Lure of the Wicked (19 page)

One minute Naomi had been right there. When he looked up next, she was gone. Getting into trouble, doing something stupid, chasing whatever ghost her Church had demanded she find, he didn’t know.

He dialed security. “Get me Naomi Ishikawa’s location,” he said as the comm clicked over.

Barker cut off his own greeting with a clipped “Yes, sir.” It only took a minute, but every second slammed into Phin like a dagger of apprehension.

Something was very wrong.

“She’s on the athletic floor,” Baker reported. “In the gym.”

“Who’s with her?”

“No one, it’s clear.”

“Good.” Phin hurried across the courtyard. “Put out the word. We’re closing for the duration. I want every man on your team on this.”

“Yes, sir, we’re already scouring the floors.”

“Bring in extra help, I don’t care who you have to strong-arm, but get them in here. Escort the temporaries to a safe location—
safe
, do you hear me?—and release the staff to go home as soon as everyone is out.”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Clarke, about Vaughn—”

“Later.” Phin let out an explosive breath as he cut the line. He sprinted through the double doors, following the line of glass panels to the gym.

He heard her before he saw her.

Reminiscent of the first time he’d watched her, she stood in front of a heavy bag, its chains creaking as it swung wildly with every furious blow, every punch, every kick.

But it was different this time. She was different. Not nearly so controlled. She hadn’t changed her clothes, and there was something wildly incongruous about a woman beating the shit out of a punching bag in jeans, soggy sweater, and high-heeled boots, but she moved as if she was used to fighting in those heels.

As if she didn’t give a flying fuck what anyone else thought.

She moved like a missionary.

And he was the sucker who harbored witches.

God damn it.
It didn’t matter. He rounded the glass. “Naomi.”

Her bare fist slammed into the bag. Too hard. It swung, but she did it again, expelling a ragged sound of thinly restrained fury with every strike. And again. A left hook, an uppercut that made him cringe. Red gleamed wetly against the vinyl casing. Her wet hair tumbled in stringy knots around her shoulders while her sodden clothes dripped onto the sealed wood floors.

“Naomi,” he said again. He caught her shoulders. The ruined wool knotted and stretched beneath his fingers. “Stop, sweetheart, don’t hurt—”

She rounded on him, seizing the front of his shirt in one abraded, bleeding fist. “Back off,” she snarled. Her face was so close, her eyes so haunted, that Phin couldn’t, wouldn’t be cowed.

Not by her. Not by the woman he had already fallen for.

He ignored her fist. Ignored her anger and slid his fingers over her cheek. “It’s okay,” he said softly.

The sound she made shouldn’t have been possible from a human throat. Like a wounded animal, a caged beast, it ripped out of her, tore free from her chest as she wrenched away.

Phin staggered, but caught himself and took another step toward her as she faced the swinging bag, her shoulders heaving. “It’s okay,” he said again, as gently as if he were coaxing a wounded kitten. A scared child.

“Stop it.”

He shook his head. “It’s going to be okay.”

“You have
no
idea,” she bit out, and stiffened as he laid his palms over her shoulders.

Braced for her anger, ready in case she lashed out in whatever pain rode her now, he slid his fingers down her arms. Her body jerked, but he stepped into her space anyway. “Hey,” he murmured against her cold, wet hair. “It’s okay.”

She sucked in a breath, and he felt it break. Some kind of leashed tension, an emotional dam crumbling in his arms. Quickly, more easily than he’d expected, he spun her around, gathered her into his embrace and only held her as she trembled.

Sometime in the near future he’d have to tell her. He’d have to explain about the people Timeless had helped, try to get her to understand that he hadn’t meant to lie to her. Try to undercut the missionary he knew she was.

Someday he’d have to convince her to trust him, but for now he only held her. Braced her as she fell against him and gave him her weight. She was tall, but he didn’t spend every other day in this gym for nothing. She wrapped her legs around his waist and buried her face into his shoulder, her arms tight around his neck.

Wordless, everything inside him aching with her, for her, he navigated them into the women’s locker room. He cupped the back of her head and turned on the shower inside a stall. It blasted against them both, soaked through his clothes, a stream of soothing warmth and steady sound. It would muffle the tears he knew she needed to shed.

But she’d die before she did it by herself.

His fragile witch hunter.

He braced her against the wall, leaning back to thread his fingers through her hair and watch her face. Her eyes swam, vivid pools of too much emotion. Grief, fear, resentment.

Haunted.

Tipping her face up, he angled her beneath the spray. It beat over her shoulders, her chest; washed away the lingering aroma of sodden wool and chlorine and the acrid stench of ozone from the electrical current that had nearly killed her.

“Look at me,” he demanded.

Because she was Naomi, she did. A hard, direct challenge. Phin’s heart swelled. Overflowed. His Naomi. “I don’t need—” She sucked in a breath as he flattened his palm against her breast, just over her heart.

“Listen to me,” he said softly. “It’s going to be okay.”

“God damn it—”

“It’s going to be
okay
,” he said again, watching her eyes flinch. Her breath shuddered, jarred on the tears he knew were in there. She needed them out.

When was the last time she had cried?

Did the Church
let
its hunters feel? Did it care?

She struggled to get out of his arms, but he held on. He twined his hands into the back of her sweater, angling his weight to lock her against the tile. Fury etched itself into her features, twisted her mouth into a teeth-baring grimace.

It was a start.

“You risked your life— Naomi, don’t,” he said roughly as she lashed out. Her elbow crashed into the tile. Her fist slammed past his ear, spiked sharply into the wall over his shoulder.

Her knuckles cracked and he swore.

“No
.” Her voice echoed in the tiled acoustics. “Don’t you
dare
—”

His heart breaking with every violent denial, he shook her hard enough to snap her teeth together on the words he saw forming in the red-rimmed defiance of her eyes. “You risked your life to save a woman you don’t even like,” he said flatly. “Don’t tell me you don’t care.”

“What do you know?” she hissed. Anger couldn’t fill the shock-white pallor of her skin. It couldn’t fill the void he saw behind her eyes, behind the twisted, bared teeth of her grimace.

“I know that she’s under your skin.”

“Fuck you.
”

“I know that she hurt you,” Phin continued, undeterred. He seized her wrists, pinned them over her head, and knew it was because she let him. He’d seen her fight, seen her roll with a bullet.

But she didn’t shake him off.

Somewhere inside that rage, she needed him.

“I know that you—”

“She left me.
” It broke on a sob, a wild cry that sounded to Phin as much grief as wounded woman and, somewhere in there, a tormented little girl. She thrashed, slammed her head back into the tile. Shocked to the bone, Phin jerked her away from the wall and slipped. They hit the shower floor in a tangle of sodden limbs, but she didn’t stop. She swore viciously as she tried to get away.

From him. From the memory.

He didn’t know, but she wouldn’t win this one.

She couldn’t afford to.

He pinned her legs, dragged her back over the tile to wrap himself around her. He strained to hold her to the ground until her stream of violent, screaming curses turned into gasping silence. Beneath his shaking hands, the straining, rigid tension of her body melted into exhaustion.

The shower beating the tile around them was all the sound that filled the wrenching quiet.

Panting, Phin loosened his grip. A fraction.

She curled into the tile. Her hair pooled toward the drain, a streaming current of black, but he couldn’t see her face. She’d turned away from him, toward the purple and white tile.

“Sweetheart,” he whispered. It was all he could say.

Her shoulders jerked. “I was five years old.” Her voice shimmered with pain, anger muffled against the floor.

Phin let her go.

She moved. Like a damn cat, liquid sleek and too fast, but she didn’t try to get away this time. Twisting, scooting back into the corner, she shoved her hair from her face and the water from her eyes.

No, not water.

Oh, Christ, tears. Despite the knowledge that he’d wanted this reaction, knowing she needed it, Phin fought back the need to reach for her again, to gather her into his arms and soothe those tears away.

That wouldn’t help her, either.

So he sat back on his heels. It took everything he had to strive for calm as he observed, “Young to remember.”

Naomi sniffed hard, expelling the breath on a sharp, short sound of disgust. “She left the day before my fifth birthday. One day she’d been planning a party with the house staff, and the next she’d packed up her clothes and jewelry and took off.”

Phin watched her. Said nothing.

He had to be so careful.

“My father worshipped her. Fuck,” she snorted, a harsh sound from trembling lips. “God knows why, but he did. He wasn’t the first sucker to marry her, but she never had any kids with anyone else. She used to call me her doll.” Her hands trembled as she scraped them through her tangled hair. “Her little Japanese doll. She just—” Her hands splayed, slashing through the air. “She just wanted a pretty kid to show off. But she didn’t like being tied down.”

He couldn’t imagine. The picture she painted, the matter-of-fact way she painted it couldn’t hide the raw emotion beneath; it explained so much. And God, he wished it didn’t.

“So about three months after she left, she served him with divorce papers.” Her voice tightened, roughened. “Then he died.”

“Oh, sweetheart.”

She shook her head roughly. Water droplets scattered from her hair. “No one saw it coming.” Her laughter bit deeply, jagged and raw. “He just . . . killed himself. His will left everything to her. Put me in an orphanage, and you know?” She couldn’t muffle the sob that broke against her gritted teeth. Couldn’t hide the tears that spilled over her reddened cheeks.

“You know,” she tried again, “she never . . . she never once came for me.”

He just couldn’t bear it. Abandoned, forgotten. “I’m so sorry,” he breathed, knowing it wasn’t enough.

“No.” Her chin came up, and it was as if she’d flipped a switch. He watched a cold kind of strength slide back into place over her eyes. Missionary eyes. “You wanted to know. Fine. My mother abandoned me to the Mission, abandoned my father and took him for everything he had. The divorce suit claimed it all, the house, the money, everything except me. Funny, isn’t it?” She slammed both fists to the tile. Water splashed in a glittering arc. “A fucking goddamn comedy that she got exactly what she wanted. More money, more houses, and she never had to think about me again.”

He closed his eyes, but it couldn’t stop him from seeing her. Huddled in the corner, sodden, a drowned rat with her knees drawn to her chest and pain like a razored knife shimmering in her eyes.

He’d never been so out of his depth.

Or so in love.

“So, yeah,” she said. Quiet, now. Cooler, as mercurial as the wind. “Yeah, I’m a missionary. I kill people for a living, Phin. I lied to you from day one because I’m here to kill someone who’s out to kill other people. Does that make sense to you?” Her crack of laughter split his heart. Shattered it. “It makes perfect sense to me, but then I don’t care. I just kill people. I’m here to kill a man. It’s what I do, it’s who I am—”

“You’re Naomi Ishi—”

“Don’t call me that.
”

Phin stilled. The wild rage, the torment that all but ripped her apart before his very eyes pinned him to the tile. She struggled to her knees, swaying, and he wanted to help her. God, to reach her. To hold her.

But she jammed her arms against the wall for balance. Straightened up without him. “My name is West.” It vibrated from her lips, taut and hard. “Naomi West. I work for the Mission. I kill people. God damn it, Phin,” she said on a rush, clearly frustrated as she shoved at the water sliding over her face. “Is any of this getting through to you?
I kill people
, and I don’t fucking care who.”

Phin crawled across the tile on his knees, caught her by the arms, and pulled her against his chest. She struggled, but he cupped her face in both hands. He met her eyes and forced himself to remain calm, not to rise to the bait she threw out like so much blood in the water.

Not to give her what she so desperately thought she wanted.

“Your name is Naomi West,” he repeated softly. Seizing the advantage, he tilted her face up and brushed her lips with his, as tender as he knew how. Gentle. “You’re a missionary.” Again, his lower lip catching on hers. She shuddered. “You kill people in your line of work, I get that.”

“I—”

“But I refuse to believe,” he said over her, still as soothingly, as soft as he could, “that you don’t care. I know you. Even in this small amount of time, I know you better than you think. You care. You care and it eats you alive.”

Her eyes darkened.

“But you aren’t alone, Naomi.” Phin pressed his mouth to her chin, her cheeks. Tasted the salt of her tears and the lingering bite of chlorine. “You aren’t alone, because I’m here. I love you.”

She drew in a sharp breath.

“And I’m not going to leave you.” He covered her lips with his, coaxed her mouth open under the gently aggressive sweep of his tongue, and tried to pour every ounce, every shred of love and need and reassurance into a single kiss.