Keri Arthur: Fireborn

He grunted. “Who was his running companion?”

“Professor Jake Haslett.”

“Would Baltimore have trusted him enough to mention his research?”

“How the fuck would I know? I ran his research life, not his private one.”

He raised an eyebrow, and just for a moment I thought I saw a glimmer of amusement. But it was too quickly lost to the sea of darkness to be really sure. “And you can think of no one else he interacted with on a regular—or even irregular—basis?”

“No.” I paused, then added, probably a little too hopefully, “So, can I go now?”

“Not until Rochelle gets here.”

I poured my tea, then raised the cup and drew in the rich scent in an attempt to cleanse his smell from my lungs. I might as well have tried to sweep a chimney with a feather. “And who is Rochelle?”

“Our compositor.”

That raised my eyebrows. “She’s coming here? Why?”

“Because we are a specialist unit working outside regular police boundaries, and we prefer to keep our location secret. It’s safer that way.”

Which made me wonder what in the hell his unit was doing—other than tracking down and killing those infested with the red plague, that is.

“Then how do I contact you if I discover there’s anything missing from the lab, office, or home?”

“You don’t. I’ll meet you again tonight.”

“There are such things as phones, you know.” And if he knew where I now lived, he undoubtedly also knew my phone number.

“We avoid using phones unless they are securely scrambled.”

Wow, his employers were going to serious lengths to protect themselves. “Meaning I’ll have to put up with you leaning on my doorbell again?”

He hesitated. “Unless you wish to arrange a meeting time now, then yes.”

I drank some more tea and wished I knew what the hell was going on behind his closed blue eyes—although what good it would do me, I had no idea. It wasn’t like we could undo the past and the things that had been said.

“Given it’s going to take me a good part of the day to go through Mark’s things, let’s meet at the Magenta,” I said. “It’s a bar just down the street from Mark’s.”

He nodded; then his gaze slid past me and he rose. The smile that touched his lips was warm and welcoming, and it briefly lifted the shadows in his gaze. It was also the first true indication that the Sam of old wasn’t entirely lost.

He was just lost to me.

A tall amazonian brushed past me and greeted Sam with a kiss on the cheek that was just a shade more friendly than necessary. And her fingers lingered on his arm as she said, “This is a bitch of an hour to be up. I hope you’ve ordered me coffee.”

She was the same height as Sam—six foot—broad shouldered and muscular, without appearing too much like a bodybuilder. She also emanated a high degree of heat, had thick, strawberry-blond hair that tumbled to her shoulders in waves, and wide, leaf-green-colored eyes. Her clothes were designer.

To say I suddenly felt inadequate in my baggy sweats and old leather coat was something of an understatement.

“I haven’t yet,” Sam replied. “I wasn’t sure how long it would take you to get here, and if there’s one thing worse than an early hour, it’s cold coffee.” Warmth fizzed between them, and it was decidedly sexual in its nature. Lovers, it suggested, not just work companions and friends.

Sam’s gaze came to mine again. “Rochelle Harmony, meet Emberly Pearson.”

“Emberly,” she said, in a voice every bit as cool as Sam’s. “A pleasure to meet you.”

I shook her offered hand and noted it was a whole lot warmer than his. She was, I realized suddenly, another fire Fae. And maybe she was the reason her male counterpart was also here—maybe he was simply waiting for her to come into her reproductive period. From what I knew about the Fae, it was a somewhat irregular event that happened only every fifty years or so, and was, in part, the reason why there were so few of them.

She placed a tablet computer on the table and then sat down, firing it up as he placed an order with the waitress.

“Now,” she said, unclipping the stylus from the top of the tablet. “Describe him to me.”

I did so. She worked on the image as I spoke, and within a remarkably short amount of time, we had a composite that looked like the guard I’d spoken to last night.

“I’ll get this out to all operatives and see if we can find a match in the system.” She finished the last of her coffee, then glanced at Sam again. “Anything else?”

He shook his head. “I’ll meet you back at headquarters.”

She nodded, gave me another of those cool smiles, then left. Her scent lingered, all warm exotic spices.

I finished the cooled remnants of my tea, then said, “That it?”

“For now. I’ll meet you tonight at the bar—six okay?”

“Uh, no. Not if you want this job done properly. Try something closer to ten.”

He nodded, flipped enough cash onto the table to pay for everything, then rose. “I’ll see you tonight.”

He walked away, and suddenly the morning seemed a whole lot brighter—another sad reminder that he wasn’t the man I’d known. At least around me, anyway.

A glance at my watch revealed it was almost eight thirty. If I didn’t get to work ASAP, I’d be meeting him a whole lot later than ten. He obviously had no idea just how much crap Mark kept.

I sighed and headed home. Rory hadn’t returned to bed, but then, I hadn’t really expected him to.

“What did he want?” he said, gathering me close.

I relaxed into him, enjoying the comfort and peace of his arms for several minutes before actually answering. “Mark was murdered last night, and I found the body.”

“Fuck,” he said; then, “You okay?”

“I would have been a whole lot better if the case hadn’t been handed over to Sam’s unit.”

He snorted, the sound rumbling through my body. “I told you—someone upstairs is pissed at us in this lifetime.”

“It certainly seems that way.” I sighed, then added, “I now have to go through everything in Mark’s office and apartment to see what’s missing.”

“You’re probably the only one who’d have any chance of knowing, given you were his all-around go-to person.” He dropped a kiss on the top of my head. “You’d better leave before my hormones start acting all desperate again.”

I grinned, then rose up on my toes to kiss him properly. “Given our love life has been a little hit and miss of late, why don’t you see if Rosie’s free after work tonight?”

Rosie was a divorcée who worked in the office at the fire station. She and Rory had been friends with benefits for almost three years now, with neither of them expecting or wanting more. I liked Rosie. She was human, but she was good for him, and she understood his loss. Her husband had been murdered two years before Rory’s fiancée had been. We still had no idea why Jody had been killed and, apparently, neither did the police. Rory was in semiregular contact with the officer who’d been in charge of the case, but there’d been no fresh leads for some time now.

Even my dreams were mute on the subject—not that they ever made an appearance when I actually wanted or needed them.

“ That ,” he said heavily, “is a damn good idea.”

“Glad I could help.” I dropped a quick kiss on his cheek, then spun and headed for the shower.

The search through Mark’s office and lab was as tedious and long as I figured it would be, and just as useless. I couldn’t see anything missing, but it was hard to be absolutely certain. I stacked the final pieces of paper onto the last of the checked piles, then swept my gaze around the small room. The books he’d cared so much about now sat broken in piles. But at least many of them were salvageable, which was more than could be said about his running trophies. What they thought they’d find in those I had no idea. Hell, even his computers . . .