Changeling (13 page)

“Mine, too,” Gage added. “We need to find out who this John Doe is, and if he has any real connection to Jarvis, or if the Skin Walker took him at random. Same thing with Arnold Stark. Details about him, if he was just the next body or if there was a reason he was taken.”

He started to add something, but stopped. We were all thinking the same thing. Was it Stark who tried to kill me, or
the Skin Walker possessing him? Because if it was the Skin Walker, he may not be finished trying. It made all of us open targets, especially if anyone on the street could be possessed by this creature.

“I’m sure Pascal will share whatever he gets,” I said. “He knows this isn’t just a job for us anymore.”

Gage nodded his agreement. “Pascal is a good man, but I don’t want to rely on him for information. We’re not private investigators, but near enough.”

“What do you suggest?” Ethan asked.

“Sleep.” Gage took the time to look at each of us, his silver-flecked gaze hard and tired. “Go home, get a few hours of sleep. Then we’ll do our own checking on Arnold Stark.”

Ethan’s eyebrows furrowed. “But—”

“We won’t be effective if we’re all exhausted.”

Everyone conceded the point.

“Look,” Gage continued, “I’m going to stay here. You guys, just go home. It’s been a long-assed day, and I am reserving the right to be the stiff-upper-lip guy who stays behind and pretends he isn’t bone tired, too.” Conviction couldn’t mask his exhaustion; it did do a moderate job of making me believe him. He looked old and so damned weary.

Renee stood up. “You’ll call if—?”

“Yes.”

She left first and quickly. My annoyance meter rose a few notches. She hadn’t been there ten minutes ago when Gage needed comfort, and now she was dashing as quickly as possible toward the elevator. Marco and Ethan followed her out.
I reached over to squeeze Gage’s hand; I didn’t want to leave him there alone.

He squeezed back. “Where did your friend go?”

“Home, I guess,” I said. “Pascal wouldn’t let him go into the station with us, so he left. We made lunch plans, though, as long as I’m not passed out in bed.”

“If you are, he’ll understand, Dahlia. I was serious before, about feeling protective, so bear with me if I start to take his interest too personally. Especially now, with someone out there targeting you. Promise me you’ll be careful when you go out tomorrow. Keep your eyes open.”

“I promise.” I was a little surprised he hadn’t ordered me to stay home, insisting I not go out in public where Ortega—or someone else, if Ortega was shed just like the others—could finish what he started. Going out wouldn’t be the smartest move of my life, but I couldn’t let this Skin Walker cow me, or make me afraid of the outside world.

I would not.

“Well, I appreciate the concern.” And I did, more than I could ever express. “I never had siblings, let alone a big brother.”

A smile quirked the corners of Gage’s mouth. “How about three big brothers and two sisters?”

“That either.” Sometimes Renee reminded me more of an evil stepsister, but I kept that to myself. No sense in analyzing our inability to get along at one in the morning, with someone who was as emotionally exhausted as I was physically. Renee and I had time to work out our problems.
Right now, Teresa and the Skin Walker were our biggest priorities.

“Look, try to rest a little bit.” I released his hand and stood up. “She’ll be fine. Teresa is the strongest person I know. She’s a warrior, and warriors don’t die when a coward shoots them with a gun. It’s not her style.”

He seemed to sink back into his chair, shrinking in front of me. “I know. I guess I thought I was finished sitting by her hospital bedside, worrying if she was going to live or die. I got quite enough of that back in January before she learned to control her power surges. I didn’t think I could ever worry about her more than I did then, but I was wrong.” He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Go on, they’re waiting for you. I’ll see you in the morning.”

On impulse, I kissed his cheek. He winked at me as I departed, and then settled back into the chair for a long wait.

I caught up to the others at the elevator and got a good look at Renee in the fluorescent light. Her eyes were bloodshot, the rims bright red and swollen. She turned away when she caught me staring. Anger rose, heating my chest. She had displayed the same weakness that she berated me for and was now trying to hide it.

Let it go, Dahlia, just let it go.

Oddly, I was able to, and chose to just ignore her for the entire trip home.

As much as
I longed to take an extended shower and wash the last smoky remnants of the warehouse fire out of my
odorous hair, I was just too damned tired to bother. We trudged upstairs as a unit and retired to our separate bedrooms. I peeled out of my uniform jacket and pants and crawled into bed.

Sprawled out on my belly, pillow bunched up beneath my head, I closed my eyes but could not sleep.

Images of the shooting kept replaying. The glint of light off the muzzle of the gun; the flat look in Stark’s eyes; the surprise in Teresa’s. The blood on the pavement and on my hands, oozing through my fingers, and the stink of smoke and water and damp concrete. Tears stung my eyes and I forced them away—no more tonight.

I refocused my thoughts on the best part of yesterday: Noah Scott. The short, spiky pattern of his auburn hair, and his mesmerizing green eyes, a shade so startling they didn’t seem real. The way his mouth curled at the corners when he was trying not to smile. He gazed at me like I was the most precious thing on Earth. Only Marco had ever looked at me like that before; I hadn’t been able to return his affection.

I hadn’t been attracted to Marco, no, but the idea of loving someone scared me, too. Noah said it himself—life was short, and we lost people we cared about. My mother had her heart broken and was left alone to raise a child. Renee lost William. Gage loved Teresa, and now she was fighting for her life. Love seemed easy to fall into, but did it ever last? I could easily lose my heart to Noah.

The question: Is it worth it?

Eleven

Wild Cards

T
he sharp, intoxicating aroma of freshly brewed coffee enticed me out of a deep, dreamless sleep. I woke slowly, curled on my right side, one bare leg draped over the edge of the mattress. A blue porcelain mug hovered directly in my line of sight, and I followed the attached hand up to Ethan’s face.

“Good morning,” he said.

I grunted, still trying to form coherent thoughts in my sleep-deprived mind. Light streamed in through the single window, pale and low. It was definitely morning; good or not remained to be seen. And the person they’d sent to rustle me out of bed was the one most likely to succeed.

It wasn’t any one thing that had cemented my fast friendship with Ethan. He’d been horribly injured by a collapsed ceiling when we first met, so we hadn’t spent a lot of time together until I’d been with the team for a month. Maybe it was that he would never make a romantic overture, and he didn’t play the part of the overbearing big brother. He didn’t judge me like Renee did. He was just Ethan—funny, understanding,
good friend Ethan. The guy who had advice for any problem, but never dumped his own stuff on me.

And sometimes I really wished he would. All of the bright smiles and sunny conversations couldn’t completely hide the shadows in his eyes or the weight of the secret he still hid from the others. I knew he trusted his friends with his life, and he had his own reasons for keeping that secret from them.

Ethan swayed the coffee mug back and forth in front of me. “We’ve got a big pot going downstairs, and a mug waiting for you. After a shower, because, my dear, you reek.”

I blew a raspberry and sat up. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.” He made it halfway to the door before I called out with a question: “Anything new on Teresa?”

“She’s still unconscious, but her vitals are strong.” Ethan glanced over his shoulder. “You know, I always thought of you as more of a lacy thong type of girl.”

I stared blankly until I realized I was sitting there in an orange tank top and pale yellow panties, and nothing else. “Out!”

He laughed and closed the door behind him. Lacy thong, indeed. I worked hard enough to find panties that didn’t ride up my butt; I wasn’t about to purposely spend money on ones that did.

I rolled out of bed and into my robe. The custom-made bathroom was conveniently across the hall, and empty. A three-basin sink and long mirror covered the wall on the right, and a curtained entry at the very end hid a row of toilet stalls. On the left, across from the center sink, was another
curtained doorway. I stepped through, ignoring the mirror and my reflection. I didn’t want to know how bad I looked.

The shower unit had four separate stalls, each with a small changing area and bench. The design was better than what I remembered from college. Those dorm showers didn’t have a separate spot for drying off and dressing. We’d agreed on this style, instead of several private baths, on the off chance that our resident numbers increased in the future.

I kept my things in the last stall, nestled together in a plastic basket. The cloying odor of smoke washed away quickly with my shampoo, and I took care to scrub every single inch of skin with the body wash. I wanted to linger beneath the steamy spray for hours, allowing the heat to soothe tired muscles and comfort the hurts, only there wasn’t time.

I ran the lathered sponge down my left leg, over a pattern of small bruises. Two more dotted my right, just behind the knee. Bruises popped up all over the place lately. Teresa was pushing me hard in my physical training, helping me develop my self-defense skills. Bruises came with the job.

Hair wrapped up in a towel turban, I padded back to my room to dress. We were officially on a case, so I pulled on a fresh pair of black pants and orange tank and swept my wet hair up into a tight bun. Jacket tucked under my arm, I headed downstairs, refreshed and somewhat energized.

I approached the kitchen by way of the dining room, but found both empty. The coffeepot was half full, so I poured a large mug, added sugar, and grabbed a slice of wheat bread from the open package on the island. With breakfast in hand, I padded down the second hallway to the War Room.

Voices drifted toward me. Ethan and Renee were hunched over a pile of printouts, their own coffee mugs nearby. Only Ethan raised his head to acknowledge my arrival and wave me over.

“What did you find?” I asked.

“A lot on Arnold Stark,” Ethan said. “Pascal e-filed us what he had on Stark, which was enough to get our own search started. So far we’ve got quite a profile going, but irritatingly, not a thing that connects him to Jarvis or Ortega.”

“Besides the fact that Ortega arrested him,” Renee added. “We can’t discount John Doe until we identify him.”

“So who is Stark?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the table and biting into my slice of bread. Should have put some butter on it.

“Freelance journalist,” Ethan said. “He used to make a living doing security at music galas, while writing on the side.”

Renee slid a paper toward me. It was a photocopy of a letter. “Seems Stark has amassed quite a few enemies by writing about those galas under a pseudonym,” she said. “Even earned himself a few death threats, and he was definitely fired from the gig when he was found out. He’s got a thing for raking celebrities over the coals in his articles, which could explain why he was at the fire yesterday. Maybe he was looking to throw some dirt at us.”

“But it doesn’t explain why he shot at us,” I said.

“Why he shot at
you,
” Renee said. “He’s got no history of violent behavior, no recorded anti-Meta statements, nothing to indicate he’d do what he did.”

I nodded, glancing over the scrawled words on the page,
and silently told him to perform an anatomically impossible action on himself. “So we’re going on the assumption that the Skin Walker is the one targeting us, not Stark.”

“Looks that way, Dal,” Ethan said. “And whoever this Skin Walker is, he or she knew exactly which host to pick in order to get close enough to shoot.”

“But why? Why try to kill me? How could I have possibly made someone hate me this much this fast?” I desperately wanted to find the son of a bitch and lock him (or her) away for a very, very long time. Stark was, in the end, as much a victim as we were, another pawn in someone else’s sick scheme.

“If he’s picking hosts at random,” Renee said, “it’s going to make tracking this guy, or thing, that much harder. He knows we know he’s in Officer Ortega, which means he’ll dispose of Ortega pretty quick.”

“And kill Ortega in the process,” Ethan said.

My stomach tightened, the bread no longer sitting well. Another in a long line of victims, drained of his insides and left as nothing more than a sack of skin and fingernails. Dead because he was doing his job. Did he have a family? Would they mourn him when he was gone?

“Where’s Marco?” I asked, refocusing my thoughts to something a little less (but barely so) depressing.

“Telephone,” Ethan said. “Gage called a few minutes ago, and Marco is filling him in.”

“So do we have a plan for this morning?”

Renee shook her head. “So far, we’re doing it.” Her attention darted over my shoulder, prompting me to turn around.
Marco stood in the doorway, phone in hand, mouth drawn into a tight line. Worry bracketed his eyes.

“Gage had to hang up,” Marco said to us, words clipped. “Teresa had a seizure.”

Dread washed over me. I nearly dropped my coffee mug when Renee slammed her fist down on the tabletop near my hip. Ethan reached for her arm, but she yanked away from him.

“We should get to the hospital,” she said. “We should be there.”

Marco took a step toward her. “Renee—” The phone in his hand rang, its shrill tone cutting him off like a warning bell. He looked at the receiver’s display, frowned, but pressed Receive. “Headquarters, Onyx.” We watched in curious silence as his expression changed from confusion to surprise, and finally annoyance. “Fine, we will be there in twenty minutes.” He hung up.