Secret Worlds (510 page)

My stomach rumbled at the sight of the stale donuts. After all, a stale donut is still a donut, and donuts are delicious little fried gifts from heaven. Besides, even I knew that bitter coffee on an empty stomach wasn’t the best idea. Before guilt overrode me, I shoved a crusty, glazed donut into my mouth, the dry dough turning to glue the moment it hit my tongue.

Good job, genius
, I thought, grimacing as I swallowed the dry lump of fried dough, washing it down with a mouthful of burnt coffee.
Ten thousand dollars for a toilet seat and they can’t afford decent coffee?

Glancing around to make sure there were no witnesses, I snagged the last donut before darting back to Holbrook’s office. It wasn’t the healthiest meal I’d ever had, but then again, I’d eaten whole rabbits still warm and twitching, so who was I to complain?

Sitting in the uncomfortable visitor’s chair in front of Holbrook’s desk, I nibbled the second donut, occasionally pausing to brush the cascade of crumbs from my sweater. I might have a
slight
weakness for junk food.

After licking every last trace of sugar from my fingers, I sat back in the chair, sipping my coffee and drumming the fingers of my free hand on the arm of the chair. My blood was thrumming with a mixture of restless energy and a mounting sugar high. Although my profession as a freelance graphic artist requires me to spend a lot of time sitting around on my ass, I’ve never been one to just sit around with nothing to do. This restlessness got worse with the wolf’s constant need to run and be free, compounding my already fidgety nature.

Glancing around the room again, I spied a series of glossy photographs peeking out of an innocuous looking manila folder sitting on top of the box on Holbrook’s desk, the image of a single lonely boot lying on snow covered gravel catching my attention. I knew I shouldn’t be snooping, but boredom made for idle hands, at least that’s what my grandmother always said.

I looked out into the hallway to make sure that no one was passing by, and then, giving in to curiosity, plucked the top most picture out of the folder. Horror bloomed in my chest, stealing my breath away, as my eyes danced over the photograph in my hand. It looked like someone had splashed a bucket of paint along the side of a pickup truck, red streaking down the pitted metal like a gruesome modern painting.

It took a moment for me to make sense of the swaths of red smeared across the truck, the direction of them looking purposeful.

“For you Riley.”

Nausea roiled in my gut, the words swimming in my vision.

“Oh, god,” I whispered, my free hand hovering in front of my mouth.

I didn’t realize I was crying until the first salty tear splashed down on the glossy paper. The photograph fluttered down to the worn carpet at my feet as I reached for the trash can beside Holbrook’s desk, the acidic break room coffee burning a bitter path up my throat.

“You weren’t meant to see that,” Holbrook said behind me.

“I wish I hadn’t,” I said, wiping the back of my hand across my mouth, wrinkling my nose at the smell of vomit.

I heard the faint scuff of his feet on the carpet a moment before a square of white fabric appeared at the edge of my vision. Wordlessly, I accepted the handkerchief from him and wiped my mouth, my fingers brushing against the raised stitches of some kind of embroidery. I could just make out the minute stitching that spelled out a set of initials. D.J.H.

Who even uses a handkerchief anymore?

I ignored the warmth in my eyes as fresh tears rose to the surface. Sniffling, I offered the crumpled wad of fabric back to him with a shaking hand. His fingers were warm, and buzzing with energy, squeezing my fingers around the damp square of cotton.

Holbrook’s voice was full of sympathy when he broke the silence. “Come on. The boss man wants to see you.”

DIVISION CHIEF JAVIER Santos was shorter than Holbrook, wider through the hips and shoulders, but his presence gave the impression of a much larger man. There was something in the stubborn set of his chin and the flinty quality of his dark eyes that commanded attention and respect. He was a natural alpha male, the wolf could tell, yet he didn’t appear to demand the admiration of his men. Holbrook seemed to regard him with respect that had been earned. He was instantly likeable, and yet I couldn’t help my hesitancy. I resented him for seeing me pale with nausea, eyes red rimmed and gritty.

After so many years alone, with only my cat and computer for company, I was not accustomed to being vulnerable around others. My painful recovery and transformation had been exposed for all the world to see by Chrismer and her ilk during Samson’s trial. After he’d been shipped off to prison, I had closed myself off from the public eye, preferring the company of books and internet “friends” to interaction with actual people.

There was something implacably mysterious about Holbrook that cut through the barriers I had erected around myself, but Santos was an unknown. It was obvious that Holbrook trusted him, but it was going to take me a while to formulate an official opinion of the man.

His office was larger than Holbrook’s but not ostentatious by any means. Dark woods dominated the space, and would have made the room tomb-like if not for the sunshine streaming in through several large windows. The room possessed a homey warmth that was reflected in several framed family photos around the room. From the looks of it, Santos was a very young grandfather, but as I stepped further into his office I caught the gleam of several grey strands peeking through his dark hair.

Not so young after all
.

Unlike Holbrook, Santos appeared to work in a more fluid state like I did, the surface of his desk covered in scribbled notes, folders marred with coffee stains, and half a dozen pens with the ends chewed. Sticky notes fanned out around the edges of twin monitors, and not for the first time I felt a pang of longing for my cozy home, where I didn’t have to worry about psychotic killers or racist FBI agents.

Leaning across the desk, Santos extended a hand towards me, and I couldn’t hide my surprise when I noticed that he was missing the last two fingers of his right hand. The skin stretched over the ends of the stubby remnants of his ring and pinky fingers was smooth and shiny, marking them as old injuries. I wondered if he’d acquired the injury before or after joining the FBI, and then if Holbrook had any scars I hadn’t yet noticed. Admittedly, I’d been rather distracted by
other
parts of his anatomy every time I’d seen him naked, so it was entirely possible that his body was a veritable roadmap of old injuries.

“Ms. Cray, I’m sorry we’ve had to meet under such distasteful circumstances,” Santos said, his voice bearing the faintest hint of his Hispanic heritage. The earnestness in his expression lent credence to his sincerity, and I warmed to him a little despite his decision to refer to the current cluster fuck as merely “distasteful.”

Not trusting my voice, I nodded in response as I accepted his hand in a firm handshake. I was glad that he didn’t feel the need to try and crush my fingers in a show of masculinity, his hand warm and solid in mine. The absence of his fingers made his hand awkward in my own, but I tried not to let the unease show on my face.

“Has Agent Holbrook been keeping you up-to-date on the latest developments in the case?” he asked, releasing his grip and gesturing for me to take one of the open seats in front of the desk.

“He has,” I replied, my hackles rising even though the rational side of me knew he was simply asking a question. I remained standing, my blood buzzing with restlessness, as I braced myself for whatever accusations were forthcoming.

“It’s all right, Riley. No one is holding you responsible for what’s happening,” Holbrook said, appearing to sense the darkness of my thoughts.

Moving forward into the empty space beside me as if to lend me his strength, he brushed a hand over my shoulder, sending sparks of electricity skipping along the back of my arm. My fingers tingled with the traces of his unique energy where I flexed them on the back of the chair in front of me. Letting out a shaking breath, I closed my eyes for a moment, pushing back the wave of emotion that threatened to drown me.

“I’m sorry, it’s all a bit much to take in,” I managed to say, opening my eyes again to see the two men looking at me with similar expressions.

The pity—so evident on their faces—riled me more than if they had been laying the fault of Samson’s actions at my feet. I’d had my fill of pity. First when my mother ran off in the middle of the night, and again when my father died in action, leaving me parentless. All of that paled in comparison to what I saw reflected in the faces of everyone I knew when my grandfather died, slipping away suddenly due to a heart attack while driving into town for a can of bait. His truck, still dented from where it had impacted with the tree when it went off the road, sat smothered under a tarp in the garage beside my cabin. It would’ve cost a fortune to fix, but I’d never been able to bring myself to get rid of it. That rusty old pickup held a childhood’s worth of memories.

When my grandmother was taken from me by the merciless bitch that is cancer, the sympathy of others had been almost too much to bear. By the time Samson sauntered into my life and subsequently turned it upside down, I’d run out of patience for people and their pity. The faintest whiff of an “I’m sorry” would leave me snapping and snarling like a rabid dog. It hadn’t taken long for me to chase off what few friends I had, and even the prosecution attorneys quickly learned to limit their contact to only what was necessary to nail Samson’s ass to the wall.

“Sit down,” Holbrook urged, applying gentle pressure to my shoulders to steer me around the chair.

Waiting until I had settled into the chair, Santos nodded at Holbrook to close the door, cutting off the low murmur of voices filtering in from the hallway.

“We’ve come to believe that Reed is trying to send a message,” Santos began to explain, his words slow and thoughtful. “That he is—”

“They’re love notes,” I said, cutting him off. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I should have been concerned by how hollow and faraway my voice sounded.

“What?” they chorused.

“The messages from Samson. They’re love notes. Displays of his twisted affection,” I said, their faces bearing identical expressions of confusion. Growing frustrated when they didn’t grasp what I was saying, I added “He’s leaving the choicest pieces of the kill as offerings. He thinks he’s courting me.”

“But he tried to kill you,” Holbrook said, disgust and doubt warring on his face.

“And I survived. By some cruel hand of fate, I survived to become what he is. Maybe he thinks that means I’m strong and worthy of his attention, that we’re destined to be together. I don’t know. I don’t understand the twisted workings of his mind, and I don’t want to. Whatever the reason, he now thinks I’m a suitable mate, and he’s trying to express his intentions by leaving the most succulent, nourishing pieces of the kill for me.”

I hadn’t given much thought to it until that moment, but as the words poured from my lips in an unstoppable deluge they rang with truth. Surprisingly, the revelation didn’t make me sick or bring tears to my eyes. Instead an icy cold anger settled heavily in my gut, lending a new stiffness to my spine and the set of my jaw.

“Are you sure?” Santos asked, his face looking a little paler than before.

“Not a hundred percent, no,” I replied with a shrug. “But I’m pretty damned sure I’m right.”

THE HOLIDAY INN a few blocks from FBI headquarters wasn’t the Ritz by any means, but it was a hell of a lot better than the Knotty Pine. Dull winter sunlight filtered in through the glass ceiling of the hotel’s atrium, making the lobby appear as cold and dreary as the weather outside. I missed my cabin with the fire blazing in the fireplace and Loki curled around my feet.

Here, there were no cheery staff to check us in. It was all business as Holbrook and our
Men in Black
entourage whisked me through the lobby to the elevators. We rode up to the fourteenth floor, my charming bodyguards, Collins and Hill, flanking me, and Holbrook standing in front. The elevator ride would have been silent if it weren’t for Loki deciding to serenade us all the way, his yowls of discontent growing louder by the second. He was starting to resent being crammed into the crate that, until now, had only been used when it was time for his annual shots.

I felt my bodyguards tense on either side of me, their stoic faces tightening almost imperceptibly as Loki’s outburst grew in volume and pitch. I caught Holbrook’s sly grin in the mirrored doors of the elevator a moment before we stopped and the door slid open. He’d at least been acquainted with Loki’s vocal skills before.

“You’re in 1409,” Holbrook said fishing a plastic keycard out of his front pocket, drawing my eyes to the front of his slacks. “And I’m right next door in 1411,” he added, the hint of laughter in his voice drawing my gaze up to meet his. The corner of his mouth tilted up in the beginnings of a smirk, the skin around his eyes crinkling with silent laughter.

Busted.

Heat suffused my cheeks, and I dropped my gaze to the scuffed toes of my boots. “Great,” I said, pushing past him into the room as soon as the little light on the lock flashed green.

“There’ll be agents in the room on the other side of you, and some stationed at the elevators and stairs. We have the floor to ourselves.”

“Sounds like a party,” I said as I set Loki’s carrier next to the bed by the window, opening the little metal door before he began to protest again.

The culmination of the day’s events began to settle in my shoulders, weighing me down, and I flopped back on the bed with a sigh. I welcomed the weight of my furry companion as he climbed into my lap, rubbing his face along the back of my hand until I acquiesced and scratched beneath his chin. Sinking down to his haunches a deep purr rumbled out from his chest, echoing through my abdomen.

Closing my eyes, I could, for a moment, almost forget the mess that my life had become. I could pretend that the endless noise of traffic on the street below was the wind moving through the trees outside my bedroom window.