Sacrifice the Wicked (13 page)

Words jumbled in her throat. Not that it mattered, because Simon tugged at his grip, forced her that much closer, until his lips hovered scant millimeters from hers.

She stared at him, into his eyes, mesmerized by his . . . Oh, God, what was it? By his words? His smell, his, what, freaking pheromones? His simple assertion that he wanted her?

His
easy
declaration of how things were?

Everything he did was easy. She’d been accusing him of it since day one. But she wasn’t.

She couldn’t be.

His lips brushed hers as he whispered, “The rest is pure speculation.”

Someone cleared their throat over Parker’s fog-filled head. She blinked, feeling suddenly as if she’d surfaced from deep water, and sucked in an abrupt, gasping breath.

Simon let her go before she yanked her own hair out of his grip. “Great,” he said, grinning at the blond waitress. “We’re starving.”

Parker shook her hair back, a defiant move that wouldn’t take away the feel of his hand on her head. At the nape of her neck.

The knowledge that she’d wanted him to close that distance, to kiss her the same way he’d kissed her in her condo, in the car. Outside in the rain.

Too much kissing.

As the waitress set the platter down—chicken and greenhouse vegetables and an array of cheeses probably garnered from concentrate—Parker didn’t dare look up.

I want to fuck you.

As pickup lines went, she’d heard worse.

S
imon ate in silence, content to let his reluctant date mull over his last volley. He ate quickly, one eye on Parker and the other on the café.

He didn’t trust anything at this point.

The rest of him hovered like a mental net. The people in the café registered easily, and three more in the kitchen moved about like flies in a jar. People in the streets passed by, people in cars.

He knew exactly how many of them stepped inside from the rain-slick streets. And how many didn’t.

His message should have already made it to Jonas’s system. He’d memorized that damn number just in case.

He knew Parker trusted him. The tech seemed all right, and he knew Jonas was hard on the heels of Ghostwatch. He knew the ghost had taken notice of the tech in kind.

He knew where they all intersected, even if they didn’t know themselves.

These things all factored in.

But if Jonas didn’t show up within the next few hours, Simon would have to move to a new plan. One that involved dumping the director somewhere safe while he pulled every string he had—all of a handful, at this point—to end this.

The chances of success there settled somewhere around
unlikely
.

Everything banked on Jonas. And the tech agent’s adherence to the instructions Simon had left him.

Simon didn’t like that, either, but his options were slim. He hadn’t expected them to come after Parker themselves, not this early. The fact the Salem team had done so told him that Director Lauderdale wasn’t in the mood to be patient. Parker was in the way.

Something had shifted. Something had been decided when he wasn’t looking, and without any inside intel, Simon was operating blind out here. Not comfortable.

Not safe.

Then again, safe had been blown out the window the second Parker stuck her spiked heel into the mess.

Everything had moved past the point of subtlety.

He refilled his coffee mug, pouring the last of the carafe into the white ceramic. Outside, people mulled in knots, small groups out long past residential curfew and happier for it. It made keeping track of any potential threats harder.

Moving fast was something Simon did best. But he didn’t like Parker’s extra baggage.

She wouldn’t like his.

That sort of made them even, didn’t it?

“There’s something you should know,” she said abruptly.

He hid his smile as he wiped his hands on his napkin. “There’s a lot of things I should know. Let’s start with what’s on your mind.” He held out a hand. “And give me your comm.”

To her credit, she didn’t ask why. Slipping the device from her pocket, she handed it over. “Yesterday I met with an informant.”

He flipped up her comm screen, powered down the device, and set it aside. “And?”

“He showed me something I think is important.”

He didn’t follow. “This has what to do with what, Parker?”

She looked down at her plate and the few bits of chicken she hadn’t managed to finish. The girl had a healthy appetite—he appreciated that in a woman.

Her lashes lifted, revealing the eyes he’d started dreaming about months ago. Brilliantly blue, dark like the depths of the night sky just after sunset.

And shadowed.

He deserved that much, anyway. “You’ll have to start somewhere,” he said gently.

He watched it play through her features—uncertainty, mistrust. Resignation.

Exhaustion.

“It was something to do with GeneCorp,” she finally said. “A syringe. He told me that it would lead me to a lot of answers.”

He stabbed at her plate with his fork, spearing the chicken neatly. “Who was the informant?”

She looked away. Then back, her gaze once more steady. “Phinneas Clarke.”

His fork scraped against her plate. She jumped, wincing as the metal clattered to the ceramic surface. Back rigid, Simon braced a hand on the table. “Phin Clarke. Wanted Phin Clarke?”

The man Sector Three had sent operatives after—a shady fucker named Clay. Simon had never liked the witch. Cocky as hell, young but powerful.

Far as the word got around, Clay had been killed. Probably by the same people—Matilda’s people—that had taken Operation Wayward Rose apart. Then Clarke had vanished.

So had his mother.

With—Simon would stake his very short life on it—those same people Matilda had protected.

As Parker nodded, he swore savagely under his breath.

That was it. That was the key.

Motherfucker
.

“Where is it?” he demanded.

She leaned back, fingers braced delicately at the edge of the table. “What is it?” she replied just as evenly.

Anger raked a bloody hole through him. Swallowing back the surge, he reached again for his coffee mug.

Swore when a bolt of pain lanced through the back of his head. The cup slipped from his spasming hand. The ceramic clattered loudly, drawing every eye.

Simon fought to keep his head up, but Parker’s keen gaze settled on him with narrow-eyed appraisal. Pain etched a bass beat through his skull. Pain he knew he failed in keeping off his face.

“What happened?” Her glance flicked to his side. “Your wound?”

He shook his head, didn’t bother explaining.

He’d pushed himself. Pushed his abilities, although it seemed like every opportunity he took to use them pushed it into overdrive. Damn it.

Four seconds . . . three . . . two . . .

There.
The world stood up in one giant radar field and stomped all over his brain.

Simon’s elbow hit the table.

“Simon?”

His forehead cradled in his palm, he squeezed his eyes shut and managed, “Headache.” It was the best he could do.

The word didn’t even begin to describe how it felt. As if every last body in a miles-wide radius had just all crammed into one room. Hammered on one nerve.

It was too late to shut it down.

“Simon, what’s in the syringe?”

His future, if he was right.

If those witches had anything—fuck, if they had a syringe from Mattie, from GeneCorp . . . He’d thought it too late, a done deal. He’d hinged all his decisions on the knowledge of his impending destruction.

But what if he was wrong?

Even as pain ravaged his head, hope uncurled. An insidious flame.

“I don’t know,” he said tightly. Not quite a lie. Not entirely the truth. He suspected. “It could be anything. What did Clarke say?”

He knew she read every sign on his face, in his stiff muscles. Pain, determination. Maybe that explained her small nod; her acquiescence to his question. Maybe not. He couldn’t tell as his head threatened to crack under the pressure. “He said that it held the key to the whole fight. That Sector Three wanted it.”

Jesus Christ.
He leaned over the table, gripping the edge until his knuckles cracked. “That thing holds the answer to—”
Life.
His life. Simon grimaced. “To everything. I need it, Parker.”

She met his gaze. Flinched at the pain Simon knew she read there. “What will you do with it?”

Cure myself.

He closed his eyes as the back of his head squeezed. A vise of pressure.

As Simon knuckled at his eyes, two shapes arrowed in from the front corners of the café’s building. They cut through traffic lines, bypassed collections of people.

Shapes with purpose.

Operatives? At only two, Simon would have left someone in the back. Both coming in from the front was sloppy.

The line between visual and sense distorted, until his eyeballs ached with it and Parker’s face blurred into a hazy gleam. White skin. Ocean blue eyes.

“Simon?”

He shook his head. Hard. Ignoring the terrible ache in his chest—wild hope, crushing disappointment—he muttered, “Let’s go.”

“But—”

The café door swung open.

Simon slid out of the booth, grabbed Parker by the arm, and bodily hauled her out behind him. “Stay close.”

“There they are,” a man’s voice said.

Eyes flicked toward them. Too many.

Parker peered around him, all that red hair a bloody gleam in his pulsating vision.

Two men wearing street clothes quickly navigated the tables. Headed right for them.

Simon pushed Parker ahead of him. “Kitchen. Go, now.”

The waitress, a fresh carafe in one hand, approached with a nervous, uncertain frown. “Do you guys want your check—
hey
!”

Simon grabbed her, pulled the carafe from her grip with a smooth motion, and spun her around. Pulling her back against his chest, he used her as cover as he studied the threat.

Two men, and a lot of horrified patrons. He didn’t care. One of the men, a tall older man with a sandy blond goatee, threw up his hands. “Just hear us out!” he called.

Not on his life.

The second man, athletically built and young-looking, with dark brown hair and eyes, cut a diagonal path. Right toward the kitchen exit. And Parker.

“Sorry,” Simon said in the waitress’s ear. With a firm hand at her back, he shoved her at the first man, flung the carafe at the second so hard that coffee sprayed from the spout in a steaming arc.

The blond man tripped over the waitress, hit the floor in a tangle of limbs and curses. The other rolled across the floor, sliding off the lip and into a chair hard enough that it rocked against the table. Coffee pooled in a growing puddle of brown.

Simon pulled his Mission-standard Colt from his waistband, fired it once into the ceiling. The shot thundered in the surprised silence. Echoed.

Like he knew they would, the patrons screamed on cue, threw themselves to the ground, at each other. Toward the door. Just like panicked sheep, cutting between him and the struggling men. Screaming, crying, shouting.

Chaos accomplished.

Simon sprinted after Parker. Without a backward glance, he pushed into the kitchen.

His head pulsed, pounded with the effort to keep his vision focused in his eyes, and not the radar flinging information at him left and right. The cooks had fled; smart move.

Simon sprinted between two low metal counters, past the grill hissing as oil overheated on its surface. He grabbed the edge of a boiling pot, tipped it too fast to sear more than the ends of his fingers. As scalding oil and water coated the floor behind him, he shoved open the exit illuminated beneath a glowing green sign. The door rebounded off the wall. The empty alley sucked at the sound, reflected it back in a series of echoes that hammered into his skull.

Where the fuck was Parker?

But even as he thought it, even as he stepped out into the rain-cool night, his radar shifted. Spiked hard through the back of his head and nearly sent him to his knees with the effort.

Sirens wailed in the distance. He didn’t have time to linger. “Parker!”

The alley ate the echoes, twisting them into the growing cacophony of people who’d all missed a show and wanted a look now. His senses shut down. As if a switch had turned off his abilities. Just . . . nothing. A headache that wouldn’t quit and nothing.

Useless.

Parker was a smart woman. She wouldn’t go out into the crowd without knowing if there were more tangos in there. Which meant she had to go out to the parallel street, adjoined by the other side of the alley.

He’d have to bet her life on it.

He lurched into a sprint before the thought finished forming. His feet splashed in puddles, but there weren’t any piles of refuse or discarded shipping crates to navigate. No lumps of homeless squatters, no mold and moss. As alleys went, this was one of the cleanest he’d ever been in.

Topside took its appearance seriously.

With every footstep, a dull ache echoed in his heart—worry, fear. Where the hell was she?

As he approached the alley mouth, a hand grabbed the back of his shirt. Without even breaking pace, he turned into the grip, crowded his assailant against the wall, and twisted the arm impeding his progress. By instinct, by a habit as familiar as breathing, his other fist drew back for a punch he only barely caught in time.

Copper flame, a corona of red in his blurry vision. Pale skin, warm curves pressed against him.

Fuck!
His punch shifted into an open-palmed brace beside Parker’s head, all in the space of a breath.

He growled something that might have been a word. His brain just wouldn’t translate, hooked on the image of Parker’s blood, her beautiful face bruised and battered under his own handling.

“It’s okay! It’s—”

Seizing the collar of her jacket, he pulled her up to her tiptoes. “Never sneak up on me,” he managed, and covered her mouth in a kiss that seared more than just her taste on his brain.

He needed a handle on this. On
her
.