American Witch, Book 1

by Thea Harrison

  They executed it close to midnight. The Sherman & Associates main office was located in a downtown high-rise, but they didn’t need to break into the main office. As the most prominent law firm in the state, Sherman & Associates would pay a fortune for data protection, so they would almost certainly use an off-site server with encrypted security anyway.

  But the coven had yet to discover an electronic encryption that Steven couldn’t breach. Steven said all they really needed was to get him access to the internal network, so they chose to target one of the firm’s smaller auxiliary offices located north of the city.

  It was physically more accessible, located in its own building separate from other businesses. Also, if things went south, they had a marginal hope of gaining a minute or two more before either the police or some other form of security showed up.

  But when the team of four went in, something happened, some elusive magical thing that shot off into the night. None of those who went in caught what it was, and Josiah and Maria were positioned at road points too far away to identify it.

  “Get out,” Josiah said into his mic.

  “Roger that,” Anson replied.

  Steven might have difficulty with social situations, but at that moment he sounded entirely calm. “I just need forty-five seconds to finish casting this malware spell. Hold on.”

  Josiah heard fast-approaching sirens and got the sense of something huge, magical, and ugly approaching fast.

  Maria said, “Jesucristo. Incoming.”

  “Twenty-two seconds. Almost there.” Steven sounded like he was discussing the weather.

  Two cop cars hurtled past Josiah’s sentry position, but that wasn’t what worried him. He was worried about that huge magical thing. Josiah said, “Get out now.”

  “Goddamn it.” Richard uttered a foreign-sounding name.

  Another immense magical thing hurtled in like a cyclone. A moment later the cyclone appeared in front of Josiah. It resolved into the form of a tall, stern-faced Djinn with sparkling, diamond-like eyes. He had with him the four who had gone in.

  A hint of strain etched Anson’s distinguished features, while Richard looked pissed. As usual.

  Henry held a laptop in one hand as if he were about to place it onto a table. “I guess I can’t put that back anymore.”

  Steven fist-pumped the air. “Forty-seven seconds. Got it.”

  “Yeah, and they know you’ve got it,” Josiah muttered.

  “My debt to you from years ago is now paid,” the Djinn said to Richard. Then it vanished.

  Richard glared at the space where the Djinn had stood. “Do you know how fucking rare it is to get a favor from a Djinn—for a human to get a favor from a Djinn? I was trying to hold on to that.”

  “Bitch later,” Josiah said grimly. “Get in the damn SUV.” He spoke into the mic again. “All the eggs are in my basket.”

  They poured into the car Anson had stolen just for that evening’s work. As Josiah drove sedately away, Maria replied, “Good to hear. I’m headed out.”

  “Meet you at the rendezvous.”

  Ten minutes later, they converged behind the darkened building of a chain store that had gone out of business eighteen months previously. While Richard wiped down the interior of the SUV, Maria hugged them. She hung on to Steven for several moments.

  The sense of something malicious and ugly still hovered at the edge of Josiah’s senses. “Do you feel that?” he asked Maria, and she nodded, her gaze hard and shiny with visions. “Do you know what it is?”

  “Some kind of demon, I think. But I don’t believe they have a fix on us. Our obfuscation spells held.”

  He turned his attention to Steven. “You know that whatever team they’ve got guarding those off-site servers are working on that malware spell.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Steven gave him a sunny smile and snapped his fingers. “I’ve already got it, baby. Even as we speak, a shit-ton of their info has bounced through a half dozen IP addresses and is downloading onto my server. Of course, it’s going to take me a couple of days to break through the encryption.”

  “Everyone’s clear we can only pull this kind of stunt once, right?” Josiah arched an eyebrow as he looked around the group.

  “I’m just glad we lived through it this time,” Maria said softly.

  Josiah was too. He said to Steven, “First priority is a list of their clients. I want that as fast as you can get it to me.”

  Henry said, “A close second—get me their financials.”

  Steven bounced on the balls of his feet. “You got it.”

  After that, they split up. Total meet time: less than five minutes. Josiah went through the laborious task of winding his way back to his Audi and eventually back to the apartment. He was too wired to sleep for a long time afterward.

  Everyone else had been relieved, but he knew better than to relax. Only time would tell if they had really gotten away with it and had gleaned the information they needed.

  His attention turned to Molly as his thoughts did too often these days. He wouldn’t have shared the stress in any case, but she’d been smart to insist on minimal contact.

  The next morning he headed to work, already strategizing his way through the various meetings and decisions on the docket for the day. As he slowed to a stop at an intersection, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

  A semi, approaching too fast. It roared toward him. He spun the steering wheel hard, gunned the Audi. A gigantic force T-boned him from the other side and spun him around. Not the semi, he realized, dazed.

  The door on the driver’s side was smashed in, immoveable. Not enough time to find his phone. He flung a communication spell.

  Molly’s voice, sleepy and confused, “What… Josiah?”

  He should have said it before, but he was so often his own worst enemy. He should have done so many things differently. “I love y—”

  With a scream of metal, the semi hit his car from the other side. He felt a gigantic jolt, and then everything went black.

  Chapter Twenty

  Forty-two hours later, Molly’s plane touched down at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on a sultry, late-summer afternoon.

  Thirteen weeks into her agreement with Josiah. Over four months after the death of her husband. She was fourteen weeks pregnant.

  Two plainclothes detectives from the Atlanta PD met her as she deplaned. One of them, a world-weary man in a gray suit, introduced himself as Frank Williams. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Sullivan.” His tone was polite as he eyed her with a penetrating gaze. “I’ve got two uniforms appropriating your luggage from the airline. If you would kindly come with us to the police station.”

  “Of course.” She kept her expression closed to scrutiny, her voice calm. “I expected as much. That’s why I called you.”

  The drive to the station was riddled with pleasantries. How was her flight. Had she missed the Atlanta summertime. The air felt like pea soup today. Frank liked sweet tea on a hot day. His partner, Molly believed his name was Rubio, drove in silence. Apparently Rubio didn’t feel the need for pleasantries.

  Neither did she. She stared out the window at the scroll of familiar scenery and answered questions when they were asked. At the station, they took her into an interrogation room and tucked her luggage into a corner.

  Was she under arrest? No, of course not, but Frank didn’t mind if he said so himself: he thought it was exceedingly odd she would disappear for such a significant amount of time when her husband had just died and so many personal issues were unresolved.

  Could she tell them what happened the Saturday night her husband died?

  Would she mind going over that again?

  They just needed a little clarification… Could she narrow down the timelines in her story a bit more?

  She told them a deeply edited version of what had happened and stuck to it no matter how often they circled back around to question various points.

  What happened the night
of the doomed party. How she had emptied out the house safe when she left.

  How Austin had found her at the hotel and chased her into the elevator. How she had filed a restraining order, hired Nina, found a place to stay, filed for divorce. She had given her hard copy of the Seychelles file to Nina, whose office files had burned in the fire, but she had kept a copy of all relevant documents in a zip file in her email account.

  She left out any mention of Josiah completely. Funny. He was the most important part of it all.

  Her composure cracked when she told them about the attack. Her memory had grown foggy on the details. (True enough.) She got away from Austin, drove her car back to the Airbnb rental, and realized she was in way over her head and needed to disappear.

  True, true, and true. After spending months under Sarah’s tutelage, she knew the importance of telling at least some version of the truth. Even if they weren’t aware of it, many people had a rudimentary truthsense.

  “About that,” Frank said. “How did you disappear so completely?”

  At that point she stopped feeding them information. “I don’t have to explain that,” she said. “I felt like my life was in danger, so I did what I needed to in order to hide and survive.”

  They didn’t like that, so they circled back around again, taking turns and questioning her for several hours. She asked for water and bathroom breaks when she needed them. Her pregnancy wasn’t showing yet, but she did have to pee a lot.

  At one point, they brought her a cup of coffee that she left untouched, and later a sandwich from a fast-food place. She ate some of that.

  As far as why she stayed away for so long… she had heard the news that her lawyer had been killed and her husband had died.

  Frank had stepped out for a moment, so Rubio asked, “Why didn’t you come back when you first heard the news?”

  “Because the money in that offshore account didn’t appear out of thin air,” she said flatly. “And Austin attacked me for a reason.”

  “Had he ever been violent with you before?”

  “No.”

  “Where do you think the money came from?”

  As Rubio asked those questions, the door opened and Frank returned, followed by another man who redefined the room when he stalked in.

  The newcomer wore dark slacks and a white shirt that was open at the throat and rolled up over the arms. He had a muscular, spare frame and moved like a wounded panther, limping slightly, his hard face expressionless. His amber, catlike gaze sparred with hers.

  She had been leaning forward, elbows on the table. Now she sat back to tuck her hands underneath the scarred tabletop to hide how they shook.

  Her hungry gaze soaked in details. He’d lost weight since the last time she’d seen him. He looked leaner. He looked mean.

  Mottled bruises marred his deeply suntanned skin. A new scar slashed along the knife-edge of his jaw, curving around to the back of his neck to disappear into his collar. It looked as if…

  Abruptly, she pressed her mouth hard with the heel of one hand. It looked as if he had almost been decapitated. Her stomach heaved. While she hadn’t suffered any morning sickness, for a moment she thought she might vomit up the few bites she had eaten of the chicken sandwich.

  The two detectives didn’t notice her reaction. They had focused on the newcomer. Rubio looked shocked. “DA Mason. Good to see you. We hadn’t heard you’d been released from the hospital, or that you’d already returned to work.”

  “I left the hospital this afternoon. Officially, I’m on medical leave.” Josiah turned the laser beam of his attention away from her to focus on the two detectives. “But I’m making an exception for a few special cases.”

  “I see. Well…” Rubio gave Frank a look that clearly said now what?

  Frank responded with an infinitesimal shrug.

  Josiah’s hard gaze swung back to Molly. “Mrs. Sullivan, I was one of the guests at the party the night you and your husband had difficulties.”

  Hearing her name spoken in his deep voice after so many weeks was like touching a live wire. He was so angry at her. He hadn’t tried to speak to her telepathically. She didn’t dare reach out to him either. Her control felt precarious enough as it was.

  “I remember.” She met his gaze steadily.

  “Frank has filled me in on things.” Josiah crossed his arms. “If you were so afraid for your life that you’ve stayed away all this time, what made you come back now?”

  You. I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. I had no way to find out. Hospitals don’t give out information to anyone other than family. I had only the news to watch.

  She waited until she could speak again without losing her shit. “I was tired of waiting and wondering when it might be all right to claim the life I deserve. I decided I needed to have my questions answered about what had happened more than I needed to hide in safety. That I needed more than anything else to confront this.” She spread out both hands, indicating him and the two listening detectives.

  His cold expression hadn’t warmed in the slightest. He said to the detectives, “Go grab some coffee.”

  “But, sir…” Under the pressure of Josiah’s icy stare, Frank’s protest fizzled into silence. He muttered to Rubio, “Come on. Let’s do as the man says.”

  As they filed out, Josiah pulled out the chair across the table from Molly and sat. Holding her gaze, he deliberately put his hand over the recorder that was stationed in the middle of the table and switched it off.

  What was he doing now?

  Even as she opened her mouth to ask, he said, “The audio might be turned off, but the camera isn’t. They’re watching everything you do.”

  “Understood.” More than anything, she wanted to reach out to touch him. She clenched her hands together under the table. “How will you explain wanting to talk to me without the recorder on?”

  “I’ll tell them the truth, that you’ve been my CI and you’ve given me what information you had that’s pertinent to another investigation. They won’t like it, but they’ll have to accept it.” Anger blazed in his expression. He said fiercely, “The only reason I’m not biting your head off right now is because you look like shit.”

  “Likewise, because you do too,” she muttered. Her gaze fell and skewed left to the new scar, and sudden wetness blurred her vision. “How are you walking around after an injury like that?”

  “Magic. My coven called in a trauma specialist who arrived in Atlanta this morning.”

  She folded her arms and gripped her elbows tightly. “But how are you standing upright? You shouldn’t be out of the hospital, not after an injury like that. I don’t care what kind of magical healing you’ve had.”

  “As far as the rest of the world is concerned, I’m still in the hospital.” He planted his fists on the table and leaned forward, the knuckles showing white. “What the hell are you doing here? You’re weeks early.”

  A fine tremor shook through her. Pulling out her phone, she activated the screen, scrolled to the call log and held it up at an angle that allowed him to see but obscured the view from the camera mounted high in one corner. “Two days ago, you woke me out of a sound sleep around four a.m. Then I couldn’t get in touch with you. All I got was an error message.”

  His hot gaze dropped to the phone, and the muscle in the side of his jaw tightened. She must have dialed Josiah’s number a hundred times, only to listen to the same message over and over.

  The number you are trying to reach is not in service at this time.

  The phone trembled in her hand. He looked like he might leap across the table at any moment. He said tonelessly, “I lost my phone in the crash.”

  “Hospitals have telephones.” She whispered so she wouldn’t shout. She wanted to hit him. “You didn’t call. Not even to leave a message.”

  His expression tightened. “I couldn’t. I wasn’t conscious until this afternoon. When I got back to my place and looked through my work emails, Frank had emailed to say you had calle
d and were on your way back to Atlanta. I got here as fast as I could. You shouldn’t have come, Molly.”

  She had been eviscerated two days ago. Now her raw emotions spilled out. “Your accident made national news. Did you know that? I scoured every online news service I could find, but none of them offered any real updates. All they said was that Atlanta’s district attorney was fighting for his life after being in an accident involving multiple vehicles. Staying away was not an option.”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” he hissed.

  Her lips went numb. “Somebody tried to kill you?”

  “That’s why you shouldn’t have come back.”

  The words blasted her. Feeling buffeted, she flinched and then jumped up to pace erratically. “I don’t care. I don’t care. I’m done with this shit. You woke me up. You were trying to say something. Then your presence settled on the bed, and I could see the outline of your body. You looked like you did in New Orleans when you would lay beside me, only you were transparent.” Backing into the corner underneath the camera’s pitiless lens, she shouted, “I thought you had died!”

  He sprang up, knocking his chair back, and launched at her. Pushing her against the wall, he leaned the length of his body on hers. Tears spilled over as she felt his taut, muscular length pressed against her. His scent was strange, overwhelmed with something antiseptic.

  She knew so much more now about how to read a person’s Power and physical state, and she used those skills to scan him. His Power was seriously depleted, his body under tremendous strain as he recovered from massive injuries.

  But his heart, that sturdy, good heart, was still beating strong.

  He buried his face in her neck. “You didn’t catch what I said?”

  Her arms locked around his waist. “No,” she said hoarsely. “I was sound asleep, and whatever it was shot by too fast. By the time I had woken up enough to figure out something had happened, you’d fallen silent. Then you faded away.”

  “I said I love you,” he whispered. “I should have said it before. I shouldn’t have waited until impending death dragged it out of me. You were talking about your mother, remember? You said she’d always been a bitch to you, but she was getting elderly and you wanted to be available in case she changed. I thought, how like you to be so loyal to someone who doesn’t deserve it. I’d fallen in love with you long before then, but that was the moment when I knew for sure.”