Tempting Danger (24 page)

Karonski stood back. Rule moved fast then. He shouldn’t have. When you move too fast it scares humans, and scared humans with guns were likely to put holes in things.

But . . . he stood outside his cell, looking around. The short corridor was empty except for Karonski and another man, one Rule didn’t know. Neither had their guns out. “Am I in your custody?”

“Nope. You’re free, like I said, thanks to your girlfriend. I’d like you to come with us, though. You might want to do that, considering there’s a dozen reporters salivating out front. They’ll pounce when you come out. We’ve got a car waiting.”

Rule nodded at the other man. “And this is—?”

“Martin Croft,” the other man said. He was taller and darker-skinned than Karonski, and much better dressed. He held out his hand.

Karonski elbowed him. “Not yet. He needs to settle more.” He scanned Rule. “You’re jittery but holding. Can you make it through the piranhas with microphones without biting off someone’s hand?”

“Of course.” Reporters. He should have expected that. He wasn’t thinking clearly. Rule ran a hand through his hair and wished for a mirror. He would perform for the cameras, but it had better be brief. “I trust someone plans to return my shoes. What time is it?”

“About ten. This way to checkout.” Karonski started down the short hall. The door at the end was blank metal, no way to open it from the inside. Rule concentrated on keeping his breathing steady. He was almost out. It wouldn’t do to crack up now.

The other man—Croft—smiled as he fell into step beside Rule. “If you’re wondering why we had the honor of letting you out of your cell, you can thank Abel’s descriptive abilities. He explained what happened once when a couple of cops released a lupus who’d been locked up too long.”

“For Chrissake, Martin, you trying to get me jumped?” Karonski growled. “Turner, I didn’t tell them why being locked up makes you folks twitchy. Let ’em think you just get put out at the injustice of it all.”

Obviously he’d told Croft, however. “You two are partners?”

“For my sins, yes,” Croft said.

Unexpectedly, Karonski chuckled. “He means that literally,” he said as he punched the button by the door.

A few minutes later Rule slid his feet into his shoes and his wallet into his pocket, having signed for his belongings. Two more cops were waiting to escort him; the authorities didn’t want him stopping for a press conference on his way home from jail, it seemed.

Lily wasn’t there. He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted her to be until the disappointment hit.

It did his human side good to have his things restored, though. He wondered if humans experienced the same lessening of their civilized selves when they were stripped of the bits they normally carried on their bodies. “You said I was out ‘thanks to my girlfriend,’ ” he said to Karonski. “What did you mean?”

Karonski gave him a quick glance. “Explanations later. Let’s get through the media mob and go somewhere we can talk.”

“Damn,” Croft said as they reached the door. “It’s raining again. I guess reporters don’t have the sense to come in out of it.”

“You won’t melt. Come on.”

Rule walked out into a damp night with Karonski on one side, Croft on the other, and a cop in front and one behind to clear a path.

Lightbulbs flashed. Microphones were thrust at him. Voices called out questions. They crowded him—people, sounds, lights, all pressed in on him until it was hard to breathe. With darkness backing them, rain drizzling down, and lights held high for the TV cameras, they became a wall of people and sound, lacking individual faces or voices.

Easy,
he told himself.
You can get out, so you don’t have to.
He paused, formed a smile for them, and put on one of the best performances of his life. “Gentlemen. Ladies. I’m far too vain to allow you to interview me like this.” He gestured at his T-shirt and jeans, which were certainly more casual than he usually wore for a session with the press.

A couple of them laughed. Someone gave a wolf whistle.

“Thank you.” He hoped he got the grin right. “Allow me to get a night’s sleep and groom myself properly. I’ll give you a statement and take questions in the morning.”

They didn’t exactly give up, but, with the promise of an interview, they weren’t as insistent. Rule’s escort managed to get him to the dark sedan that waited. Croft got in behind the wheel; Karonski sat beside him, leaving the backseat to Rule.

He concentrated on breathing.

“You okay?” Karonski turned to look over the seat as they pulled away.

Rule hated the way he reacted. Lupi uniformly disliked small, enclosed spaces, but not all were as bloody sensitive as he was. But it couldn’t be helped. He was scrambled. “There’s a park a few blocks away. I’d like to go there.”

“In the rain?” Croft asked.

“Would you get over your thing about the weather?” Karonski turned back around. “My mama always said, don’t crowd a jumpy werewolf. No walls at the park. Tell him where to go,” he added to Rule, and chuckled. “I do.”

“All the time,” Croft murmured.

A few red lights later, they pulled up at the park. Rule got out. It wasn’t much of a rain, but the wind whipped it around, making a fuss. He tilted his face toward the sky and let the Lady clean him.

It helped. When the other two got out, he was able to say politely, “Excuse me a moment. I’ll be back.” And he ran.

Twelve minutes later he returned to the car. He’d kept to an easy lope, no faster than most humans could manage, and had seen two others out for a run, unwilling to let a little rain keep them inside. It was a good reminder. Not all humans closed themselves away from nature.

The FBI agents, however, had gotten back into the car to stay dry. When they climbed out, he apologized for having kept them waiting. “I wasn’t in good shape to ask questions or hear the answers. Now I am. Why am I not in jail anymore?”

“Just as well you ran off your jumpiness,” Karonski said. “Normally you wouldn’t shoot the messenger, but I’d rather you heard this with your head clear. You aren’t going to like it.”

 

 

CROFT
and Karonski had Lily’s address. They dropped him off.

She lived on the second floor of a small, overwhelmingly pink complex that might have begun life fifty years ago as a motel. A cement walkway on each floor connected the outside stairwells and gave access to the units.

The scent of the sea was strong and sweet in Rule’s nostrils when he got out of the car. Water and decay, salt and sand . . . he was encouraged by her choice. Surely a woman who picked a spot so close to the ocean didn’t automatically hide from the rain.

Which didn’t mean she wouldn’t hide from other things. “Go away,” she said through the door after he knocked.

“No.”

“Suit yourself. I’m not opening the door.”

“And I’m not leaving.” He settled himself on the damp cement, leaning his back against her door. No comment came through the door, but he knew she was still there. The door was too thin to hide her movements from him. “Do you go to the ocean often? You live close.”

Another pause. He imagined her shaking her head, perplexed by his subject. “I run on the beach. It’s good for the calf muscles.”

“And the soul. We don’t go to the ocean for anything as simple as happiness, do we? We go there to feel alive. Like life, the ocean holds chance and change, grief and terror and beauty. It promises mortality, not peace.”

“I’m not in the mood for poetry tonight.”

“I suppose not. You’ve had your life jerked out from under you. Hitting, screaming, and throwing things might be better. You can’t hit me through the door, though.”

A long pause, then: “You’re not going away, are you?”

“No.”

A second later the lock snicked. He rose to his feet and faced the door as it opened.

She wore old black sweatpants and a gray T-shirt that read, San Diego Police Dept. No bra, he thought. Her hair was pulled back in an untidy ponytail. Framed by the soft light from inside, she looked stark and untouchable.

It didn’t keep him from wanting to touch.

She shook her head. “I ought to call you in as a prowler and let them lock you up again.”

“I’m fortunate that you’re too kind to do that.”

“I’m not kind at all.” She stepped back. “Come in so we can get this settled.”

He stepped inside and looked around, breathing in the scents—plants and spaghetti and Lily. Everywhere Lily. Her scent had sunk into the pillows and carpet and walls of her space, and it made him happy.

But there was another scent. “You have a cat.”

Her lips quirked. “He’s outside. You have a problem with cats?”

“They often have a problem with me.” He moved farther into the room, touching a leaf, the drapes, looking at the single print on the wall, a black-and-white shot of the ocean. Her living area was small, scrupulously neat, and almost bare, except for . . . “You prefer plants to furniture?”

“I like to garden. Lacking a yard, I do it in pots.” She crossed her arms, locking him away from her body. “You didn’t come here to inspect my apartment, I hope.”

They were such pretty arms, round and firm, the skin smooth. He wanted to lick his way up one arm and down the other. To give his hands something else to do, he ran one through his hair, shaking out some of the dampness. “No, but I was curious about your space. It smells good.”

“Ah—thanks. Look, I’m glad you’re out of jail, but I don’t want company right now. If you came to thank me, let’s consider it said.”

“Gratitude is a flimsy word when I owe you more than I can repay. Why did they take your badge?”

She flinched. “It’s temporary. And how do you know about it, anyway?”

“The FBI agents you spoke to. They released me from the metal hole where I’d been placed.”

“I suppose they talked to the captain.” She shrugged, but the movement was jerky. “It’s none of your business.”

“Isn’t it?” Without thinking he took a step toward her, then forced himself to stop. He was already too close, his heart beating too fast. This was a damnably intimate space. “Were you suspended for going to the FBI?”

“Technically, no. Can’t punish a cop for following the rules. Though I broke them, too . . . but it was the unwritten ones I violated.”

“Then why?”

She grinned mirthlessly. “For having an affair with you.”

That sucked the air right out of him. “Your captain is prescient?”

“Confident, aren’t you? No, he’s pissed.” She started to pace, but the small room didn’t give her much space for it. She reached the wall, turned, started back. “I’d been told to leave it out, you see. But that was wrong. Maybe I didn’t have evidence, but I
knew
it was sorcery that killed her. The captain didn’t want to believe me, and you were so handy. As long as he could believe you’d done it, he didn’t have to look for a dirty cop in his department. In the end, I forced him to.”

She passed within arm’s reach of him on her circuit of the room. He didn’t reach. Instead, he lowered himself to the floor and sat, to discourage himself from grabbing her. “How?”

“I went to Internal Affairs.” She reached the other wall, turned. “You wouldn’t know what that means.”

“They’re the cops who watch the other cops.”

“Roughly, yes. But you don’t go to them. You don’t rat on your supervisor or your brother cops, because no one will trust you if you do. I can’t explain it. That’s just how it is.”

“I think I understand. Internal Affairs are cops, but they aren’t part of your clan of cops.”

“What?” She stopped, gave a nervous laugh, and resumed her circuit of the room. “This is not like lupus clans.”

“It seems very similar. The captain is your Rho. You knew he was wrong, but your rules don’t allow you to challenge him directly. Instead you had to go out of the clan for a champion—which the rules allow, even encourage, but of course this behavior troubles you and your cop clan.” He shook his head. “A strange system.”

“I must be losing it,” she muttered. “That made sense.”

“In a true clan, you’d be punished through the Challenge itself. Your rules make it seem as if you can go out of the clan without paying a price, but that feels wrong. So the other cops find a punishment for you, even if it means lying. You and I aren’t lovers yet.”

“Yet. Yet. Would you stop talking that way?” She dragged a hand over her hair, caught her fingers in the band holding the ponytail, and jerked the bit of cloth out, throwing it on the floor.

“Who told the lie about you?”

“Mech fed the captain a bunch of bullshit. Randall knew it was bullshit—I think he did, anyway. But then there I was, telling him he had to release you. I did that after ratting to the FBI and to Internal Affairs. I needed to be punished, all right.” She slowed. “It should be temporary. They can’t prove something that isn’t true.”

She couldn’t believe that. He’d just been put in a cell because they’d been able to “prove” an untruth. But she wanted to believe it, needed to. She didn’t want to lose her clan—that’s what it amounted to. “
Querida.
You make me ache.”

Her glance hit him and skittered away, like a stone skipped over water. “I didn’t do it for you. You should know that. I did it because I have to live with myself, and it was wrong to cover things up. Even temporarily.” Her feet took her into motion again. “I wanted to handle the investigation myself. I tried to persuade myself I could, but in the end I decided that would be risking too much. More than I had a right to risk.”

She reminded him of himself earlier, pacing out his cell, unable to stop. What walls put her in motion this way? “What would that have risked?”

“You, for one. You were in a cage. I know what those cells are like—tiny. Probably smelled bad to you, too. You might not have been able to stand that for long enough for me to fix things.”