by J. R. Ward
What was his female doing here?
Frowning, he stepped forward, intending to reveal himself to the person who he’d been waiting to hear from all day long. But he’d killed the lights, and she was distracted texting on her phone… so it wasn’t until he put himself in her path that she stopped short. Looked up. Did a double take.
“It’s… you,” she said.
God, that voice. He had to close his eyes and consciously keep his balance as it went through him.
Then they both spoke at the same time.
“What are you doing here—”
“Do you work at the paper—”
As they fell silent together, he re-memorized her features, and found that his recollections of her were spot-on. He’d managed to remember everything about her with precision, yet the images he’d stored in his brain were nothing compared to the real thing: The three dimensions of her body. The smell of her skin. The sight of her red hair teased by the cold spring wind.
And most especially the way her green eyes pierced through his skin and bone, and went somewhere so much deeper.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She seemed too distracted by his appearance to answer. But then she nodded. “Yes. I’m good. You?” Then she laughed in an awkward burst. “I feel like we’re at a very strange cocktail party right now—”
“I’m talking about what you saw last night. On the fire escape.”
She frowned. “Wait, did you follow me after you left?”
“I just wanted to make sure you got back to your car okay.”
Those resplendent eyes of hers closed and she shuddered. “Yeah, that didn’t happen. Guess you know that.”
“You shouldn’t have to see such things. Ever.”
She shook her head. “No one should—”
The sound of a bullet being fired came from the left, and Syn yanked her behind him so fast, she stumbled. Catching her fall while blocking the shot with his own body, he got out a forty and pointed it at a junker that was traveling down the lane next to the parking lot.
Just as he pulled his trigger, his female pushed his arm out of alignment and the bullet ricocheted off a building flank, a spark flaring bright before being consumed by the darkness.
“What’s wrong with you!” she hissed. “It’s just their exhaust backfiring!”
Ignoring her, he kept his eyes on his target, and brought his arm back up. This time, he wasn’t going to miss, and he didn’t give a shit what the cause of the noise was. Bullet or backfire, those fucking humans deserved to die if only for their failure to Midasize. They’d startled his female. That was more than enough justification to pump them full of lead.
Especially in his current mood.
* * *
This time, when Jo tried to move the man in leather’s arm position, she got absolutely nowhere. She hung her entire body off his elbow, and still that gun stayed pointed at the old Civic. In a panic, she looked toward the car and could make out the profile of the driver, the man clueless that he was about to be blown sky high.
“Please…” Her voice cracked. “I can’t take any more death today.”
The gun lowered instantly, allowing the Civic to safely round the corner and drive out of sight.
And then it was just her and the man in leather in the damp, rushing spring air, standing in the darkness behind the CCJ newsroom.
As Jo started to shake, she dropped her bag on the pavement and put her hands to her face. “Oh, God.”
The trembling got so bad that she threw an arm out blindly, and the man with the gun was the one who caught her, pulling her against him just as her legs lost all their muscle tone and turned into pipe cleaners. His strength was such that he didn’t seem to notice the addition of her weight, and before she knew what she was doing, she put her arms around him, holding on as if he were the rope drawing her out of the cold, greedy lake she was drowning in.
As she fell into the weakness that claimed her, Jo turned her head to the side and put her ear against his heart. The strong, steady pump calmed her, and the scent of him was heaven in her nose, and the warmth emanating off of him revived her as nothing else could. So yes, even after she could feel her legs again and stand properly on her own, she didn’t step back.
It had been so long since she had felt safe.
Just a little longer.
She would stay… a little longer.
“Where can I take you?” he asked.
His voice vibrated through his chest, and she liked the feel of it. Hell, she liked the feel of all of him. And that cologne, dear God, the cologne.
But they couldn’t stay like this forever.
Prying her body off of his, she forced herself to step away from the warmth of him. Then with a quick tug, she pulled her jacket down and cleared her throat.
Like that would call her brain to order.
“Ah, nowhere,” she said. Because it was the right answer. “I’m good. I’m fine—”
“Have you eaten?”
Jo blinked. “Eaten?”
“Yes.” He mimed a fork going back and forth to his mouth. “Food?”
And that was when his expression registered. In spite of all his leather and his weapons, and the fact that he very calmly and deliberately had been about to shoot and kill someone with a bad muffler, he seemed… sheepish. Shy. Nervous.
Jo laughed in a burst. “Oh, my God. Are you asking me on a date?”
“I… ah…”
Alarm marked those hard features of his. In fact, he looked downright spooked.
“I, um, I thought you might be more comfortable in a public place,” he blurted. “You know. With public around. In a place. That serves… you know, dinner things.”
She started to smile. ’Cuz sometimes that was all you could do. “There’s a bar with bad fried food about two blocks from here. They also have a beer menu that’s three pages long.”
“I don’t drink.”
“Okay, like anything? Because that’s not compatible with life.”
“Alcohol.”
“Well, you can order a tap water and a straw then. How about that?” As he started to nod, she pointed at his gun. “But that stays in your pants. Or… yeah, that sounded dirty. But the point is, no shooting anything or anybody. I don’t care if the waiter drops a tray right behind you or a fight breaks out and you get beer splashed in your face. Agreed?”
The way the man nodded was like a Doberman who’d been schooled for piddling on the rug.
“All right,” she said. “Let me put my bag in my car—wait. One more thing. The bar is where most of the cops go to hang out. Are we going to have a problem with that?”
It was a test. Public places were one thing. But given this guy’s point-and-shoot proclivities, she wanted to go somewhere especially safe—and if he were a wanted man? A violent felon? He wasn’t going to volunteer to get ID’d. Oh, and as for herself and that helicopter from the night before? There were a thousand redheads in this city, and chasing an active suspect through the streets via spotlight was a very different proposition than identifying her in a bar twenty-four hours later.
Facial recognition was good. It wasn’t that good.
Besides, she’d had the hood of her windbreaker up most of the time.
“That’s not a problem for me,” he said without blinking.
Ignoring the relief she felt, Jo hefted her bag up on her shoulder and headed for the Golf. As she walked, she could sense him behind her, and she glanced back. He was scanning the parking lot, the lane, the buildings around them.
And he hadn’t put the gun away yet. It was down by his thigh—
As her phone went off, she put her palm up at him. “Just my cell. Don’t fill me full of holes.”
He shot her a no-shit-Sherlock look.
Whoever was calling wasn’t in her contacts, but she answered anyway. “Jo Early.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that the man did a double take. But then she had to conc
entrate on what McCordle was saying.
“Wait, wait,” she interrupted. “So Frank Pappalardo’s definitely put a hit out on him? You’re sure?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Butch pulled his roommate’s R8 up to Safe Place, but he did not cut the V10 engine. As much of a gentleman as he was, there was no walking his shellan up to that door. No males were allowed on the property, and definitely not close to the entrance or in the house. The females and young who were finding safety and treatment inside were on a continuum of recovery and stability. There was no reason to make them any more uncomfortable than they had to be, and surprise, surprise, the aggressors who had hurt them were all males.
Marissa leaned over the console and he met her halfway. Kissing his mate, he lingered with their mouths together, his hand sneaking up to the nape of her neck.
When they finally pulled back, he smiled. “I’ll come pick you up at four.”
“I love driving in with you.”
“I love being your chauffeur.”
Marissa gave him one more peck, and then she opened her door and shifted her legs out. As she extricated herself from the low-level car, he wanted to pull her back in. Then he wanted to drive off and keep going.
Instead, he tilted over into the passenger seat and looked up at her. “I’m counting the hours.”
“Me, too.”
Marissa blew him a kiss, closed the door, and went up the front walkway. On her way inside, she gave him a last wave, and then the heavy, reinforced oak door was shut. Butch took a deep breath. Then he put the car in M1S and hit the gas, manually shifting the DCT as he left the neighborhood. It was a good ten or twelve minutes to get downtown, and he enjoyed the swerving in and out of lanes, the seventy-eight miles an hour in M4S… the dropping down into third gear, hammering the accelerator, and taking the Audi up to a hundred just before he got off at the Northway’s Trade Street exit.
Some blocks down from where he dumped out onto the surface roads, he ditched the R8 in the garage where Manny parked the mobile surgical unit when it needed to be downtown on standby. Out on the street on foot, he strode along with his senses threading through the darkness. He immediately sensed a couple of lessers, but they were blocks and blocks away. Frustrated, he gave their approximate locations to the group that was on rotation, and hoped that tempers would hold and nobody would get too stabby before he could come on scene.
The instinct that he was being followed was a gradual one, the kind of thing that snuck up on him… as someone snuck up on him.
Triangulating the direction of the wind, he made a left, a right, and then another right so that the breeze coming off the river rode up on his back, carrying the scent of his little friend upon it.
Not a slayer. Not a vampire.
And was that… Poison by Dior? Shit, his nose had to be playing tricks on him. No one wore that perfume from the eighties anymore.
Stopping, he pivoted around, not bothering to hide his Hi, how’re ya.
The woman was a good twenty feet away from him, and she was surrounded by light, sure as if the ambient illumination of the city was drawn to her. And yeah, he could understand why. Considering all the grime that downtown had to offer, she was certainly more worthy of a glow than a dumpster or an MSD truck.
Long brunette hair. Ridiculously good legs, like a thoroughbred. Tiny waist. Boobs that were perfect, but proportional, which, according to his male brain, meant that they might well be real. All in all, a package done up in runway-worthy clothes that, prior to his bonding with Marissa, would have caught his attention and then some. But he didn’t fall into those kinds of feels. He was, after all, and in spite of the many questionable choices he’d made in his past, a good Catholic boy who had no interest in adultery.
Plus, hello, his shellan was all he wanted anyway.
The woman kept walking toward him, and she did that model thing, where the high-heeled shoes swung out and came back in with every step, the hips counterbalancing the exaggeration, the hair all bouncing to the rhythm of “Sexy Can I.”
This show couldn’t be for him.
Her eyes, however, told a different story.
They were locked on his, and Butch glanced over his shoulder, figuring a tour bus full of rappers, ballers, and tech billionaires had to have rolled up behind him.
Nope. She was coming for him.
When she stopped, she was about five feet away, and damn, her foundation was either the spackle they used at the end of Death Becomes Her or her skin was just fucking perfect. And those eyes. There was a king-sized bed with furry handcuffs attached to the headboard behind each one of those glittering black irises.
“Can I help you,” he said dryly. “Because you’ve obviously mistaken me for somebody.”
“No, I’ve been looking for you.”
As her words came through the air at him, he weaved on his feet, his brain shorting out for a brief second. But then, like the electricity came back on in his skull, he was perfectly fine save for a lingering headache.
He rubbed one of his temples. “Look, sweetheart, you need to keep moving on—”
“Dontcha recognize me? I’m a friend of your sister Janie’s.”
Butch froze. And not only at the words, but the Boston accent that came through loud as a marching band in those syllables. “What did you say?”
Those eyes never left his, and as he stared into them, he felt as though he were falling, even as he stayed on level ground.
“Your sister Janie. I went to school with her and you.” The woman pointed to her bodice. “Melissa McCarthy—and who knew that name would ever mean anything outside of Southie, right?”
Butch narrowed his stare. “Melissa… McCarthy?”
“You know, we lived on Bowen and F Street. I had braces back then, but you gotta remember me.”
“Your brother was…”
“Mikey. Remember they named the five of us with M’s? Mikey, me, Margaret, and Molly, the youngest. Megan, who shoulda been the baby of the family, didn’t make it when she was born.”
“Holy… shit, Melissa.” He closed the distance between them. “What the fuck you doin’ up here?”
His accent, long suppressed by his years in Caldwell, rebounded in his mouth like something that had been vacuum packed.
“We ain’t that far from Boston.”
“Far” was “Fah.” “Boston” was “Bahston.” And he loved it.
“Look, Butch,” she glanced around, “I didn’t mean to ride up on you like this, but it’s just too crazy a coincidence. I mean, I was just talkin’ to Joyce the other night. She had her second baby—but you know that, right?”
“Ah, my mom, she mentioned something.”
“So ya still in touch with some of your family, huh.”
“Just Ma. But she’s, you know…”
“Yeah, in that nursin’ home. I’m real sorry about that, Butch. Anyway, yeah, so Joyce was invitin’ me to the baptism back home. She said she hadn’t seen you, and when I told her I was livin’ up here, she said I should see if I could find you. No offense, but I don’t think she really meant it. It was kind of a bad joke.”
“That’s Joyce.”
“But yeah, so I was heading over to that club, Ten? Do you know it? Anyways, I seen this hot car go by and park in this garage. Then you came out the door. I was across the street—I couldn’t tell for sure it was you. But… it was. Is, I mean. You.”
They stared at each other for a while.
“It’s good to see you, Butch,” Melissa said in a voice that got shaky. “You got people who miss you, you know? I mean, where you been these last couple of years? And what’s with the clothes. You look like some kinda hard-ass now.”
Butch glanced down at his leathers. Opened his mouth. Closed it.
“Listen, whatever’s between you and your sistah?” Melissa shrugged. “It’s none of my business. I’m not… I mean, if you don’t want me saying nothing to her, that’s fine. And if you don’t want to talk to me,
I understand. I know what it’s like to have to leave things behind. It’s not fun, no matter what side of the exit you’re on or the reasons why you have to go.”
Melissa wrapped her arms around herself and shivered a little, her eyes drifting away as if she were trying to stop her own memories from knocking on her frontal lobe.
“You shouldn’t be out here walking alone,” Butch heard himself say. “It’s not safe.”
She seemed to snap back to attention. “Oh, I know, right. Did you hear about those two bodies they found? What the fuck?”
“Why don’t I walk you to the club. That way, I know you’re safe.”
Melissa’s smile was shy, and very much at odds with her beauty.
“Come on,” Butch said as he offered her his arm. “Allow me to escort you.”
“Such a gentleman.” She linked a hold on him. “Hey, why don’t you come inside with me? Or we could go somewhere quiet.”
“I gotta work.” The sound of their footsteps rose up from the pavement, the heavy impact of his boots balanced by the staccato clips of her high heels. “And listen, I’m married.”
Melissa stopped. Stamped her foot. “Get out. You are? Joyce said you weren’t ever going to settle down.”
“You meet the right person, that’s all it takes.”
“Well… shit.” She recrossed her arms and looked him up and down. When her eyes came back to him, there was a sly light in them. “But married isn’t always… you know… married, necessarily.”
“It is with me.” He took her elbow and started walking again, drawing her along. “But come on, someone like you, I’ll bet you’re beating ’em off with a stick.”
“You’d be surprised,” came the dry response.
“You know, I don’t remember you looking…”
“So good?” She smiled at him and put her head on his shoulder. “Go on, you can say it and not violate your vows.”
“Fine. I don’t remember you being this hot.”