As Lie the Dead

Chapter Nineteen

5:15 P.M.

Jenner helped us get a rental car, late-model, very discreet—something with wheels to get us around town for the next few days. After handing over the keys in the parking lot of the rental place, he extended his hand. I thought he meant to shake mine.

Instead, I pulled back to find an electronic motel room key and a business card for the All-Nite Inn. I stared at them, then at Jenner. “What’s this for?”

“In case you need a place to rest,” he said. “I keep a room there for business meetings, or nights when I just don’t feel like making the drive home. You may use it for the week.”

“Thank you, Mr. Jenner. That’s very generous.” It was a canned response, but it was genuine. A car and a place to stay. For a lawyer, I was really starting to like the guy.

“I wish I could do more. For what it’s worth, I think they’re fools for voting against you, and time will prove that.”

Part of me hoped he was wrong. “You know, I never did ask which Clan you’re from. You are Therian, right?”

He smiled. “You’re right, you never asked. And yes, I am.” With that nonanswer, he strode back to his Cadillac and climbed in.

Wyatt and I stood next to our dusky blue rental until Jenner had driven off, leaving us alone in a mostly empty parking lot. “Well, you got any bright ideas?” I asked.

“You still want to hear what Gina has to say about that Neutralize order she got five weeks ago?”

I nodded. “If we’re lucky, it has something to do with Snow and why he’s so pissed at us. It’ll waste time until Phin calls, right?”

“Right.”

I unlocked the rental and climbed into the driver’s seat. Wyatt slid in next to me. The engine shuddered and grumbled when I first started it, then smoothed out. I pulled out into a quiet side street and began looking for signs to take us back west.

“Where are you going?” he asked, cell phone out and open.

“That motel. It’s not too far from here. I can leave the bag somewhere safer than this car, and besides, I have to pee.” Something I hadn’t quite realized until I said it. All that broth I’d sipped down for lunch was ready to vacate the premises.

He put the phone on speaker without my having to ask—nothing more frustrating than a one-sided conversation you wanted in on. On the fourth ring, Kismet picked up with a terse “Joe’s Pizza.”

“It’s Truman.”

“Is there a reason the phone you’re calling from is blocked?”

“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate; I smiled, turning us back toward the Axelrod Bridge and Uptown. “Any movement at Park Place?”

“Nothing so far. We’re keeping our distance, but I have to tell you, it’s starting to feel like a huge long shot. Not to mention a waste of resources.” Her side of the line crackled. She spoke to someone, words muffled. “Sorry. Nothing new on Call, either. We’re trying everything we’ve got, but with no luck.”

“Yeah, look,” Wyatt said, his tone as rude as I’ve ever heard him, “I may have another lead, but I need to ask you about something from last month.”

She hesitated. “Okay.”

“Second week of April, you got a Neutralize order. Who was the target?”

“You know we aren’t supposed—”

“Fuck what we’re supposed to do, Gina. You owe me.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant she owed him for my “death” or something else. Didn’t matter much, because while I navigated bridge traffic, she answered him. “The target was a vampire named Orlan, from the Emai Family. Mid-rank member, not royalty. The charge was willfully infecting humans.”

Damn. Nothing there painted a motive for Snow.

“Anything else?” Her tone said there had better not be.

“No, thanks.”

“Wyatt, where are you?”

“Around.”

“Look, I know you’re angry, and I know you’re hurting, but we need you. We’ve got rookies who need field training and—”

“No.” His entire face hardened into a scary mask of anger. I was glad I was driving and not being crushed under the weight of that look.

“Six other Hunters died at Olsmill, Wyatt. You aren’t the only one suffering.”

I hazarded a peek at his face. Fury melted into shame in the space of a heartbeat. We were outside of the loop now, beyond the internal problems the Triads were facing, but we could still feel their impact. Mounting odds and dwindling numbers, and their two most experienced Handlers were out of the field. Kismet was trying to keep a dam together with gum and duct tape.

“You still there?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Wyatt said, tone softer. “Look, we’re waiting on some information. When I get it, I’ll pass it along, okay? I just can’t come back in right now.”

“We?”

“Okay?”

“Yeah … okay.”

He hung up without further discussion and pocketed the phone. I let out a breath, glad she wasn’t pursuing the tongue slip. Not that Wyatt couldn’t have handled it. White lies were easy. I made a left one block past the bridge, the motel looming in the distance.

“Something tells me,” Wyatt said, “the Blood kill didn’t set this off.”

“I’d believe it if he were higher up in the Family,” I said. “But not mid-level, and not with the guy orchestrating all of this being human himself. Plus, I have no reason to doubt Isleen’s word that the Bloods are pretty well satisfied with the status quo.”

“So much for that lead.”

The All-Nite Inn was a few steps up from the last couple of motels I’d stayed in—clean parking lot, no graffiti on the walls or bars on the windows, modern paint choices. It was two levels, with a single balcony connecting all of the rooms, accessible at intervals by internal stairwells. It wasn’t a by-the-hour kind of place, but it was still a far cry from the Hilton.

Jenner’s room was number 224. I parked as close to our stairwell as I could, backing in just in case we had to make a quick getaway. With no luggage except my canvas tote of belongings, we probably looked like a couple sneaking in for an illicit rendezvous.

I put my bag on the floor near the bed and spun in a slow circle. It had a single king-sized bed and sensibly colored linens, polished fake walnut furniture, an acceptably understated painting on the wall, and modern electronics. Nothing kitschy or outdated. The mini-fridge looked new, and the tiny bottles of shampoo and lotion were from a decent retail chain. Not a bad place for a hideout.

Or whatever Jenner really used it for.

The bathroom was the type with the counter and mirror inside. I did my business, then checked my appearance. More color had come back to my cheeks, but even tied up, my hair looked like a dead animal had been glued to my head. Definitely needed a good shampoo. Or a fast chop with sharp scissors.

When I emerged, Wyatt was perched on the far corner of the bed, staring at the wall and seeming lost in thought.

“This is probably a terrible idea,” I said.

He snapped his head toward me, eyebrows arched. “Why?”

“Lately, motels seem to herald my imminent demise.”

For several seconds, he just stared dumbly. Then the joke sank in, and he cracked a smile. “That’s really not funny, Evy.”

“Then why are you trying hard to not laugh?”

His smile widened, and amusement made his eyes sparkle. “I remember something more pleasant than imminent death from our last motel stay.”

My stomach flipped. I remembered that night, too—slightly out of focus and fuzzy from the distance of death and time. Our only time together before my death. The way he’d held me. The brush of his mouth on my skin. I had craved sensation that night—one last electrifying moment before it was all ripped away, as though I’d known I was about to experience the worst agony of my life and would have to see Wyatt break as I lay dying.

A moment in time I both treasured and regretted.

“Evy, I’m sorry.”

I blinked. “For what?”

“For whatever I said that made you look so sad.”

“Wyatt, don’t.” I sat next to him, letting the squishy mattress sink under my weight. I was weary of the constant battle between my emotions and my memories. Between the things I wanted and the things lodged firmly in my subconscious that kept me from them. I was sick to death of fighting with myself.

“I shouldn’t have joked about that night,” he said.

“I think you’ve earned the right to be honest with me.”

He turned his hand palm up. I threaded my fingers around his and held tight. “And I think you have, too,” he said.

“This isn’t me being honest?”

Shifting to face me more directly, he reached for my other hand and I let him take it. “Evy, I think if you were being truly honest right now, you’d be beating me into a bloody pulp. Or screaming obscenities out of sheer frustration. Maybe both.”

I searched his face for hints of teasing. A glimmer of self-deprecation that belied the honesty I sensed in his words. I found none. Why the hell did I think I could run around and prevent a citywide Dreg meltdown when I couldn’t even sort out my own feelings? Or my relationship with my … what? I couldn’t even put a label on what Wyatt was to me. More than a boyfriend, less than a lover. A best friend I’d die for in a second, and someone I’d rather punch in the face than be gut-wrenchingly honest with. The confusing dichotomy had me tied in knots.

Four years of professional give-and-take between Hunter and Handler had been complicated by one moment of weakness on my old self’s part—the culmination of immediate grief impacted by two months of behavioral changes and undefined tension between us. Add to it the physical attraction to Wyatt from a woman who’d been so lonely and depressed that she’d given up and killed herself rather than deal with life. Season it all with the fact that every wound I’d ever inflicted on a Dreg—deserving or not—had been paid back in spades by a goblin Queen and her horny henchman. Then roll it all up in my own bruised, orphaned psyche, and I was a psychiatrist’s wet dream.

“I don’t blame you” was poised on the tip of my tongue. But if I was being honest, I did blame him. Not for anything that had led up to my death but for everything that had happened since. For waking up alone and frozen on a morgue table, for dragging Alex Forrester into my life and getting him killed, for the battle at Olsmill that left six Hunters dead. And especially for the goddamned quiver I felt in my belly when he smiled at me; the way just holding his hand calmed me down, and the constant, warm memory of his kisses. All things I wanted to feel over and over again.

I’d been running around in a constant state of agitation ever since my resurrection, solving one problem after another. The closest Wyatt and I had come to figuring us out was four days ago in First Break. Surrounded by the peace and serenity of the Fair Ones and sure of our protection from everything hunting us, we’d finally been honest with each other. Or as honest as we’d been able when I was still only borrowing Chalice and I was convinced one or both of us would be dead in a day.

But now? We’d both survived that battle, only to be thrust headlong into a new fight—one that had been boiling beneath the surface for longer than we’d anticipated, with no downtime to think about us. Waiting for Phin’s phone call, we had time. And now that I had it, I wanted to do anything except think about us. Or me. All I wanted to think about was the next mission.

It was a hell of a lot easier to handle.

“I don’t want to beat you up, Wyatt,” I said, forcing a smile. “You’re less useful when you’re bleeding and unconscious.”

His eyes narrowed. “Will you be serious, please?”

“I am being serious!” I launched off the bed and stalked to the other side of the room, rounding to face him when I reached the door. “Getting pissed at you doesn’t help. Hell, getting pissed at me doesn’t even help, and quite frankly? The only fucking person I want to be pissed at right now is this Call asshole, because he’s the one creating all our problems.”

“Call isn’t the one affecting us, Evy.”

“Oh no? Without the Park Place tangent he led me on, I probably would have found the information I needed in time to save Rufus from the Assembly, and maybe even have had time for a daylong nap that didn’t come as a result of two broken legs and chemical inhalation.”

“Are you being intentionally dense?”

“Excuse me?” I took three steps toward him, hands balled by my sides, fuming. He stood up, shoulders back, fists loose, anticipating an assault and making no move to protect himself from it. “What the fuck—?”

“I’m talking about us,” he snapped.

No, no, no. We are not talking about us.

He continued. “You and me, Evy, not you and me and anyone else. I love you. I’ve made no bones about that, because it is what it is. I also know you have feelings for me, and I know why those feelings scare you.”

Heat flared in my cheeks. “Oh, really? You know exactly why my feelings for you scare me?”

“I was there at the end.” His voice quieted, was almost reverent.

“It’s more than what Kelsa did to me, Wyatt. I think if it were only that, I could compartmentalize it as just more Dreg-on-human violence and move on. As sick and disgusting as it was, and as … brutal, it was just one more way for the goblin bitch to tear me down and prove she was in charge. It was part of her job to keep me and kill me.”

Wyatt had paled a bit during my monologue. He’d twisted his mouth into a curious grimace, as though unsure what to make of my admission. Hell, I was a little unsure what to make of it. I would forever carry the memory of how I’d died, chained to a mattress, taken piece by piece. But that experience had been altered the morning I’d fully inhabited Chalice’s body. Our body.

My body. A body that had experienced things I hadn’t and recalled those sensations. Sometimes vividly, as I’d felt upon first reentering the apartment; other times, it was just a shadow of feeling. My own memories—of my childhood, of working for the Triads, my friendships with Jesse and Ash, every Dreg I’d ever killed—were becoming gray. Less distinct. They lacked sensation—the touch my old body, long gone and disposed of, had imprinted on itself. Just as Chalice’s life was imprinted on me.

I was glad to lose the pain of my death. I was also terrified of the loss and what it meant.

“If not that, then what is it?” he asked softly. His fingertips twitched, not quite trembling. “When you froze up in First Break, I thought I understood why. Now you’re saying … what, Evy?”

“No, I’m pretty sure in First Break, it was because of the goblins.” More than pretty sure. At the time, the memories were fresh and crystal clear, restored by the magic of a vampire memory ritual. I’d relived the brutality in Technicolor detail less than twelve hours prior to our attempt at sex. I’d only been borrowing Chalice at the time.

He blanched, struggling to understand my cryptic-speak. “Then what? Tell me.”

Something in his pleading tone made me snap. I don’t know what did it, only that I briefly saw red. Fury heated my skin and soured my stomach, barely tempered by the icy grip of fear. My fingernails dug into my palms.

“You really want to know why you scare me, Wyatt?” I asked, voice strange to my own ears. Cold. “You really want to hear why I regret sleeping with you two weeks ago, when I knew I shouldn’t have, and why the idea of admitting my new feelings for you drives me to irrational fear? Tell me you want to know.”

He didn’t reply, and I wanted him to. Hesitation meant he wasn’t sure. “Yes” meant exposing personal bullshit. “No” was easier. If he said no, I’d clam up, swallow the truth, and move on with the other shit we had to deal with. As the silence drew out, the tension became a tangible thing, wrapping cold, icy fingers around my heart and squeezing tight.

He doesn’t want to know. He likes the fantasy warrior woman who kills bad things and doesn’t have a past deeper than four years. The woman who needs him to save her from the terrible memories of torture and death—he wants her. The one he fell in love with, not the amalgamation of two people that you’ve become. He doesn’t—

“I want to know,” he said.

My mouth fell open. A strange chill settled in my stomach. I’d challenged him and he’d called my bluff, and now I didn’t want to say it. Saying it meant he’d really asked, and that meant he wanted me. Not her. Me. Warts and wounds and multiple personalities and all. I retreated until my back hit the door, an immovable barrier. Unless I turned and ran.

Different emotions telegraphed across his face—surprise, concern, anger, frustration, hesitation, even grief. I’d seen them all; I knew his facial tics. I retained the advantage from our old life. He wasn’t so lucky.

“I could guess,” he said evenly, “from things you’ve said in the past, adding details from my own imagination. But I don’t want to guess anymore, Evy. I’ve never known anyone who could still surprise the hell out of me after four years, not the way you do. Who hurt you?”

“Who didn’t?”

His face crumpled. Not out of pity—good for his looks, since I’d have pummeled him if pity had even pretended to come my way—but out of the acknowledgment of hidden fears. This wasn’t the conversation I’d expected, but there was no sense in holding back, either. He wanted the truth? He’d get it.

“Don’t worry,” I said, my voice a little too poisonous. “I wasn’t molested by my mom’s rotating boyfriends or raped by the guards at Juvie. My entire life before the Triads, I was just never treated like a person.”

“Abuse isn’t only sexual, Evy,” he said. Low voice, nostrils flaring. “No one deserves to be ignored.”

I snorted—if only being ignored had been the problem. “Oh no, they paid attention. Just the wrong kind, and mostly it was my own damned fault. To my mother’s boyfriends, I was a leech that needed occasional feeding and slapping around. To the people at the group foster home, I was another pathetic orphan with anger-management issues that was locked in the closet at least once a month for fighting with the other kids. When I was in Juvie, I spent more time in solitary or the infirmary than anywhere else.”

He scowled. I could almost see his blood boiling in his veins. “What about your mother?”

“She’s dead. What about her?”

“Did she love you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. She stopped saying it when I was four. After my stepfather left us, I think she stopped loving everything, including herself.”

“She filled the void with heroin?”

“You know she did.” Where the blue fuck was he going with this?

“Just like you filled the void with killing Dregs?”

The entire world seemed to go absolutely still. My heart pounded so loudly I was sure he could hear it. It drowned out any other sound. Panic set in, colored with fear and anger. He had no right to get into my head like that. He wasn’t allowed to know me so well.

“Don’t,” I said.

“Don’t what?”

“Just don’t!” My chest hurt. It was hard to breathe. Tears stung my eyes, sharp and hot. It was too much. I didn’t want to analyze why I was the way I was. I didn’t want to know why I had a hard time letting people in. I didn’t want to understand why killing Dregs made me feel good—gave me a sense of purpose I’d never felt as just another angry orphan.

Psychology was stupid.

Wyatt walked toward me, and I recoiled. Didn’t even think. The loneliness was there from our conversation; I just slipped into the electrical current of the Break and moved. The jump was brief, barely irritating, and I found myself standing on the other side of the bed, by the bathroom. Wyatt’s back was still to me, attention on the space where I’d been.

I’d just run from him.

God, can I sink any lower than this?

An angry sob tore from me and I fell to my knees, helpless against the shame choking me. Shame over what he knew, and all the things I couldn’t bear to tell him—about the scared thirteen-year-old who’d let an older boy touch her down there for the price of a plastic necklace; the confused twenty-one-year-old who fucked strangers in dirty bar bathrooms to prove she was a woman and not just a killer.

Tears blurred my vision. I squeezed my eyes shut, gasping for air, desperate to keep it together.

Warm arms circled me from behind. I pulled away, but he held tight. Unafraid of my weakness. Not seeming to care that I wasn’t the strong, independent Hunter he’d trained. I turned and collapsed against his chest, unable to fight anymore, and let the tears come. Cheek against his shoulder, I sobbed until my head ached and I’d soaked his shirt through with tears and snot.

He didn’t speak until I was choking back soft hiccups instead of shaking gasps. “You scare me, too, you know,” he whispered, breath warm by my cheek. “You barrel into situations you don’t always understand, and you’re way too fond of questioning my orders.”

“Good thing …” I wheezed a bit, cleared my throat, and tried again. “Good thing I don’t take orders from you anymore.”

“I don’t want to give you orders. I want to be your partner, Evy, not your boss.”

“My partners have a bad habit of dying.”

“Well, I’ve already died once, so we can strike that off the list of objections.” He stroked my hair with one hand, gentle brushes, like I was fragile glass. “Why did you disappear like that?”

Tell the truth, dammit. He deserves that. “I was afraid.”

“Of me?”

“Not you.” I pulled away far enough to see him. The look on his face broke my heart and my resolve to shield any more of myself. Building that wall had been easy, placed brick by brick over twenty-two years of loneliness, ignorance, neglect, and pain. Keeping the wall up against something as simple as love … not so easy.

I was tired of it. Tired of battling my emotions. Tired of fearing the future. Why continue to fear what I couldn’t stop? I had too many other enemies out there, too many other things to fight, without fighting with myself all the time.

Wyatt hooked a finger beneath my chin, drawing my attention back to him. I tried to focus on the bridge of his nose, afraid if I looked into his eyes I’d fall in and never climb back out. He didn’t speak. I gave in, looked, and barely held on.

“Then what?” he asked.

“Of us.”

“Why?”

My stomach quaked. A tremor tore down my spine. I balled my hands in front of his shirt and closed my eyes, sure I would break into a thousand pieces if I didn’t hold on tight. Wyatt pulled me close, abandoning his quest for answers, and just held me. I pressed my face into his shoulder. Inhaled him. Felt his heart beat.

“I told you I’d never pressure you,” he said.

“It isn’t that. I want to be with you and let myself care for you, but it’s those things that scare me the most.”

He tensed a fraction, barely noticeable. “I don’t understand.”

“It feels like …” I struggled to put into words what was so clear in my head. My mixed-up, tired, pain-addled head. “No, not feels like. It is. Giving in to this thing between us—to my physical attraction to you—means losing the old Evangeline Stone for good. It means the sensations I feel in this body are well and truly mine, and that what I was before? She’s gone. It means accepting I will never be her again, and that this is my life now. Period.”

I’d finally said it, and I felt strangely good. Relieved, even. There it was—my fear in full-color detail, and even if I’d been able to take back the confession, I wouldn’t. I knew in my brain that I couldn’t go back to what I’d been before my death, but I had not accepted it in my heart. Saying it drove that acceptance home. Made it impossible to ignore, for both of us.

Besides, it was better he know it all up front, so he could weigh the totality of my issues against his feelings for me. He’d more than earned it.

I drew back and searched his face. “Sorry you asked?”

“Never.” The vehemence in his voice made my heart soar. “Are you sorry you told me?”

“No.”

He smiled. I couldn’t decipher his expression. It seemed like … awe, but that wasn’t possible. “I can’t begin to imagine these last few days from your perspective, Evy. Your entire world changed when you came back, and I never considered that, or how inhabiting a new body would affect you. You’re allowed to be scared of this.”

I bit the side of my lip, considering my words. “I hate not knowing if my feelings for you are mine or hers.”

“I thought you and she were the same now.” He touched my cheek, then let his hand drift around to rest on the back of my neck. “It’s all semantics. Everything you are now is because of the woman you were and the woman you’re in, and both of them are you.”

“Semantics, huh? So my existence has been boiled down to what came first? The chicken or the egg?”

“It sounds goofy when you put it like that.”

“It sounds just as goofy when I say it my way. Everything changed when you died, Wyatt. This is me now, and I need to get over the damned past and just … live.” I drew the tip of my finger across his brow, down his temple, across the hard line of his jaw and over rough stubble.

“So live,” he whispered.

A tiny shiver stole down my back. “Help me?”

His answer was in the slight tilt of his head and in the way his hand gently stroked the back of my neck. In his parting lips. My other hand snaked around his neck and drew him down to me. The first kiss was hesitant, the barest brush of lips. I still felt a thrill all over my body. My stomach fluttered.

His other hand slid to my hip and rested. He waited for me to come to him, and I did, claiming his mouth with mine. Falling into the intoxicating taste of him, letting it overtake my senses. Warmth settled in my stomach, then drifted lower. My skin tingled wherever we touched, and I thought I could kiss him like that forever.

Or until my knee started to cramp from our awkward position on the floor.

I hissed and pulled away abruptly, twisting to unlock my angry joints. “Ow, shit, shit,” I muttered.

“Evy?”

“Inconvenient cramp.”

He scooted around to crouch in front of me, concern blaring from his face like a siren. “Your left knee?”

“Yeah.” The pain was already going away, and it faded quickly as I massaged my knee through my jeans. “Now that’s what I call a mood breaker.”

He chuckled. “I didn’t want to say anything, but my ass was starting to go numb.”

“A numb ass,” I said, grinning. “There may be a market for that as an insult.”

“Says the queen of foul language.”

“You always say to go with my talents.”

He laughed again, and I followed suit. It felt good, knowing that a little personal information hadn’t completely altered our existing patterns. I found comfort in them, and I was sure he did, too. A little continuity in the midst of chaos. He stood up and offered his hand. I accepted, and he pulled me to my feet.

I didn’t let go of his hand. “So what happens now?”

“Nothing you don’t want to happen.”

The petty part of my mind wanted him to promise that went for the things going on outside this room as well as in. Only I knew he couldn’t make such a promise. Everything outside of us was beyond our control. Instead, I replied by obliterating the pocket of air between us and pressing up close. Hips to hips, stomach to stomach. I licked my lips; he accepted the silent invitation.

His mouth moved against mine, soft but insistent, and I met his every movement. Fingers caressed my throat and wandered back to massage my neck and shoulders. My lips parted, allowing him entrance to my mouth, and for a moment we shared a breath. His tongue traced along my upper lip, sending delicious tingles through my belly, and I responded by gently sucking his lower lip into my mouth. I nibbled with my teeth, and his hips surged against mine.

A niggle of old fear returned, and I swiped at it with a mental two-by-four. Not here. Not now. Not again. I won’t let the past continue to control me, or my emotions. Instead, I allowed a delicate dance to begin.

Wyatt’s tongue darted into my mouth, stroked across my teeth, until it was met by mine. I raked my fingers down his chest and earned a soft moan. He trailed cool fingertips along my back, down over my ribs to my hips, drawing me into him. His mouth left gentle, tasting kisses across my cheeks to my throat, and each hot caress drove another small spear of pleasure through my abdomen.

I groaned at the sensation. Felt his lips curl into a smile. He raked his tongue across the hollow at the base of my throat, and my knees buckled. Strong arms kept me upright. We inched sideways, closer to the bed.

A digital ringtone skewered the moment and brought progress to a screeching halt. We froze mid-grope, and I started laughing.

“This better be good,” Wyatt grumbled as he fished the cell phone out of his pocket. It was a city number, caller I.D. unknown. We disentangled, and he flipped it open. “Yes?” He looked at me and mouthed, “Phineas.” My racing heart skipped a beat. “Here’s fine,” Wyatt said, and rattled off our location. “Twenty minutes, then.”

He hung up. I didn’t have to ask—the brief conversation told me all I needed to know—but did anyway. “Phin’s coming here?”

“Yeah. And apparently with big info, too. Said he met Call.”

I could have throttled him for his lack of interest in the new development. It was the phone call we’d been waiting for. “This is good news, Grumpy. We’ve been stewing over this guy’s identity for two days, and Phin might be able to tell us who he is and what the hell he wants.”

“You’re right,” he said with more energy in his voice. “Forgive my selfishness in wishing he’d waited another thirty minutes to call.”

“Only thirty minutes?”

He grinned wolfishly. “It would have at least let me finish kissing you the way I wanted.”

Dammit, heat blazed in my cheeks and neck. I cracked my knuckles, suddenly full of nervous energy.

“I love that for the brave fighter you are,” Wyatt said, “I can still make you blush.”

“I’m sure I could make you blush, too, if I tried hard enough. Only it would be more from words coming out of my mouth than anything going in.”

He laughed at the moderately lewd joke. Since we had no time to continue our previous activities to a satisfying conclusion, I worked on putting the touch and taste of him out of mind. My skin still seemed hot where he’d kissed me, and I missed him in my arms. Not good, since I once again had a problem to solve. And a bad guy to stop. The world had briefly paused; Phin’s phone call hit the Play button again.

I flopped down on the bed and leaned back on my palms. “So, if you were a bad guy intent on bringing a battle force against the Triads, who would you be?” I asked.

“Someone with one hell of a grudge.” Wyatt leaned against the wall opposite the bed, arms folded over his chest. “And it’s someone who knows what we do, who we are, and seems to have a connection to the Clan Assembly.”

“Or he got that connection via his relationship with Snow.”

“Also possible.”

“Hopefully Phin managed to get a snapshot somehow, because it’ll make identification a hell of a lot easier. I guess he didn’t give you any clues over the phone?”

“The conversation was pretty brief, Evy.”

I picked at a snagged thread on the bed’s coverlet, hoping for inspiration to strike. Twenty minutes felt like an eternity of waiting, and I was not a patient person. Only my mind kept circling back to the same possibility—someone who had every reason to bear a huge grudge against us. “I know you said he wasn’t our guy,” I said, “but I keep going back to the surviving son of the Greek restaurant owner. He makes such perfect, poetic sense.”

Wyatt pressed his lips into a thin line, eyes sharp. “I told you, it’s not him.”

“Yeah, you told me, but he still feels relevant, Wyatt. You said you trusted my instincts, and my instincts say that what happened back then has a bearing on what’s happening now.”

“Of course it does. That event helped shape what the Triads are now, but it doesn’t mean the son of the victims is involved with Call.”

“Then what’s he do?” I sat up a little straighter, frustrated by his lack of real answers. “You said you know him, so prove it. Prove my instincts just happen to be a little clouded on this, and that I’m grasping at straws out of some deep-seated need to be the one to unmask this asshole.”

Coiled like a furious spring, Wyatt pushed away from the wall and stalked to the other side of the room, near the door. He reached his farthest point, pivoted, and walked halfway back to me, blazing. “He works in the city, Evy, and he can’t possibly be Call or be working with him. I know he can’t.”

“But I don’t.” I stood up, planted my hands firmly on my hips, and returned his scowl tenfold. “Come on, Truman. I just bared my soul for you to see, touch, and possibly sneer at. Toss me a fucking bone here. Who did the kid grow up to be?”

He continued to glare, but his resolve was crumbling. He raked a hand through his short hair, around his neck, and back up to pinch the bridge of his nose. I hadn’t moved; he had to know I wouldn’t, now bound and determined to get this information from him. I wanted to know who he was protecting.

“Fine,” he snapped. “You want to know whose father was killed by a Halfie and his mother and sister by rogue bounty hunters? He’s the Clan Assembly’s killer, Evy, the one they keep accusing you of protecting.”

My face went slack as confusion settled in. “Rufus?”

“No, not Rufus.” Something sinister flashed in his onyx eyes. “Me.”