Enigma (5 page)

She stared back at him, pale and still, then began to shove through the crowd toward him. She reached him in record time and clenched one hand around his arm. “Patrick.”

“Anna.” Her grip would leave bruises, but he just covered her hand with his own. “This is Olivia Ashworth. Do you know each other?”
Is she an enemy?
Anna would hear the implied question, even if the stranger didn’t.

Anna said nothing. Olivia smiled blandly and extended her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Instead of shaking the proffered hand, Anna began to back away, pulling Patrick with her. “Excuse us.”

Shapeshifters had sharp hearing, so Patrick waited until they had twenty feet of noisy party between them and the woman before tugging Anna to a stop. “Are you okay?”

She grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the bar setup and dragged him out into the hallway. “Come with me. Somewhere, I don’t know—the roof.”

“This way.” He pulled her in the opposite direction, toward the west side of the building where the freight elevators were tucked behind an ice machine. “I checked the place out last night.”

She mumbled something he couldn’t hear over the noise of the ice machine. When the freight elevator slid open, she pushed the top button and backed him against the wall. “Why haven’t you left New Orleans?”

He caught both of her hands. “My turn. Who was that woman?”

“A stranger.” The whiskey bottle clanked against the metal wall as she wiggled closer. “Didn’t you hear her say it was nice to meet me?”

It had to be a lie, because Anna was flipping out—losing her everloving shit—and it scared the piss out of him. “I told you the truth. The whole damn truth.”

She tensed—and closed her eyes. “I’ll tell you when we get to the roof. Away from everything.”

It didn’t take long. The hotel was a squat building of only ten floors, and from the top one, it was a short walk to the roof. Patrick shoved open the access door, let Anna out and wedged his jacket between the door and the jamb to keep from getting locked out.

Anna opened the whiskey, tossed the cap to the ground with a clink and took a long gulp straight from the bottle before holding it out. “Want some?”

She could drink him under the table. A year ago, he might have had a hope of keeping up, but not now, not with scars across his back, disrupting the magical tattoos that kept him alive against shapeshifters.

He still drank. The whiskey burned, but so did the pain in her eyes. She looked wrecked. Crushed. “Who’s Olivia?”

Anna tilted her face to the moonlight and swayed a little. “She’s my mother.”

Oh, hell. Patrick offered her the bottle again and caught her wrist once she’d taken it. One pull and he had her tucked against his chest, both arms around her. “What is her damage?”

“I don’t—” The bottle shattered to the rooftop. “I don’t have anyone, either.”

“Bullshit,” he whispered. “Those people down there care about you. Trust me. I’ve been warned not to mess with you.”

She slipped both arms around his neck with a soft sigh. “Tell me you’re not going to let that stop you.”

He shouldn’t kiss her. A decent man wouldn’t, not when she was spinning out of control. Her body trembled under his fingers, so much of her strength stripped away by the emotional blows of the day.

He shouldn’t kiss her, but he did, sliding his fingers into her careful hairdo with enough force to dislodge it. But the kiss—gentle. Soft. He licked her lower lip, tasted her like he’d imagined a thousand times before, and wondered if there was a hell dark enough for him.

“Don’t think,” she whispered, tilted her head and fused her open mouth to his.

Still so wrong, but he fell into her anyway, sliding one hand down to her ass to lift her against him as he bit her lip. Her moan disappeared into his mouth, swallowed along with the taste of her, and her trembling intensified.

Then Anna’s fingers bit into his shoulders through his shirt, and she turned her face, breaking the kiss. “The stairs—”

He caught the sound a second later, footsteps tromping up the stairs so loudly the noise had to be deliberate. Wincing, Patrick lowered her and hoped like hell the darkness was heavy enough to hide his hard-on.

Not that it would hide Anna’s disheveled hair. He smoothed one strand back into place as the door pushed open, revealing Alec Jacobson, his eyes tight with stress and worry. “You two have a second?”

The top of Anna’s strapless dress had twisted just enough to reveal an edging of flesh-colored lace. She tugged it back into place. “What is it?”

When the wolf didn’t crack a joke about the two of them making out like teenagers on the roof, Patrick knew they were in trouble. Instead, Alec exhaled sharply. “I got a call this morning, but I wanted to get Julio out of here before I said anything. There’s trouble on the Southwest council.”

Anna nudged the broken whiskey bottle with the toe of one satin sandal. “Most people would consider that Jorge Ochoa’s problem.”

“That was my first instinct. Then I talked to my younger brother.” The already tense set of Alec’s shoulders tightened. “Wolves have been going missing across the southwest region for a while now. I guess it just didn’t make a dent in the council until Ochoa’s son disappeared.”

“Goddamn, motherfucking—” Anna sucked in a breath. “If the investigative stuff you were talking to me about is going to involve a lot of stupid political dancing, you can shove it up your ass, Jacobson.”

Alec huffed. “If it was about politics, I’d have sent Julio, honeymoon or no. But if wolves are disappearing in the next state over, I don’t get to ignore it. Especially if Ochoa’s too busy grieving to take care of the problem without getting humans involved.”

She lifted a challenging gaze to meet Alec’s, though she jerked her head toward Patrick. “It’s up to him. If he says we go, we go.”

It caught him off guard, and Patrick blinked. Alec was doing the same thing, and it was a good thing he didn’t have an easily wounded ego, because the expression on the wolf’s face was picture-perfect shock.

Alec continued to stare at him, and Patrick felt compelled to point out his qualifications. “I do this for a living. For money, which is the operative word. Investigations like this don’t come cheap. Informants need to be paid and officials need to be bribed.”

“I know.” Alec reached into his jacket, pulled out a folded piece of paper and looked at Anna. “This isn’t simple politics. Oscar Ochoa just got engaged to my baby sister.”

“Emily? And you didn’t rip his…” Anna trailed off and groaned. “I get it. We have to find Oscar or his body before his daddy does, or maybe Jorge will think you made his kid disappear.”

With Oscar Ochoa’s reputation as a philandering jackass, even Patrick could see the problem. “
Did
you make his kid disappear?”

“I haven’t had time,” Alec said darkly, with more than a little bite. “She agreed to the engagement. I don’t like it, but I’m trying to remember that she gets to choose, even if I don’t like her choice. She’s staying with my younger brother in Austin, and you two can probably get more information from her than you could from his family. She’s a smart kid.”

“And arguably better informed about Oscar’s habits than his father.” Anna snatched the paper from Alec’s hand. “Nathan, right? That little brother?”

“Yeah.” He nodded to the note. “That’s all the details I have so far. It’s not much, and I don’t know if it’s reliable. You may not know how much is accurate until you get boots on the ground. But I can transfer the payment into your account tomorrow, if you take the job.”

She passed the note to Patrick without opening it. “The sooner we can talk it over, Jacobson, the sooner we can give you an answer.”

Alec’s gaze flicked back and forth between them. “I’ll be downstairs.”

He left, and wasn’t as careful with the tuxedo jacket. It fell to the ground in a crumpled ball, still holding the door open but trashed. Patrick expected a glare and a cleaning fee from the rental owner, who’d seemed dubious enough about fitting a thug to begin with.

Then he flipped open the paper and stopped worrying about a few hundred bucks. “Shit, that’s a lot of zeros. Suicide-mission-level zeros. How much does Ochoa like his kid?”

“Don’t know.” She peered down at the paper and swore. “That looks about right for how much Oscar
means
to him, though. He’s the favored oldest son. The heir apparent.”

Patrick skimmed the rest of the notes. “Five wolves missing over the last three weeks, and that’s just the ones someone reported to the council. I’d bet there are more.”

“There are always more.” She took the scribbled sheet from him and frowned at it. “Who do you know out there?”

“In the southwest?” Patrick closed his eyes and summoned the list of names. “A spell caster detective out of Albuquerque. A few psychics in Dallas, and a jaguar in Phoenix. And the Lore Keeper, but he’s gotten dodgy in the past few years. Won’t even open that crazy underground missile silo he lives in unless you catch his interest. What about you?”

“Most of my contacts are closer to Vegas,” she admitted, “but I should be able to bang on a few doors.”

This was always the surreal part, the part that kept him coming back. It never mattered if they’d been five seconds from fighting or fucking, when work hit the table, the pieces fell into place. “So are we doing this?”

The corner of her mouth kicked up. “No one’s better than us, right?”

“I could use the money,” he replied, keeping his voice light. “Hell, who am I kidding? I could use a good hunt. I’m ready to climb the walls in this town.”

Anna folded the note neatly and handed it back to him with a slight bow. “When do we leave?”

This was a dance they were good at. They both knew their places, not to mention all the steps. It wouldn’t be the first time they started a job with lingering tension in the air, but if there was one thing they could do well, it was wipe away the personal and get down to business.

Besides, it just might be fun. Not the tragedy of the circumstances, but the thrill of catching the bad guy. “Got any plans for tonight?”

Anna was six miles shy of Beaumont, Texas, when her gritty, burning eyes forced her to take the next exit. She signaled in plenty of time before the ramp, and she heard the deep, rumbling engine of Patrick’s bike follow as she took the right indicated by the roadside signage.

In the next few days or weeks, as the danger grew and they found themselves avoiding populated areas, they’d surely see their share of dumpy motels. For now, she chose a bright, fresh-looking chain hotel and turned into the lot.

Patrick pulled to a stop next to her and had his helmet off by the time she pushed open the door. “Want me to get the room?”

The room, singular. “More than one doesn’t really make sense,” she agreed. “We’re both adults. Two beds and we’re square, right?”

“I won’t even sleep naked.” He swung off the bike and nodded to a fast food joint across the street. “Or you could get the room and I could get us a dozen cheeseburgers. I was too busy getting chased around the reception hall to eat any of that fancy wedding food.”

“Even better.” Anna grabbed her bag from the front seat, walked back and opened the trunk. “And McNamara?” When he stopped, she grinned. “I want fries with that shake.”

Patrick laughed at the corny joke. “Sweet thing, you can’t
handle
my shake.” He tossed his bag toward her.

She caught it and dropped it next to hers. “Maybe not,” she agreed, because every other response she could think of sounded like a challenge.

Not yet.

The clerk tried to engage Anna in cheerful conversation, as if it wasn’t almost two in the morning. It reminded her why she usually preferred the shitty motels. Sure, the bathrooms were questionable and sometimes you could hear the people at the other end of the complex having sex, but the clerks were universally bored and didn’t ask questions.

She requested a first-floor room, took the keys and waited for Patrick by the coffee machine. He arrived with three enormous takeout bags in one hand and a tray with four sodas in the other. “They wouldn’t believe it was for two people.”

“Would you?” She nodded down the hall and hefted the bags. “First floor, by the fire exit.”

Patrick nodded at the clerk and followed Anna toward the room, laughing as soon as they were out of earshot of the main lobby. “She’s bright-eyed and interested for two in the morning.”

“Probably desperate to know why I wanted a double if you’re with me.”

He grinned. “I thought everyone knew that you need one bed for sex, one for sleeping.”

The idea of Patrick tearing up a hotel bed in the heat of passion was nothing less than torturous, and dwelling on it an invitation to madness. Anna clenched one hand around the leather strap of her bag and unlocked the door to their room. “You don’t sleep with many shifters, do you?”

When she opened the door, he pushed a booted toe against it and shoved it wide, holding it for her. “What makes you say that?”

She brushed past him, avoiding his gaze. “Switching beds. A shifter would want to stay in the one that smelled like sweat and sex.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she wanted to pull them back and bite her tongue until it bled.