Bone Hunter

by Thea Atkinson

  He should not have been able to recognize me either.

  I yanked my invite back from the doorman and wilted away from the queue uncertainly, not sure if I should melt back toward the street or keep forging ahead to the lobby. If Maddox could see through the disguise, then surely Scottie would. I needed to haul ass out of there before I ended up pitched into a peat bog myself, somewhere discreet.

  Maddox made to say something more and I swung away, pulling the string of my beaded purse along with me through a throng of genteel seniors holding colorful pamphlets. I wished for a second I hadn't worn heels at all. The diminutive Isabella would have been able to disappear easily while the tall redheaded Ginger had to clomp along slowly and painfully, each step in fear of discovery.

  Maddox followed me as I melted away from the lineup and despite me forcing as brisk a pace as I could, abruptly pushing through some rather stately divas who really shouldn't have been out so late, he kept up with me.

  I felt his fingers brush against my arm.

  I fumbled with my purse because I simply didn't dare look full into that green-eyed gaze, even through the windows of my colored contacts.

  He edged nearer to me and had to lean so close when a patron pushed past that I felt his breath on my cheek. My heart sped up and something within made me search out Scottie's face through the crowd, afraid he'd see me with another man.

  Maddox's fingers kissed the edge of my elbow, forcing my attention back to him.

  "Hey," he said.

  "Do I know you?" I said, trying to put the ice of a stranger's voice in the query. An inexplicable nervousness sang along the edges of my nerves.

  "Ouch," he said. "I think I just heard my heart crack."

  The timbre of his voice made me think of velvet and chocolate, and I flicked my gaze back to his, drawn by something I couldn't resist. I should just brush him off and keep going. I'd waited too long already to disappear.

  Maybe he'd move on, thinking he'd made a mistake. I shook my head at him, deciding silence was my best option. He wasn't to be dissuaded so easily.

  "You're not leaving so soon, surely," he said. "You'll miss the show."

  "I changed my mind," I said, flustered. "Not that it matters to a stranger."

  He canted his head to the side. "I'm not in the habit of calling strange women Kitten," he said.

  I shivered as I caught the faintest hint of soap and smoke. My memory cast about for an image of him that was clear and perfect. I ended up snagged on the most pleasant one I had: of he and I in his office, filled with books and the finest scotch. I remembered the little box he'd stored the rune in and the way he'd pulled a mace from the wall, ready to do battle with the fae assassin who had door-crashed his bazaar.

  I shuffled sideways at the memory, my heels nearly buckling and reminding me I was in a dress and rather uncomfortable shoes.

  One side of his mouth tugged up as he watched me fidgeting, and I found I had a hard time pulling my eyes from the small dimple just at the fleshiest part of his cheek.

  "In fact," he said. "I call only one woman by that nickname." He snicked in tight enough to my side that his lips brushed my earlobe. "But she's not a redhead and certainly isn't as tall as you."

  At that moment, someone pushed into us and he caught me with one broad hand on the small of my back as I jostled sideways. It was a reflexive movement, I knew, one a gentleman did without thinking when someone next to him nearly tumbles, but something in the way his fingers splayed across the curve of my hip made me flush.

  I stammered out something about needing to get inside and he scooped my chin with his fingers so I had to look him in the eye where he could search my face.

  Damn those eyes. They could melt the panties off a blow-up doll. I swallowed down the clump that tightened my throat when his gaze dropped to my mouth and then down to the stem of the rose tattoo. I hoped it looked real under that careful scrutiny, one that made no apologies for lingering so long.

  "I owe you an apology then," he said. "A case of mistaken identity, we'll call it." The dimple appeared again.

  I knew he was teasing me and I should have given up the pretense, but just when I thought I should, a willowy blonde with hair so light it looked like spun silver sauntered over, waving what looked like liquor tickets over her head.

  All thoughts of revealing myself sailed down the gutter along with one of the tickets that escaped her manicured fingers.

  She sidled up next to him, slipping an arm into his elbow and molding her entire body into his side. She didn't so much as give me a glance. I supposed she didn't think there was any competition worth looking over.

  "I scored five extra champagne slips," she purred and actually licked his earlobe.

  I was annoyed to see she didn't have to strain upward to do so, even though Maddox was a good six foot four. I told myself I would not look at her shoes. Mine were high enough and I only reached his Adam's apple. If hers were flat, I was going to choke on my annoyance.

  His eyes left mine and slid over his date as he extracted his hand from my back and wrapped them around her waist.

  "You know they're just for kitsch factor," he said, and his gaze stopped at her mouth. "They'll give you whatever you want."

  She laughed with a tinkling, breaking crystal kind of sound. I felt as if I was chewing on the glass shards.

  "Of course," she said with more than a loaded amount of silk in her voice. One that was saturated with intimacy. "But not everyone likes that scotch dishwater you drink, Maddox."

  He eyed me with feigned indulgence. "Glenfiddich offends Kerri's Irish heart."

  I stammered out something that sounded like how lovely and tried to get my feet to move in the direction of the queue and away from Maddox and his silky sounding date. Watching them fawn over each other was making me ill.

  Scottie had disappeared, inside no doubt and up to no good involving that poor girl in his clutches. That left me open to find the queue and get inside.

  I knew I needed to get about my own business. But for some reason, I felt like a failure already.

  I braced myself with a deep inhale and headed toward the doorman, my initial confidence sagging even if my determination was renewed.

  "We'll see you inside?" Maddox said from behind me.

  I spun inelegantly in my shoes and tried to run a sophisticated smile over my features.

  "My date is inside already," I said. "We have special access after the lecture. I doubt we'll have time to hang about and chit chat."

  I kept my gaze on Kerri. Her eyes narrowed briefly at mention of special access. I mentally stabbed the air with a victory whoop.

  Then she spoke and ruined it.

  "There is no lecture," she said, indicating the real reason for her crestfallen look. Not jealousy at all. Annoyance, I discovered when she turned to Maddox. "You said I wouldn't have to sit through another boring history symposium."

  She stabbed her finger into his chest. "You lied again," she said.

  He curled his fist around her finger and pulled it down next to his side. There was a possessiveness to it that clogged up my throat.

  "I did not lie," he told her softly, patiently. "I don't lie, and you know it."

  She pulled away and threw her hip sideways, cocking her extricated hand along its slim curve. She was wearing Wang, I noticed, a deep black sheath so tarlike, it shimmered blue in the creases and made her tarry eyes look even more black. She looked like a goddess as she stood there.

  Despite my determination to get back to business, I couldn't help watching them from the corner of my eye as I moved along in the line. A few other patrons seemed to think the same.

  Kerri jerked her head in my direction.

  "She said lecture." She said without looking at me.

  "I agreed to a symposium," he pointed out with a cocky lift to his eyebrow. His voice, I noticed, had risen a decibel. "A lecture is a totally different thing."

  She sniffed and hit him with her purse. Hard. Several
people halted in their eddy toward the queue.

  I caught my breath. This was a scene in the making. I needed to evade the exposure already melting down around the couple. I tried to move ahead a few people and got glared at for attempting to cut the line.

  I settled for keeping my head down instead as she hit him again. He clutched at her wrists, whereupon she began kicking him with silver toed sandals.

  I blinked stupidly and backed away, swinging my gaze left and right. More people had begun to rubberneck. A slim and wiry gentleman in a smart moss green suit broke away from the crowd nearest the doorman. Security alongside the doors squared their shoulders and lifted radio watches to their mouths.

  Kerri began to complain loudly that Maddox never did anything she wanted, that he took her for granted. She was gorgeous and loud in her comments and that alone wouldn't make too much of a scene, but when she crossed into complaints about the bedroom, I knew there was no way to evade notice.

  She threw in a complaint about him not being willing to engage in what she called lustful threesomes and then everyone who wasn't looking at them, swung their gazes their way, no doubt imagining exactly what she was detailing so perfectly and so specifically.

  There was something breathtaking about the way she looked. Her hair came free its sleek ponytail and wisped about her face. Her slim, graceful arms rose in the air as if dancing a frenzy.

  The men in the crowds got smug, lustful looks as they watched her, and the women were running their eyes down Maddox's form with obvious sympathy and desire. I was rooted to the floor myself for a long moment, trapped by the image that cantered its way through my mind.

  For the briefest of moments, I was wrapping naked legs over and between theirs and the sensation that rippled up my spine made me gasp.

  I dropped my purse at the intensity of it.

  I bent to retrieve my purse, grateful to duck out of sight. That was when I noticed, from the corner of my eye, the ruddy gentleman slip right past the doorman, whose eyes were on the gorgeous Kerri.

  A distraction. That's what this was.

  I should have seen it. Should have known it for what it was right away: nothing but a concerted and practiced means to get that green suited man past the guard.

  It was a clichéd ploy but effective. With any other two people, it might not have worked, but they were both gorgeous. The addition of salacious detail made them impossible to resist. And the hole they left in the queue and in the attentions of the doorman made the perfect opportunity for the little man to slip by.

  I should have felt irritation that someone else was here to work some mischief. Between Maddox and Scottie, there were all too many unknown plottings afoot. And they could serve only to make my own more complex and dangerous.

  But all I could feel was relief. Maybe I didn't have to feel jealous of the gorgeous woman at all. In fact, she might be just the thing to have helped out my case. Who would look my way at all with her in the vicinity. Even Scottie would be hard pressed not to see her before any other woman.

  I tried to convince myself of that as I rose and sidled my way through the crowds to the door that the relief was from the favor they'd done me by keeping my QR code intact and unused.

  I felt that relief for all of three minutes.

  CHAPTER 7

  By the time I was inside, I was already grateful and had decided to push thoughts of both the gorgeous Kerri and the equally gorgeous Maddox out of my mind.

  I had pinned my line of sight on the curator, standing alone with a smug look on his face as he surveyed the room. Servers brought trays of tall-stemmed glasses to patrons as they entered, and I shook my head as one of them, a middling height brunette with too heavy eyeshadow, offered a glass to me.

  "Are you sure, hun?" she said. "This isn't the cheap stuff."

  "I'm sure," I said with a thanks and tried to slip past her.

  She sidestepped pretty effectively and blocked my escape. She pushed the tray toward me. She smelled of cheap perfume and for all the makeup, she still managed to look like a lesbian pretending to be straight. Her wrist was bruised where two small marks kissed against each other.

  I found myself commenting on them despite my better judgement.

  "Cat bite?" I said.

  She twisted her wrist at my glance downward and shook her hand out. "Oh this," she said. "Damn cat. Got me in the leg too. You have any?"

  "Cats?" I said to clarify. "One," I said, thinking about the feline who no doubt had already shredded my duvet in anticipation of my return.

  "Match made in heaven, then," she said and cocked her hip at me. "We should drink to it."

  Maybe she was paid by the glass, who knew. I plucked a stem from the tray and lifted it toward her. "Slainte," I said and made to lift it to my lips.

  She smiled encouragingly. "I can get us a whole bottle for later, if you like."

  This wasn't going well. She had already looked me over far too much for my comfort. Disguise be damned; too much exposure wasn't great either. I started cursing my vanity in earnest. I never fancied myself overly attractive and perhaps had miscalculated the power of a ginger haired chick with her cleavage bared.

  "Sure," I said, deciding hope was a lesser mnemonic than rejection. I searched out her name tag, thinking that at the very least, she might be useful. "Ismé, is it?"

  "May," she said. "It's pronounced with a may at the end."

  "Well Ismay," I said. "Sometimes gals gotta stick it to the man."

  "Stick it to all men," she said as though she'd found a kindred spirit.

  I smiled and lifted the glass again and let the bottom trail along the stem of my rose tattoo, pulling her eyes away from my face before spinning coyly around and hightailing it toward the curator.

  He was still alone. Good. If I'd judged carefully, he'd be ordering the doors to the exhibition room open in about five minutes. My gaze skirted the lobby, eager to avoid Scottie's notice as I approached him. Five minutes would be plenty of time for me to accost the curator with video of his unnatural proclivities and get through the exhibit room to the basement doors at the other end. While the rest of the party was enjoying a lecture and a bunch of dry-heaved pleadings for funding, I'd be picking through the crates in the basement and stashing a few priceless but miniature items.

  I dropped my flute on a passing tray, mentally rubbing my palms together. My spine tingled the way it did when I was about to step into heist mode. So many variables. There was a certain excitement to it all.

  An adrenaline junkie would love it.

  I was no more than three feet away when I heard Scottie's voice and the chill he evoked chased the excitement down my spine, raising the downy hairs along the back of my neck. He was close. Maybe just a foot to my left. I had the horrible thought that he'd know my scent, the way I stood. He'd seen me in disguise a good many times; he'd know me if I was dressed head to heel in a paper bag.

  I stole a glance out the side of my peripherals. He was a foot away. But the girl stood between us, blocking his view of me and I might have been relieved at that, except her posture was off. Everything about her looked stiff and unnatural. Her demeanor screamed she wanted to be noticed.

  And she was staring at me.

  She was scared. Maybe even terrified. I totally got that. Scottie could have that effect on a person.

  But I was not going to risk it. I had to tell myself that whatever he wanted from her, in the end, the room was full of people. He couldn't harm her outright. Whatever doom she was expecting, surely she had time to figure a way out of it. If she was smart.

  But maybe she wasn't smart. Maybe she was just unfortunate.

  Scottie collected those the most.

  I groaned inwardly. It wasn't my problem. It couldn't be. I had to move on. Whatever trouble she was in she would have to work it out.

  I turned my back toward them, angling so that he couldn't see my profile, only the lean of my shoulders.

  The curator caught my eye. He was a man in hi
s late 30s or early 40s, and he was handsome. The sort who looked like he sipped brandy or port after dinner. No one would suspect him of being a pedophile.

  It amazed me the number of seedy folk in this city, but it always made for effective connections. If someone had a secret, they'd do anything to keep it, and you could work your way through a network of seedy folk without getting your hands dirty except for a bunch of proxy fingers.

  But the pedophiles. I couldn't keep them around. I used them when I had to and discarded them as quickly as I could. They made me ill. And they were a bigger liability than I wanted.

  So looking at the curator and the way he puffed out his chest as his patrons idled about drinking from champagne flutes and picking at Italian-style cicchetti morsels from the various trays, I knew he'd let me into the sanctum. He'd give me those ten minutes because he needed to safeguard his reputation like a badger in his den.

  I could be in and out in moments.

  It was now or never.

  I plastered a smile over my face and stuck my hand into my purse. I stepped toward him, pulling in a bracing breath.

  Except that was when Scottie stepped forward too. Like lightening, the girl moved as well, funneling along with him toward me and the curator.

  I knew right then what was happening. It was so clear. I'd been a fool to not see it before.

  The girl was beautiful in an exotic way. Soft black hair, the blackest, inkiest of eyes.

  And just the right age for the curator.

  My stomach clenched into a fist of muscle.

  Scottie was using that girl, and now I knew how.

  My sense of indignation overcame me before my good sense could kick in. I took that last step and practically shoved the girl to the side. I think she might have stumbled. I didn't care.

  All I wanted was to move her out of harm's way. I didn't notice until the curator yelped out loud that in my haste, I'd stepped on his toe.

  His gaze landed on me, but instead of slipping to my cleavage where I'd spent so much care, it bit into my eyes.

  I held my breath, hoping the expensive contacts would look real this close up. He glared at me for a long second before he repositioned his good natured, professional look onto his face.