Cipher (5 page)

“I’ll try.” The door slammed, and the driver’s side opened so quickly he must have run around the vehicle. “Just hold on.”

She had to. Whatever Andrew had done to her arm might have staunched the bleeding, but she clearly lacked the badass shapeshifter gene that kept them all running with bullets in them. If she let go of the empathic synesthesia, she’d shove her pain into every driver they passed. They’d be lucky to survive.

The engine rumbled, and Kat concentrated on breathing. Slow, deep breaths, while she tried to decide how best to describe the feeling of being shot. Throbbing pain was too mild, stabbing was too…sharp. Though when Andrew spun them out of the parking lot fast enough to shove her against the door,
stabbing
became a serious contender. So did blinding. Agonizing.

“Sorry.” Andrew kept his eyes on the road, but the first hints of panic began to creep into his voice—and his aura. “Shit.”

“It’s okay.” That was the least convincing lie ever. “I’ve got two choices here. I can let go of this empathic trick and try to shield, but I don’t think I’ll be able to. Not while I’m hurting this much.”

“What’s the other option?”

“Controlled burnout. It’s already starting. It won’t
hurt
me, but I’ll be useless until tonight. Maybe tomorrow morning.” Though the giddy euphoria and vaguely stoned feeling might make being shot a little more tolerable. “You’d have to feed me and find me a place to sleep it off.”

He ground a curse between clenched teeth. “Is that safe for you?”

“It won’t hurt me,” she repeated, putting more strength into it. “But I’m going to be even more of a burden than I already am.”

He cast her a quick, disbelieving glance. “I can take care of you. If burning it out won’t hurt you, do it. You can trust me.”

Trusting him had never been the question, but she didn’t have the energy to argue the point. Instead she closed her eyes and fought to find the half-trance again.

It was harder this time. She could smell her own blood, and if the scent bothered her, God only knew what it was doing to Andrew. Her arm ached, and it was getting worse instead of better. Fear formed a sick knot in her belly, and beneath all of it a wild, terrible excitement gathered.

They’d found something. Something big, something
real
. Later she’d be horrified that a woman had died and she’d been shot and Andrew had been placed into danger, but for the first time in her life, answers were within her grasp.

Or maybe she’d just found more questions. She dropped her hand to her hip and traced the outline of the key in her pocket, using the slow, repetitive motion as its own sort of ritual.

Once she found the quiet place, it was easy to lock her mind into a carefully controlled spiral. Callum might have been obsessed with a mysticism she didn’t care for, but he’d earned his reputation for being the most powerful empath on the planet. Not through strength—he’d happily acknowledged that she outstripped him in raw magic—but with a skill and control that bordered on artistry.

He’d also been a brutal teacher. Burnout was the first defense he’d taught her, and the one she’d been most motivated to learn. A nice, safe recursive loop that drilled down to the heart of her gift and exhausted her too much to hurt anyone.

With her eyes closed, she could almost see her empathy, its usual raging flames winnowed down to a cheerfully flickering campfire. Soon it would be a candle. Smoke.

She could only hope that half-drunken numbness would give way to unconsciousness before she did anything truly humiliating—like tell Andrew the truth of why she’d spent so much time avoiding him.

Chapter Four

It took him far too long to find a suitable motel, because he couldn’t drive more than three miles without checking to make sure Kat wasn’t slipping into unconsciousness.

Andrew gripped the steering wheel until it groaned in protest as he pulled into the parking lot of a small, run-down motor inn. It was impossible to tell when it had last been painted, but the white blocks and bright aqua of the doors had faded to grimy beige and pale green.

He chose it because it wasn’t a chain, which meant they might get away without giving any real personal information—including credit cards—and because it was an utter
dump
, which meant they might not have to answer any questions.

Which brought him to another problem—what the hell to do with Kat while he paid and retrieved a key.

He thought about leaving her in the SUV. She could climb in the back and hide until he returned, but his instincts balked. She’d be alone and bleeding, and he couldn’t leave her like that.

He actually literally
couldn’t
.

Andrew parked and stripped off his jacket. “Sit up, sweetheart. Can you slip your arms into this without it hurting too much?”

She held up her injured arm and leaned toward him without unbuckling her seatbelt. The canvas snapped tight across her chest, and she frowned, glanced down and wrinkled her nose. “Seatbelt.”

Christ, she was completely out of it. Panic threatened again, and he swallowed it with fierce determination as he unbuckled her safety belt. “We’re going to put this on you, go inside and check in. Everything’s fine, you just had a little too much to drink.”

“Got it. I’m a lush.” This time she lifted her arm more slowly, and the pain of easing it into his jacket showed on her face. By the time she’d gotten her other arm into the sleeve her eyes were too bright, and she had to blink away tears. “I’m a wuss. I’m sorry I’m such a wuss.”

“Quit it. You’re doing fine.”

She nodded and lifted her good hand. Her fingertips barely cleared the end of the sleeve, and the sight seemed to amuse her. “Sometimes I forget how huge you are.”

“Uh-huh. I’m a real mountain of a man, sweetheart.” He zipped the jacket and buckled the top for good measure. “Ready?”

A nod. A smile, sweet and unguarded in a way he hadn’t seen from her in a year or more. “I like it when you call me sweetheart.”

The smile
hurt
, more than he’d believed anything could. “Pull this off, and I’ll call you anything you want.” He hurried around to her door and opened it.

Kat was wobbly at first, but once she had both boots on the ground and one hand around his arm, she steadied. Enough to make it inside, and if she pressed a little close to his side, it looked more like affection than necessity.

They could pull this off.

When the bell above the door chimed, the clerk inside barely glanced up from the small television behind the desk. “Fill out a registration card. Room’s forty-three fifty a night.”

Kat kept her feet while he filled out the card and handed over the cash. Under the harsh lights she looked pale and worn, but her expression stayed blandly pleasant until he got her back out into the parking lot. “I’m starting to feel woozy.”

“I’ve got to get the first aid kit from the truck, and then we’re right here. Room number five.”

“Can we get my bag too? My computer?”

“Yeah, sure.” He propped her against the side of the SUV and grabbed the three bags, including the duffel he’d brought along, in one hand. “Just a little farther.”

“I can do it.” And she did, though it seemed like stubbornness might be the only thing that kept her moving. As soon as he got the door open, she crossed to the sagging bed and slumped on the mattress. “Wow. It’s not even noon and I think I need a nap.”

“You need food first.” He locked the door and grabbed the takeout menu hanging on the back of the knob. “Can you look at this while I check out your arm?”

“After.” She tugged at the zipper, working it down in uneven jerks that made her wince. “I think you’re gonna have to help me get this off. And the T-shirt, too, if it needs to go.”

He pulled off the jacket and wished again that he had something to give her for the pain. The makeshift bandage around her upper arm was soaked through with blood, and the sight and the smell combined made him want to
rage
. “Good thing Carmen gave me a crash course in creative first aid.”

Her eyebrows came together. “I didn’t know you were taking lessons from her too.”

He couldn’t tell Kat the truth—that he’d done it for himself, but he’d been thinking of her. Shapeshifters healed quickly, but the most important person in his world wasn’t a shifter at all. “Pays to know how to patch people up.”

“Guess so.” She closed her eyes, and some of her earlier giddiness seemed to have vanished under tense lines of pain. “So how bad is it?”

“Could be way worse.” He probed at her arm. The angry furrow angling up the outside of her biceps was bleeding but sluggishly, and it looked shallow. “I don’t think it hit anything important. Doesn’t look like anything I can sew up, though. Maybe just some butterfly bandages.”

“Oh, good. That suturing shit looks hot in the movies, but I think I’d probably puke on your boots. I’m not exactly Lara Croft.”

He had to find some way to put her at ease, or she might puke on him anyway. “Your pop culture references are getting dated. What the hell have you been doing with yourself?”

“Getting a PhD and becoming a psychic ninja.” She trembled under his touch. One hand rested in her lap and the other fisted around the covers so tightly her knuckles were white. But she kept talking, kept
trying
, even when her voice shook as hard as her body. “Oh, and letting Zola and Walker kick me around their dojo five days a week. My PlayStation has cobwebs.”

“Okay, so you’ve been busy.” He dug a bottle of antiseptic and some gauze pads out of the first aid kit.

“Mmm.” She listed to the side, and he gently righted her. “Had to. Busy’s better than brooding.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Busy’s better than missing you.”

No amount of activity had kept him from missing her. “I know what you mean.”

Kat laughed, though it broke off when he dabbed the antiseptic on her wound. “We both kept so busy to keep from missing each other, and now the people we were missing are gone.”

“I haven’t changed that much,” he lied.

“Don’t need empathy when the lie’s that stupid.”

It hurt to acknowledge the truth, so he’d forced himself to do it a long time ago. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would do the same. “All right, those people are gone. No laid-back architects or happy-go-lucky programmers here.”

“No.” The pain in her voice cut deep. “But you found a new place. You’re on the Southeast council and you’re changing the world and I’m—I’m practically unemployed and stuck on shit that happened before I was born.”

And if the stuff about her mother hadn’t been kept from her, maybe she would have already dealt with it. “You had more to work through than me.”

“Yeah. And it got me shot. It could have gotten you shot.” She flinched as he fixed the first bandage in place. “And all because I don’t want to be Alec’s pet hacker for the rest of my life.”

“Who
would
want to be? The man’s a terror to work with.”

“He wants me to be nineteen still. But I’m
not
nineteen.”

“If you were, he’d still have a reason to protect you.”

She choked on a hysterical laugh. “Guess I just proved I need it. Way to go, Kat.”

“Quit it,” he ordered. “You can’t blame yourself for a fucking sniper.”

“It’s not about blame. It’s about—” She hissed in a sudden breath, her hand opening and closing helplessly on the thin coverlet. “Okay, I really am going to puke on you. Are you almost done?”

He placed the last strip and sat back. “Yeah. It wouldn’t heal pretty, but it’ll hold you together until we can do better.”

She said nothing for a long time, her gaze fixed ahead and her jaw tight with pain. Then she unclenched her hand and lifted it to swipe at a stray tear. “That’s all I really need.”

Don’t do it—
Andrew slipped his arm around her and bent to put his mouth close to her ear. “You’re all right. You think you’re not, but you are.”

Another tear slipped down her cheek, a salty sharpness undercutting the scent of her vanilla lotion and the spicy cinnamon of her favorite shampoo. “Maybe. Or maybe crazy really does run in my family. Maybe I can spend ten hours a day with the world’s best empath and it won’t matter, because I’m a ticking time bomb. Aren’t you even a little afraid?”

He
was
, but only of himself and what would happen if he had to walk away from her again. “I’ll never be scared of you, Kat.”

“You would be if you could remember.”

“Remember what? The attack?” He urged her chin up so she had to look at him. “I
do
.”

Her blue eyes were chips of ice. “Alec’s scared of me.
Alec
. The crazy fucker that shapeshifter moms tell stories about to terrify their kids. They all try to hide it. They try to make me a hapless stupid kid so they can pretend it’s not there. But I feel it, Andrew. Every damn day.”

He had to make her understand. “Are you scared of me, Kat? I could kill you right now, in a heartbeat. Crack your neck before you had a chance to think about liquefying my brain or whatever. Does that mean you’re pretending I can’t just to get through the day?”

Kat fisted her good hand in his shirt. Her eyes narrowed, her jaw clenched. “You’ve never been afraid of hurting me?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying there’s a lot of scary going around, and if you’re going to condemn yourself for being dangerous, move over. There are a lot of us who belong on that bench with you.”

“But I couldn’t—” Her teeth dug into her lower lip. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I was scared, and I was mad, and I
snapped
, and I could have melted your brain too.”

And so she’d gotten help, the best to be had, and Callum had spent six months teaching her to harness that power. To control it, instead of letting it control her. “A year ago, you never could have done what you did this morning.”

For the first time, the anger and fear in her eyes wavered. “No. No, I couldn’t have. Of course, if I hadn’t, you wouldn’t be trapped in a crappy motel room with a burned-out empath who’s kinda high and has the munchies.”

It was enough—for now. Andrew released her and snagged the takeout menu. “Screw the munchies. Ever had steak delivered to a shitty motel room?”