His breathing choppy as water splashed him in the face, Julio looked like he contemplated swimming away. What E wouldn’t give to hunt down the man who did this to his kid. But doing so would endanger little Julio’s life even more if dear old dad interfered.
Quickly gauging the stability of the shore that had been cut down over the centuries by the river, E zeroed in on enough rocky outcroppings to make it down to where Julio was clinging.
“Julio,” E spoke calmly, catching the boy’s eye, “hang on.”
Whether it was the calm certainty in E’s voice or just that he didn’t want to drown, Julio solemnly nodded, and he hugged the outcropping even tighter.
E slid down on his belly to the first tenuous foothold and quickly descended to water level. Trying to stay out of the water, not wanting to end the night fighting the water’s pull with his load of weapons while keeping his son’s head above water, E reached as far out as he could while still holding onto the slight purchase he had. He was only inches from Julio’s hands.
“Can you grab onto me?”
Uncertainty plagued Julio as he considered E’s extended hand. Leaning as far as he could, E could almost brush against his son’s skin.
“Just grab for me. I’ll catch you.”
Instead of lunging forward, toward the outstretched hand, Julio made the critical mistake of loosening his grip. The pull of the water was too much for the spindly arms. Terror filled Julio’s face and he drifted away.
E twisted and pressed his booted feet into the edge, using his body as a bridge. He grabbed the same outcropping Julio was holding onto and snatched his son’s outstretched arm. Yanking him in, Julio yelped as E swung him closer to grab him around the side, pushed himself off the rocks, and threw his son up and over the edge. Using his enhanced strength and reflexes, E sprang up, landing next to the gasping boy. Shivers wracked his small body, and E suspected that it was more from the adrenaline and near-death experience than any real chill.
He sat down beside Julio to figure out what to do next. Pat him on the back and say, “There, there?” Shit, tonight was the first night he’d even touched his son.
Shit…tonight he’d gotten to touch his son. E let the awe sink in. Then the dread. It was imperative he remained dead to those he loved. So now what?
“You okay?”
Julio sat up in a position that mimicked E’s—knees drawn in, hands wrapped around them, staring out over the river. “Yeah.”
“Listen. You can’t tell anyone about me. Tell your mom what happened, but you can’t mention me.”
Julio looked up at him, squinting like it would help him see better in the dark. The development’s streetlights barely touched this far off the beaten path, and there was little moonlight to highlight his features.
“Why not?”
“It’s safer for you. For us both.”
Julio nodded. “All right. Why did they try to kill me?”
E ground his teeth together. “I don’t know. But they might try again. Stay in public. Don’t leave the house until the police figure it out.”
Julio frantically shook his head. “I don’t want to tell Mom. She’ll kill me.”
Before he could stop himself, he rubbed Julio’s back. “She wants you safe. She won’t be angry you told her the truth.”
But dude, she’d be pissed someone hurt her son. Ana’s temper was legend although she rarely unleashed it. One night he had left his dirty clothes laying around one too many times. He found his underwear on the ceiling fan, in the blinds, and had to fish one out that plugged the toilet. Even at the compound, he was still religious about using a laundry basket.
“You tell her, you hear? About all of this. Just say you climbed out yourself.”
“Will you walk me home?” Julio’s shivering had subsided, but he faced a dreaded deed.
E hopped up and pulled Julio to standing. “I’ll follow in the tree line while you bike back. Straight home.”
“Yes, sir.”
E’s heart swelled with pride, remembering how he used to refer to his father in the same tone. Even after he was an adult, he talked to his veteran father with nothing but respect up until a heart attack claimed the man’s life.
“Let’s go.”
Chapter 2
Griffin Chase wandered into the kid’s room. Julio was sitting with a thick book open on his lap, a dim lamp barely lighting the room.
“You did good tonight, kid.”
“Thanks,” Julio muttered, otherwise ignoring Griffin.
Forcing his irritation down, Griffin shoved his hands into his chino pockets so he wouldn’t fist them in front of the kid.
It’d taken him hours to calm Ana down. Still, she insisted on calling the police. They came over, questioned Julio about his near-drowning incident, went to investigate the site where it had allegedly taken place, and said they’d call if they needed anything else.
“So what happened?”
Julio gave him a droll look, and Griffin’s hands fisted of their own volition inside their tight constrains. Kids and attitudes didn’t sit well with Griffin, and there was an overabundance of both in this house.
“I told the cops everything.”
Yeah, including a too accurate description of the kid with the coveted Pokémon card and enough of a description of the man to make certain John Q. Public would be able to point the police in the right direction.
What a fucking mess.
“It’s okay to tell me everything. I understand talking to the police might be a little intimidating, and you might not have mentioned everything.”
Julio rolled his eyes up at Griffin, considered him for all of one second, and went back to inspecting whatever the hell the book was that sat open on his lap.
Griffin rocked on his feet waiting for Julio to add anything to the conversation, like how the hell he survived being thrown into the fucking river in the middle of the night. Following Julio’s gaze, Griffin glanced down to the thick book he was paging through, surprised to see it was actually a photo album.
Griffin’s jaw worked at the sight of photos of the happy couple strewn across the pages: Julio’s father and Ana shortly after they met, smiling together at a picnic, hugging each other at their wedding, Julio Senior in his police uniform.
“How did you survive the river, Julio?”
“I climbed out.” Julio, the little shit, repeated without looking up, riveted on a picture of his father dressed as Freemont’s finest.
So that’s the way it was going to be. Leaving the room, wishing he could inform the kid just how he was going to take his ire out on Ana, Griffin shut the door behind him. He had a call to make and a woman to bang senseless.
“Think I hit him?” X bounced next to E as they walked from the garage in Sigma’s compound into the loading bay, heading toward their quarters.
“You know you did. At least you didn’t use silver this time.”
X fell quiet, brushing her black hair off her forehead, her brilliant green eyes downcast. Damn, E knew that bothered her. She had quite the contentious relationship with the local Guardian commander Rhys Fitzsimmons. So when Commander Fitzsimmons and Bennett Young showed up to deal with a rogue shifter X and E had also been chasing, there were a few bullets exchanged.
E would’ve rather bought the rogue shifter supper for killing Agent L and Agent M. But since the shifter would soon go feral and need to be put down anyway, they set out to kill him and kill him they did. Commander Fitzsimmons almost put a bullet in E’s head right as E was taking aim on the rogue, so X “distracted” him, getting grazed herself by Bennett as she nailed the commander’s shooting arm. Both Bennett and X missed vital organs on purpose, but regardless, E was glad because he suspected the commander’s aim would’ve been true, and a head wound is a bitch to recover from. Not to mention the shit he would take if X had to carry his ass out of there.
Get up here.
Aw, shit. The mental summons from Madame G left a pounding headache behin
d. He subtly rubbed his temples. X didn’t suffer the same effects, being a shifter and telepathy was in their nature.
“What’d you do?” X taunted, poking him in the arm.
Scowling, he ignored her, keeping his gaze on the floor as they changed direction to head to the elevator.
X grew quiet, then gazing at him speculatively asked, “Seriously E, what did you do?”
“The less you know the better.” He kept silent about the other night when he had saved his son. Sure X knew he creeped around his wife’s place, but if he entered Shit City as far as Madame G was concerned, X needed to keep to her own path and not go down with him.
Tension lined her face, mirroring E’s own, and they silently rode the elevator up to Madame G’s suite.
The chime of the elevator made E feel like this was a turning point in his life, a significant moment that he couldn’t change, couldn’t back away from.
The doors slid open presenting Madame G standing in her floor-length, blood-red kimono. Her hands tucked within the sleeves, the only skin showing was her porcelain face and ink-black hair pulled into a high ponytail.
Both X and E approached and stood before the evil woman, eyes downcast, heads bowed, hands clasped in front of them.
“Tell me how the hunt went?” their mistress intoned.
It was a loaded question. But for what intent, he didn’t know.
“He was dispatched,” X replied dutifully, her bangs falling onto her face, revealing the shaved sides. Her hair had been up in a messy faux hawk, but their little scrimmage mussed it up.
“Without incident?”
“No, Madame G. Two Guardians arrived and we engaged, but were able to take out the rogue.” E hoped the bloodshed would satisfy Madame G.
No luck.
“Tell me, Agent E and Agent X, how is it you keep encountering the Guardians, yet they are still alive?”
E suppressed a shiver. Shit was starting to get real. Madame G tested their dedication to her cause periodically, but with both his and X’s wit, they were able to cheat the tests and retain some semblance of humanity.
“They are highly trained fighters, Madame G,” X answered first. “Our primary goal is to complete our mission, and we often don’t retain the firepower afterward to dispatch the Guardians. They are armed more heavily now since we have killed one of their own.”
“Hmmm.” Madame G stared at them. E would kill to look up at her, read the conniving bitch’s intention in those glittering, almond-shaped, black eyes, but he remained unmoving like a rock.
“Agent E, where were you two nights ago?”
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
“At Happy Hari’s getting a blow job, Madame G.” And he had. He hated it, every second, but at least the talented ladies at the massage parlor knew how to give a happy ending to the most uptight of clients.
“Did your blow job take all night?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He threw in a bit of arrogance. If he paid well enough, and he did, it took as long as he told the ladies it did. Happy Hari’s had been a solid alibi for him many times.
“Mmm.” He hated her wordless comments. “Your wife is getting married, I hear.”
Translation: I keep tabs on her and will kill her if you deviate.
E clenched his jaw, jerking his head into a nod as if the information surprised him. Hearing the words sucked, almost as much as seeing the evidence. He didn’t trust his voice not to betray his knowledge of his wife’s business, and that would let Madame G know some part of him wasn’t fully committed to his dark mistress.
They stood there, X and E, side-by-side, while Madame G considered them.
“Go. I’ll have another mission for you tomorrow. Pack your bags, it’s out of town.”
The feeling of foreboding came back full force. Madame G was sending them out of town within days of his son’s attack. Could it be connected, and how?
Chapter 3
Driving home, Ana Esposito groaned and repositioned herself in her seat. Griffin had been uncharacteristically rough with her in bed last night. Again.
Again, she wondered if she had made the right decision saying yes to his proposal. He was a good man and seemed to get along with Julio, at least as much as her son let any of the men she’d dated get along with him. Ana loved Griffin, but lately, he’d seemed distant, brooding, and she had been questioning that often misinterpreted emotion—love.
While she might love Griffin, she was not in love with him, and how pathetic was that? A good-looking man who treated her right…usually. Ana shifted again and grimaced. He tolerated her son’s aloof behavior and held down a good job, yet she still carried a torch for her dead husband.
It wasn’t Griffin’s fault she couldn’t get past her feelings for her late husband. Or at least, it wasn’t his fault that she had experienced the head over heels, madly in love emotion in the past to know that what she felt for Griffin wasn’t it.
But she was lonely, dammit.
For so many years, it had been her, little Julio, and Nana. Then Nana passed away after a bad bout with pneumonia and the loneliness became unbearable. Because she worked full-time and was a single mom, she had few friends she could go out with and unload her suckass day onto.
Her coworkers in the pharmaceutical lab were amazing, but not besties. There was no one she could call and vent to about the mess Julio left behind after making a snack, or how her gutters were clogged again, and she hated heights and dreaded dragging the ladder out to clean them every fall. Man, she despised that task. She could never meet coworkers after work just to relax and share in some laughs because she always had to race home to meet her son as he got off the bus.
Pulling into her driveway, she saw the bus leaving. Perfect timing. She didn’t dare leave Julio alone, not after the attack three nights ago. She shivered. Griffin didn’t believe Julio, but Ana was uncertain. Why would her son lie about that? “To get attention because we’re getting married,” Griffin had replied.
Regardless, Julio had been dripping wet and shaking when he banged on the front door that night. Ana hadn’t even known he’d snuck out, or that he would ever sneak out. The police claimed there were more than Julio’s footprints and everything about his story corroborated. Her heart was pounding just thinking about it.
Deep breaths. She had to calm herself before Griffin got home. He seemed to think extreme sex was the perfect way to ease her nerves. After the police had left and she’d tucked Julio into bed with the worn, ever-comforting photo album, she went to bed and tried to sleep. Griffin had come to her.
She had wanted the lights turned off, but he left them on and descended on her, despite her protests that she most definitely wasn’t in the mood. “You’re too wound up to sleep, let me relax you,” he had said. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was definitely more vigorous than usual.
Then the next night, he took her in the shower after Julio was put to bed. Griffin’s dark eyes had focused on her while he took his release; it was…disconcerting. She didn’t feel the normal connection he strove to make with her in bed.
Then last night…she shifted in her seat again. When the hell did he get the idea that she liked to be spanked? Was he into that shit? If so, she should know before they tied the knot, because for her, a sore ass the next day wasn’t her gig.
She pulled into the garage and waited until her son walked inside before shutting the garage door.
“Hey kiddo. How was your day?”
Julio shrugged one bony shoulder, playing with his backpack’s straps. “Fine.”
All right then. Sometimes, he talked nonstop about his day. Sometimes, it was “fine.”
She followed him up to the door into the house and waited for him to go inside. She stepped into the entryway off to the side of the kitchen. Shoving her keys into her purse, she bumped into Julio’s back, not noticing he’d stopped in his tracks.
“Whoa, sorry hon, I—” As Ana glanced up at Julio, she caught sight of what, or rather who, had mad
e him stop short.
Two men in dark suits were facing them, silently waiting in the kitchen.
One man stepped forward, presenting a holder containing a badge of some sort, but she was too far away to see the credentials clearly. “Ma’am, we don’t mean to alarm you, but you and your son are in danger.”
“What? Why?” Ana’s heart pounded. Who wanted to hurt her son? He was a good, sweet kid. Kids don’t have enemies. And cops don’t wait for you inside your home, keeping their badges too far away to see clearly.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. We need to take you with us now.”
“Oh my God. What’s going on? Do we have to go into witness protection or something? Did we see something we shouldn’t have?” Ana kept shooting off rapid-fire questions while shoving Julio solidly behind her. Making sure her voice sounded panicked, rising in frequency, she prayed it threw the men off.
“Ma’am don’t panic.” One of the males clasped her arm. Meanwhile, the other male reached into his suit jacket. “The boy is in trouble; you need to come with us.”
Ana nodded woodenly, her gaze on the hand on her arm, then drifting past it to his other hand, which was now holding a gun. Turning to look behind her and catch Julio’s terrified gaze, she said, “Don’t worry, little Pikachu, it’s going to be okay.”
Understanding dawned in Julio’s dark eyes, to be replaced with determination. Good, he was ready.
She turned back to face the man who had a hold of her. He was on the shorter end of average, and plain in every way, but there was a gleam in his eyes…A dispassionate, almost cruel aura exuded from the man. It was the same with the taller one who, thank her lucky stars, had his back to her and was walking away toward the backdoor, probably to a nondescript, windowless van. These two men would garner no second glances if you were passing them on the sidewalk, until you looked into their eyes.
“Are you sure I can’t grab a change of clothes before we go?” Ana asked.
Irritation flashed through the first man’s features and as he was shaking his head. Ana steeled herself, snatching for the gun held halfheartedly in her direction. Fully utilizing the element of surprise, she jerked her arm free of his grasp and shoved her shoulder into him as her hand gripped the cool metal of the black gun. Startled, he stumbled back.
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