A Righteous Kill (17 page)

The second was lean and rocked a pink belly-shirt printed with the words “Namaste Bitches” coordinated with some kind of yellow Thai-looking lounge pants. He seemed
much
more like someone who’d go to a class called “Kick your Asana” than Luca or Kravitz over there. The electric blue tips of his carefully mussed hair matched his manicured nails and pretty much cleared him as serial killer material. Besides, Stefano St. James was a close friend of Hero’s whom she regularly referred to as Stef. They’d gone on that ill-advised Mexican Rivera cruise together. Luca still hadn’t forgiven him.

“Releasing that pose with mindful breath, let’s move into half moon pose and hold for seven breaths,” Hero’s gentle voice urged before bending herself in half
sideways
and lifting one leg off the floor. “I want to see your legs trembling with effort, but your faces calm and relaxed.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Luca murmured under his breath, earning him a sharp look from Hero. He returned it with a scowl of his own.
Who
bent like that? He looked around. Other than everyone in this room besides him? Keeping his four-letter words to himself, he let out a loud, irate breath from his throat, which in this crowd got him exactly zero attention. He tried not to kick the blonde standing next to him in the head while he attempted the pose. Come to think of it, he was way too tall to be in the front row. Also, if he wasn’t mistaken, blondie kept scooting her mat closer to him and checking out his ass.

Luca hated to admit it, but Vince had been right. Advanced yoga was harder than it looked. Sporting a firearm and a continual hard-on, it was damn near unbearable.

He’d spent the last forty-five minutes watching Hero do things with her body that shouldn’t be humanly possible, or at the very least should be illegal. Hell, the first time he saw her in downward dog he all but fell over, and it only got worse from there. The curve of her ass, the flex of her thighs, the lean sinew of her strong yet soft body revved him up like nothing else. He certainly had a few positions
he
wanted to teach her, and now he had irrefutable proof she could pull off every single one. And then some.

A groan escaped him and from the mirth sparkling in Hero’s eyes, Luca knew she’d misinterpreted it. This particular sound of suffering had nothing to do with his straining muscles and everything to do with the fact that he could see the outline of her sex through those poor excuse for yoga pants, when she parted her legs like that. They cupped her perfectly, creating a delineation he wanted to explore with his mouth more than he wanted his next breath.

It was official. This case was going to be the end of him. How would he keep her safe if his focus was so trained
on
her that he missed the danger surrounding her? Something to think about. He was a damn good agent with one of the best investigative records the Bureau had seen. It was the reason he got away with being such an asshole. He got results, confessions, and closed cases despite his personality “liability.” The complaints against him had never turned into lawsuits and therefore he’d skated around the word
brutality
with a good boss and a little luck.

His size, racial ambiguity and, let’s face it,
mad skills
had seen him embroiled in covert operations as everything from a Middle East Terrorist sympathizer to the Mexican Mafia. He’d lived through shootouts, explosions, gang wars, and political nightmares. So why did going quasi-undercover as one tiny yoga instructor’s boyfriend feel like the most dangerous thing he’d done thus far? A better man would—would what? Recuse himself? The word had been dancing with Luca ever since the night Hero had been fished out of the river.

A few things stopped him, though. While he was a fan-fucking-tastic Agent, he wasn’t necessarily a better man, and he’d be goddamned before he let the interests of his pecker conflict with the interests of justice.

Who
else
could he trust with this case? With Hero’s life? Not one person came to mind. Even Trojanowski had seen that he was the best man for this job. So he was going to just have to nut up, so to speak, and keep his eyes where they ought to be. Trying to recognize and anticipate a serial killer’s next move. For example, identifying cars that drove by the window of
The Crane and Lotus Yoga Studio
more than once. Checking student rosters against the criminal database. Scanning her students for any strange and obsessive behavior.

Though how he could do that with the lights so low and his head down by his knees was beyond him. Not that his head got
that
close to his knees.

The next pose was some kind of warrior lunge series that allowed him more freedom to look around. The yoga studio wasn’t exactly rife with suspects. The women were rejected out of hand along with Stefano, the fabulous, and that only left dreadlocks two mats down from him as the slightest person of interest.

The man
was
medium build, and Luca had to admit that his impressive pound for pound strength and balance was evident in his yoga skills. Though his features were decidedly African-American, his skin was more caramel than chocolate. Apparently he shared one disturbing feature with Luca, a hard-on for Hero. His gaze ventured to the same inappropriate places Luca’s had been glued to only moments ago. When she looked in his direction, the smile they shared was warm. Familiar. They knew and liked each other.

Luca’s already foul mood darkened. Just
how
familiar were these two? Hadn’t the professor said something about her tastes leaning toward the exotic? Was this yahoo some other part of her past that she’d neglected to mention? This time, when Hero abandoned the front of the class to drift through the rows of students to make adjustments and give encouragement, Luca watched their interaction with different eyes. When she neared dreadlocks, the guy broke his excellent form, tilting his hips at an odd angle.

Hero zoned in on the movement, and she walked over to him, placing her hands on his hip flexers and squaring them with the floor. Another shared smile. A few whispered words. Hero touched his shoulder with affection and moved on to another student.

This guy was smooth.

The loaded weapon strapped to Luca’s thigh bothered him less now, in fact, it just became downright comforting. As soon as this class ended, he was going to find out just who this guy was to Hero.

As she padded toward Luca in the semi-darkness, she said something to the class that he didn’t catch because he was bracing himself for the intense sensation that came with her touch.

She gripped his shoulders pressing down gently and, what do you know, a jolt of pure, electric energy shot down his spine straight to his dick. “Relax these,” she urged. “And you’ll have more strength and stamina in your legs.”

He wasn’t relaxing
shit
while her hands were on him. The look he threw her must have told her as much, because an answering heat sparked in her eyes and her fingers tightened on his shoulders.

That was the problem, wasn’t it? This thing. This primitive, explosive attraction. It wasn’t one-sided. She met his every hot glare
quid pro quo
. She embraced and encouraged his attention, and if there was even the whisper of heat between them, she flipped the knob to broil.

Luca hoped the warning he put into his stare would douse the heat. Keeping a lid on this was his responsibility. He was bound by the law, procedure, duty, honor, and whatever other words meant “hell no” when it came to her. Years of therapy, training, practice, and field work had imbued him with some epic self-control and a high tolerance for torture. As he forced his shoulders to relax, Luca vowed that she could throw whatever she wanted at him and he’d never break.

“Excellent.” Her smile told him she’d accepted the challenge, and dread battled with anticipation deep in his gut.

Needing another place for his eyes than her retreating backside, Luca checked in with dreadlocks. What he saw in the other man’s striking face was as pure, familiar, and flame-inducing as lust.

It was violence. And it was directed at him.

Chapter Thirteen

“False face must hide what false heart doth know.”

~William Shakespeare, Macbeth

As he grabbed a towel from the front desk and wiped the sweat from his face and neck, Luca looked outside the wall of windows and identified one more thing to dislike about hippies. They were overly fond of what he considered to be inappropriately long hugs.

He hung back to observe Hero in her environment. She seemed to know and nurture everyone in her class. She remembered their names, incidentals about their lives, and even so much as physical maladies. Luca had to hand it to her, she was great at what she did. As people filtered out and wandered into the studio, the majority stopped to receive her heart-felt smile and a warm hug.

Taking advantage of a lull, dreadlocks stepped into her arms and enfolded her in a shirtless embrace.

Luca took that as his cue to introduce himself.

Stepping outside, he came up behind Hero and slipped a possessive arm around her waist. She stiffened for a second, and then relaxed into his side as though it was the most natural thing in the world. And didn’t it just feel that way? Disturbingly natural.

“Rivers, let me introduce my—boyfriend, Luca Ramirez.” Hero put a hand on his chest.

They were really going to have to get rid of that hitch in her voice every time she called him her boyfriend. That didn’t sound natural at all.

“Luca, this is a long-time student and friend, Two Rivers.” Student first. Friend second. Luca relaxed a little.

The man looked up at Luca for a silent moment with a decidedly un-hippie vibe. This cat was street, or had been. He was trying to seem as though he was still in his twenties, but Luca had him pegged early thirties. He’d learned the same posturing, death-glare, and shoulder position that was the uniform of thug life. His relaxed stance effectively hid an entitled defiance. Schooling his features into the beat-nick squint of pot enthusiast, he switched his clove cigarette to his left hand and offered Luca his right. “Friends call me Rivers.”

Luca shook and fist-bumped. “Nice to meet you, man.” He didn’t call him ‘Rivers.’ They’d never be friends.

“Pleasure,” Two Rivers lied, and then turned to Hero. “I thought you didn’t allow men to claim you under the oppressive titles of our Patriarchal society, girl. What changed you?”

Luca slanted a look at Hero. He was starting to see a pattern emerge with men in her orbit. Hero’s answer shocked him just as thoroughly as it did the man who’d asked the question.

“Love.” She wrapped her arms around Luca’s torso and pasted on the dreamy smile of the infatuated. “Love changes everyone, doesn’t it?” She lifted her eyes to meet Luca’s, but some kind of heart-pounding weakness kept him from looking down. Instead he offered a tight smile at the brother in front of them, whose own easy smile had faltered.

“That’s right, babe.” Luca threw sex into his reply, just to be an asshole. Also, because he wasn’t sure what love sounded like.

Rivers’s smile disappeared altogether, and his brows began a long journey up his forehead. “Babe?”

Hero winced.

“Something wrong?” Luca asked.

Two Rivers shrugged. “Never thought I’d see the day, is all.”

“That Hero would be someone’s babe?”

The guy flicked some ash and took a long drag. “That Hero would allow someone to
call
her ‘babe.’”

“What’s wrong with babe?” Luca feigned some bewilderment of his own.

Adopting the posture of a sage, Rivers rested his back on the brick of the building. “I mean no offense man, but it’s such an unenlightened term to encompass all that is your lady, you know? It denotes a lack of respect for the feminine divinity.”

It took every ounce of Luca’s training to maintain his easy-going posture. He’d spent entire weeks drinking with human sex traffickers without a crack in his façade. He’d sidled up to con artists and serial killers. But Luca had little patience for sanctimonious ass clowns. This guy was going to learn about
respecting
his fist in another two-point-five seconds.

Hero laughed to break some building tension, looking between the two men with a mixture of intrigue and bewilderment. “It’s charming when Luca does it.”

River’s striking hazel eyes latched on to the raised scar on the hand that Hero had rested on Luca’s abs. He took another drag of the clove, the smoke hiding a deeply camouflaged psychotic rage the likes of which Luca hadn’t seen for a long time. Not since he’d last glimpsed it in the mirror years ago.

This man was
not
who he appeared to be. Of the three of them, Rivers was the least genuine, and Luca’s instincts were arcing higher than a Geiger counter at Chernobyl. Rivers had a past, and Luca needed to know what it was.

“So, Two Rivers, those were some creative parents you had.” Luca put more ease in his smile and less teeth.

“I’m sorry?”

“Your name. It’s pretty unconventional.”

A mask of complete calm crept across the hippie’s face, the persona he’d constructed lying on his features as though it belonged there. “I was not born with this name, with this soul, or this body.” His voice had become smooth as glass. “My previous menial existence was one without purpose above my own base pleasure and monetary gain.”

Luca suppressed a snort, urging Rivers to continue with a feigned vaguely interested nod.

“One day, overcome by the chaos and negativity that was my life, I found myself at the sacred place where the two Great Rivers converged into one.”

“You mean at Kelly Point Park?” Luca asked.

Hero nudged him with her elbow.

Two Rivers narrowed his eyes with condescension. “In that moment, I was truly born. I
became
. And I am named for that sacred place.”

That
sacred
place was right in the middle of where nearly five dead John the Baptist victims were recovered. Including Hero.