The Judah Black Novels Box Set

by E. A. Copen

  “Judah, what is this about?”

  “I’ll tell you when I know,” I said, thankful he couldn’t smell my lie over the phone. I hung up without giving him a chance to say anything more on the subject.

  At least he’d given me some new information. Emiko wasn’t acting on her own. Someone had brought her ghost here and directed it at Mia, but why?

  I spent the rest of the day buried in Marcus Kelley’s files. I pulled sheets for everyone even remotely connected to him, starting with his staff. Like him, they were all clean. Cynthia wasn’t even in the system, which didn’t mean anything. I didn’t have her last name to match to her, and if she were human, BSI wouldn’t have been keeping tabs on her.

  The Kings were a different story. I knew about Sal and Chanter’s records, both of which contained mostly dated information. Bran had immigrated to the states and become a U.S. citizen only a few years ago, so his record was short. The only thing I saw there was a traffic stop from three years ago, where he was issued a citation for speeding. The names Flash and Istaqua didn’t return me any results, so I assumed they were nicknames.

  When I put the club’s name into the search, however, a lot of new information came up. The club was on several federal watch lists and had been investigated twice by my predecessors at the Paint Rock posting. It seemed the agent directly before me had enough of a run-in with the club that he convinced BSI to relocate him. Intimidation seemed to be the club’s natural go-to when it came to the law. Istaqua aside, I hadn’t run into any trouble of that sort with them. My relationship with Sal likely shielded me from the worst of it. The takeaway was that BSI knew about the Kings, and while there weren’t any active investigations relating to the club, one could land on my desk at any time. I had to decide what I would do if that happened. If it came down to loyalty to BSI or loyalty to the Kings, I didn’t want to have to choose either of those options. Neither group owned me.

  At the end of the day, I collected my things and trudged back out to my car, deep in thought. I was going to have to confront Sal with the information Reed had given me and see what he had to say about it. I felt a little guilty about how I’d come by the information. After all, I was keeping a secret from him. He had a daughter I hadn’t told him about. Once I broke that news to him, he was going to be pissed, and rightfully so, but I couldn’t tell him, not until I was sure Marcus and Zoe wouldn’t hurt Hunter.

  Valentino’s tow truck was sitting in my driveway along with Daphne’s Prius. I pulled in behind the Prius and decided it was time to check on progress in the house. As soon as I shut off the car, the front door opened, and Shauna came out in a pair of overhauls with paint stains on them. She hauled a big black trash bag behind her and tossed it into the dumpster. Shauna and I weren’t friendly. We weren’t unfriendly either. We just sort of avoided each other. Her girlfriend, Daphne, though, had taken a liking to me. She bounded out of the house with a mop in hand to greet me. “Hey, Judah,” Daphne said, pushing her chubby cheeks up into a dimpled smile. “You, uh, don’t want to go in there just yet. We’re not done.”

  I closed the car door. “How long do you think it will be?”

  “Tomorrow.” She shrugged. “Maybe the day after. By the end of the weekend, for sure.”

  I tucked my hands into my back pockets. “Hunter come home yet?”

  “Umm…” Daphne bit her lip.

  “Valentino told us to get rid of him,” Shauna said with a frown. “Daphne sent him over to Sal’s place.”

  I nodded, waved, and trudged across the dead ground between my house and Sal’s. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him, not like I usually did. After my research that afternoon, I was even more uneasy.

  When I reached the driveway, I heard a loud curse from inside and picked up speed as I went up the stairs. I pushed open the door, poked my head in, and immediately sighed with relief. Sal and Hunter sat on the couch, controllers in hand, staring blankly at the television. From the look and sounds of it, someone had rescued Hunter’s Xbox and Call of Duty from the wreckage in the house and they’d hooked it up. That explained the cussing I’d heard. Hunter said it was physically impossible to play video games and not cuss at them.

  “Hey, Mom,” he said without looking away from the screen.

  Sal looked over sheepishly. It wasn’t a good look on him. “They rescued some of your clothes. I put them in the wash.”

  “You didn’t have to do that, Sal. I could have taken them down to the laundromat.”

  “So how long until they finish fixing the house?” Hunter asked and paused the game to look up.

  Sal patted him on the back. “I told Hunter about the water main break in the kitchen.”

  Ah. So that was the story. Hunter probably knew it was a lie since werewolves could smell lies a mile away, but at least he didn’t know the truth.

  I sniffed the air. My nose might not have been as good as theirs, but I could pick up the faint whiff of vanilla hanging in the air. And chocolate. “What is that smell?” I asked, stepping inside.

  “Cupcakes,” Sal announced. “Spent most of the afternoon baking dozens of the damn things. I don’t know, I guess I needed something to keep my hands busy while my brain worked.” He patted Hunter on the back again. “Hey, kid. Why don’t you go shoot some hoops for a while? Too much time in video games will rot your brain.”

  Hunter acted disappointed and grumbled, but he eventually got up, grabbed the basketball, and went out the back door. Sal stood. “You any good at icing cupcakes? They ought to be cool by now.”

  “I don’t know,” I answered with a shrug. “I’ve never tried.”

  “First time for everything.”

  He went into the kitchen and started lifting hand towels off baking rack after baking rack after baking rack full of cupcakes. There must have been twelve dozen. My mom used to bake like that around the holidays, only her vice was cookies. She’d make enough for everyone at church to have two dozen.

  “So about last night…” His voice trailed off as he started taking them off the baking racks and lining them up in rows of four, then he gestured for me to take over while he got out the icing.

  “I talked to Chanter. I asked him about the Kings since you wouldn’t tell me anything.” I hadn’t meant for it to come out like that. Ideally, I would have eased into the conversation rather than just blurting that out, but tact usually eludes me. This time was no exception.

  Sal paused at the refrigerator door and frowned at me. I expected him to say something, but he just stood there, silent, watching me line up cupcakes. Outside, the faint sound of a basketball striking a wooden backboard echoed into the house.

  “He didn’t tell me much of anything either, but he did have a lot to say about you. He’s worried about you, and so am I. You’ve got a lot on your plate right now. Both of us do.”

  “You don’t have to be nice, Judah. Just do it.”

  I turned around. Sal looked like he was trying to swallow a mouthful of bees. Eyes wide and turned to the floor, muscles in the neck and shoulders tense. Breathing fast. Fear. I’d never seen him afraid before, not even standing inches from death.

  “Do what?”

  “Call it off. Tell me we’re better off as friends, maybe neighbors. It’s you, not me. Whichever one you were planning on. Just say it.”

  Something inside me broke, seeing him like that. I’d come in there resolved to spend the whole evening working toward letting him down gently, to tell him we both needed time and space to get our heads on straight. But standing there with him like that… All I could think of was that if I left him now, he’d be facing whatever came all alone. Chanter’s death. Zoe. Leading the pack. A daughter.

  What kind of woman does that to a man she cares about?

  Even if he was doing something illegal, it was all for a good reason. Rejecting him wouldn’t change that. All it would do was make things worse.

  “Now you listen to me,” I said, gesturing with a vanilla cupcake in hand. “You do
n’t get out of this that easy. You don’t get to just walk into my life and walk back out because shit got real. And you don’t get to be all angsty and stoic and go lone wolf on me either. We’re going to figure out a way to make it work, even if that means I’ve got to sit on you to keep you from going anywhere. I’m sorry. You’re stuck with me.”

  His face changed, and his lips widened into the more familiar sly grin. “Well, anytime you feel like sitting on me…”

  My face flushed, and I turned back around to finish angrily lining up the cupcakes.

  “He likes you, you know,” Sal said. I watched him from the corner of my eye, loading up a pastry bag with white icing from a tub.

  “Who?”

  He handed me the bag of icing. “The wolf. He’s just not sure what to do with you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Why all these cupcakes, Sal?” I asked as I dropped a big, messy glop of icing onto the cupcake and frowned. Sal’s looked a lot better than mine, good enough to sit in a cake shop window.

  “The club’s doing a bake sale and car wash tomorrow. Charity thing to raise money for the local food bank. With Thanksgiving coming up, they could use the help.”

  Thanksgiving. I’d almost completely forgotten about the holidays.

  “The Kings do charity drives?”

  He shrugged. “I guess even outlaws have a heart.”

  I picked up my ugly cupcake and leaned my back against the counter, musing about how sad it was that the biker alpha werewolf could bake and ice cupcakes, while I could barely put together a box meal without burning the house down. “Where’d you learn how to do this? I think maybe I could use some pointers. No one’s going to want to buy a cupcake that looks like this.”

  “It’s not that hard.” He took the cupcake out of my hand, placed it on the counter, and then scraped off what I’d done with a finger that he popped into his mouth. Then he piped his on perfect like it was nothing before showing it off smugly. “There, see? Now you try.”

  I could have grabbed a new cupcake and tried, but to tell the truth, I wasn’t all that interested in icing the cupcakes Sal made. I was tired of the questions and being unsure. If we were going to do this relationship thing, I needed to tell him I wasn’t mad anymore. Somehow convey a definite interest in a strong enough way as to appeal to the other half of him without coming off as a challenger.

  So instead of just grabbing another cupcake, I lifted the one he’d just finished and licked the icing off. Sal watched with interest and then shook his head, smirking. “If you’re going to do that, you could at least get it all.”

  Stupid werewolf. He knew I couldn’t resist taking up a challenge, especially when he phrased it that way. “These are big cupcakes,” I protested and scooped the last of the icing off with my finger.

  Before I could put it in my mouth, Sal grabbed my hand. We locked eyes. Tiny flakes of gold danced in his honey-brown irises. “How long do you think the kid will be entertained outside?” he asked.

  I grinned. “Why?”

  “Because the wolf might not know what to do with you, but I’m starting to get a few ideas.”

  A buzzing sound broke the silence. It took me a lot longer than normal to realize it was my phone in my pocket. I shoved the naked cupcake at Sal, fished out the phone, and fumbled to answer it. “Black.”

  “Eight p.m. in front of the police station. Your ride will be a black Escalade. The Master says, don’t keep him waiting.” They hung up without waiting for an answer. I didn’t recognize the voice but I knew, whoever they were, they were working for Marcus. He was the only one I’d ever heard people around Concho County call The Master. I wondered if he’d found out I’d been asking around. Maybe he just wanted a general update.

  “You need to be somewhere?” Sal said.

  The clock on the stove flashed six. “Not yet.”

  “Good.” He stared down at the cupcake he’d crushed in his hand. “Ah, shit.”

  “The house isn’t going to be livable for another few days, according to Daphne,” I told him. “So, if you don’t mind us crashing here a few more days…”

  Sal walked over to the trash can and swept the crushed cupcake into it. “I’m fine with giving you run of the place. I’ll behave better than last night, too. Unless you’d rather I didn’t?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “What I want right now is a shower and something besides cupcake icing to eat. I need to go meet someone at the station at eight, too. Think you can handle a boys’ night in with Hunter?”

  “You sure you don’t need me to wash your back?”

  “I got it, Sal.”

  His eyes followed me all the way down the hall. I couldn’t help but smile, even though I’d failed on my mission to not let him down. Maybe he was right, and he’d pull himself together. As long as nobody got hurt.

  Chapter Sixteen

  One shower later, I went down the hall to the room Sal had made up for me and found a freshly washed and folded t-shirt and jeans on the bed. Both were still warm. I smiled and dressed.

  When I came out, all the cupcakes had been iced and placed on fancy serving plates, covered with a plastic lid. Sal was outside with Hunter, working on his free throw. I decided to leave them to it rather than interrupt and left without saying goodbye. After all, I’d have all day tomorrow, since the school was closed for teacher in-service.

  A black Escalade pulled up right at eight in front of the station. I got out of my car, locked it, and approached the Escalade. The front passenger door opened, and Marcus’ secretary got out to open the rear door for me. I paused. I’d had plenty of men open doors for me, but it felt weird to have her do it. She gave me an impatient glare. I got in.

  I’d been in a lot of SUVs over the years. None of them could hold a candle to the backseat of Marcus’ Cadillac Escalade. I didn’t catch the edition on the back, but one glance inside told me it was a special luxury model. Instead of facing forward, the back seats faced each other. The interior wasn’t just all leather with wood paneling. It was white leather, soft and supple like a baby’s skin. A screensaver bearing the Fitz Pharmaceuticals logo bounced back and forth on a touchscreen computer inlaid in the car’s wall.

  How many cars did this guy own? Maybe this is a company car.

  Marcus leaned forward in his seat and extended a hand as if to help me in. I ignored it and climbed in just fine on my own to sit across from him. His personal assistant shut the door and climbed back in, and the car moved off. At least, I think it moved. It was so quiet inside that I could hear myself breathing.

  “I wasn’t expecting you to come,” I said. “I thought it would be the goon who called me earlier.”

  Marcus folded his hands in his lap. “I would have called you personally, but I wasn’t well.”

  “You have a cold or something?”

  He frowned. “I feel I should apologize for leaving suddenly last night, especially since it’s somewhat related.”

  I think he expected me to forgive him. Poor guy. I almost felt sorry for him.

  When I didn’t respond, he continued with a longer explanation. “I suffer from an ongoing medical condition, Judah. If I go for long periods with minimal feeding, over-indulge in alcohol, or go too long without proper rest, as I have been, there are symptoms. The condition lends itself to making me irritable and…hungry.”

  I lifted one eyebrow. “So, like vampire diabetes?”

  Marcus offered a strained smile. “More like regular diabetes.”

  “Vampires can get diabetes?”

  “Vampires can have the same defects and diseases as humans, as well as many that are specific to vampires. It’s why we must be so particular about our food sources. It’s why I should not have tried to ensnare you last night.” He sighed and turned to look out the window. “It’s not my custom to feed on the unwilling, nor do I find it in any way enjoyable. For that, I apologize.”

  If I looked closely, I thought I could see a faint twinge of color in his cheeks as he focused on
the landscape passing on the other side of the tinted windows. He’s ashamed, I thought. So it wasn’t intentional after all. It didn’t make me any more comfortable around him, especially now that I knew what he could do.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked, crossing my arms. “You seem like the type of guy who’s very aware of the shadow he casts. Your image and what people think of you in the media make you untouchable, and I know you’re a predator. Seems to me it’s not smart for a predator to admit his weakness to potential prey.”

  Marcus turned away from the window, and I dropped my eyes to make sure my gaze didn’t meet his. “Is it a weakness? Could a weak creature do what I’ve done? Build the empire I’ve built?”

  As he spoke, his tone became increasingly agitated. I’d stepped on a nerve. “I didn’t say you were weak,” I pointed out. “Only that you shouldn’t go around telling BSI agents that tampering with your insulin could kill you.”

  “It’s a matter of public record for anyone who chose to look hard enough. Why do you think I’m so invested in medical science? In Mia?”

  “What’s this meeting about, Marcus? You didn’t come all the way out here to pick me up and apologize.”

  “I did not,” he agreed with a bob of his head. His expression muted to something unreadable. “You’ve been asking around about the Kings. I promised to answer your question. However, I know you visited the priest today. Can I assume you two gossiped enough that you already have your answer?”

  I crossed my arms. The move was meant to make me look more threatening, but inside, I was shaking. I didn’t want Reed to get hurt because of anything I said. The two of us might have our differences, but he was still a good man. He didn’t deserve to be eliminated just for disagreeing with Marcus, especially when he and I finally agreed on something.

  “If anything happens to Gideon Reed—”

  “The priest is too valuable an asset to just throw away.” Marcus waved a hand. “And you can tell him to rest easy. If I intended him harm, I would have done it already. I’m not unreasonable. I only wanted to know where things stood.”