TrackingDesire (12 page)

“True,” Will replied thoughtfully. “And I’m certainly not
complaining. It’s the only positive that’s come from this mess.”

“So.” Liv looked around the lab again, feeling slightly at a
loss. “What is it you want us to do? Obviously there’s something specific
Julian and I can help you with, since you called us and not any of the others.
What do you need us to do, Captain?”

Julian looked over at her and stared at her with such heat
and intensity that it made her blush. She had meant her words—obviously Will
had called her and Julian for a reason, and if he needed their help she was
willing to do whatever it took. She had come to like the brisk, gruff blond man
and value his leadership style. Added to that, she’d enjoyed their mission at
the Tiens’ house and if she could rectify the mistake she’d made, albeit
unknowingly, she was willing to follow his command and do what it took.

The heat and depth of feeling burning from Julian’s eyes,
however, showed not only that he felt grateful for her offering, but also his
utter willingness to have her along for the ride. Liv was not sure of the
depths of his feelings for her—although she was pretty sure she was falling in
love with him, if it hadn’t occurred already—but regardless of whether or not
he loved her, she could tell just by the look in his eyes that he cared deeply
for her and didn’t want whatever had sprung up between them to end any time
soon.

“You’re right, Liv,” Will said firmly. “I did call you for a
specific reason. Julian tells me you’re a Retriever.”

Liv nodded, an inkling of where this was heading forming in
her mind. “That’s right,” she confirmed.

Will nodded at her, an eager light in his pale-blue eyes.

“You’re no dummy. I can see you’re pretty much on the same
page as I am,” Will said respectfully. “The only lead we have left to follow is
that we still have a tiny sample of the ochre powder. It’s barely enough to
test—less than a gram we recovered from a centrifuge tube that the assholes who
did this overlooked. I want you to hone in on its essence and Retrieve any more
that might be nearby for us. With luck, that essence will lead us to where
they’re manufacturing it, or at least give us a new lead to work on.”

Liv took in what Will was asking, then asked for further
clarification. “Do you actually want me to steal more of the sample?” she
checked. “Or are you wanting me to use my skills to bring us to where more is,
like a beacon? There’s no difference in how I’d Retrieve the drug, but my
approach to the building and people will differ according to what your final
aim is.”

Will chewed thoughtfully on the end of his cigar as he
surveyed the wrecked laboratory.

Liv gave him a moment to organize his priorities and make
the decision, and scanned the gray room while she waited.

The lab really was a mess. She could tell despite the broken
glassware and scattered papers that usually the lab would have been pristinely
clean. Filing organizers sat on most of the work benches, labels and
color-coded tags clearly stated where everything’s proper place was. Notices on
the walls and discreetly placed around filing cabinets directed people where to
put certain forms, reports and articles.

Many of the instruments were either broken or thrown on the
floor. Even had she not known what had occurred here, she would have guessed
that someone very angry and determined to find something had ripped through the
large room, not caring what stood in their way—they’d simply wanted to create
as much devastation as possible.

“I want these bastards,” Will finally said after a few
minutes’ silent contemplation of the ruined laboratory. “I want to put them all
in a cage, turn the key and let them rot. If you have an opportunity to get
more of the sample, take it. But your top priority is to find the people
responsible for this and the creation of the new mid-point toward the antidote.
Either give me their identities so I can send a clean-up team after them, or
bring me their heads on a platter. I don’t care if you find out it was the King
of fucking England. As far as I’m concerned, no one is above our reach right now.
They hurt techies—
cop
technicians—to save their asses, and they can burn
for all I care. Just get them.”

Liv turned to face Julian, silently asking if he was with
her on this. She understood and agreed with what Will said. If the police and
the Enforcers didn’t protect their own, sooner rather than later people would
not want to work with them.

Liv understood Will’s need to make an example of these
people and shut them down. They had crossed a line and instead of a slap on the
wrist—which was all the likes of Erik and Blossom Tien would ever expect from a
court of law—if they could beat them with a steel baseball bat to express their
displeasure, then it would cause others to think twice and possibly refrain
from repeating this sort of action.

Julian’s gray eyes showed a similar level of understanding
and a hint of angry fire burning behind his calm demeanor.

“I’ll watch your back,” he said with a smile. “Heaven knows
what kind of mess you’ll get into if someone isn’t there to watch that lovely
ass of yours. I told you I’d protect you, and it wasn’t a throw-away comment,
babe. You’re stuck with me any time you’re working a case like this.”

Will snorted but Liv barely heard him. She grinned sappily
at Julian, a warm glow infusing her chest as she realized they were a team now,
despite her screw-up with the fume cupboard’s silent alarm. After a moment of
thanking him with her eyes, she turned back to Will.

“I’m on it. I’ll call you when I find something.”

Will nodded curtly and with a sigh turned back to scan the
laboratory once more as Liv and Julian took each other’s hands and left the
destroyed room.

“I need to go back to my place,” Liv explained to Julian,
and gave him the address. “If I can meditate, clear my head a little and
cleanse myself, then I can use this sample Will gave me and have nothing but
the essence of the antidote in my senses. Hopefully then I can lead us to
wherever these assholes are working.”

“Do you always need to prepare like that?” Julian asked.

Liv turned to look at him and saw the genuine curiosity
etched on his face. She smiled and shook her head.

“Oh no, it’s just a matter of focus. The thing is, right now
I smell strongly of you. I still have your taste in my mouth and my mind is all
over the place,” she replied truthfully but with an impish grin so he would
realize she wasn’t complaining in the least. “If I cleanse myself, meditate and
clear my mind and
then
start the search, I’ll be focused on the right
things, not distracted. It won’t take as much energy to focus on the drug’s
essence and the magic that I save can be spent speeding things up.”

Julian continued to ask questions as he drove in the
direction of her apartment, his curiosity apparent. “Do you only have a certain
amount of magic to spend?” “Magic is like a focused energy with a specific
purpose,” Liv explained. “When you have a talent for something, magic is what
helps to channel your energy into doing that task. That’s why Kelly looked so
wiped out at your apartment after we broke into the Tiens’ place. She had been
expending energy the whole time, keeping her senses sharp and jacked-up. She
needed to keep herself stealthy and to process all the information she was
being given. Burning that energy for a long time to keep your magic going is
draining, much like running a marathon wears you out and, if you’re not
careful, can do serious damage.”

“Hmm, that sounds pretty logical,” Julian mused as he drove.
“What sort of damage does it do? Do you know?”

“We were all warned against it at the Academy,” Liv replied
uncertainly, “but I’ve never known anyone who has truly burned out. They were
pretty forceful in their explanations that it’s not a pretty sight. The
lecturer said you could actually burn your magic away, which until then I’d
never even known was possible. The few times I’ve really pushed myself, I’ve
felt drained, almost hung-over. It’s a physical but also mental and spiritual
thing. You feel as if you’ve just pushed so hard you can’t function—you need to
sleep and heal. I find I need to meditate constantly for days after a big job.
It helps to clear my mind and spirit. I imagine it’s similar to regular
burn-out but on a larger scale. It’s almost as if you’ve spent so much of your
body, heart and soul that you can’t bounce back from it.”

“Well, if you keep on pushing yourself to your limits,”
Julian agreed softly, “sooner or later you won’t bounce back.”

Liv looked out of the window and a moment of silence passed
between them. Shaking herself slightly to get out of the melancholy air that
had filled the car, she injected some warmth into her tone as she spoke again.

“That’s not going to happen to me,” she said confidently. “I
can’t imagine what it would be like not to have my magic. It would be like not
having optimism, or faith. It’s an integral part of me, even if it isn’t
something one can really quantify. I hope I’d never feel the need to push
myself consistently to that level of need. Anyway, this should be a fairly
routine Retrieval.”

Digging her hand into her pocket, she removed the plastic
centrifuge tube and checked that the lid was still clamped down tightly so that
not even a grain of the powder would be lost. Holding it up so they could both
see it, she turned the plastic tube this way and that in the light of the
morning sunshine.

“With this, I can follow the essence of the drug itself.
Hopefully luck will be on our side this time and it will lead us to the people
responsible for these problems without too many false leads.”

“Do you often have false leads on a normal Retrieval?”
Julian inquired.

Liv frowned as she tried to think of a way to explain what
it felt like to Retrieve. It wasn’t as hopeless as trying to describe a color
to a blind person, or answer a child’s simple question when the complexity of
the answer meant trying to explain a larger concept to such a young mind, but
it was not a simple answer either.

“You know how scientists tell us animals can sense things by
spores and pheromones?” Liv said. “How they don’t remember the way back to
their home by memory as such, or because they’ve traveled the same path dozens
of times, but because when they rub against something they leave a scent trail
behind? That’s kind of like how I can find and follow the essence of something
to Retrieve it.”

Liv watched as Julian frowned and nodded. It didn’t seem to
have clicked properly in his head and taken shape.

“Think of it as if you could put on a pair of glasses,” she
tried again, “and through those glasses you could still see the world, but you
could also see something
extra
, something indefinable. Let’s say it was
the actual essence of an object. Now, if you held in your mind a known essence,
you could look around the world through these ‘glasses’ and try to match all
the essences you could see to the one you were looking for. That’s sort of like
what I do. When I heighten my senses, jack them up and use my magic, I can look
around the world. I still see the people and buildings and trees and whatnot,
but I also can sense the essence in all manner of things. If I focus on one
particular signature, something I want to find, I can pick up remnants of the
essence it has left behind.”

“So objects leave behind pieces of their essence?” Julian
clarified.

Liv grinned at him and nodded.

“Oh, yes. From what I’ve gathered, it’s a bit like your
forensics. We all transfer fibers and all sorts of microscopic things,” she
reminded him. “Well, objects are the same. It’s why houses have the ‘feel’ of
their owners after a while. Sure, the paint you put on the walls or the carpets
you lay or the paintings you hang up all reflect your tastes and personality,
but even when you remove them all and clean the place out, there’s still
something left of you there—your possessions leave a residue just as your
spirit and soul do.”

Julian finally nodded his head vigorously, understanding.
“Okay,” he said. “That makes sense to me. I’ve experienced that and can picture
it clearly in my head. So you follow these essences. How does it work in a
city, though? Chicago is a huge area.”

Liv shrugged as Julian turned into a side street and slowly
cruised as he searched for a parking space. She tried once again to find the
right words to make it clear for him. After a moment, she spoke again.

“That’s a bit harder to explain,” she replied, pausing to
gather her thoughts. “Sometimes I need to be driven around slowly in a car
until I can pick up an idea of where the item has been taken, sometimes I can
just walk around wherever the item was stolen from and I can get a sense of
where the trail leads. More rarely I can look at maps and ‘see’ where the item
might be, but that’s only happened a few times. That’s very similar to Scrying
and I’ve never had much luck or talent with that.”

“So what would you suggest we do?” Julian asked as he
parked. They unsnapped their safety belts and left the car. After thinking for
a few minutes, Liv made her proposal as they walked up the sidewalk and into
her apartment complex.

“I figure we try two things.” She paused for a moment while
she brought out her keys. “Firstly, I figure I might as well try looking at a
map of greater Chicago and get an idea whether I can find it that way. It would
save us time and gas driving around possibly chasing our tails. If that doesn’t
work—and I wouldn’t hold out hope that it will—then I figure the smartest thing
to do will be for us to go back to the laboratory and walk around the outside
and see if I can get an indication of where they were headed. If I can follow
the essence from there, even just giving you a direction to drive in, we should
be able to carry on without too much hassle.”

“Won’t a moving car be too fast for you to connect the
spores and follow the trail?” Julian asked doubtfully as she unlocked the door
and pushed it open, waving a hand for him to enter before her.

Liv shook her head as he preceded her inside her main living
area. After closing and locking the door behind her, Liv automatically hung the
keys on the hook on the wall. She had a terrible habit of losing her keys, and
it was embarrassing when she had to Retrieve them from the fridge or under the
couch.

“Oh, no, it’s not just a literal trail, it’s…” Again Liv
trailed off as she struggled to find the right words. “I see where the object
has been as a literal, almost physical thing too, but just as I can see where
it
has
been, so can I trace it to where it
is
. I can focus on it
now
and get a good feel for where it is, what direction we need to be going in.
It’s not like a compass in that the second you go the wrong way I hear this
alarm and know we’re off course—it’s a lot looser and less accurate than that.
But the farther away we go, the more I sense we’re heading in the wrong
direction. I can get out of the car and wander around, maybe even a whole
block’s distance, until I pick up the trail again.”

“Hence the lots of driving and use of gas comment,” Julian
said with an understanding nod. “Gotcha.”

“Make yourself at home.” She waved a hand into the direction
of the kitchen. “Get something to eat if you like—or, hell, if you can whip us
up some breakfast to go, I’ll be eternally grateful. Don’t feel obliged, though.
I can grab some fruit as we leave if you prefer just to have some toast or
something.”

Julian smirked at her, closed the distance between them and
rested his hands on her shoulders. With maddening slowness, he lowered his head
and brushed a soft, chaste kiss to her lips which nevertheless left her panting
with need.

“I’m sure I can whip us up something quick and easy to eat
so you don’t have to lose focus over it,” he replied, clearly amused. “Do you
have any special requests, or are you willing to trust me?”

“I trust you,” she replied breathlessly, her heart pounding
fast in her chest. Liv wasn’t sure when she had reached out, but her hands now
clung to his slender hips. Her gaze was lost in the soft gray depths of his as
he stared at her, his amusement deepening.

“This isn’t going to help you to meditate and clear your
mind,” he pointed out with a soft laugh.

Liv moaned and tossed her head back before pressing her body
flush against him.

“I don’t care,” she groaned, “I need to feel you. Every time
I move, my inner thighs and pussy muscles twinge as an erotic reminder of what
we did last night. I positively
crave
more of it—and you, I hope you
realize. I want to feel you everywhere, all over again—in my mouth, fucking my
throat, in my pussy and deep in my ass. I almost feel as if you’ve cast a spell
on me. Changed me intimately, somehow, until all I want is you.”

“I don’t have magic,” Julian purred lightly. “That’s you,
remember? You’re the one who’s bewitched me and stolen my heart.”

“Your heart?” she echoed, her own heart pounding a hard,
driving rhythm in her chest as she felt her hopes rise to the sky.

Julian grinned, a low, sensual, wicked thing that had her
wanting to kiss him so deeply they would never, ever be parted again.

“Of course. You’ve completely stolen my heart,” he repeated
in an almost chiding tone, soft as it was. “You’ve held it in your delicate
little hands since the moment you turned around from your office window to look
at me with those huge, beautiful green eyes of yours. I love you, Liv. Surely
you could tell?”

Liv smiled and thumped her fist gently against his hard
chest. “No,” she insisted. “I need to hear the
words
. I can Retrieve
lost items, not read minds.”

Julian ran his index finger lightly down the straight length
of her nose as he stared hungrily at her. They kissed passionately, and it took
a moment for Liv to even remember what her name was, let alone where they were
and what her heart overflowed with—what she needed to share with him.

“I love you too,” she said huskily after pulling away
slightly so she could whisper the words to him. “I don’t know when it happened,
but I’m desperately in love with you too. I was so scared you’d want someone
more stable, more able to support the hectic, dangerous work you do.”

“Now why would I want someone stable, when you set me on
fire, babe? You heat me with just a look. Make me hard just by turning your
head and having those wild, beautiful curls frame your face. Besides, I’m
looking for a partner, not someone to sit back and watch me live my life. You,
Liv, can
join
me when I do crazy things. Hell, you will probably
lead
me into as many adventures as Will could ever thrust at me. And none of that
matters, anyway. I
love
you. You and everything wicked and twisted and
crazy about you.”

Liv beamed and wrapped her arms around his neck, bringing
their bodies so close that she jumped up a little and wrapped her legs around
his waist and clung to him. With an eagerness she’d never experienced before,
she peppered kisses all over his face, ending with a long, deep, breathless
kiss that stretched on seemingly forever.

When they were both panting and Julian’s hard, thick cock
was pressed into the soft curve of her ass they were forced by the need for
oxygen to pull apart. Liv reluctantly let her body slide down her lover’s until
she stood on her own feet. With regret twisting her mouth, she looked around
Julian into the corridor that led to her bathroom.

“I want to drag you back to my bedroom, throw you down on my
bed and ravish you senseless. The only thing I want more than that is for you
to throw
me
down and fuck me until I scream,” she said honestly. “But…”