Kelly Meding - As Lie the Dead

A niggle of old fear returned, and I swiped at it with a mental two-by-four. Not here. Not now. Not again. I won’t let the past continue to control me, or my emotions. Instead, I allowed a delicate dance to begin.

Wyatt’s tongue darted into my mouth, stroked across my teeth, until it was met by mine. I raked my fingers down his chest and earned a soft moan. He trailed cool fingertips along my back, down over my ribs to my hips, drawing me into him. His mouth left gentle, tasting kisses across my cheeks to my throat, and each hot caress drove another small spear of pleasure through my abdomen.

I groaned at the sensation. Felt his lips curl into a smile. He raked his tongue across the hollow at the base of my throat, and my knees buckled. Strong arms kept me upright. We inched sideways, closer to the bed.

A digital ringtone skewered the moment and brought progress to a screeching halt. We froze mid-grope, and I started laughing.

“This better be good,” Wyatt grumbled as he fished the cell phone out of his pocket. It was a city number, caller I.D. unknown. We disentangled, and he flipped it open. “Yes?” He looked at me and mouthed, “Phineas.” My racing heart skipped a beat. “Here’s fine,” Wyatt said, and rattled off our location. “Twenty minutes, then.”

He hung up. I didn’t have to ask—the brief conversation told me all I needed to know—but did anyway. “Phin’s coming here?”

“Yeah. And apparently with big info, too. Said he met Call.”

I could have throttled him for his lack of interest in the new development. It was the phone call we’d been waiting for. “This is good news, Grumpy. We’ve been stewing over this guy’s identity for two days, and Phin might be able to tell us who he is and what the hell he wants.”

“You’re right,” he said with more energy in his voice. “Forgive my selfishness in wishing he’d waited another thirty minutes to call.”

“Only thirty minutes?”

He grinned wolfishly. “It would have at least let me finish kissing you the way I wanted.”

Dammit, heat blazed in my cheeks and neck. I cracked my knuckles, suddenly full of nervous energy.

“I love that for the brave fighter you are,” Wyatt said, “I can still make you blush.”

“I’m sure I could make you blush, too, if I tried hard enough. Only it would be more from words coming out of my mouth than anything going in.”

He laughed at the moderately lewd joke. Since we had no time to continue our previous activities to a satisfying conclusion, I worked on putting the touch and taste of him out of mind. My skin still seemed hot where he’d kissed me, and I missed him in my arms. Not good, since I once again had a problem to solve. And a bad guy to stop. The world had briefly paused; Phin’s phone call hit the Play button again.

I flopped down on the bed and leaned back on my palms. “So, if you were a bad guy intent on bringing a battle force against the Triads, who would you be?” I asked.

“Someone with one hell of a grudge.” Wyatt leaned against the wall opposite the bed, arms folded over his chest. “And it’s someone who knows what we do, who we are, and seems to have a connection to the Clan Assembly.”

“Or he got that connection via his relationship with Snow.”

“Also possible.”

“Hopefully Phin managed to get a snapshot somehow, because it’ll make identification a hell of a lot easier. I guess he didn’t give you any clues over the phone?”

“The conversation was pretty brief, Evy.”

I picked at a snagged thread on the bed’s coverlet, hoping for inspiration to strike. Twenty minutes felt like an eternity of waiting, and I was not a patient person. Only my mind kept circling back to the same possibility—someone who had every reason to bear a huge grudge against us. “I know you said he wasn’t our guy,” I said, “but I keep going back to the surviving son of the Greek restaurant owner. He makes such perfect, poetic sense.”

Wyatt pressed his lips into a thin line, eyes sharp. “I told you, it’s not him.”

“Yeah, you told me, but he still feels relevant, Wyatt. You said you trusted my instincts, and my instincts say that what happened back then has a bearing on what’s happening now.”

“Of course it does. That event helped shape what the Triads are now, but it doesn’t mean the son of the victims is involved with Call.”

“Then what’s he do?” I sat up a little straighter, frustrated by his lack of real answers. “You said you know him, so prove it. Prove my instincts just happen to be a little clouded on this, and that I’m grasping at straws out of some deep-seated need to be the one to unmask this asshole.”

Coiled like a furious spring, Wyatt pushed away from the wall and stalked to the other side of the room, near the door. He reached his farthest point, pivoted, and walked halfway back to me, blazing. “He works in the city, Evy, and he can’t possibly be Call or be working with him. I know he can’t.”

“But I don’t.” I stood up, planted my hands firmly on my hips, and returned his scowl tenfold. “Come on, Truman. I just bared my soul for you to see, touch, and possibly sneer at. Toss me a fucking bone here. Who did the kid grow up to be?”

He continued to glare, but his resolve was crumbling. He raked a hand through his short hair, around his neck, and back up to pinch the bridge of his nose. I hadn’t moved; he had to know I wouldn’t, now bound and determined to get this information from him. I wanted to know who he was protecting.

“Fine,” he snapped. “You want to know whose father was killed by a Halfie and his mother and sister by rogue bounty hunters? He’s the Clan Assembly’s killer, Evy, the one they keep accusing you of protecting.”

My face went slack as confusion settled in. “Rufus?”

“No, not Rufus.” Something sinister flashed in his onyx eyes. “Me.”

5:24 P.M.

The phrase “You could cut the tension with a knife” flashed through my mind, because his final statement shut down all activity in the room. He didn’t move. I didn’t move. Even the distant hums of electricity and running water faded out, replaced by numb silence. My brain refused to understand what he’d just admitted. I felt queasy, unbalanced. Seriously confused.

He blinked and broke the spell.

“You …” I swallowed hard against a lump in my throat, mouth dry. “You didn’t lead the attack on Sunset Terrace. How—?”

“That’s not why the Kitsune … It’s not that.”

I closed my eyes and exhaled hard. The queasiness increased as I prepared to learn the real reason the Kitsune Elder had accused me of protecting a killer. It wasn’t for the Coni and Stri; it was something else entirely. When I looked up, Wyatt had slumped into one of the room’s two upholstered chairs. He gazed at the floor, hands folded in his lap. Miserable.

I’d cut into a festering wound because I couldn’t stop needing to control my environment and everything in it. I couldn’t just accept his word; I had to know the facts for myself. And it had opened up a side of Wyatt I’d never seen or asked about before—his past. He hadn’t sprung, fully formed, out of a hole in the ground. I just hadn’t questioned his life before the Triads; he never talked about it.

It was lame, but all I could come up with was, “I’m sorry.”

“You know better than that. You hate pity as much as I do. Don’t do that.” He leaned forward, resting both elbows on his knees. Still giving the floor his full attention. “I don’t deserve it.”

“You were seventeen, Wyatt.”

“I wasn’t there. I couldn’t try to stop it or save them, because I wasn’t even there that night. I should have been. We promised we’d be there by eight to help inventory the food, but we went to a friend’s house instead.”