Part 7 (2/2)
Knowing he had given up the right to have an opinion on what she did, or how, he pokered up. ”Go on.”
She sent him a measured look, but continued, ”I was after a high-dollar bounty n.o.body else would touch, a real sleaze named MoJo, chasing his a.s.s through this s.k.a.n.ky apartment building, when I whipped around a corner and found him waiting for me. With an UZI.” She paused, smiling with zero humor. ”I kept going, right out a second-story window. Seemed like the better option at the time.”
A chill washed through him. ”Christ, Reese.”
She held up a hand. ”Neither of us wants to do the whole 'So what have you been up to for the past decade?' thing, so let's just leave the past where it belongs. But I figure you should know that I don't bounce back as fast as I used to. I was in the hospital and rehab for a while, then turned private locator when I was back on my feet, partly because I had lost the taste for bounty hunting, and partly because these days I do better with the finding than the grabbing.” She rubbed the back of her neck. ”I'm fine on a day-to-day basis, and Sasha worked some healing magic on me while I was at Skywatch, but all the rattling and rolling we did today threw something out of whack again.”
”Why the h.e.l.l didn't you say something before I dragged you hiking in the dark? If I had known, I would've-” He broke off because there wasn't much he could've done different. They had needed to get moving before the cops arrived, and calling for a 'port pickup wasn't an option. He had to stay the h.e.l.l away from Skywatch until he'd dealt with Keban, or things could get seriously ugly.
”I didn't tell you partly because my instincts are telling me that you're right-we're better off staying out and here following our noses. Or, rather, your nose.” That was the plan-if none of her inquiries yielded better options, they would return to the crash site in the morning to see if he could track the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's scent trail.
”If that was 'partly' it, what was the rest?”
”Because I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” she snapped, eyes suddenly flaring. ”I don't need a man to tell me how to run my life.”
”Whoa.” He held up both hands. ”Rewind. I wasn't-”
”I'm not talking about you.” She glared at the phone she had tossed on the desk.
She hadn't been arguing with a contact, he realized suddenly. It had been a man. Leave now, he told himself. Close the door. Instead, he bared his teeth. ”Boyfriend back in LA giving you grief about being gone?”
She shot him an unreadable look. ”He's just a friend. And I'm in Denver now.”
”You moved back?” That shouldn't have bothered him, just as it shouldn't have bothered him that she had a ”friend.” She had her own life, her own existence. And he didn't have any f.u.c.king right to comment on either.
And if he kept telling himself that, maybe it would sink in.
”I flew back when I heard the VWs had gunned you down. Then, after . . .” She hesitated. ”I stayed. Denver was home.” Or it had been once he was gone, he realized. And he couldn't blame her for that. She continued: ”It wasn't hard to move the locator business. It's mostly Internet searches and phone calls, with the occasional plane ride and face-to-face for variety.”
”When did you get hurt?” What she had described wasn't sloppy, it was suicidal. And if he focused on that, it would keep him from going where he way didn't belong.
”No.” She crossed her arms, shaking her head. ”No more 'remember when' c.r.a.p. I only told you about my getting hurt so you would know I'm not the a.s.s kicker I used to be. Not to get sympathy points, or what-the-h.e.l.l-ever. So just leave it alone.”
”You said a few years, which puts it right around the last time we saw each other.” He had been p.i.s.sed off about getting convicted for a bunch of small s.h.i.+t that he knew had come from her, deep in withdrawal from the black artifact having been locked away with the rest of his effects, and about bursting with rage and self-pity. And he had been f.u.c.king ugly to her. Hateful. Worse, even, than Keban at his nastiest.
He should know. It was one of the two scenes Anntah had shown him, over and over again, using the guilt, shame, and pain to break him down to nothing, so he could be rebuilt tougher and stronger, and ready to be a good Nightkeeper.
Reese didn't say anything, but although his instincts weren't as uncannily accurate as hers, they were good enough, and right now they were telling him he had nailed it. After that last visit, when he'd pretty much blamed her for everything that had gone wrong in his life, she had headed home. And she had freaking decompressed.
Son of a b.i.t.c.h. ”If I made you-” he began, but broke off when she practically exploded out of the chair.
She got right in his face, and poked him hard in the chest, eyes blazing. ”You can cut the big brother s.h.i.+t right now, Mendez. It won't play anymore. I'm responsible for my own choices, my own mistakes. n.o.body makes me do anything.”
She drilled him again, and he had to stop himself from catching her hand, holding it, holding her. His blood heated, and in the back of his brain something dark and greedy whispered: Mine. Except she wasn't his, hadn't ever been. Couldn't ever be, given the threat of the serpent bloodline.
And f.u.c.k it all, he should've knocked her out, called for a pickup, and left her with a note that if Rabbit didn't wipe her memory and Strike didn't'port her home and leave her alone, there would be h.e.l.l to pay.
He took a step back, which put him in his own room, and raised his hands. ”Reese, calm down. If you-”
”Don't tell me what to do.” She shot him a look of pure venom. Then she slammed the door that connected their rooms. And locked it on her side.
The next morning not long after dawn, Reese opened her side of the connector and tapped on the other panel. Expecting the click of the lock, she jolted when the door swung open immediately to reveal Dez, wearing desert-camo pants and a tight, dark brown Under Armour s.h.i.+rt that zipped up to his throat and showed every ridge and bulge. His sleeves were pushed up on his forearms, baring not just the dark blue-green tattoo bands that hid his scars, but also the three stark black glyphs on his right forearm: the swirling ovals of the warriors mark; the plumed serpent's head; and the stacked, intricately decorated circles that identified him as a lightning wielder. She had first seen the marks the day she had grabbed him out from underneath Strike's nose. At the time, she had thought they were just affectations. Now, though, she knew they were real, understood what they meant.
He's a new man, Strike had written of Dez. But if that was true, why had he gone off on his own? What wasn't he telling the others? That's what I'm trying to figure out, she told herself, ignoring the twist of unease that warned her motives weren't so simple.
”Morning,” she said to him, holding out a Dunkin' Donuts bag containing three egg sandwiches and a twenty-ounce Mountain Dew. ”Here.”
He took the bag with a raised eyebrow. ”Making sure I've got enough calories on board to do the bloodhound thing?”
Her face heated. ”More like an apology for losing it last night. I'd like to blame the pain meds, but the truth is that I probably would have melted down regardless. Yesterday was . . .” She trailed off.
”Yeah.” He nodded. ”Yesterday definitely was.” He paused. ”Feeling better?”
”Fine, thanks.” And she was, physically. Emotionally . . . well, she would deal.
”You ready to get on the road?”
She exhaled, then nodded. ”Yeah.” The sooner they found Keban, the sooner she could get back to reality and away from a man who was simultaneously the boy she had loved, the guy who had broken her heart, and a stranger she didn't trust in the slightest.
They drove up a winding pathway, to the top of a forty-some-foot cliff overlooking the S curve where Keban had abandoned his car the night before. Reese's gut and basic logic said that the winikin had made his getaway in a second vehicle that he had stashed somewhere, and that the plateau would've made a good hiding spot. But Dez spent only a few minutes pacing back and forth along the flattened parking area before he shook his head. ”I'm not sensing anything up here. You see anything down below?”
Lowering the binoculars she'd been using to scan the crash site, she said, ”Nothing is jumping out at me.” With the wreckers apparently having come and gone the night before, there wasn't much left of the crash beyond a crumpled section of guardrail, some skid marks, and scattered debris. ”I keep thinking there should be more,” she said, remembering the jolt of impact and the wrench of going over the edge . . . and then his magic feathering over her skin, making her feel like she was inside a giant Fourth of July sparkler.
He came up beside her, standing close enough that his sleeve brushed against hers. ”There probably is more. If not right here, then somewhere along the trail.”
”b.o.o.by traps, you mean.”
Nodding grimly, he said, ”He needs to slow me down enough that meeting him on the twenty-first is my only option. He'll want to call the shots and set the scene.”
”Do you know what kind of a spell he's planning on casting?”
”He can't do magic. That's why he needs me.” It was an answer of sorts, but she was keenly aware that he was avoiding her eyes.
d.a.m.n it. More disappointed than she should have been, she turned back to surveying the site. ”If there's a trap down there, I can't see it.”
”I'll keep my senses wide open.” He shrugged out of his desert-camo jacket and hooked it over her shoulders. His eyes were unreadable behind dark, frameless sungla.s.ses. ”Stay up here and watch my back.”
Until she was surrounded by his secondhand body heat, she hadn't really realized she was cold-her jacket was fine for A-to-B-ing it in the city but not much else, which meant that the weight of his coat was a major improvement.
Not wanting to examine her sudden flush of warmth any further, she nodded. ”Will do.”
As he headed down the narrow trail that led to the road, she folded back the sleeves and tried not to think that once upon a time, his simple gesture would have made her weak. Now it just made her hope they found Keban quickly, and that Dez's secrets would turn out to be no big deal.
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