Ambushed (19 page)

There
had been a conversation, and after that a fight that I hadn't been
sure I would survive. The conversation was too nebulous to remember,
while the fight was vivid enough that I could almost remember the
sequence of attacks and counters. Even so, I was positive that the
conversation had been more important.

It
had been important because of a…kiss? That couldn't be right,
I'd never kissed anyone, never really felt the urge, at least not
enough to risk it. Kaleb would have used any attachment on my part to
anyone, in or out of the pack, as ruthlessly as he attacked any other
perceived weaknesses.

Any
recollection of a kiss had to be just an idle fantasy played out on
the stage of some dream, but it didn't feel immaterial, it felt real,
it felt important. I could almost feel
her
lips on mine, feel her trembling against me as she started breaking
down the barriers of self-control that I'd spent a lifetime forging,
barriers that kept my beast in check, barriers that were the only
thing keeping her safe.

The
kiss had been magical, life-changing even, but I'd been wrong, the
kiss wasn't what was important. The kiss wasn't the reason that my
subconscious had been picking at the memory for weeks now in an
effort to bring it up to where I would remember. The kiss was only
important because it had been with
her
,
with…

Brindi's
hands on mine shattered my entire train of thought into ten thousand
pieces. It was gone, all of the feelings, the memory that I'd spent
so long trying to reconstruct without even realizing it, the identity
of the mystery girl who I'd kissed, it all went spinning away and
even as I tried to grab ahold of
something
,
the pieces all evaporated like hoarfrost before a desert sun.

Maybe
I would have been able to retain enough to put some of the memory
back together if not for the shock of realizing that I'd allowed
myself to become so distracted that I hadn't seen Brindi reach out to
touch me. No matter what else was going on inside of my mind, I
shouldn't have allowed that to happen.

Her
touching me was dangerous for her in ways that she didn't know enough
to understand, but it was more than that. Letting someone I didn't
know get that close to me wasn't the kind of thing that I could
allow, not if I wanted to survive long enough to see the Coun'hij
fall.

I
moved my hands out from underneath Brindi's hands and then I slid a
little to the side so that our shoulders weren't touching.

"I'm
sorry, you're really quite attractive, but that isn't a good idea."

She
pouted. Even her pout was a study in beauty. "I already told you
that I'm not afraid of a challenge. Tell your bodyguard to keep those
other girls away; they'll never even have to know."

I
shook my head. "You need to leave. Go find your friend and the
two of you can try again with someone else."

"I
don't want someone else, I want you. Besides, my drink hasn't
arrived. You wouldn't have your bodyguard throw me out before I'd had
a chance to finish my drink, would you?"

I
opened my mouth to tell her to leave, but something about her stopped
me. It wasn't that she was gorgeous and I was suddenly feeling
inexplicably lonely. It was that in that instant I realized that her
curious mixture of brash self-confidence and shyness was less
calculated than I'd originally thought.

It
was an act, but it was the confidence that was a show. She was
scared. Maybe that was too strong of a word. The club was too full of
noise and bodies to get a very good read on her, but the less
assertive part of her personality, the shy, withdrawn part, was the
real Brindi.

"You're
scared."

She
gasped. Even that was perfectly understated. She was either a master
actor or she really hadn't expected me to cue into that.

"How
did you know that?"

"I'm…unusually
observant. You could say it's a gift."

She
wasn't satisfied with that explanation, but she obviously knew it was
as much as she was going to get out of me.

"Okay,
yeah, I'm scared. My ex-boyfriend is here tonight too. I didn't
expect to see him here and I'm worried that he'll follow me home.
After we broke up I moved to a new apartment so he couldn't hurt me."

My
nostrils flared slightly as I tested the air. It was harder here with
so many distractions, and I wished for a second that I could just
shift to wolf form, but I could smell the lie rolling off of her. Her
heartbeat spiked despite the fact that her face had stayed relatively
composed.

"Let's
try again, Brindi. This time lead with the truth or I'll have Jerome
throw you out of my booth regardless of whether your drink has
arrived."

Her
eyes hardened and I could see her trying to figure out what she could
get away with.

"Fine,
the truth is I owe some people a lot of money. I came here tonight
hoping for a ticket out of all of that."

"What
about your friend, the redhead?"

"She's
one of the people I owe money to. She's here to keep tabs on me and
make sure I leave with the kind of guy they aimed me at."

"What's
the end game?"

"I'm
supposed to insert myself into your life, take an inventory of all of
the valuables back at your place and then let them inside so they can
rob you, after which I'll be free and clear."

My
beast wanted her gone. Subterfuge was anathema to us. Some shape
shifters obviously got over their beast's native straightforwardness,
but I wasn't sure I ever wanted to be one of them. The animal inside
me wanted to ensure that she couldn't hurt me, but the human part of
me was curious at what could take someone down such a path so
quickly.

"How
did you get in debt to these people?"

"My
parents died in a car wreck when I was seventeen and I…"

I
cut her off with an angry wave. "This is your last warning. If
you lie to me again you're gone."

"Fine,
it was drugs. I'm into them for thirty thousand worth of cocaine. I
ran away from my last foster home when I was seventeen and I've been
selling drugs ever since. I use a little, but mostly I just deal.
Some stuff happened and I ended up in trouble."

"So
you turned to prostitution and theft?"

Her
mouth tightened. "I don't have a lot of other options, not if I
want to live to see next week. They gave me a week and last night was
a bust, so I've only got six more nights to make something happen."

"So
where does it end, Brindi? If you make your big score and get square
with the redhead and the others you'll still be broke and scrambling
to make rent."

I'd
only thought she looked scared before, now she really looked
terrified. It was fascinating though. A lot of people got mean when
they were that afraid, that or they just seized up completely. She
wasn't just waiting around for death to come after her, but it was
obvious that she'd compartmentalized her life to an extreme degree.
She didn't want to think about what came next because she knew things
were almost certainly going to get worse.

"I
don't know. Maybe I could leave the club with you and then make a run
for it. If I find a new city and keep a low profile then they might
never find me."

I
stared at her for several seconds, debating.

"What
would you do if you had the option to do anything in the world?"

She
swallowed and then looked away from me. "I'd like to start over,
for real. I'd like to have the kind of life most kids have. I can't
go back and grow up in a normal family, but I'd like to pretend like
that's where I came from. I'd like to go to college and just blow off
the first year and a half trying to figure out what I wanted to do
with the rest of my life. I'd like to worry about boys rather than
drugs, and dating instead of grand larceny."

It
was true. Every single word of it, which meant that I had a difficult
decision in front of me. The money back in the First National Bank of
Cayman was the next best thing to limitless, but I didn't have access
to all of it right now. Banks here in the U.S. had to report any big
money transfers, which meant that I had to be very careful still when
it came to creating a money trail.

I'd
brought several million in cash and negotiable instruments with me
back on the plane, but it wouldn't last forever and once it ran out I
was going to have to make another trip back to the Caymans. That was
dangerous because Kaleb and the rest of the Coun'hij would be
watching flights out from the mainland very closely and the next time
they'd be waiting for me with a lot more than just five hybrids.

I
already had other plans in the works, plans that should allow me to
funnel some of the money into the U.S. without getting the attention
of the IRS, but they would take some time to really get up and
running. Until that happened, we were vulnerable. I didn't anticipate
any big expenses, but then again I hadn't anticipated Agony being
caught after all of this time and I didn't have any idea how much it
was going to cost to get him free, even assuming we could.

Not
only that, Brindi had made her own bed. It might not be completely
her fault, but she could have chosen not to deal drugs. Was it right
for me to help her and risk coming up short in my efforts to save
thousands of children from growing up in a world where Kaleb and his
cronies were going to use them as disposable commodities in the
Coun'hij's wars?

"Okay,
Brindi, I'm going to help you out. You've been mostly honest with me,
and I do believe that you want the life you just described. There are
stipulations though."

The
cautious joy that had been shining from her face despite her best
efforts died away as she tried to prepare herself for disappointment,
for 'strings' that would be as bad or worse than anything she was
currently dealing with.

"You
can stay with me and I'll get you out of the club. I need to meet
with someone here; you can sit in the booth with us, but you'll stay
on the far end and you'll keep your mouth shut, both in the meeting
and afterwards about anything you hear or see there. Once we're out
of the club I'll give you the money you need to pay off the redhead
and her friends plus a little extra to salve their pride at the fact
that you're about to walk out on them and deprive them of a much
bigger score."

"What's
the catch?"

"You're
never coming back here. You'll arrange for a dead drop so that the
redhead can get the money and then you'll never have any contact with
anyone from your old life. I'll get you a fake ID and you'll enroll
in college and make something out of yourself. No partying, no
dealing, nothing illegal. You need to be squeaky clean for the rest
of your life."

"That's
it?"

She
didn't believe it. It really was too good to be true and she'd
learned a fundamental lesson that most adults twice her age still
didn't understand. There's no free lunch.

I
was going to have to put a catch in there or she was never going to
live up to her end of things.

"No,
that's not it. From time to time you're going to move money around
for me. You'll have some kind of business on the side, we can work
out the details later—maybe photography. The money will come
in, you'll move it to one of my accounts, and you'll take a very
small cut for your time and effort. If you ever try and screw me then
the consequences won't be pleasant."

"Okay,
I'm in."

I
held up a hand. "You also must stop trying to touch me, Jerome
or any of the other people with me."

That
earned me an odd look, but the waitress was back with Brindi's drink
and Jasmin was only a couple of steps behind her. The waitress
flashed me a three-hundred-watt smile as she asked if there was
anything else we needed, but I simply held up my still-full drink and
waved her away with a smile.

Jasmin
didn't look happy to see Brindi. "Who is she?"

"Someone
who's been very foolish up until now, but who we're going to help get
a new start. Did you find him?"

Jasmin
and Brindi exchanged mutually hostile stares and then Jasmin started
working her way around the booth. I slid over, meeting her halfway
and putting more distance between Brindi and me. Jasmin leaned in as
though to whisper, which was a nice touch when it came to maintaining
the illusion that we were just humans.

"I
found Shawn. Jess is keeping an eye on his booth to make sure he
doesn't send anyone out for help, but it's not like we can stop him
from texting. He's expecting you now; you're going to want to move
quickly so you can talk to him and get back out before more of the
Chicago pack can show up and box us in."

"Okay,
let's go."

We
all stood up to leave, and Jasmin reflexively wrapped my arm around
herself to keep our cover, which in turn caused Brindi to move up to
my other side as though intending on hanging off of me as well.

"The
deal was no touching."

"Yeah,
but if I don't at least make an effort they are never going to buy
it. I might not make it out of the club if they don't think we're
together now."

"Grab
our drinks, that gives you a reason for not throwing yourself at me.
Once we arrive at the other booth you can set the drinks down and rub
up against my back or chest, but no skin-on-skin contact."

Brindi
shot me a high-powered smile as she turned back for our drinks, but I
could tell she wasn't any more pleased about the situation than
Jasmin was. Luckily Shawn's booth wasn't far away and once we arrived
she behaved herself. The fact that there was a pair of particularly
massive shape shifters posted just outside of Shawn's booth probably
helped. Shawn's bodyguards were as dangerous-looking as they were
big.