Jessica Andersen: Storm Kissed

Nobody drew down, though. They just waited, staring at Reese with an intensity that gave her a funny little skin-quiver, as though she had walked too close to a transformer.

Pulse upshifting, she held out her empty hands. “I’m not looking for trouble. I was invited.” Sort of.

A pretty blue-eyed blonde off on one side glanced at the brown-haired man beside her. “We didn’t invite you.”

Okay. Bride and groom weren’t the prospective clients. Didn’t look like newlyweds, either; the rings weren’t new, and they came across like a solid team. Were they renewing their vows, maybe? Or was this whole thing a setup? Reese didn’t know, but she wasn’t moving away from the door until she did.

“I invited her,” said a big guy on the other side of the room, breaking the silence.

At that, the others gave way a little, telling her that he was the boss of this outfit. Wearing a charcoal suit with the slight awkwardness of someone who did better in jeans, maybe six six, two thirty, he was built like a bouncer and had killer blue eyes, dark, shoulder-length hair, and a jawline beard that made her think of a Renaissance fair. And he was vaguely familiar, but not from her present life.

Oh, shit. Again, her new self said to run. Again, she stayed put. “Do I know you?”

He gave her a once-over with those brilliant blues. “Where’s all the black leather?”

She was wearing low boots, trim pants, and a subtly studded blazer, all in muted earth tones. Professional, grown-up clothes. “Dog’s show turned it into a cliché.” Tipping her head, still not placing him, she said, “I could dig up the boots if you’re interested.”

“He’s not.” The smaller blue-eyed blonde moved up beside him and shot her a narrow-eyed glare.

Reese knew that look. Fallon hit her with it often enough. “You’re a cop.”

That intel eased her nerves a degree. Granted, there were cops who crossed the line, but fewer than the TV made it seem. More, she wasn’t getting the “bad guy” vibe off this crew, and her instincts might not be infallible, but they had a damn good track record. So who were these guys? A task force working the wrong side of the border? If that was the case, why did they need her? And why not go through channels?

Unless they had, and Fallon had told them to fuck off. That, she could believe.

The cop nodded. “And you’re the bounty hunter.”

Most of the others relaxed a smidge at that one. The bride’s mouth went round in surprise and, Reese thought, recognition.

Filing that, she stayed focused on the boss. “I used to be a bounty hunter. Now I’m strictly private.” She paused. “Where do I know you from?”

“Three years ago. A burned-out warehouse in Chicago.”

“Three—” She broke off as her stomach knotted. Keeping the poker face that had saved her life more times than she wanted to count, she nodded and made herself breathe past the stab of pain. “Right. Strike. I remember.”

Would’ve been better if she could have forgotten. She still had nightmares where she was back in the burned-out shell of Seventeen, breathing stale smoke as she crept up on the two men, one far too familiar, one an unknown who had a gangsta name—Strike—but wore normal duds and had shown up in a rented minivan.

With the other hunters closing in faster than she had anticipated, she had nailed her target from behind with her souped-up Taser and had her two quasi bodyguards drag his ass back to lockup. After that, she had chased the other guy—this guy—back to his rental, labeling him harmless. Then she had locked herself in her hotel room, binged on Ding Dongs, and cried herself empty. Which wasn’t the point right now. The important part was where she had filed Strike under “harmless” back then, now her instincts said that the man facing her was deadly dangerous in his own right. Which meant that either he’d changed over the past three years, or he’d been playing her before.

What the hell was going on here? And why did it have to be that day? The coincidence sucked.

A chill skimmed along her skin as a dead man’s voice whispered, There’s no such thing as coincidence. It’s all just the will of the gods. Mendez had been big on quoting his writs when they made his point, especially toward the end of their time together.

Keep your head in the real world, she told herself. That part of her life had ended long before his death. Shifting the small black carryall so she could get to the gun tucked at the small of her back, she said cautiously, “I don’t do find-and-grabs anymore.”

“All you need to do is locate him,” Strike said without a shift of expression or inflection. “We’ll take care of the rest.”

She should turn him down. Hell, she shouldn’t have come out here in the first place. She was just starting to hit her stride in Denver after moving back from LA just under a year ago. She had a string of solid—if boring—jobs lined up and ready to go. And this crew had “questionable” written all over them. But that same questionability was what had her sticking. She knew what it felt like to be lost. Now she tracked down the lost and reunited them with their friends and family . . . or, if they were better off lost, she helped them stay that way. Saving the world one person at a time, Fallon had called it. And he hadn’t even been mocking her. Not much, anyway.

“Tell me about the target,” she said. Routine question, nice and open ended.

Strike’s expression didn’t change. “It’s the same guy you bagged out from under me that day in the warehouse. Snake Mendez.”

He said something else, but she couldn’t hear him over the roaring that suddenly filled her head.

Mendez. Oh, Christ.

She had to lock her knees to keep from sagging when it all tried to come rushing back—memories, pain, guilt, betrayal, grief. Keep breathing, she told herself, struggling with her poker face. She couldn’t go there again. Not now, when she was just starting to put her shit back together. Not now, when losing him had nearly killed her before.

More, there were warning bells beneath the pain. What the hell was going on here? How much did this guy know? Who was he working for?

Her instincts chimed in with a Time to go!

Feeling far shakier than she wanted to let on, she retreated a step toward the doorway. “Mendez is dead.” She forced herself to say it, though the words tasted foul. “He was killed last year in Denver. The Varrio Warlocks got him.”

His parole officer swore that Mendez had been playing it straight, but as far as she could tell, he had died as he had lived: trying to run the world one city block at a time.

“Wait.” Strike stretched out a hand. “Don’t go.”

“You don’t need me to find a dead man.” Another step back put her in the doorway.

“He’s alive.”

The words didn’t compute at first, coming one at a time, disconnected, echoing in her ears like someone screaming inside an abandoned warehouse. He’s. Alive. He’s. Alive. He’s alive. He’s alive . . . alive . . . alive. Not dead.

“Bullshit.” The word was little more than a whisper. “The VWs claimed the kill.”

“They lied. Dez has been working with us in New Mex for the past year. He took off two days ago, and we need him back.”

“He . . . ” She trailed off as the numbness grew teeth and bit in.

Dez. The nickname had been reserved for the inner circle. And three years ago, Strike had called him “Mendez,” just as she had used “Snake,” trying to remind herself what he really was. Poisonous. A manipulator.

Hearing the nickname now meant . . . Jesus, she didn’t know what it meant. But her instincts said Strike was telling her the truth.

They lied.

Her breath rasped in her lungs and the world took a big spin around her.