Skin Deep (20 page)

“What’s that?” Sinclair asked.

She held up a small granite obelisk. “This? I like to mediate in a cleansed space before I go to sleep. Do you mind if I set it up?”

“No, go ahead. Can I watch?” he said. He put a mildly lewd tone to the question.

She glowered at him. “Sure, if that’s your thing.”

She placed the obelisk next to the stone cup on the bookshelf. She caressed it, strands of blue essence dripping from the tips of her fingers into the stone. Retrieving her beer, she sat in an armchair. “That cup’s a listening ward. The obelisk is basically a jamming device. We can talk freely in here. There’s another listening ward in the kitchen and probably one in your bedroom.”

He slouched across the couch and frowned. “Why the hell would someone do that?”

Laura shrugged. “I believe someone thinks Sanchez said something to me before he died. If I had to guess, they think I told you something when you found me in the warehouse.”

He looked dubious. “They bug my apartment and try to run me off the road on the off chance you might have said something to me?”

She took a swig of beer. “I’ve seen people killed for less reason, Jono. Depends on the stakes involved.”

A flash of satisfaction passed over him when she called him by his nickname. She stretched her legs out, watching his eyes shift to them and back to her face. Flirting with someone to manipulate them was so much easier when she actually enjoyed the flirting. She sipped her beer again. “Do you know much about how your medallion works?”

He shook his head. “No. My grandfather made it and told me to wear it. That’s good enough for me.”

She pulled off her barrette and shook her hair loose. “Want to hear something funny? The listening wards are pointless. The medallion neutralizes them when you’re near them.”

He grinned. “Thanks, Gramps.”

“Have you had any houseguests since the raid?” she asked.

He raised his eyebrows. “Are we at the point where we talk about past relationships?”

Laura rolled her eyes. “No, we’re at the point where I try and figure out if they’ve realized you have that dampening medallion. If you’ve been home alone, there’s been no reason to talk, so no reason to hear. With me here, they’ll notice if they can’t hear conversation.”

“Like now,” he said.

She nodded. “Like now. Only I just gave them the reason. They know a cleansing ward is meant to suppress other essence. Lots of fey like cleansed meditation spaces, so they shouldn’t find it suspicious they can’t hear. As long as they think the other wards are fine, they might not worry about the living room.”

“No one’s been here,” he said.

“We’ll have to be careful what we say when you’re not near the listening wards. They’ll pick up anything up to ten feet away, but not something near that obelisk and not if your medallion is near.”

“Got it.”

“Any word on what’s going down at the apartment complex?” she asked.

Laura caught herself noticing the way his widow’s peak curled off center, a satisfying quirk that broke the sharp planes of his face. He shifted to a more comfortable position on the couch. “The FBI shut us out. They’re claiming we stumbled into a European drug cartel they’ve been investigating, so they’re going with that.”

Laura nodded. “That’s become their standard excuse the last year or two.”

He grunted as he downed half his beer. “All drugs are connected to a cartel somewhere.”

“Is Foyle taking heat for the bad intel?”

She watched him hesitate, as if he were about to say something and changed his mind. “He’s been in his office with the door closed. I think he’s been sidelined. Are you going to be Crawford all night?”

She smirked playfully at him. “Who do you think is more attractive, Janice, Mariel, or Laura?”

He smirked back. “That sounds a lot like that who-do-you-love-more game parents tease kids with. How about you pick whoever you’re most comfortable with?”

Her impulse was to say Laura. That was who she was, physically. That was the face she put to the world, her real face without any artifice. Laura was her default, but in that moment, she didn’t think that meant the same thing as comfortable. Laura wasn’t a person anymore. These days, she was only someone when she was Laura Blackstone, director of public relations. By definition, she was a persona about presentation and image, not a fleshed-out human being with an existence outside her office.

She shoved the reflection aside and released the Janice glamour. Her hair lightened and face narrowed. Her body lengthened a bit and thinned, but the clothes remained the same black jeans and T-shirt. Sinclair showed little reaction at the transition except a slight lift to his eyebrows. His eyes shifted, as if he marked off something on a mental checklist. “I’ll get us more beer.”

She liked the way he walked, the way his jeans hugged his hips but hung loosely enough on the legs that she surmised he didn’t think much about it. Of course, like all elite cops, he had a gym body, the V-shape of his torso flaring to fill the T-shirt. His giant heritage showed in that, now that she knew to look for it, the height, the thick muscle, even the wheat blond hair.

Stop, she thought. Everything was complicated enough. She was lonely and tired and frustrated. He was handsome and smart and different. The wrong combination for her at the moment. He startled her by dangling a beer bottle in her face. Between her weak sensing field and the medallion dampening his fey nature, she didn’t know he had returned. Even that lack of warning intrigued her. She literally couldn’t see him coming.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“What?”

“You’re smiling. You’ve been aggravated all night, and now you’re smiling,” he said.

Tired, she shook her head. “Long day.”

“Liar,” he said, around the opening to his bottle of beer.

She lifted her head, a little too quickly, wondering if the jotunn had truth-sensing abilities after all. They were an enigma among the main branches of fey species, not so few to be considered solitaries, not so many that they posed a threat to anyone as a group. She knew few truth sensers other than herself. Jotunn were among the least studied species, which probably was another reason to be careful around Sinclair. And hybrids like him were even rarer and less studied. “I was just thinking you met Janice Crawford only a couple of days ago, and now anyone watching will have seen me show up here with an overnight bag. Makes you look like you take advantage of women who might be a little emotional about getting shot at.”

“Nah. Makes Janice look a little easy,” he said.

Laura surprised herself by snatching up a bottle cap from the coffee table and playfully flinging it at him. He pretended it came at him harder than it did, then tossed it back at her. She snatched it out of the air and took another deep draft of beer. “So what were you doing at Hornbeck’s hearing yesterday?”

The smile on his face went out like a light. Mood killer, she thought. “Foyle asked me to drive him. The overtime’s good. It’s interesting sometimes.”

She chuckled. “You must be the only person who thinks driving in D.C. is interesting.”

He smiled. “I meant it’s interesting to see what Foyle does when he’s not running the unit. I like politics.”

“Tylo Blume was at the hearing yesterday. Did Foyle talk to him?”

He nodded. “He owns Triad, one of the security contractors that Hornbeck recommended for a ceremony at the National Archives. Are we back to the interrogation already?”

She rolled her eyes and lied, “No. Lighten up, Jono. A subject we have in common happens to be related to an investigation. We’re not friends yet. This is called getting-to-know-you conversation.”

“You want to be friends?”

She shrugged a little. “Let’s say I don’t want us to be adversaries. I’m putting my ass on the line for you, and it would be nice to know if my gut is right.”

“Me, too. Tell me why you’re spying on the SWAT team.”

She rested the beer on her hip. “Fair enough. To be honest, I wasn’t this time. A year or so ago, Foyle needed a druid to fill in for Deegan when he was on sick leave. InterSec thought it might be beneficial to have someone on the inside there, so I created Janice. It didn’t go anywhere, but I got stuck doing Foyle a favor as a result. That was how I ended up on the drug raid.”

“You want me to take over that job,” he said.

Laura played with the label on her beer. “More or less. I’m stretched too thin to keep it up for much longer. There might be other things.”

“Like what?”

“Like, let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. You’re on probation until Terryn is satisfied you aren’t a double agent,” she said.

“Like you,” he said.

She sighed. “For the right side. I’m not going to apologize for what I do, Jono. It’s fair game in this town. I’ve accomplished a lot of good, positive things over the years.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I forget how the good guys kidnap people and threaten to make them disappear.”

She tore the edge of the label. “Is this how it’s going to be? Because I don’t need it.”

He chuckled again and stood. “Yeah, this is how it’s going to be. I’m not the only one on probation. You’ll have to figure out when I’m joking and when I’m not. Come on. Let’s find the bedroom ward so I can get some sleep. We have to work tomorrow.”

She followed him through the door at the back of the dining room. A short hall had a clean, well-lit bathroom to the left next to the kitchen. To the right, a space too large to be a closet and too small to be a room served as a study area. Laura found another ward—stone pencil sharpener—and held it up for Sinclair so he knew where it was. The bedroom at the back of the apartment had a clean, masculine feel—midcentury modern nightstands and bed, mini malist bureaus, and crisp white sheets.

“So this is my bedroom,” he said.

“It’s nice. Are the nightstands original?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I’m not sure. They’re secondhand, though. Found them in a shop.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his boots while Laura made a circuit of the room. She found the listening ward. The base of the lamp on the alarm-clock side of the bed had been charged. She pointed it out to Sinclair.

“Why so shy, Crawford? We’ve been wanting this for days,” he said.

Startled, she pointed again at the lamp. He wasn’t close enough for the medallion to block the sound of his voice. Sinclair chuckled loud enough for the ward to pick it up. “Mmmm. Lift your shirt a little higher.”

She crossed her arms firmly across her chest.
What the hell do you think you’re doing?
she sent at him.

He grinned and slipped off his jeans. She met his challenge and refused to look away as he stretched in his T-shirt and navy boxer briefs. At least he didn’t push it with an arousal, she thought. “Very nice,” he said, his voice soft with seduction, “now slide the jeans down slow.”

Knock it off!

“I love thongs,” he said.

She grabbed a pillow and threw it at him. He caught it with one hand and moaned. “I knew I’d love the way your skin smells. Talk, Janice, I like to hear you talk. Tell me how good this feels.”

“You like to play games, don’t you?” she said, as annoyingly sweet as she could while maintaining the threat in her eyes.

He groaned again. “Oh, yes. Let’s play more.”

Stretching out on his side and closer to the lamp, he propped up his head on his hand and grinned up at her. Behind him, the essence ward faded as the field from his medallion touched it.

Laura put her hands on her hips. “You are dead meat, Sinclair.”

He patted the sheets next to him. “Time for bed.”

She sat down hard with her back to him, then lay fully clothed on her side. “You can sleep on the couch,” she said.

“Uh-uh,” he said. “If someone’s listening in when I bring a woman home, you can be damned sure she’s sleeping in my bed with me.”

She half rolled toward him. “Sleeping is all she’ll be doing.”

“Got it,” he said, still grinning. He slipped under the sheets and turned out the light. “There’s a blanket at the end of the bed if you want it.”

She found the blanket, arranged it over her jeans, and lay back down. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Do you need another pillow?”

“I’m fine.”

Sinclair shifted on his side, not crossing the space between them. She closed her eyes and listened to him breathe.

“Would you like a glass of water?” he asked her back.

“I’m okay, Sinclair. Good night.”

“How about a story then?”

“Good night, Sinclair,” she said loudly. He snickered behind her.

She smiled in the darkness, watching leaf shadows cast by a streetlight dance in dark gray against pale walls. The last time she’d slept in the same bed with someone was . . . a long time ago, she realized. Although technically, she was working. And wearing her clothes. And on top of the sheets while Sinclair was under them. But she was sleeping in the same bed with someone. Technically.

Sinclair breathed lightly behind her. She knew he was awake, probably staring at the back of her head like she was staring at the wall. He had started out the night as a cop following up a hunch on his own and ended up sharing his bed with a druid who had threatened to kill him. She tried to imagine being in his situation, and if their positions were reversed, would she have a sense of humor. She admired that he could. She liked it.

She adjusted the pillow. That was as far as she was going to take that line of thought. It was fun—fantasy always was—but Sinclair was the wrong person at the wrong time. And maybe a little too cocky. He definitely was too cocky. She pictured him swilling beer every night at his dining-room table, completely oblivious to food stains on his T-shirt. Yeah, she thought. That was what he was probably really like. Behind the handsome face, the attractive body. An arrogant cop who would take any opportunity to trip her. She didn’t need the hassle. She had gotten along fine without it for years. His breathing became rhythmic, a slow deep inhale, a soft exhale. It soothed her into drowsiness, then sleep.

She dreamed of a city empty of people, the sky a stark white above, something acrid in the air. She ran, darting around corner after corner, looking for something while something looked for her. A sound gained on her, like the panting of a large animal, its breath broken by the lunging of a heavy body. Light flashed across her vision, bright white and blinding. Whatever followed was coming closer. Panic took over as she ran between parked cars and dodged down broken sidewalks.