Mars stepped back, giving her space, as though sensing her ire with this…this…mortal. He patted her on the shoulder but focused on Finn, and diverted the topic to one less combustible. “I’m an old military man myself. I’d enjoy sitting down with you to swap stories. Maybe coffee one day soon.”
That’s all she needed. For the God of War to hash out his glory days with a police officer. He’d probably regale the guy with stories of how he single-handedly vanquished the Titans the first time around. Not like they’d stayed vanquished. Two of them sat on the Olympus Board of Directors.
Finn grunted, the sound noncommittal. Without cracking a smile to ease the unforgiving lines of his face, he nodded at her. “Again, please accept my apologies if I’ve offended in any way. It’s been a…rough day.” Some emotion haunted his gaze, and he quickly dipped his head. “I’ll let you know about coffee, Martin. Nice to meet you both.”
His long-legged stride had him across the temple in the span of a few heartbeats. He’d been a boorish man from the moment she met him. The kind of man she had spent all her lifetimes avoiding.
So why was this guy so damned intriguing?
She spun on her uncle and unleashed all her confusion. “Mars, I can’t believe you said that about gods of war. What were you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I know him.” He shoved his fist into his pants pocket and tipped his head, watching Finn’s exit. He murmured, more to himself than to her. “But I don’t know how. And that bothers the piss out of me.”
Patting his cheek, she quipped, “Hard to believe after all these years your memory is slipping. Can deities get Alzheimer’s?”
“Niece, I do not know whether to hug you, or swat you like a harpy.”
“A hug would be nice. It’s been a long day and I have a bad feeling the respite from Pierus’s challenge is about to expire.”
“We’ve conquered the magpie bitches four times thus far. We have this.” Mars wrapped her in a comforting hug.
“And you could tell me the name of my partisan.” Aerie prodded his mind to see if she could locate the information about the supernatural guardian assigned to her. Each of her sisters had a protector, but they’d never been revealed until absolutely necessary. But his mind looked like a cast iron door marked with stark red letters spelling out No Admittance.
“You will know when you need to.” Mars’s chest rumbled under her cheek.
“I want to know now,” she complained, knowing beyond a doubt her uncle wasn’t about to tell her.
“I see a counseling session with Chronos is in order.”
“I’m not sure we have time for a meet and greet with the god of hours.” Aerie’s voice was muffled against Mars’s big chest.
“Consider this a lesson about time management and patience, Aerie.” He chuckled again and tightened his arms. If she could have, she’d have shrugged. He’d tell her when he was good and ready.
The warmth and steadfastness of his embrace had eased the tension still lingering from Lykos’s visit and her encounters with a certain police officer. Thankfully, the satyr had disappeared, but the blonde and the groom’s brother were molded together as one of the last couples on the dance floor. Somehow, Aerie had missed the newly married couple’s departure.
Pulling a camera over his head, Phillip strolled across the space to join her. Mars pressed a kiss to her forehead, nodded to Phillip, spun with military crispness, and marched away.
“I got some great shots of the happy couple departing,” Phillip reported. “Bernie got the Morgans into the limo and they are on their way to the bridal suite at the resort.”
“Thanks, Phillip. I appreciate you wrapping it up without my help. I’ve been a little distracted.”
Phillip hesitated, as though trying to make up his mind. He nodded and rushed on. “So, you know Mike Finnegan?”
“Just met him tonight. Why?”
“Just some, er, not great gossip about him.”
Now she was intrigued. She loved a juicy story, and from the look on his face, Phillip had a great tale. “Spill it.”
“He’s been on disciplinary leave a couple times in the past two years. Seems he has anger management issues. Word is, he has a hair trigger.”
“Really?” She wondered whether that aspect affected every area of his life. Heat flared under the skin of her cheeks, and she crammed the thought back into the deepest recesses of her mind.
“Yeah. My friend, Denise, in the evidence room, said he claims he blacks out and never remembers losing it.”
She recalled his expression when he mentioned beaters. Like they were scum he’d scrape from his shoe. “Has he hurt someone?”
“I don’t think so, but Denise said he can be frightening. Like the epitome of hate.”
Funny, she hadn’t gotten that vibe from him at all. Yeah, he was gruff, and definitely a hard-assed cynic, but hate-filled? She didn’t see it.
“Anyway, I was just going to caution you to steer clear of him.”
Something she’d already planned to do, regardless of how magnetic she found the man. “Thanks, I appreciate the warning. But I can take care of myself.”
“It never hurts to have a little extra help.” Phillip gripped the camera strap tightly. “I’m taking off now. You be careful.”
Why was everyone warning her to be careful? Low-grade anxiety circled in her gut. She hadn’t seen any signs of the magpies or Pierus, but the memory from earlier, of her awakening, arose in her mind’s eye. A feeling, call it a foretelling, settled around her shoulders; the brief hiatus was about to end. She only hoped her premonition didn’t mean it was her turn to face Pierus’s challenge. Now that would suck monkey balls.
Three
“Finnegan, Elwood! My office…pronto,” Captain Percy Barber hollered across the bullpen.
“Something tells me this is going to be as much fun as a bumblebee in a nudist camp,” Anson grumbled. He banged his palm on the desk and shoved to his feet.
Finn hadn’t stood yet. Scrubbing his hand over the nape of his neck, he cringed. The god-awful tension at the base of his skull had kicked in this morning as he’d driven to his gym around five. Typically, the burning pressure indicated a stinking mess of horrible was about to hit the fan. Whatever the captain wanted to talk about, Anson was right; Finn wasn’t going to love it.
“You coming?” Anse stopped next to Finn’s desk, tipping his head toward the corner office.
He sucked in breath to fill the black hole blooming in his chest and reluctantly stood. “Yeah.”
“You think this is about the Miller case?” Anse’s voice was low, edgy.
With a shrug, Finn followed his partner across the bullpen toward Barber’s office. They’d interviewed Meredith Miller in the hospital last Saturday. The woman’s husband had sprained her wrist, broken her clavicle, and blackened both eyes. Despite their best efforts to convince the battered woman otherwise, she’d refused to press charges.
Anger and worry churned in his gut. He had such a bad feeling about this summons that he couldn’t stop himself from reaching for the doorframe on the way into the captain’s inner sanctum. The sharp edge dug into the heel of his hand. By force of will, he peeled his fingers away and trudged to the hard wooden chair his boss indicated. The surface was unforgiving under his ass.
“Shut the door, Elwood.” Barber’s tone softened uncharacteristically.
Finn’s nervousness escalated at the sudden teddy bear quality in the older man’s normally gruff voice. Clutching the side arms of the chair, he fought the constricting tightness around his throat. “What’s up, Cap?”
Barber chewed his lip and stared out through the window into the bullpen. Huffing out a breath through pinched nostrils, he blurted out, “No easy way to do this. No fucking easy way at all.”
He shifted his gaze to Finn. A shadow of sympathy passed over his face, chased by frustration and anger and wariness.
Yeah, I’m not gonna be happy with what comes next. Dropping on
e hand to his thigh, Finn dug nervous fingers deep into his quad, as if self-inflicted injury could deflect the incoming pain his boss was about to deliver. Anse squirmed in the chair next to him.
Temporary silence ruled the office, exaggerating the ticking of the clock above the door. The ringing of the phones was muted through the glass behind him. Finn desperately wished for the cap to spit out whatever shitty, world altering news he had.
Barber leaned forward. “Meredith Miller was found dead this morning. She’d been beaten almost beyond recognition.”
It felt like all the goddamned oxygen had been sucked from the room. Finn’s ears rang in the sudden vacuum; his head spun. A searing ache radiated along his thigh from where his fingers dug like steel pins into muscle.
Anse gasped. “What the fuck? I knew she shouldn’t have gone back to her asshole husband.”
“Tell me he’s been arrested,” Finn growled. The black hole in his chest enlarged, threatening to consume him. He beat it down ruthlessly, digging his fingers deeper into his leg.
Shaking his head, Barber made a sound of disgust deep in his chest.
Finn shoved out of his chair so violently it tipped on the back legs, smacked the drywall, and clattered to the floor behind him. Fists clenched, he skirted the fallen furniture and moved to the side of the desk. There wasn’t much space in the office, but he found a way to pace.
“Calm down, Mike,” Barber warned.
The look on Anse’s face as he righted Finn’s chair had to mirror his. Un-fucking-believable.
Finn marched a circuit from office door to the opposite wall. That damn bastard had killed his wife. Finn had used every resource, every strategy available to convince Meredith to bring charges, to take shelter at Sojourn House. To hide from the beastly temper of the man she’d married only six months ago. Saturday had marked the third time he and Anson had dealt with her complaints of domestic battery. No amount of counseling or offers of help changed her argument that the son of a bitch she’d married had turned over a new leaf. Fucker!
Finn never turned his anger on a woman, but he’d been so fucking close on Saturday. He’d held it together with the prayer she’d see reason. It had killed him to have to go to a wedding when all he’d wanted to do was stake-out the wife-beating son of a bitch and do him great bodily harm.
At least at the reception that night, Aerie Thanos had provided a distraction, even though she’d made it clear she wanted nothing to do with him. And who could blame her? At best, he was a dour, moody son of a bitch. At worst…
He wouldn’t go there, because he didn’t know for sure where his at worst led. Aerie had dismissed him with barely a thought when she’d taken offense at what he’d spewed in misplaced rage. But her tousled hair, violet-blue eyes, and that barely-there dress had taken his mind off Meredith. And weddings.
Finn pushed away thoughts of the red-head in order to tune in to the facts Barber regurgitated with equal parts vehemence and disgust. “He’s hiding like the pussy he is. Took refuge in his old man’s house and found a shotgun. SWAT has the house surrounded, but it’s a stand-off.”
Finn paused his pacing long enough to kick the corner. He barely registered the pain in his toes. The pain in his heart all but stole his ability to feel. He headed to the door. “I’m going to the scene.”
Obviously reaching the limit of his capacity to ignore Finn’s behavior, Barber barked, “Sit your ass down, Finnegan. I don’t want you anywhere near that standoff.”
Finn looked from the chair his boss pointed at to Barber, and then to Elwood, who had moisture brimming his eyes. Mother of God, Finn wanted to howl or punch something, or kick the wall again.
Instead he clawed in a breath, expelled it forcefully. “I’d like the afternoon off.”
Percy pinned a suspicious stare on him and blew out his cheeks. “No. You’ll just go looking for trouble. You’re still on probation.”
Probably the biggest drawback of being a hot-head was that employers frowned on using perps as outlets to alleviate anger management issues.
Worse than his boss’s distrust and his current probation was the blackouts. He truly didn’t remember the last episode. He’d encountered a guy beating up his kid behind his neighborhood grocery store. Allegedly, Finn had slammed the man’s head into a brick wall, but try as he might, he couldn’t summon even a hint of a memory of doing it. By the time he’d come to his senses, his knuckles were bruised and bloodied, and he had no recollection of how it happened. The guy had crumpled at Finn’s feet, but there wasn’t a scratch on him.
The grocery clerk who’d found Finn, the kid and the dad in the alley hadn’t seen the entire episode, and the area had been a blind spot on the security cameras. Those facts were the only reason he hadn’t lost his job. He’d been going to mandated appointments with a shrink, but she hadn’t been able to unlock the convoluted puzzle of his mind.
Finn went for calm as he replied, “I need to work off some of my anger. I’m just planning a trip to my gym.” Where he’d kick the stuffing out of a Muay Thai bag pretending it was Henry Miller’s head.
Anse spoke up. “I’ll go too, Cap. If you can spare me.”
“I don’t need a damn babysitter.”
“I could use some time with the punching bag myself. We done here, Cap?” Anse pushed to his feet.
Barber steepled his fingers and furrowed his brow. “Don’t let him out of your sight, Elwood.”
Touching two fingers to his forehead, Anse stood. He grabbed Finn’s bicep on his way past, and dragged him out the door.
Finn resisted the urge to press the accelerator to the floor as he drove the main drag to the Olympiad. After locking his Glock in the glove box of his old Bronco, he stalked into the gym. In record time, he’d changed from his street clothes into athletic shorts and a T-shirt. He slammed the locker door with a thunderous clang, and jabbed in a lock code. At least the blackness sitting on his chest like it could swallow him whole had eased a bit on the drive over. Small mercies.
Plopping down next to Anson in front of a row of hanging bags, Finn carefully taped his hands and wrists, knowing he was about to punish them, hoping to defeat the dark place…the fugue state…he normally slipped into when he was this pissed.
He tucked the end of the wrapping in and then flexed his wrists, testing the tightness. Perfect. Should last ten rounds with the heavy bag. “Ready?”
Anse jerked the strings of his boxing gloves tight with his teeth, and extended his arms toward Finn. “Tie me off.”
Jerking the strings harder than he needed to, Finn fastened the protective equipment. He could have gone with just punching the bag, like Anse, to work off his anger, but he really, really wanted…needed to kick the shit out of something. When he was done, Finn pushed Elwood’s hands aside. He leapt to his feet.
After a series of stretches and warm-up calisthenics, a basic he’d have ignored if he hadn’t been aware of what exactly he’d be putting his body through, his quads and hamstrings felt sufficiently limber.
He cupped his hands near his ears, pictured Henry Miller’s ugly mug on the scarred red vinyl in front of him and breathed deeply. Putting every ounce of his anger behind his elbow, he plowed his arms forward, right, left, right, then an elbow to where Miller’s skinny ribs would be. Imagining the feel of the douchebag’s bones cracking under the blows somehow wasn’t satisfying enough. He aimed another shot to the imaginary chin, then an uppercut into the bag’s midsection.
Finn worked his arms for a full five minutes before switching his attention to his legs. Rained punishing kicks to the lower two-thirds of the weighted cylinder. A knee to where thighs would have been. The top of his foot to the chest area.
Moving into a repetitive series of jabs, he landed uppercuts, knees, and round-house kicks. Ten minutes in, sweat ran down his face and neck, drenching his T-shirt, plastering it to his body.
Still angry enough to bite nickels and spit nails, he picked up his pace. His shins hit the bag at waist level,
over and over, until he grunted and panted with the exertion.
And still the punishment wasn’t enough. He paused, bent double and braced his hands on his knees for a count of ten, then straightened. His knuckles throbbed; his feet and legs ached with fatigue. He lifted the edge of his shirt to swipe his face, and then started over. Before embarking on a third circuit, he checked on Anson. His partner was hammering another heavy bag, the scowl on his face at odds with the haunted look in the man’s eyes. A look Finn knew was mirrored in his own eyes. And the thought of their grief pissed him off further.
With renewed vigor, he attacked his own bag, pummeling, kicking, jabbing with fists, heels, knees, until his vision blurred, and cold seethed up his chest. His subconscious warned him he was sliding into a fugue.
And so did his body. Lifting his hands felt as if he was punching through Jell-O, slow and ineffective. Pressure built around his chest, until breathing was nearly impossible. His world dimmed, then went to charcoal mist. Blood pounded in his ears, drowning out every other sound in the busy gym. Anger had risen so swiftly, it was as if his mind blanked, but his body continued to move of its own volition, like a fucking chicken with its head cut off. It felt like he was slipping from the solid world to one made of vapor.
Body unbelievably tense, he halted and fought the impending black out, sucking as much oxygen into his compressed lungs as possible. Slowly, thankfully, his vision cleared.
The first time he’d blacked out was right after his grandmother had died and he caught his dad beating his mom. He couldn’t recall attacking his dad, but the next thing he knew, he’d found himself locked in his bedroom. The next time he’d slipped into that shadowy world was in SEAL training, when his physical endurance had been tested almost beyond his limits. He had no idea what had happened, but suddenly, his instructors had him pinned in the sand in the wake of an episode he didn’t recall. Not due to anger, but because when they finally called the drill, he’d kept going.
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