
“Yeah, all of them,” she answered. “I left my FBI badge in there. It’s really going to suck if they run them and find out they’re fake.”
“Maybe we should worry about getting off the street for now,” he suggested. “We need to find somewhere to go. Should we call Ashton and Zachariah and let them know what’s happened?”
She took her phone out and shook her head, queuing up her text message inbox and starting to tap a message out with her thumbs. “I’ll text them,” she said. “Do you have any money?”
“My wallet’s still in the room,” he said. “I don’t have a penny on me.”
She sighed. “Me either. And since we don’t have any ID, I’m sure a hotel stay is out of the question, anyway.”
“Well, if that’s the case, you have any idea where we can go?” he asked. “Preferably somewhere where we won’t be asked questions we can’t answer.”
Riley hummed thoughtfully then poked through her phone, her thumb gliding over the screen as she said, “I think I have an idea.”
Scott groaned. “Am I going to regret asking you for ideas?”
“Probably.” She finished scrolling through her phone and put it to her ear, waiting as it rang through to whomever she was calling. “Hey, Marie, you busy?” she asked, and Scott fought back another groan. She had to call the woman that he couldn’t say he trusted with any degree of certainty. He didn’t like the way Marie had looked at him earlier, the way she’d seemed to read him like an open book.
Scott didn’t like feeling exposed. He liked it even less when someone he didn’t know did it. He’d spent enough time with Riley that he’d gotten used to the assessing looks she occasionally gave him, but this Marie woman? He didn’t know her from the next person on the street, and he didn’t want her to know anything more about him than absolutely necessary.
As he stewed over that, Riley finished her conversation and looked at him with an expression that suggested she was extremely proud of herself. “I got us a place to stay, but you’re probably not going to like it,” she said.
“Let me guess,” he replied, barely suppressing a sigh. “We’re staying at Marie’s, where she can be right there to pry into our business.”
“You make it sound like we’re not going to have a good time,” Riley quipped. “Don’t worry so much. We’re only staying until Zachariah and Ashton get into town and can offer up some financial support and maybe a hotel room.”
“Which means the rest of tonight and probably well into the day,” he pointed out. “Can we trust her enough to stay around her that long?”
“Well, I can,” Riley said. “And I guess that means you’re going to have to trust me and trust that I’m not about to walk us into somewhere that will get us killed.”
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Fine,” he acquiesced. “I do trust you. You know that. I wouldn’t have come with you in the first place if I didn’t.”
“Well, it’s not like I asked you to,” Riley muttered. But then she gave him a small smile and said, “Thank you for not taking ‘no’ for an answer, though.”
“That’s what partners are for, right?” he said. “To make the other half of the team do things they might not totally agree with?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” She peered around the edge of the entryway again, her eyes searching the scene in front of the Monteleone. Then she turned back to him and said, “Come on, we need to get moving before someone sees us standing here.”
Twenty minutes later, after a slow, casual walk one block over and down the street in order to avoid the police, Scott and Riley stood on the doorstep of Marie’s shop, Riley pecking on the glass pane set into the door with her characteristic impatience. Scott was getting annoyed with how long it was taking the woman to answer her door. Any moment now, a police officer could roll up on them and want to know why they were beating on a store’s door when, by all appearances, it was closed.
“Maybe she’s not here,” Scott suggested.
“She was here when I called twenty minutes ago,” Riley said, almost snarling the words out.
“She could have stepped out,” he pointed out. She glared at him, and he shrugged. “What? It’s just a thought.”
“She wouldn’t have stepped out if she knew we were coming,” she said. She twisted to look around the street and asked, “Do you think we should break in?”
“You’re kidding, right? There are cops that way,” he reminded her, jabbing his thumb back the way they’d come. “You couldn’t pay me enough to commit a crime around here right now.”
“That’s good to hear, because I certainly don’t want you breaking into my shop,” a voice said behind them. They turned as one to see Marie standing on the sidewalk behind them, a purse and a shopping bag in her left hand. “Sorry I wasn’t here. I stepped out to pick up some food for you guys.”
“Told you,” Scott said with a smirk.
“Oh, shut the hell up,” Riley muttered.
“I’ll get you guys settled in, then I’m heading home,” Marie continued, ignoring their exchange. Riley gave her a questioning look, and she added, “I’ve moved out of the shop and into an actual house since the last time you came to New Orleans. I’ve kept the apartment up in case I ever needed to use it. So you’ll have free reign over the entire apartment tonight.” She smiled and slipped around them to unlock the door. “This way, you can talk about whatever you need to without worrying about me prying into anything.”
Riley smiled and, once they were inside, gave Marie a tight hug. “Thanks so much, Marie,” she said. “You have no idea what help you are to us.”
“No need to thank me,” Marie said. “You’ve always been good to me. Besides, I owe you from last time. Consider this my repayment.”
Scott stepped forward and offered Marie his hand. “Thank you, Ms. Gautier,” he said. “You’re digging us out of a serious hole, and I’m not sure how to really thank you for it.”
“Just don’t mess up my apartment, and I’ll consider that my thanks.” She handed him the shopping bag and gave Riley one more hug. “You two get settled in. Be careful, and keep the door locked.”
She stepped out the front door, pulling it shut behind her, and a few seconds later, the bolt slid home as she locked it from outside.
Scott looked at Riley, and she stared back at him. Her eyes were red and a bit watery—probably irritation from the brown contact lenses she had in her eyes—and she looked exhausted. He could commiserate. He was ready to crawl into bed and get some sleep himself. The full-body ache from their fight with the werewolf had settled in with a vengeance, and he desperately needed to stretch his muscles out before they stiffened up. “Lead the way?” he asked Riley, making a sweeping gesture with his hand ahead of them.
“Why, of course,” Riley agreed. She grabbed the shopping bag from him and led him through the shop, heading to the back stairs to ascend to the apartment above.
All of the thick, muddy humidity of New Orleans was giving Brandon a headache. His sinuses had yet to adjust to the atmosphere in NOLA, despite the fact he’d been there several hours already. He shifted in his car seat, trying to get comfortable, as he cracked open a box of sinus congestion pills.
He’d been in his rental car the entire afternoon and evening, waiting for Ahm to make her appearance. He was getting impatient; it was a dangerous emotion to feel toward Ahm, who was so much more powerful and well connected than he was. Acting impatient was like asking to have the shit kicked out of him.
He tossed the dose of sinus medication in his mouth, and as he reached for the bottle of water in the center console’s cup holder, he glanced through the windshield and froze. Timothy Chambers stood about ten feet in front of his car, watching him like a predator eyed its prey, and he suppressed a shudder. Then his passenger door opened, and Brandon tore his eyes away from Chambers to see Ahm sliding into the seat beside him.
“I was wondering when you were going to get here,” Brandon commented after swallowing the mildly minty pills that Chambers had almost made him forget were in his mouth. “You’re late.”
“I was enacting step one of my plan,” she said, stretching her long legs out in the floorboard.
“Which was?”
“Flushing them out of that hotel they were holed up in,” she said. She stared out the passenger window, and Brandon had the distinct impression that she was unhappy about something.
“Did it work?” he asked.
“Of course it worked.” Ahm bobbed her head toward the windshield without tearing her eyes from the building alongside them. “I’m afraid I have made Chambers very angry with me.”
“How did you manage that?” he asked, unable to help himself.
“I sacrificed his Beta to flush out Hunter and Walker.” She said it nonchalantly, like it wasn’t that big of a deal.
Brandon, however, understood fully what sort of sacrifice Chambers had made in losing his Beta werewolf. A Beta to a pack’s Alpha was, in essence, the pack’s administrator: he—and it was almost always a he—typically dealt with the pack’s monetary accounts, expenditures, and general profitability. A werewolf pack was nothing if not mercenary. Losing a Beta would throw an entire pack into wild disorganization until a new one was found. It was a dangerous position for any pack to be in.
“Ahm, I’m not sure you fully appreciate the position you’ve put Chambers in,” Brandon said delicately.
“Oh, I understand it,” Ahm said. “I just find it difficult to care.”
Brandon glanced at the werewolf in question and saw his eyes narrow. Obviously, Chambers was more than just a little unhappy with Ahm. He hoped the Alpha’s unhappiness didn’t bleed over onto him.
“What about the other two?” he asked, turning his attention back to Ahm. “Did you deal with them?”
Ahm clenched her fists, digging her claws into her palms, and her pale cheeks flushed red with anger. “They got away,” she snarled, her lip curling to reveal the perfectly white, sharp fangs in her mouth. “I don’t know how, but they got away.”
“They are, I’m sad to say, unusually resourceful,” he replied. “I trained Zachariah too well. Damon had Ashton.”
A twinkle of interest showed up in Ahm’s eyes; he barely refrained from rolling his. “Ashton,” she repeated, as if she was swishing his name around in her mouth like fine wine. “Is that his name?”
Brandon didn’t like the obvious interest she was showing in Ashton. “He’s gay,” he told her.
“So?” she said. “You assume I hold a sexual interest in him. It’s far bigger than such petty, inane things.”
He scowled. “Why the hell does everyone have such an interest in Ashton Miller all of a sudden?” he demanded. “He’s nothing special. He’s just an agent who got mauled by a vampire two years ago.”
“He’s also a Watcher,” Ahm said. She chuckled, as if marveling at his idiocy. “Not to mention the fact he’s a—”
The sound of a cell phone ringing broke through their conversation, and Brandon grabbed for his phone before realizing it wasn’t his ringing but Ahm’s. She answered, said several words in that language of hers that he didn’t understand, then hung up and said, “They’re on the move.”
“Which ones?” he asked.
“Zachariah and Ashton,” she replied, rolling the latter’s name out with obvious relish. “Some of my demons have spotted them in Atlanta.”
“And I assume you gave the orders to kill them?”
Ahm let out a snort of laughter. “Not at all. If anything, I gave orders to leave them alone.”
“Why?”
She gave him a cold look that made his insides freeze. “Were you not listening a moment ago? Zachariah is too dangerous—he needs to die, yes—but Ashton is incredibly valuable, and he won’t come to me unless Zachariah does. So Zachariah cannot die until he’s here, with Ashton by his side.”
Eight
Riley barely missed the fist that swung at her face, rocking backwards on her heels to dodge the blow with a graceful arch of her back. Taking the opportunity to try to gain the upper hand, she wrapped the fingers of her right hand around her attacker’s wrist and pulled as hard as she could, even as she twisted to the side to avoid what she’d hoped would be his body as he fell.
Unfortunately, she had underestimated the speed at which her combatant could move. She’d have thought she would have learned by now. A foot hooked around the back of her knee, tangling her feet and throwing her off balance. She fell to one knee, ignoring the jolt of pain that rocked through her patella. Her opponent slammed into her, taking her down flat on her back and pinning her to the dirt.
“You made that entirely too easy,” her handler told her, his hands grasping her wrists and holding them down above her head. “You getting soft on me, Riley?”
“Get off me, Brandon,” Riley demanded, squirming under his tight grasp and heavy weight.
“Not until you explain to me exactly why you lost,” Brandon replied.
“Let me up, damn it.”
“Answer the question first.”
Riley rolled her eyes. “That wasn’t a question. It was an imperative sentence.”
“Riley…”
“I overestimated my own abilities,” she said, droning the words out with an exasperated sigh.
“And what happens when you do that?” Brandon prompted.
“I end up dead.”
Brandon grinned. “Yes. Just like this.” And before she could make any sort of sound of alarm, he whipped out a wicked-looking knife and plunged it into her throat.
Riley surged awake, her eyes wide, her fists clenched, and her breath stuttering in her chest. She clung to the edge of the bed she was laying on like it was a lifeline and struggled to get a grip on herself and remember where she was. Marie’s apartment, she recalled, the one above her shop. She was safe; she wasn’t in the training yard with Brandon, and she wasn’t dead or dying. The skin on her throat where dream-Brandon drove a knife into it tingled. She massaged the spot and took in a deep breath, getting her bearings.
She was lying on a big, king-sized bed under a thin, clean sheet with a higher thread count than she’d expected to encounter in an apartment Marie wasn’t even using. No light filtered around the edges of the cheap blinds hanging over the windows. The room was sparsely decorated—Marie had obviously stripped it down to its bare essentials, since it wasn’t her primary residence anymore—but it was comfortable, with a small bathroom off to the side and a kitchenette and tiny living room area that shared a joint studio-style space. It was pleasant, a lot more bearable than many places Riley had found herself in when running from the law.
There was a shift in the corner of her eye, almost the barest of movements, and she turned her head to see Sco
tt lying beside her. His hair was ruffled, and he had bloodstains on the shoulders of his shirt, probably where blood had oozed through the bandages there, and the beginnings of dark circles under his eyes from lack of proper sleep. But his eyes were closed, and he looked like he was sleeping well. Better than she was, at any rate. She was glad she hadn’t woken him up with her flailing.
Even as that thought crossed her mind, Scott’s eyelids fluttered, and he stretched almost languidly, aborting the movement halfway through when, she assumed, his shoulders pained him. He blinked a few times and then gave her a small, tired smile. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she returned. She flopped back onto the bed, flat on her back once again, and scrubbed both hands over her face.
“Sleep good?” he asked. Then he paused and added, “You didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t,” she confirmed.
“Nightmares?”
“No, not at all.”
“What time is it?”
Riley rolled onto her side and grabbed her cell phone from the small folding table by the bed, activating the screen to read the time. “Almost dawn.”
“You should try to get more sleep,” he suggested. “Never know when our next chance for rest will come around again.”
Riley shrugged and burrowed under the bedsheet again, fighting back a yawn. “How much longer do you think we have until Ashton and Zachariah get here?”
“Depends on which direction they’re driving,” Scott said, talking through a yawn. “If they came through Atlanta, I figure they’ll be here around eight or nine, maybe a little later. We should come up with a plan for the day so we’re at least being productive until they get here.”
“My idea of being productive is sleeping,” she muttered. She closed her eyes and wiggled further under the sheets, trying to force herself to relax so she could go back to sleep. Of course, when she tried to force herself to do something, it typically didn’t happen; some things just weren’t meant to be forced. Despite her attempts to sleep, though, she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to risk returning to that terrible nightmare she’d woken up from. She could still feel the sensation of the dream-knife sliding into her throat. She pressed her hand on the spot, swallowing convulsively.
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