Sentinel Lost (Mind Sweeper Series Book 5) (29 page)

I stood on the porch for a moment, fully aware that this would be the last time I would ever see or speak to her. My mind frantically tried to think of any last question to ask her.

“Why did you name me Kyle?”

Her eyes softened for a moment. “I named you Kyle after the one man in my life who didn’t have an agenda. He helped deliver you…in an elevator, of all places. He told me I should name you after someone I admired. His name was Russian and it sounded like Me-Kyle. So I shortened it to Kyle.”

Oh. My. God.

She shut the door before I could say anything else, but it was fine, because I didn’t know what else to say. Goodbye? Take care? Have a good life?

I turned on wobbly legs and headed toward the cab and Misha’s expectant face. The face of the person who had helped bring me into this world.

“Are you okay, Kyle?” Misha asked as I climbed into the car.

I shook my head, and he pulled me against his side and wrapped his arm around my shoulder. He smelled like the cherry hard candy he’d been eating on the plane. I blinked and breathed slowly, suppressing the tears. If I started now, I wouldn’t stop.

“We can talk on the plane,” I whispered.

It wasn’t like I could explain anything with the cab driver listening from the front seat anyway. Plus I needed to process and decide next steps. The first step was to tell Misha everything.
Wow.
He helped deliver me. Which brought more tears. I looked out the window so Misha would stop asking me what was wrong.

The next step of my plan, flashing continuously in my mind in glorious Technicolor, was KILL NICHOLAS. He had known about me from the beginning. Had told my mother to hide me! Then he found me in Vegas and offered me a job. Had he been watching me all along? Had everything in my life been planned and executed by him?

I was a first-class chump.

Hadn’t I just told Dalton I didn’t think the Fates were playing me? Hell, they would have had to get in line behind Nicholas, the Grand Manipulator.

I had always believed I was lucky to be able to use my gift for something good. But now? I’d been played.

And I was done with being played.

Chapter 35

Misha and I climbed onto the small jet and flopped into the plush leather seats while the pilot shut the hatch and then closed himself into the cockpit.

“Okay, Kyle. Please tell me what happened.”

“I’ll explain everything to you in a minute. I promise.” I buckled my seatbelt, buying a bit more time to decide how best to break it to him.

“I have a question about that story you’ve told me time and again. The one about delivering the baby.”

He frowned. “Kyle…”

“Just let me ask you, okay?”

He nodded. “What about it?”

“Was it in connection to a case?”

“Yes. It was the first case Talia worked with Jean Luc and me. We were tracking a demon who’d been killing people.”

“I take it you caught him?”

“Jean Luc and Talia did. The demon tried to kill the young mother, and they stopped him. I went with her to the hospital. She didn’t have any family, and the father wasn’t in the picture. You’ve heard the rest of the story.”

“Did Nicholas assign you to the case?”

“No. He’d just moved us to Indianapolis a couple of weeks before, and then the case came up.”

“You never said what happened to the mom and baby.”

Misha’s eyes tightened. “I don’t know for sure. I went to visit them at the hospital the next day, but they’d been discharged. I always wondered what happened to them.”

I took a deep breath. “What if I told you the baby grew up with a smart mouth and a sarcastic disdain for authority?”

It’s a damn good thing he’d been sitting down.

* * *

“I didn’t faint.” Misha huffed.

I smiled. “Fine. You didn’t faint. You simply decided to take an instantaneous nap.”

He growled at me.

“I’m sorry I broke it to you that way, but the whole thing is so surreal, I couldn’t figure out a better way to tell you.”

He blew out a hard breath. “I can’t believe it. I was so scared when your mom went into labor, and then you decided to come out before they could get us out of the elevator. Seems you had to have your way from the beginning.” He smiled. “Do you know I was the first person to hold you?”

I smiled back at him. “It sounds like I owe you, Talia, and Jean Luc my life.”

“Tell me what else your mother said.”

I relayed the entire conversation, with the exception of who I was named after. After his earlier reaction, I didn’t know how he would take the news. I decided to save that revelation for when Jean Luc was there to calm him down.

Misha’s smile was quickly replaced with a scowl. “I wish I could have helped you, Kyle. If only she hadn’t left the hospital, maybe I could have helped you both.”

“It’s the past, Misha. We can’t change it. But I sure in the hell am going to find out how Nicholas knew about the demons that were after me and my mother. And what else he’s manipulated in my life.”

* * *

I didn’t so much walk into the office as storm into it. Dolly had just shut down her computer for the evening when I stopped in front of her, picked up her phone receiver, and held it out to her.

“Call Nicholas.”

“You have his number.”

“I have his main cell number, which I called several times, and he’s not answering. You also have another number to reach him, right?”

She blanched at my question.

“I always wondered how Nicholas knew what was going on here before we told him. From your reaction, I think you’ve been reporting in to him.”

“He’s our boss. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Call him, Dolly, and tell him to come to the office as soon as possible.”

“He’s out of town. You know he travels to the other BSR offices.”

“Tell him to get back here by tomorrow or I’m going to CNN and telling the world that supernaturals exist.”

She opened her mouth…and then closed it again after she studied my face. “Got it.”

Misha and I walked into the back office. Talia, Jean Luc, Jason, and Dalton sat at the table with a pizza box sitting in front of them.

Jason moaned. “I knew we should have ordered more food.”

Misha shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”

Silence descended. The four of them looked at him with varying expressions—skepticism, concern, horror, and bemusement.

Jason dropped his pizza back into the box. “Your news must be bad, Kyle, if Misha doesn’t want to eat.”

I told the story again, and now they wore similar expressions of shock—wide eyes, slack jaws. It would have been amusing if it wasn’t a reaction to my pathetic life.

I smiled at Talia and Jean Luc. “I need to thank you both for saving my mom.”

Talia wiped a tear from her eye. “You’re more than welcome. It’s so hard to take in.”

Jean Luc nodded. “
Oui
. At the time, we did not know why the demon had targeted your mother. He talked about your mother glowing. And muttered on about stopping destiny.

“I thought it the rambling of a lunatic. He must have been able to sense your demon side somehow.
Mon Dieu!”

“What?”

“When I confronted him, he said he had to kill her. I thought he meant your mother, but his claws were aimed at her stomach.”

“He meant me. Maybe the demon wasn’t a crackpot. Maybe he wanted to stop a demon realm half-breed from being born.”

Jason grabbed my hand. “I’m sorry, Kyle.”

“The irony’s not lost on me, Jason.”

“Even when I was mad at you for not telling me about my shifter side, I wouldn’t have wished this on you.”

I looked at Dalton to gauge his reaction, since he was being so quiet. He nodded at me, his eyes filled with compassion. His gaze was like flashing back in time to last year.

“It’s a lot to take in. You have to give yourself some time,” Dalton said, softly.

“I know, I need time to process it all. Oh, there’s one other thing. I asked my mother why she named me Kyle. She said she named me after the man who helped deliver me. Said his name sounded like Me-Kyle so she shortened it to Kyle.”

Talia gasped, and Jason let out a low whistle.

Misha froze for a second and stared at my lips as if replaying what I said.

I took a step toward him. “Mish, are you okay?”

He yanked me into a bear hug and spun me around with a shout of glee.

Even with his shout, I heard Jean Luc utter. “
Mon Dieu
, she has just created a monster.”

Misha spun me around a few more times before I could make myself heard over his shouts and tell him to put me down.

Dolly looked tentatively into the back office, interrupting us. “He’s not answering,” she announced.

I glared at her.

“I swear.” She held up her cell phone. “I’ve left him three messages and just texted him.”

I blew out a hard breath. There wasn’t much else I could do. Nicholas was an enigma. Even if he was in town, none of us knew where he stayed. Not even Misha’s computer skills had ever been able to uncover his secret lair.

“Kyle, I think this will give you an opportunity to calm down,” Jean Luc said. “We do not want you to kill Nicholas before you get your answers.”

“We don’t even know if Nicholas can die,” Talia reasoned.

“I bet you if I lopped off his head, he’d die.”

“I don’t know for sure,” Misha said.

“What’s the saying? If he bleeds, he can die? I could take him. I’m highly motivated.”

Dalton listened to our repartee with wide eyes. “Please tell me you’re joking right now.”

Dolly’s phone beeped, which spared me the necessity of answering Dalton. She read the message and blanched again. “Nicholas responded. Says he can’t make it back in town tonight. He’ll come here first thing tomorrow morning. Uh…” She looked up at me.

“What else does he say?”

“He respectfully asks you to refrain from contacting Anderson Cooper until after you two have spoken.”

I bit my lip. Overnight was not going to be enough time for me to calm down.

Chapter 36

“Kyle, stop pacing!” Misha snapped from his perch at the office table.

“I can’t.” I stared at the case notes scattered around the table.

Dalton, Jason, and Talia sat reviewing them. Jean Luc had the Key box in his hand, attempting to decipher some of the symbols.

“Where the hell is Nicholas?” I grumbled.

Jean Luc sighed. “Take a walk around the block, Kyle. You will feel better.”

I frowned and then acquiesced. I was driving myself and everyone around me mad. “Fine, but if he shows up, you text me ASAP, and I’ll be right back.”

Talia smiled at me. “We will.” Which really meant
go away, crazy woman
.

I trudged down the hall, punched the elevator button, and waited.
Sunshine, puppy dogs, ice cream
… Nope, happy thoughts were not working right now. It didn’t help that the building’s elevator was the slowest on the planet. Just as I thought about using the stairwell, the elevator dinged and the doors slid open.

I came face to face with Nicholas.

“I hope you weren’t going somewhere, Kyle? You summoned me here. You need to explain why.”

“You son of a bitch.” I hauled back and punched him, hard. My knuckles slammed into his mouth. I stopped myself from gasping as pain shot through my fist and up my arm.

Nicholas didn’t even flinch. “You’re going to want to ice that.”

I’d hit him with enough force to split his lip, but nothing. No blood, no death? Dang. I would table that thought for later.

I marched into the elevator and let the doors close. Then I hit the stop button and turned to face him. No one would be interrupting us before he told me the truth.

“You’ve known all along!”

Nicholas shook his head. “I am not all-knowing, Kyle.”

“Don’t give me that cryptic bullshit. You know what I am.”

“I know you’re part human and part demon, yes.”

“You told my mother to run and hide right after I was born.”

He looked away for a moment. “I simply suggested she find another place to live. Since she’d just been attacked by a demon, I didn’t have to say much to convince your mother to disappear.”

“How did you know about me? Misha and Jean Luc had no idea I’m part demon. That wouldn’t have been part of their reports to you.”

“I have my sources.”

I clenched my fist again, even though pain radiated through my fingers. “What fucking sources?”

He glared at me. “There are things I can’t tell you, Kyle. There would be serious repercussions.”

My phone rang, and I ignored it. “You sent Misha and Jean Luc to protect my mother. Misha told me they moved there a few weeks before I was born.”