Karma Patrol (22 page)

ade leaned her head against Luke’s shoulder as they walked toward her apartment building, his arm around her waist as protection from the chill in the air. She was feeling far more secure in their soulmate bond now than she had before dinner. He’d proven over dinner that he was able to hold an in-depth conversation without the use of excessive sarcasm, and he’d actually unbent enough to laugh at some of her jokes. When they’d talked about the shootings, he’d listened to what she had to say, giving her opinion more than just polite lip service. She suspected she was the first person in a long time who’d managed to make it past the walls he constructed to keep people out, and she was delighted to discover the depths of kindness and good humor he’d concealed behind them. She felt like she owed Shannon an apology for doubting her.

“Here we are,” he said, and she realized they’d reached her building while she was lost in thought. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, fine.” She smiled up at him. “I was just thinking that maybe Interpersonal Relations knows what they’re doing after all.”

She couldn’t be certain in the low light, but she thought she saw him blush.

“I’m not clear on the ‘first date with your destined soulmate’ etiquette,” he said, his lips quirking into a smile. “Would it be too forward if I kissed you goodnight?”

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t,” she informed him, tilting her face up toward his.

He leaned in toward her, cupping her cheek with a gentle hand as he brushed his lips against hers. When he pulled back far enough to meet her gaze, she beamed up at him, and he couldn’t help the answering smile that spread across his face.

“Thank you, Jade.”

“For what?” she murmured, and his smile widened.

“This has been one of the best days of my life. One of the weirdest, but one of the best.”

“Just wait until—”

Jade was interrupted by the now-familiar tone of the imminent danger alert coming from the phone in her purse.

“Oh, come
on
,” she breathed, digging for the phone. She had already guessed what she would see. The bright red lettering on the phone’s screen confirmed it, with a cruel twist she’d half-suspected the moment she’d heard the alarm.

Imminent Danger. Midtown West/Intersection of Tenth Avenue and Fifty-Fourth Street. Bailey, Jade: Account Enforcement, Karma Division. All Department Assistance Requested.

Imminent Danger. Midtown West/Intersection of Tenth Avenue and Fifty-Fourth Street. Jackson, Luke: Special Dispensation per Interpersonal Relations Division. All Department Assistance Requested.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded, and she grabbed his arm, pulling him in the direction of the building.

“Inside, now!”

They made it four steps toward the building before the shooting started, bullets ricocheting off brick walls and shattering windows. A middle-aged woman several feet away from them staggered and collapsed, blood pouring from a bullet wound in her chest. Luke would have stopped to help her, but Jade had his arm in a vise grip and kept pulling him toward the building. Realizing that stopping now would mean Jade remained in danger, he sped up, shielding her body with his as they slammed through the door. It cracked into spiderwebs of glass behind them, pierced by a bullet, and he grunted in pain as the same bullet clipped his arm before lodging in the far wall.

“Stairwell!” he shouted in Jade’s ear.

She nodded, her eyes focused on the unmarked door in the back corner of the lobby. They ran together until Jade reached the door, pushing it open and stumbling through it with Luke on her heels. He didn’t stop, his hand on her waist propelling her toward the stairs, and he staggered up two flights of stairs behind her with his left arm tucked against his chest to minimize the jarring his injury suffered. Jade didn’t look like she had any intention of stopping until she reached the roof, but when they reached the third floor, he decided he couldn’t go much further without at least bandaging his arm.

“Stop,” he instructed her, catching and holding her hand to keep her from darting up another flight of stairs. She turned back to look at him, her expression a mix of panic and confusion, but it turned to pure horror when she saw the spreading bloodstain on his suit jacket.

“Oh my God,” she gasped, stumbling toward him with her free hand outstretched. “Oh my God, he shot you.”

“It’s not bad,” he told her, knowing the words wouldn’t be particularly comforting given how much blood there was on his clothing. “It’s just a graze, but I need to stop the bleeding before we run up a dozen flights of stairs.”

Jade pulled him toward the far wall of the landing, a position that gave him cinderblock to lean on as well as a good view of the inside of the stairwell in case anyone pursued them.

“Do you have anything to use as a bandage?” he asked, doing his best to ignore the throbbing pain in his arm as he used his good hand to unholster his weapon and aim it in the general direction of the stairs leading down to the second floor. This was the second time in two days that Jade had been in the area when the sniper started shooting. If Jade was the target and the shooter came looking for them, Luke wasn’t going to be caught unprepared.

Jade dug through her bag and came up with a thin cotton scarf patterned in obnoxiously bright colors. He winced as she wrapped it around his upper arm, and couldn’t quite restrain the yelp that escaped through his clenched teeth as she pulled it tight.

“You’re okay,” she breathed, sounding like she was trying to convince herself rather than reassure him. “You’ll be okay. You’ll be fine.”

“Listen to me. I need to you take out your phone and call 911.”

She blinked in surprise, as though the idea hadn’t even occurred to her. “You don’t think someone else already called? It’s a residential building, Luke. There are hundreds of people living here. Someone has to have noticed there’s a massacre going on outside.”

“You’d be surprised,” he said, dour. “I don’t have a free hand, Jade. Call 911.”

He watched out of the corner of his eye as she complied, keeping the bulk of his attention on the stairwell. She sounded calm and collected on the phone with the dispatcher, but her hand trembled where it rested on his shoulder, and he felt a pang of sympathy for her. He’d served in the military and faced his share of life or death situations, but this was miles outside her comfort zone.

When she took the phone away from her ear, he turned toward her, giving her as much of his attention as he could spare from his efforts to protect her.

“What did the dispatcher tell you?”

“She said the police and the paramedics are already outside, and the best thing for us to do is to stay right where we are until someone comes for us.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

“But you’re hurt. I should go out there and find a paramedic—”

“Hey.” He couldn’t lift his injured arm without dislodging the scarf, and he didn’t want to take his gun off the stairwell long enough to reach out and touch her shoulder, but he managed to get her to focus on him through the intensity of his gaze alone. “I’m okay, Jade. The worst thing that’s going to happen is me having to buy a new suit jacket.”

A shocked laugh escaped her before she could stop it, and she clapped her hand belatedly over her mouth.

“We’re safe,” he added, with a quirk of his lips at her reaction. “I’ll protect you.”

She dug into her bag again, and his eyes widened when she came up with a handgun of her own. “I can protect myself, thanks.”

He was silent for a long moment, staring at Jade in surprise. She held his gaze evenly. “I suppose you’ve got a permit for that,” he said finally.

She laughed again. “Now, Detective, I thought we’d already established that I’m a law-abiding citizen.”

“New York is notoriously tight-assed about their concealed weapons permits,” he pressed, and she shrugged.

“Karma Division employees are encouraged to carry. Haven’t you ever heard the saying that fate helps those who help themselves? They expect us to help ourselves out of any situations where a well-placed bullet would make a difference. We submit our paperwork for the guns to the division secretaries, and they give us the permits when they come in. I’ve never asked if they have to do any special arm-twisting to get them.”

“And you started carrying it after the Westin shooting?”

She gave him a patient smile. “I’ve carried it every day since I moved to New York.”

“You didn’t have it that day.”

“I did.”

“I searched you,” he argued. He remembered it vividly, since he’d spent the entire time trying to keep his frankly erotic thoughts from showing on his face as he ran his hands over her body. He’d offered to have Patel search her instead, trying to avoid the appearance of impropriety, but Jade had declined and he’d been powerless to resist his own desire to touch her. “I search every suspect I question before I let them into the squad room. I went through your purse—”

“But you didn’t see the special pocket where I keep the gun,” she informed him. “They don’t just give us permits, Luke. They give us protection. No one will ever find this gun unless I want them to.”

Her phone let out a cheerful chirp from inside her bag. She sighed in relief, tucking her Walther back into its pocket and pulling out the phone to make sure the all-clear alert was for them.

Bailey, Jade. Danger resolved. No further assistance necessary.

Jackson, Luke. Danger resolved. Non-life-threatening injury sustained. No further assistance necessary.

“According to the Fate Divisions, you’re going to live,” she told him. “You can put the gun away. The threat is over.”

“How do you know that?” he asked, not budging an inch from his current position. “And what was the alarm on your phone that went off just before the shooting started?”

“All Fate Divisions employees and their confirmed soulmates are monitored through the individual division phone apps. It’s another function of the app I used to try and run down the victims of the shootings. You can find any Fate Divisions employee with it, assuming they’ve got the locator function turned on and you’ve got the right clearance level to see them, and you can also receive alerts when any employee is in imminent danger. It’s designed to give that employee enough warning to get to safety, and alert anyone else in the area who might be free to help.”

“So when you went running into that hotel before the shooting started…”

She nodded, holding up her phone again. “I had about a thirty second head start. I couldn’t be sure it was the shooter, though; all the app says is which employee is in danger, where they are, and whether or not they need assistance. It doesn’t tell you anything about the kind of danger they’re in.”

“Helpful,” he muttered.

“Let’s go.”

“Go where?” he asked, frowning. “The dispatcher told us to stay put, remember?”

“Yeah, but now we know it’s safe,” she insisted, waving her phone for emphasis. “There’s no point in you standing here bleeding when it’s safe to go out there and find someone who can do something about your arm.”

She had a point, he decided, and pushed away from the wall with a groan. She stepped around him to come up under his good arm, draping it over her shoulders to offer him extra support as they started back down the stairs to the lobby.

“And it told you when the threat had passed?”

“Danger resolved,” she agreed. “For both of us. It did acknowledge that you sustained an injury, but it always notes whether any injuries are life-threatening so other employees can decide if you still need their help.”

“When cops get shot, other cops come to help them, even when it isn’t life threatening.”

“Don’t get superior with me,” she advised him, rolling her eyes. “Not while you’re bleeding all over my hundred and fifty dollar scarf.”

He looked down at the abomination of a floral pattern wrapped around his upper arm, stained red with his blood. He considered making a comment, but thought better of it. He could only hope that Jade would be open to future discussions about the possibility of not spending large portions of his paycheck on hideous accessories.

That made him think of something he’d forgotten to ask her earlier.