Rae didn’t look at him. Seemed like she’d been doing her best to not look at him since their brief conversation about Burke and the missing lockbox. “I thought you liked getting exercise.”
He scoffed. “A few blocks is exercise. A few miles is a marathon.”
“It is not miles away.”
“Two-point-five actually. I MapQuested it when Darcy called with the lead on Burke.”
Neither of them had been expecting to learn that not only had Burke stuck around Red Crossing after the break-in, but was presently employed at Wild Bill’s, a local bar. Either Rae’s old teacher didn’t frequent Wild Bill’s enough to recognize Burke as the perpetrator, or Hurst’s former assistant had worked some of his mild telepathic mojo at some point.
Darcy had gone one step further and called ahead to Wild Bill’s to see if Burke was scheduled to work tonight. Mad scientist turned bartender? Parker was still shaking his head over that one.
For the first time in over an hour, Rae met his gaze. “You can always wait back at the hotel.”
“So you’ve reminded me since we stepped off the elevator.”
She shrugged as though that shouldn’t surprise him. And it didn’t, but he still didn’t like it. Once upon a time she’d trained with him even when they both knew his hand-to-hand skills would never match hers or his own profiling strengths.
Now it was more surprising when she passed on an opportunity to remind him he didn’t measure up to the other agents on her team. He might have let that really eat away at him if he wasn’t convinced she did it in hopes that he’d request reassignment.
Although by the time this was all over, she’d get her way on that front.
Watching her from the corner of his eye, Parker noticed that every step made her shoulders stiffer. Considering they were going to face the bastard who had sedated her during the experiments she still wasn’t talking about, she seemed to be holding up pretty damn good.
But pretty damn good didn’t mean that she was anywhere close to okay.
“You’re staring at me.”
“Yep.”
She walked for another minute in silence, then, “Why?”
“Why not?” He tried not to smile when she scowled at him. “I figure I’m entitled since you stood there staring at me for a while this afternoon.”
When she stopped in her tracks, he kept going, knowing he’d succeeded in making her forget about Burke for the moment.
She quickly caught back up to him. “It wasn’t a while.”
“At least you’re not denying the staring part.”
“I thought you had hurt yourself.”
Oh, he’d been hurting all right, so he didn’t point out that she had lingered even after she knew he wasn’t actually injured. He may have pleaded with her to stay, but that wouldn’t have stopped Rae if she hadn’t wanted to be there.
But instead of bringing that up, he studied her face and the sweep of freckles across the bridge of her nose. He remembered noticing those freckles the day they’d met, shortly after they’d both been recruited by the network. Those freckles were also indirectly responsible for the scar on his forehead.
If his profiling skills had been stronger back then he wouldn’t have let those freckles—or the braids she worn in her hair that day—convince him she was more innocent than dangerous. He also wouldn’t have bet against her when another agent-in-training suggested a little after-hours sparring match outside the club they had gone to after their orientation.
When his asshole of a friend had begun playing dirty, Parker had tried to put an end to the fight between him and Rae, and ended up with a cut on his forehead when he intercepted a punch meant for his friend. He vaguely wondered if Rae still had the ring she’d been wearing that night.
She pivoted and planted herself in his path. “Stop it.”
He gave her an unrepentant look. “You watched me in the shower. I’m just returning the favor.”
“If you’re really out to get even shouldn’t you wait until I’m in the shower and—” she broke off quickly, averting her gaze.
A grin tugged at his mouth. “Getting yourself off? Is that what you were about to say?”
“No.”
Liar. He took a step toward her, suspecting she wouldn’t back down. She didn’t.
“You know, shower or not, right now I’m betting I could get you wet in no time.” If he’d backed up an inch, he would have missed hearing her breath catch.
“We’re going to be late.” Rae strode down the sidewalk without looking back to see if he followed her, her shoulders no longer carrying such a heavy load.
Relieved, but physically uncomfortable with how aroused he was, thanks to their brief conversation, he trailed after her.
About a mile into their trek, Rae stopped. Her head canted to the side, a hunter sensing prey.
Parker glanced to the right a second after she did. A roll of thunder rumbled across the sky as a bank of clouds moved in much too quickly from the west.
“Storm demon.” Her hand went to her lower back where he’d watched her strap her kukri earlier.
“Is it close?”
Her eyes narrowed at the corners, a knowing grin teasing her lips. “A few blocks.”
And then she was moving, sprinting across the street. He followed, somehow managing not to lose her when she darted down one side street after another.
Knowing they were getting close by the flashes of lightning and deafening thunder, he anticipated the rain before the first drop hit his face. The closer they got to the storm demon, the heavier it began to rain.
They were both on their way to being drenched by the time he caught up with her as she stepped off the curb across from the local high school.
“Think the hostile wants to go back and get its diploma?”
“There are two of them.”
“Two?” He studied the building, noticed the lights burning on the top floor. “I wouldn’t think there’d be anyone there to corner tonight?”
“Cleaning crew maybe,” Rae offered.
They crossed the street and the grassy lawn leading to the front of the building. Rae tried the main door, and neither of them was surprised to find it locked.
“You sure they’re inside and not around back?” Deep inside he felt that flash of recognition, like the essence that had mutated his genes recognized more of its kind close by, but couldn’t pin down their location as accurately as Rae could.
The question had barely left his lips before a gut-wrenching scream echoed inside.
“Definitely inside.” She jerked her arm up.
“Don’t—”
Too late, she jammed her elbow through the bottom pane of glass. If the school had been newer, he doubted the window would have given as easily.
“Fuck,” she gritted out, cradling her bloody arm against her body as she leaned forward.
“Let me.” He reached inside and released the lock, yanking the door open. “Let’s hope whoever was inside before the hostiles arrived had disengaged the alarm system.”
In the foyer, Rae paused, then turned to the right, darting up the stairs. She didn’t stop until she reached the third floor, Parker on her heels as she withdrew her blade. Sticking close, he unsheathed the dagger he’d nearly lost to the telepath demon.
Another scream reverberated off the walls, followed by an explosion of thunder that seemed to rattle every window in the building.
Rae stuck close to the wall, stopping outside the last door on the right. She threw him that familiar watch-your-ass look and slipped inside.
Before Parker had gotten all the way into the room, she’d driven her blade into the back of the closest storm demon, then twisted in a smooth, lethal motion and caught the second one across the stomach.
“Get him out of here.”
At the back of the room, a guy was staked down, his clothing ripped and hanging in shreds to expose his chest. Symbols had already been cut into his skin, trails of blood snaking acr
oss the floor beneath him. The hostiles had secured him with duct tape and looked to have been in the process of scrawling more ancient symbols around the room.
How many deaths had there been in the area? Enough to have already paved the way for a Scion to cross over with this man’s death?
Across the room, Rae slammed the first demon, a thirty-something female dressed like a woman campaigning for president of the PTA, face-first into the wall. Before the hostile’s legs buckled, she drove the blade into its neck and wrenched hard, severing its head.
The sacrificial dagger it carried clattered to the floor.
“Rae!”
She’d spun around before he finished yelling, but not fast enough to avoid the chair the second storm demon threw at her.
Grunting, she stumbled back, the brunt of the blow catching her already injured arm.
The storm demon, the type that usually shied from confrontation whenever possible, launched itself at Rae, catching her around the waist. They both went down behind a row of desks.
Slicing his dagger through the duct tape, Parker freed the hostiles’ victim. The guy staggered to his feet, gathering his ruined shirt to his chest to staunch the blood from his wounds.
Rae and the hostile regained their footing, the demon more wary now, careful to keep space between them. Sensing movement, the demon glared at its freed prey, its red-rimmed eyes flashing in the dark.
The guy staggered back a step, knocking over a stack of textbooks. “What the fuck are they?”
“Trouble.”
The demon snarled, taking another hit to the chest, but evading the next slash of Rae’s blade.
Lightning struck the side of the school. Glass exploded inwards, and Parker turned away on instinct, shielding the hostile’s victim. The guy scrambled back, sliding on chunks of shattered glass and taking them both down.
Parker raised his head to see Rae hit the wall. He scrambled to his feet in the next instant, the other guy forgotten.
“I’m good.” She snapped her leg up in a vicious kick that nailed the demon in the head.
By the time Parker dared take his eyes off Rae and the demon, he heard footsteps tearing down the hall. The odds were fifty-fifty whether the storm demon’s victim would go to the police, or hole up in his house, determined to convince himself none of it had been real.
Noticing its prey was escaping, the storm demon pivoted to give chase, its hunger for the fear it sensed distracting it from the closest threat. It never saw the blade coming that sliced through its neck.
Blue flames erupted from the hostiles’ manifested bodies, permanently vanquishing their auras.
“You okay?”
Glancing at her arm, she nodded. “It’s already healing.”
“But still hurts like hell,” he guessed.
A tight smile compressed her lips as she preceded him out the door, returning her weapon to her lower back and tugging her shirt over it. “Yeah.” She stopped and searched the hallway for something.
The bathroom, Parker realized when she headed back toward the stairs. “Don’t even think about it,” he warned when she looked ready to tell him to wait in the hall.
She snorted, but said nothing. Inside, she grabbed some paper towels from the dispenser and turned on the faucet.
He reached for her arm. “Let me see.”
“It’s fine. I just need to rinse away the blood.”
Parker continued to hold out his hand until she relented.
Sighing, she finally humored him. “However did I ever make it through all those field assignments without you?”
“What’s wrong with having someone look after you when you’re hurt?” He brushed his thumb across her uninjured skin.
“Nothing.” The way her voice dropped a fraction didn’t sound like nothing, and the shiver that ran through her didn’t feel like nothing either.
He took the dampened paper towel and wiped away the drying blood, carefully removing a couple pieces of glass that were slowing the regeneration process.
“If you were exposed to more than one kind of demon, why do your abilities to heal and sense other demons trump the others?”
“Scion.”
Fury ripped through his chest. “He exposed you to a fucking master demon?”
“Beware the dark side, young Skywalker.”
Realizing how quickly he’d gone from being worried about her to ready to slay something, he released her arm.
She took a step back. “Damn.”
Christ, had he hurt her? He followed her gaze to the jagged rip in her shirt. Any closer and that first demon would have sliced her stomach open.
“The blood would have gone unnoticed since I’m wearing black, but this won’t.” She ran her finger through the vertical five-inch tear that started just below her breasts.
“Let me.” He gripped her hips, tugging her closer.
“What are you doing?”
He grinned at the squeak he swore he heard in her voice. “Helping.”
“As good as you are, I really don’t think an orgasm is going to get the job done.”
“As much as I love the way you think…” He slid his hands from her hips to her waist. He caught the ends of the tear and ripped upwards.
“Gee, no one is going to notice me now,” she quipped, then finished with, “Oh,” when he tied the two pieces together like it was part of the shirt’s original design.
She glanced behind her to be sure the back remained low and loose enough to conceal her kukri. “What?” she added when she noticed he’d gone still.
“You have a belly button ring.” How in the hell had that escaped his attention? Intrigued, he ran his thumb around the tiny hoop. “I didn’t notice it last night or this morning.”
“You were a bit preoccupied with Nico.”
“Are you trying to kill my mood here?” Surprisingly, not even the mention of the antichrist diminished his interest in getting a real up close and personal look at Rae’s belly button.
She laughed, the sound only a little bit strained considering the last ten minutes. “You always have a mood. And it’ll have to wait until later.”
“Promise?”
Rae felt all the hot and delicious places inside her warm at the way Parker’s finger traced a lazy path around her navel. And the way he said “promise”, all rough and gravelly, made her want to feel him murmur it against her stomach.
Focus.
“Burke’s shift started ten minutes ago.”
He didn’t release her, so she forced herself to back up.
“It’s just a piercing, Parker.” She didn’t wait to hear his comeback for that and exited the bathroom.
They were halfway down the hall when they heard sirens.
“Guess our boy went to the cops.” Parker hit the stairs first, moving fast.
Careful of the busted glass, she stayed on his heels until they cleared the property. The sirens were still a couple blocks off when they slipped into the wooded area next to the school, moving parallel to the sidewalk until they were a good distance away.
The adrenaline rush that had taken over when she’d first sensed the storm demons began stirring inside her again, driven by her rising apprehension over her planned chat with Burke.
Even though he’d never been mean or cruel to her, sometimes even bringing along the occasional treat—as if that could make up for drugging her—she wasn’t sure how she would react seeing him again years later.
“You know,” Parker said, breaking the silence they’d fallen into for the last few minutes. “You probably tacked on at least another two miles to our little outing.” He followed the complaint up with a long look slanted at her stomach, making it clear where walking fell on his list of priorities.
A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. When they’d met, she was convinced he didn’t take training or anything else about what they did seriously. Over time, she’d realized that Parker’s laid-back attitude was not only intentional, but it put people
at ease, making him even better at his job.
He surprised her, though, by not voicing the wicked thoughts running through his head. Knowing what he was thinking was more than enough to help keep her distracted until they reached Wild Bill’s.
Cars filled the gravel parking lot and small groups of people were beginning to form on the wraparound deck out front. Music blared from inside, and she only winced for the first minute after they’d walked in, then managed to filter out the heavy country beat for the most part.
Heads swiveled in their direction, mostly women, following them as they moved through the crowd. When they returned their attention to their drinks and the people they were with, she knew Parker was making a conscious effort to discourage them from approaching him. Knowing his head would hurt like hell later left her more moved by the effort than she expected.
Wild Bill’s wasn’t packed yet, making it easy to spot Burke behind the main bar. He laughed at something a customer said, and although he was across the room, she heard the sound as though he were a foot away.
Her stomach twisted, and she instinctively took a step back, coming up against Parker as memories she’d buried long ago flashed through her mind.
“It will only sting for a second.” Holding a syringe, Burke crouched down and reached for her arm.
She shook her head, trying to pull away from him. “Please don’t.”
He sighed. “Be a good girl, Rae. Don’t make me use the restraints.”
“No.” She scrambled away from him, but he already had her cornered against the wall.
Burke snatched her arm, tugging her forward.
She dug her feet into the floor, dragging her fingers in vain across the linoleum. Tears ran down her cheeks. “Don’t put me back in there. I don’t want to go back in. Please!”
“Do I need to get your father?”
“No,” she whispered brokenly.
Down the hall another kid screamed, and she jerked as the needle pierced her skin.
Heart pounding, Rae closed her eyes as if that was enough to put a halt to the memory.
Parker’s hands went to her hips, steadying her. “You don’t have any reason to be afraid of him anymore.”
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