More importantly, Evers turned out to be the guy Razmun had been expecting to meet.
That little nugget hit me the instant I saw Razmun turn to see who’d entered the bar. I watched Razmun’s posture loosen, right before he smiled, extending a hand to shake Evers’, who I quickly realized stood almost as tall as tractor-face. Michael Evers’ body was a lot more fit and broad-shouldered than the Russian’s, and he was at least ten years younger, but between the two of them and the not-inconsiderable height of Razmun himself, at least in his human form, the three of them made a formidable-looking group.
That was even apart from the five guys from the leather booth.
Any or all of whom might be packing heat.
My sense of unreality worsened as I watched Razmun and Evers continue to stand there, exchanging now-friendly introductions with the rest of the group. The men were all smiles now...all buddy-buddy and we’re-all-just-some-business-guys-doing-business together...which made it even weirder.
I think I just couldn’t stutter past the leaps of logic and coincidence wrapped up in all that, not for a few seconds, anyway. Moreover, I struggled to make myself believe that none of this had anything to do with me and Nik.
At that point I was almost staring at their group openly.
Which, yeah, was dumb.
Thankfully, none of them seemed to notice.
I was still using the bar mirror, at least, but it may not have mattered if I hadn’t been. None of them appeared to be looking around at anyone outside of their tightly-clustered group, not anymore.
I continued to stare, blinking through the dim light as they talked and laughed. I watched them like that until they disappeared through that mirrored door, the giant Russian leading Razmun and the younger Russian through first. The latter paused only long enough to motion to the bartender to bring them all a round of drinks.
When he turned to face me almost directly, I was even more sure he was the guy from Laurie Deveraux’s phone. He turned away quickly, not noticing me at all, so I just sat there, watching helplessly, as the mirrored door closed behind him and the others.
Once it had, I looked around on the floor.
I even got up and looked behind the bar, hoping I’d been wrong about what I’d seen. I casually looked around the rest of the dim space, too.
But I hadn’t been. Wrong, that is.
Nik the cat wasn’t there.
Which meant he had to be locked inside that back room.
Sitting back on the barstool with my jacket on it, I tried to decide what to do.
The mirrored door opened again, a few minutes later, when the bartender brought back two bottles of expensive-looking vodka, along with a tray of empty rocks glasses. He also carried an ice bucket jammed under his arm. The bartender returned seconds later, empty-handed, and the door closed with a snap, again without me seeing Nik return to this side.
A part of me still wanted to believe this couldn’t be real, that I was imagining things.
But that really had been Razmun.
...and that really had been Michael Evers, shaking Razmun’s hand and grinning at him like a sociopathic ape.
Razmun had come here for a meeting with Michael Evers. I couldn’t make myself interpret what I’d seen any other way. The two of them definitely knew one another. No way had that been Razmun and Evers’ first meeting, or even their second.
And Nik was in there now, presumably to eavesdrop, disguised as a black cat.
My mind whirled around the connections, trying to make sense of them.
Michael Evers, according to what I’d just seen, clearly knew the Russians who owned this place, too. Since those same Russians might secretly be mob bosses stealing young girls for sale on the black market, and given who Evers was...
...Okay, that part made a twisted kind of sense.
Even so, the sheer number of connections and coincidences––as well as coincidences that that didn’t feel much like coincidences––floored me.
Like, how did Evers even meet Razmun?
It occurred to me that it had probably happened the opposite way. Meaning, Razmun likely hunted down Evers. I remembered suddenly that I’d told Ledi, back on Palarine, the story about how Nik and I met in that alley. I doubted I’d told him Evers’ name, but maybe I had. The thought was chilling, but it was also the only one that made any kind of sense.
It still left a lot of questions, however.
Right around when I was thinking all that, I remembered the implant link.
“Nik?” I ventured, using that same link. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
I expelled a faint breath, half relief and half a sharp rush of frustration.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Nik?”
“Listening. In fact, you really shouldn’t distract me right now, Dakota.”
I bit my lip, thinking about his words. “Should I wait for you?”
“No,” Nik said at once. “Razmun might see you...or the other one.” He paused, and I could almost hear the others talking through the connection we shared. Nik seemed to wait for a pause in their dialog, then spoke again. “I’ll tell you everything I am hearing,” he said. “Later, though. Leave my clothes on the ground outside the back of the building. I’ll find them.”
“Nik,” I said, exasperated. “Someone else might find them, too.”
“Cover them up with something. The clothes.”
Biting my lip, I nodded, not sure why I was bothering to argue.
“Fine,” I said finally, exhaling in a grumble. “But I’m waiting for you, Nik. I’ll wait outside, okay? In the back.”
“That’s not a good idea.”
I exhaled in frustration again. “I’m not leaving you here.”
“I will be careful,” he said. “Go home, Dakota. I will be less distracted without you here. Go back to work...to do whatever you had planned after coming here. It is not safe for you to stay here. They have already mentioned your name.”
I pressed my lips together, about to argue again, but Nik cut me off.
“We talked about this, Dakota,” he reminded me. “About being business partners. About not risking the job for one another...or taking unnecessary chances unless it was logical.”
I felt my jaw harden. We had talked about it. About needing to act like business partners when we were doing this kind of stuff. About not doing anything crazy to try and protect one another when neither of us needed protecting in that way. A talk I initiated, by the way, in an effort to get Nik to understand that going postal on human beings in public wasn’t a great idea, no matter who they were. Not when he was supposed to be laying low, and not calling attention to himself. I’d also been trying to get Nik to understand that going after dangerous people was normal for me, that it was part of my actual job.
Trust Nik to use those words against me, less than two weeks later.
A pulse of warmth pressed into the center of my chest.
“I do worry about you,” he said, softer. “I am touched that you worry about me, Dakota.”
“Of course I do!” I snapped at him through the link. “Jesus, Nik. What were you thinking, going in there? You’re still new here...do you have to take so many damned risks? All the time? Hell, you couldn’t have even asked me, first?”
The warmth in my chest only increased. It radiated out over my ribcage and belly from the lock, holding heat, but also a more gentle affection.
“Go,” he repeated, softer. “I am thinking about sex again. It’s distracting.”
I shook my head, but only a little.
I didn’t raise my head from where I had it slumped over the bar, hoping no one would notice from my facial expressions that I was having a conversation with someone in my head.
“Unbelievable.” Still shaking my head, I muttered, “You are one smooth operator, Nikhil Jamri. I’m starting to realize just how smooth...and just how often it works on me.”
“I mean it,” he said. His
thoughts turned less cajoling, holding a blunter edge. “I’m not playing you,” he clarified, again borrowing words from me. “I want to fuck. I can’t work while I’m thinking about that. I can’t transform, either...not quickly enough. You need to go, Dakota. I am already here. Let me do this. It will help both of us. It may help you find those girls.”
I felt my fingers clench on my thighs through the jeans I wore.
Frustration swam over me as I tried to decide if he was using the lock to manipulate me, like he’d once accused me of doing to him.
“Please.” His voice turned softer, back into a caress. “Please, Dakota. I’m not trying to manipulate you. You can tell me how I’m saying all of this wrong later...and we can talk about sex then, too, if you want. You can try and talk me into it again.” That heated feeling returned to my chest. “You should know, unless my feelings change by then, I’ll probably let you...”
Snorting lightly, I shook my head again at that. I couldn’t help it.
Still, humor wasn’t my only reaction, and both of us knew it.
“Please,” he said. “I need you to go. Now, Dakota.”
Thinking about his words, I conceded defeat.
For real that time.
I wanted to know what they were talking about, too.
More than that, if Nik didn’t learn something about what Razmun was doing here, we had nothing. I had nothing...and the clock was running down on those girls. I understood Nik’s urgency too, even if it annoyed me, given how many risks he was taking. We still didn’t know for sure where Razmun and the other morph were holed up.
I felt a pulse of relief off Nik as I mulled over his words, enough to know that he must have followed at least the bare progression of my thoughts. I still felt those more heated glimmers behind that relief, but yeah, Nik wanted to know what Razmun, Evers and the well-dressed Slavs were up to, as well, maybe even more than I did.
He wanted to know what Razmun was up to especially, I suspected.
I knew he felt responsible for bringing Razmun to Earth. I knew that brought conflicts, that none of it was uncomplicated for him...but I also knew Nik loved me, even if he’d never said as much to me directly. I knew Nik felt guilty about what had happened to me since he’d entered my life. He also worried Razmun posed a threat to me...more than any of the humans who currently wanted me dead. Even Evers, I suspected.
Nik was also pretty serious about getting me out of there so he could work...and, more likely, so I wouldn’t know just how damned risky whatever he was doing truly was.
“Fine,” I said, exhaling again.
I slid off the stool as I thought it at him, landing in my rubber-soled boots on the sticky, tile floor. Yanking my jacket off the seat, I shouldered it back on. Then, glancing around quickly before I did it, I leaned down and scooped up Nik’s shirt, pants, belt and even the rings, which I shoved in my own jean pockets. Gripping his boots in my free hand, I gave one more quick glance around, then headed for the back door.
“I’ll let you know where your clothes are once I find a place to hide them,” I informed him. “Then I’m out of here. I’m leaving now.”
“Where?” he said at once.
“Where?” I said, snorting. “Didn’t you just tell me to get out of here, Nik?”
“I mean, where will you be?”
I thought about his words, but not for long.
“The modeling agency,” I said, making up my mind even as I said it. “I have a few new questions for Ms. Constance Culare...”
Luckily, the back door popped open on a brick alley.
Within a few minutes, I found a cardboard box filled with old, dried-out newspaper that was perfect for hiding Nik’s clothes and his boots. Someone might still find them, of course, but unless Nik was in there a lot longer than I hoped he would be, I doubted it.
Anyway, if that happened, Nik could probably transform into a bird or something, and get home that way.
So I stuffed the clothes and boots in under the newspaper and left the box near a dumpster, thinking most people who saw it would assume it was trash.
The sky had changed since I’d last been outside. It hung heavy and low now, covered in a gray blanket of clouds that left a lot of glare but no visible sun.
Realizing I was just standing there, despite what I’d promised Nik, I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket, aiming my steps reluctantly for the street at the end of the alley. I really didn’t want to leave him there, but I knew he was right, that it would be needlessly risky for me to stay. Moreover, if they saw me around, they might look for Nik. In the process, Razmun might think to question the presence of a black cat in the bar’s back room.
So yeah, after tugging it back and forth in my head for a few minutes longer, I left.
I only accessed the link long enough to tell Nik where I’d left his clothes. At that point, I really didn’t want to distract him, but yeah, I was worried.
I told myself again that he’d be all right. That it was a risk worth taking.
Nik was smart. He wouldn’t take any unnecessary chances. I hoped.
Like Gantry always said about this line of work, I had to be practical. That meant being practical about Nik, too.
I still didn’t like it. I also couldn’t help wondering if that very thing––meaning how easily Nik could get killed down here, given who he was and the forces aligned against both of us these days––might be part of the reason I was still keeping him at arm’s length. A part of me just couldn’t see how things would end well with the two of us. Not just in terms of any kind of romantic relationship, but with Nik and Razmun and the other morph being on Earth at all.
Shoving that from my mind, I decided I’d think about it later.
I had other things I needed to deal with first.
Right or wrong, I was still on the job.
Once I hit the main street, I held up an arm to hail a cab. A yellow cab slowed down as it approached my section of curb, right around the time I made up my mind to focus back on the immediate thing, meaning the job I’d actually been hired to do.
The rest of it could wait. Well, at least until I heard back from Nik.
For now, I was going to do what I’d told Nik I would do, and make another visit to the modeling agency.
This time, I needed to have a little chat with Madam Culare, herself.
14
A Tip and a Tumble
Luckily, Ms. Constance Culare happened to be in.
I didn’t have to wait long for her, either, but got ushered into her corner office only a few minutes after I told her assistant, Clarice, (who still wore the Jessica Rabbit outfit), that I really needed a word with the big boss.
Still giving me looks that came off as more than half-flirtatious, Clarice asked me over her bare shoulder where my beautiful “friend” had gone. She grinned like a big kid when I told her Nik was running down a lead for me. I’d already figured out that it was my job that intrigued her, more than my winning personality, but Jessica Rabbit’s sheer delight that I had people “running down leads” almost made me laugh out loud.
I managed to contain myself, however.
“Come right in,” Jessica Rabbit sing-songed a few seconds later, poking her head out of Ms. Culare’s office door after she’d slipped inside to check her availability.
Clarice continued to clutch the wooden door, beaming at me as I approached.
She didn’t move out of the way as I walked up to her, either, and I found myself having to push gently past her partly-bare body to get through the door, which struck me as a little bit invasive. I pretended not to notice any of that, though, focusing instead on Ms. Culare herself, who sat behind the same old fashioned desk I remembered from our first meeting.
I didn’t want to waste her time or mine, so I got right to the point.
“Who gave you the tip about me?” I said, blunt.
Ms. Culare’s perfectly penciled eyebrow rose.
“Excuse me?” she said. “And ho
w are you, Ms. Reyes? Would you like some coffee?”
Behind me, Jessica Rabbit giggled.
I ignored her. I also ignored Ms. Culare’s implied rebuke about my social graces.
“The tip on me,” I repeated. “Where did you get it?”
Ms. Culare looked behind me, barely seeming to hear my words.
“You can go now, Clarice,” she said, her voice calm, but significantly less subtle in its rebuke. “Apparently our meeting has formally begun.”
I didn’t react to the implied wrist-slap that time, either. I also didn’t turn to watch the assistant go...although I did wait until I heard the door close behind me.
“Not trying to be rude, but it’s urgent...I need to know where you got the tip,” I said, once I heard the click. Remembering that not everyone spoke in me and Gantry-speak, I clarified, “My name, Ms. Culare. Who gave it to you? Who told you about me and what I do for a living...how to find me?” Flushing a little when I realized I was still coming off as overly aggressive, I shrugged. “...I’ve been out of the country for awhile,” I explained, subduing my voice. “Most people don’t know I’m back in Seattle at all, Ms. Culare. Now I also have reason to believe someone might have been setting me up, putting me on this job.”
The penciled eyebrow arched again.
“Setting you up?” Ms. Culare said.
The way she said it told me she wondered if I was being melodramatic.
She leaned back in her chair as I thought it, steeping her fingers above her desk, which she’d used to prop up her elbows. When I didn’t respond to her implied question, she sighed.
“Setting you up in what way, Ms. Reyes?” she said.
Hesitating, I opted for a half-truth.
“I went to a bar today,” I explained. “...With one of my associates. Chasing down a lead I pulled indirectly from your files.”
Taking another breath, I walked deeper into the room. Only then did it occur to me that I’d been standing by her office door all that time. It probably looked like I’d intended to bolt out of there the instant I got the information I wanted.
Which hadn’t been far from the truth, honestly.
Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two Page 21