Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic Book 1) (17 page)

Chapter 24

Quinn just nodded, his face expressionless. I tried to focus on the logic, the chain of events, before I lost myself in
what could have happened
. “Victor and Darcy picked up Charlie,” I said slowly. “They realized they’d forgotten to bring any diapers from John’s house . . . and maybe they didn’t know Nolan already had some here. So they stopped at the Flatiron Depot to grab a package before leaving Boulder.” I looked around the room. “This wasn’t her final destination, though. Darcy said their senior was going to take Charlie to the ‘merchant,’ which I figured meant middleman.”

“That makes sense,” Quinn agreed. “They’d want to get her out of Itachi’s enclave as quick as possible. Besides, if the plan was for Charlie to stay here, Nolan would have set all this stuff up. My guess is that he was storing it here, maybe overnight, and was planning to hand it off with the baby.”

“But who killed Nolan? It wasn’t Victor or Darcy. That puddle of blood is bright red. He was killed tonight, probably while we were talking to Kirby.” So not Kirby, either.

“Well, we know there’s a fourth player in the kidnapping,” Quinn said. “The person who wanted Charlie. Whoever it is doesn’t want to make another grab for her right now, not while Itachi and Maven are watching her. But Nolan was a loose thread.”

“Meanwhile, we’re looking for the kidnapper,” I finished. “It was only a matter of time before we found Nolan, and whoever did this knew it.” I gritted my teeth, fighting down the urge to punch something. “We must have missed this guy by
minutes
.”

Quinn checked his watch. “Speaking of which, we need to get going.”

“What? Are you serious?” My voice came out harsher than I’d intended, and frustration was turning my stomach. Quinn and I were at a dead end, and we both knew it. I just wasn’t ready to admit it yet. “We’ve barely looked around.”

“The Denver crew’s gonna be here any second,” the vampire explained.

“But we don’t
know
anything,” I protested. “We haven’t searched enough—”

“There’s not going to be anything else here, Lex,” Quinn insisted. “Nolan was a pro. He was too careful to leave evidence of who he was working for, and even if he
had
made a mistake, the killer would have found it first.”

I pointed at the stack of baby supplies. “Then why didn’t the killer take this stuff?”

“Because,” Quinn said patiently, like I was a particularly dimwitted child, “he—or she—wanted us to find it.”

I shook my head, confused. “Why would he want us to find it?”

“Because he’s done, at least for now.” Quinn nodded at the baby stuff. “He didn’t move it to a new location, he didn’t smuggle Nolan out of state to keep him away from Itachi’s investigation. We’re supposed to find this and know that he’s done. It’s over, Lex.”

I stared at him, incredulous. “
Over
over? Are you suggesting that we just stop looking for whoever
kidnapped
my niece?”

There was a knock on the front door, and Quinn grimaced. “Can we agree that there’s not going to be anything else in here, and move this conversation outside?”

I allowed Quinn to lead me down the hall and back to the entryway, where we let in two vampires dressed in jeans and CU sweatshirts. The woman looked to be about my age, with a blonde ponytail tied high on her head and a gigantic tote bag in lieu of a purse. The man seemed a few years younger, with an earring and shaggy hair that curled past his ears. They looked like any normal couple on their way home from a football game, except for their unreadable expressions and the easy, fluid way they moved. Quinn didn’t introduce us; he just gave the vampires a tight nod as we edged past them toward the door. They returned the nod in perfect, eerie unison, and I was careful not to touch them as we went by.

Back at the car, Quinn started for the driver’s door, then glanced over his shoulder at my face and stopped. “What do you mean, it’s over?” I demanded. “We’re not done.
I’m
not done. Someone killed Nolan, and whoever did it was in on Charlie’s kidnapping.” I glared at him, my hands balled into fists. There were people talking and laughing at the far end of the lot, and Quinn stepped very close to me before answering.

“I’ll talk to Maven and Itachi,” he said quietly. “But I know exactly what they’re going to say.” A bitter expression crossed his face.
“
‘Sometimes the cost of secrecy is not knowing the whole truth.’ Three of the four players are dead, and the fourth player is walking away. That will be good enough for them.”

“But there are other threads to pull,” I said through gritted teeth. “Itachi has contacts with the police, right? Maybe he can get into Nolan’s financials and find out who paid for the baby stuff. Or we can go back to Kirby and push harder. Victor and Darcy’s neighbors, we never did get to talk to them, and maybe they—”

“
Stop
, Lex,” Quinn interrupted. “This guy killed a high-ranking vampire, a frickin’ general in Itachi’s army. You don’t think he’ll have covered the rest of his bases? And if we go poking around at Nolan’s bank or Darcy’s building, we may end up accidentally pointing him at people who really don’t know anything. We’ve been outmaneuvered. We’re done.”

“And where does this leave me?” I demanded. “I was supposed to help you find and stop this guy. It was my goddamned field test. If I don’t get this position with Itachi, he’s not going to leave Charlie alone.” My voice broke on Charlie’s name, and I hated how weak that sounded.

“I’ll tell them you did good work,” he promised. “I’ll make sure he and Maven know this wasn’t your fault.”

“That’s not good enough,” I sputtered.

Quinn studied my face for a moment. I don’t know what he saw there, but he closed even more of the distance between us, until we were close enough for him to whisper. “Do you need to hit me?” he said.

My eyes widened. “What?”

“You’re shaking,” he said matter-of-factly. I looked down at my fists. Sure enough, there was a visible tremor. Glancing around, Quinn quickly reached out and grabbed my hands, stilling them.

I reacted without thinking, jerking my hands back and snapping them out to shove Quinn
hard
into the side of the car. He hit it with an audible thump but didn’t react. The voices at the other end of the lot went quiet.

Quinn just leaned there, his eyes probing mine. “Feel better?” he asked, his voice still low. “I meant it, you know. You can hit me if you want. You might break your hand, but if it you think it’ll help, I won’t stop you.”

Balling up my fists, I spun on my heel and paced a few feet away, my body thrumming with unspent anger. When I was sure I wasn’t actually going to hit him, I turned and stalked back. He had straightened up, but was still leaning against the car, motionless. I just stared at him, seething. I’d struggled with anger since I’d gotten out of the army, but something different was happening now. It felt like rage was rolling through every part of my body, seeping out from my chest down into my legs and fingers, pushing out against the inside of my skin.
You’ll feel things harder
,
Simon had told me. I felt like I was going to explode.

Quinn’s nostrils flared suddenly, and he glanced down. “Lex,” he said softly, genuine concern in his voice. I followed his eyes down to my left hand, which he took gently, turning it over and uncurling my fingers. There were four thin trickles of blood trailing from my palm. I’d clenched my fist hard enough to draw blood. “Oh,” I said lamely. “Does that—”

Quinn dropped my hand and jerked away from me. His pupils had dilated, and he turned his head, avoiding my eyes. “Christ . . . did Simon say anything about your magic growing?”

“Yeah, I guess . . . why?”

“I can smell it in your blood,” he whispered, his face clouding over. “It’s . . . it’s like it’s singing to me.”

I shrunk back from him.
An affinity for vampires.
You got that right, Simon. Apparently death magic was coursing through my veins, and that affinity worked both ways. Great.

Quinn reached into his pocket and pulled out the car keys, holding them out and staring at them. “You should probably drive yourself back to Boulder. I’ll catch a bus or something. Please, Lex, I . . . I don’t want to hurt you.”

His gaze flicked toward my face for an instant, vulnerable and begging, and I forgot my anger. Quinn’s eyes were full of pain, some sort of raw wound that hadn’t healed, that probably never would.

He had hurt someone, once.

Compassion surged inside me. I looked around quickly, but I didn’t have a tissue or anything, and my purse was still locked in the car. Without thinking, I peeled off my long-sleeved shirt and wound it around my hand as tightly as I could. Then I checked Quinn’s face. “Better?”

He nodded and dropped his arm, his relief evident. “Thank you.”

“Who did you hurt?” I said abruptly. I’d meant it in a supportive way, like
I’m here if you need to talk
, but I was out of practice with talking about real things, and it came out all wrong.

He met my eyes, pain still raw on his face. “My wife,” he said softly. He shuddered. Actually
shuddered
, although I seriously doubted that vampires needed to react physically to emotional stimuli. It was so . . . human.

“Quinn . . .” I whispered. “It’s okay. You’re not going to hurt me.” I reached up with my right hand and touched his cheek, leaning into him. He bowed his head, and I touched my forehead to his. Neither of us moved, and I felt something stir in me, something I’d put to sleep a long time ago. Quinn’s hands wrapped around my waist, and he pulled my body forward, which drew my mouth closer to his . . .

“Hey, dude, you gonna give her your jacket or what?”

Quinn and I jerked apart. The voice had come from a laughing girl of about twenty-five, who was tottering past us on spiky heels, heading toward the apartment building. She was on the arm of a dumb-looking jock of a guy, all muscles and gold chain necklaces, and he gave my chest a frank stare as they went by. I was suddenly very aware that a) it was all of forty degrees outside, and b) I was wearing a soft jersey camisole Sam had gotten me for Christmas and no bra.

I shivered, still clutching the shirt around my hand, hugging it in to my chest to cover my erect nipples. It didn’t do much to hide my embarrassment, though. I’d almost just
kissed
him, for God’s sake. I couldn’t trust myself, couldn’t trust that whatever I was feeling for Quinn wasn’t the result of my swelling connection to magic. I took a deep, shuddering breath.

Quinn mumbled something and shrugged out of his leather jacket, leaning forward to wrap it around me. “Thatta boy,” the party girl called over her shoulder. “Whoops.” She wobbled on her heels and for a second I thought she was gonna go down, but the jock caught her, sending Quinn a wink. “Have a good night,” he yelled.

“Take me home,” I muttered to Quinn.

Quinn insisted that I couldn’t come along to talk to Maven and Itachi. We argued about it for most of the trip back from Denver, but he was adamant. He thought I was too emotional about the whole thing to deal with them directly, but he promised to call me after his conversation and fill me in.

But he didn’t call me that night. At sunrise, I went to bed, now worried that Maven or Itachi had decided to punish Quinn for what they might have seen as his failure to catch Charlie’s kidnapper. I meant to nap for just a couple of hours, but was awoken by the ringing of my phone a little after seven I’d been asleep for more than twelve hours. I grabbed my cell and saw Quinn’s number in the display.

“Hello?” I said cautiously.

“It’s me.” Quinn sounded fine, and I felt a momentary sense of relief before I remembered to be irritated with him. “Sorry I didn’t call last night.”

“What happened?”

“Hang on a second.” There was a pause, and I heard the sound of a door closing. Then another. Then a third. “I’m at Magic Beans,” he explained. “Just trying to get some privacy.”

“What did they say?” I said, more insistent this time. “Can we keep looking for the kidnapper?”

“No,” he said heavily. “I was right. They agreed that three out of the four is good enough for now.”

I kicked at a pillow in frustration, sending it flying off the bed. Dopey looked up from her spot beside me, bewildered. “Shit.”

“I know. If it helps, though, your niece is now considered permanently under Itachi’s protection.”

“What about me?”

He paused. “I swear, I told them you did a good job.”

“But?” I prompted.

“But . . . they want to think about it a little more. They’re vampires, so ‘we need to think about it’ could mean for a night or a month. Meanwhile, no one’s gonna touch Charlie.”

I flopped back against the remaining pillow. “
They
can touch her,” I said coldly. It wasn’t enough for Charlie to be safe from every monster but two. I wanted her to grow up safe, period.

“The kid is what? A year and a half?” Quinn pointed out. “They’ve got no use for the baby until she’s at least talking. You just need to be patient.”

Be patient. Yeah, right. Maybe if I went and talked to them myself . . .

But Quinn sensed exactly what I was thinking. “Lex,” he sighed, and I thought I heard actual concern in his voice. “Seriously, this isn’t the time to run over here and make your case. Their whole concern is that you’re too close to this . . . and that you’ll be too emotional and unpredictable while your magic comes in.”

“You
told
them about that?” It was stupid to feel betrayed, but I did.

“I had to,” he said, his voice thick with regret.

I didn’t trust myself to answer him. Simon had warned me that Quinn’s first loyalty would be to other vampires, and I’d let myself believe he was on my side. What an idiot.

“Look, just . . . keep up the magic lessons,” he said when I didn’t speak. “Do anything you can think of to make yourself more valuable to them, especially Maven. I think she likes the idea of a boundary witch working for them. She’s just not sure about you personally. Don’t do anything to scare her off.”