“Insane, obsessed bad guys?” Angel supplied, feeling a familiar bitterness creep in.
Gabe shot her a sideways glance before turning away to shove a hand through his hair. “You won’t be in your right mind. The past will screw with you.”
“Gabe, I can’t sit still and do nothing. It’s a ninety-nine percent chance this thing is for some reason focused on me. I’m the only warden living in that area.”
Gabe shot her a surprised look. “How did you know that?”
She smiled. “I didn’t. You just confirmed it for me.”
He exhaled and swore softly.
She went on, all seriousness again. “This thing is either circling in for an attack like a shark, or its trying to get my attention,” she said. “If it’s the former, then I’m in mortal danger, Gabe. And if it’s the latter and I pretend not to notice, the Apex will just up its game.”
“I’ll handle it.”
Angel watched him for a few shocked seconds. “Oh?” she finally asked, bewildered. “How exactly will you do that?” He’d just told them all that the job belonged to the Monsters clan.
“It isn’t your concern,” he said without looking at her.
“Oh, I think it very much is my concern. This creature is gunning for me.”
Gabriel put his hands on his hips and took a deep breath as if preparing for something. He still didn’t look at her, and Angel’s wariness grew. He closed his eyes for a moment and rolled back his shoulders.
Then he asked, “Angel, what aren’t you telling me?”
Angel froze. She blinked a few times and sat back in the metal chair. She put her hands on the arm rests to try and calm her nerves. “What do you mean?”
Gabriel dropped his hands and opened his eyes. He turned the full search beam of his attention on her, leaning over the table to brace himself against it with two strong arms. The color of his beautiful eyes had lightened dramatically, going from amber to citrine that caught the light overhead and focused it like a magnifying glass.
At once and like a slap in the face, Angel remembered where she was. This was the interrogation room. She was in the chair. And Gabriel Santiago was the Vega clan’s best interrogator.
He’d brought her in here on purpose, and not solely because of the Apex job. He was planning on questioning her. He was planning on getting answers out of her. And for that he had her right where he wanted her.
Gabriel waited there a moment, allowing her to fully realize the situation before carefully formulating his words. “You haven’t been sleeping.”
Angel opened her mouth to protest out of general stubbornness, but he held up his hand, silencing her before she’d made a sound. “Don’t insult me by denying it. We’ve already established this much.”
He lifted off the table and circled around it. She watched him come with mounting trepidation. “What you haven’t admitted, but that we both know, is that you’re being haunted. Now. After a decade and a half of flawless work.” He rounded the table and stopped beside her chair, but she refused to look up at him. Instead, she stared at his boots.
“I want to know why, Angel. I want to know why you’re so tired you can barely stay on your feet – yes, I noticed. I want to know why you’re unable to defend yourself when we train. I understand you’ve had no break since the Victor Maze case, but you’ve managed to handle stints like this before.” He leaned down, resting his hands on the arm rests of her chair. “This is different. Something is eating you.” He spun her chair around, scraping its legs on the cement as he did so.
She stifled a cry of surprise and instead chewed on her bottom lip. She could feel it tremble between her teeth.
“I want to know why you’ve chosen not to heal yourself before going to sleep the way you used to.”
He was brutally laying out the evidence of her problems like suffocating layers of truth she couldn’t hide from. He was right about everything, including the healing, and she hadn’t even realized that one until he pointed it out.
Before all of this, she’d developed the habit of using some of her healing magic to tend to really bad bruises or bothersome injuries before resting because she knew she would regain that magic power in sleep just like a human regained energy. But she hadn’t done that for some time.
“Why are you holding out every night, Angel? What is it you are so afraid will happen to you while you sleep?” He spelled out her actions and their reasons with crystal clear comprehension. She couldn’t hide a damn thing from him.
“And most of all,” he continued, his tone lowering, “I want to know why you were absolutely certain before we’d even pinpointed your apartment’s exact location on the map that you are the Apex’s target.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Angel chewed furiously, until a sudden sharp pain in her bottom lip drew her up short, and she winced, finally freeing her lip from her teeth. She tasted blood, but sucked it in and straightened in her chair. “It was a hunch, that’s all.”
Gabriel’s silence stretched, his eyes narrowing dangerously. “Wow.”
Angel lowered her head. Her hands curled into fists.
Gabriel’s voice was half bitter disappointment, half stark impatience. “I thought we were past this too.”
“What do you want me to say, Gabe?” Her head jerked up and her eyes flew toward his as she prepared to force him away from her and stand – but he was right there, a few very small inches from her face. His eyes tore into hers, bright amber lanterns that lit her from the inside.
And for the umpteenth time since she’d joined the Vega clan, Angel found herself caught in Gabriel Santiago’s sway. There was a reason he was clan leader. He reminded her of that reason as he took a slow, deep breath and lowered his voice, speaking to her almost intimately. “If you can look me in the eye and tell me in all honesty that you have not been contacted, that there is no one messing with your head, and that the predator hasn’t already made himself known to his beautiful prey.... If you can do this right now Angel, I will believe you.” He paused for effect. “Otherwise, you will go back to your apartment with heavy escort, gather what you need for one full week, and be escorted back to my place, where you will stay under twenty-four-seven guard until I get this mess figured out.”
Angel felt trapped between a rock and a hard place, and really she was. Her body was stiff, the metal chair cold at her back, Gabe solid and scary in front of her. Her lip pulsed with pain, and her mind spun with a mix of fear, fury, and indignation. She knew she couldn’t give him the answer he wanted. And he knew it too, which was why he’d brought her here in the first place and delivered his ultimatum.
After nearly a full minute of silence from them both, Angel took her courage in both hands and said, “You have to let me help with this, Gabriel.” She licked her sore lip, and his eyes finally slipped to her mouth as if he’d been controlling himself, preventing himself from doing so until now.
His pupils dilated before returning to reclaim her eyes. She added softly, “Please.”
“Why?” he asked point-blank, not letting up.
He wanted her to confess. He wanted her to confide in him.
“Because,” she replied stubbornly.
Gabriel’s eyes sparked with anger. She glanced down. Where he held her chair, his knuckles were white. She was pushing it.
Very softly, he said, “It’s Monsters territory, Angel. No one crosses those lines for a job unless invited. No one is willing to face off with Cain.”
“Fuck Cain,” said Angel suddenly and with hard and sharp vehemence. She was as shocked as he was that she’d said it, and knew her own widening eyes mirrored his.
The truth was, she was actually terrified of the notorious motorcycle club leader, and she hadn’t ever even personally met him. But she guessed that her anger and her crabbiness due to lack of sleep were overpowering her sense of self-preservation just enough to make her obstinate.
“He and his gang will be gone before the year’s out, I can almost g
uarantee it,” she continued defensively. “The Monsters clan is transient; they’re always on the move. I don’t know why we designate jurisdiction to them in the first place.”
But Gabriel wasn’t budged from his track by her attempt at subject change, and he wasn’t fooled by her bluster. He simply smiled a hard, tight smile and said, “Yes you do.” Which was true. The Monsters clan was the only clan in existence that had never failed at a job. Not once. So they were given whatever they needed, along with a healthy dose of respect.
In truth, the clans of a host city were always grateful when the Monsters came riding into town. It meant the host city could finally catch up on their own sleep a little, and it meant fewer people would die. Well, fewer bad people.
Angel tore her eyes from his at last and crossed her arms over her chest. It was all she could do. He was making her feel a dichotomy of things. Fury, for one. And something less unpleasant due to his nearness.
“I’m going to give you an order, Angel, and as my subordinate you’re expected to follow it.” He spoke in his calm clan leader voice that made Angel feel powerless and livid when he was using it on her. “You’re going to go back to your apartment with the men I assign you. You’ll have one hour to gather your things. And then you will be escorted to my house and you will stay there. Under guard. Until I deem it safe to do otherwise.”
She didn’t say anything, so he slowly straightened and stepped back, giving her a little space. He knew her by now, it was true. He knew she would buck at being bossed around, and he probably didn’t want to press his luck.
But he drove home his command with one final jab. “Have I made myself clear, Clemens?”
Angel felt her jaw tick. Her heart was hammering wildly. Her blood pressure was probably through the roof. Already, her head was spinning with mutinous ideas and plans.
In the meantime, to placate her boss and give herself more time, she said, “Crystal.” Then she shoved out of her chair and moved around him without touching him, heading for the door. Before her fingers had curled around the handle, he called out behind her.
“Angel.”
She stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“Knight, Hudson, and Daniels will accompany you.”
She stiffened, her back going ram-rod straight. Those three men were the Vega clan’s assassins. They were trained in all manner of combat, both hand-to-hand and long-range, they were cunning and quiet, and they made Angel feel… uncomfortable. And that was putting it mildly.
She didn’t trust them.
Well, that wasn’t quite accurate. She knew they had her back in general because they were Vega, and clan members stuck together. But they were assassins, so trust was ambiguous. And even though they supposedly only went after secret enemies of the sovereigns, Angel had an old brain reaction to their presence when she was around them. Frankly and basically – she was afraid of them. They were killers. Not just wardens, not just cops. But killers, pure and simple.
Angel clenched her teeth and chanced a glaring look at her mentor. He caught it and held it, determined and hard. Oh, he knew what he was doing. He knew she feared those men. They would be shadowing her, and in their proximity, she wouldn’t be able to think clearly. She wouldn’t be able to plan. And she wouldn’t be able to run.
“Yes sir,” she said curtly.
His expression remained unchanged, but something dangerous flashed in Gabriel’s eyes.
Angel opened the door, stepped through it, and left him alone in the room she hated.
Chapter Twenty-Two
There was only one way to get out of this, and that was to leave immediately. Immediately. Right here, right now, right this very second. No slowing down, no getting sidetracked. Don’t even make eye contact with anyone.
In any situation where rank was pulled, there was a precious corridor of time, a few short seconds, between the moment an order was given and the moment that order was carried out. In that vital space of time, there was a kind of pause where nothing happened. There was no getting around it. Either it took a bit to get to a phone, or it took a while to move from point A to point B, or whatever – the mobilization of an order always required that pause, no matter how brief.
For Angel, that vital space of time was now.
She made the most of it, closing the door to the interrogation room with an exaggerated finality that would hopefully signal to Gabriel that she needed to not see him for a little while. It would hopefully also signal that he should stay in that room and regain his patience and composure before returning to his work as leader in the Vega safe house.
The moment the interrogation room door was shut, Angel strode into a fast walk, heading right past her desk, right past Harry – who would have been the one to take Gabriel’s order to contact her assassin escorts – and right past everything and everyone else that might have slowed her down. A few of them glanced up; she could see them in the sidelines of her vision, including Hannah and Casey. But she put on her “I don’t want to talk” face that kept them at bay and didn’t even grab her coat or purse. Just her keys, on her way out the door. That way, they would figure she’d be right back.
Once she was outside, she ran.
She ran for all she was worth, shoved her key into her Jeep door, and jumped inside. It welcomed her as it always did, with the scent of leather and the sound of silence, but she barely noticed because her blood was roaring so hard through her head, all she could hear was its steady pounding and all she could smell was metal. She slammed the door shut.
This is my job, her mind warned her ceaselessly. This is insane. It’s all over if you do this.
But I have to, she argued with herself. I have to. I know I do. It’s everything. Somewhere in this city, a monster was closing in on her. It had already taken seven lives. But now that she knew about it, she absolutely would not, could not, allow anyone else to get caught in its crossfire. Especially not someone she knew, like a fellow warden. Or… someone she cared about.
Not again.
An image of Jacob Crow’s jade green eyes flashed in her mind.
She made a desperate sound. Not again, she thought. Please, not again.
Forget firing you, Gabriel is going to fucking kill you! screamed the little voice in her head.
Oh, shut up! she retorted as she gritted her teeth, plunged the key into the ignition, turned it hard, and ripped out of the lot for all she was worth. She was aimed directly for Monsters territory and broke the speed limit. Her legs were shaking, her hands were shaking, and her heart was going a million miles a minute. She felt the seconds drag at her, as if they were physical and they were wrapping around her to hold her back. The warden safe house felt like a gaping maw behind her, trying to suck her back in.
Does Gabe know yet? she wondered as she lucked out with another green light and crossed the sixth city block that drew her closer to the territory border. Had he noticed she was gone?
As if in answer, her phone buzzed in her pocket. She ignored it.
Almost there… almost there….
When she was fortunate enough to meet a green light at the last intersection and her tires passed over the invisible line made by warden maps, Angel let out the breath she’d been holding. But she didn’t feel any better. She felt sick.
The phone stopped buzzing. Then started immediately again.
She drove another two blocks, pulled over to park illegally, and was grateful that if her plates were run, her vehicle would come up as off-limits at the highest levels. FBI, CIA, NSA, take your pick. There would only be enough information to clear her and keep any curious cops moving along.
Angel put the Jeep in neutral and engaged the emergency brake. She closed her eyes, gripping the leather-wrapped steering wheel with trembling hands. She really was shaking hard… too hard, in fact. This wasn’t normal.
Her phone stopped and then at once began buzzing again. She still ignored it. Her guts twisted, and suddenly she was severely light-headed.
Oh
no, she thought as she realized what was taking place inside her body. Fear was making her heart beat too fast, which was burning through her energy like wildfire. She was on the verge of fainting. No wonder she felt sick. Syncope was a terrible feeling. She needed to get something in her stomach right away.
I left all of my meds. “Oh…wow,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut so tight they hurt. The nausea rolled again through her, but she fought it down, trying to think. “Damn it!” she cried through clenched teeth. She used to leave an extra store of meds and food in the Jeep, but San Fran had been experiencing heat waves recently, and the food kept melting or going bad, and the meds reached dangerous temps, so other than the water, which was still in the back, she’d taken it all out and placed extra stores of snacks and prescriptions in her backpack instead.
Which she’d left in the safe house. It also had her bottled protein shakes and extra ammo. And her wallet.
With her money.
She couldn’t call her friends. They were the first people Gabe would have traced and followed. Elena’s boyfriend, Matt lived around this area… but asking him for a favor was risky business. He’d probably grant it straight away, but nothing with Matt ever came free. And with his criminal reputation, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go there.
She was trapped. By this time, Gabriel had probably spoken with Harry. He was no doubt aware she’d run. He would see her things left behind and he would figure out that she was disobeying orders, that she was without supplies, and that she was on Monsters turf.
He would probably want to cross right over the border after her, but he wouldn’t dare. Would he? She honestly wasn’t sure.
He could always send Harry. As a messenger, he was allowed in this case. Technically, what Angel was doing was seeking sanctuary. It almost never happened, but the rules were on the books for a reason. The sovereigns had accounted for every contingency when they’d made the code, including this one.
For all intents and purposes, Angel was fleeing one clan territory out of fear for her personal safety and seeking shelter in another clan territory until the issue could be resolved. Granted, that wasn’t actually what was happening, but for lack of any other guideline for this situation, that was how the clan leaders would no doubt approach it.
Monsters, Book One: The Good, The Bad, The Cursed Page 13