Moira Rogers: Cipher

“I love this place.” He rubbed his hands together. “Waffles and whipped cream in a can.”

“Better than heaven.”

Miguel ducked out of the room and closed the door behind him, leaving Kat staring at her netbook.

Regarding your mother’s association with the Cult o…

She eased the cursor to hover over the subject before noticing for the first time that the email had an attachment. The tiny mouse cursor sat there, balanced on top of the apostrophe in mother’s , and her resolve wavered for a moment.

Ancient history, she’d told Miguel, and she hadn’t been lying. Whatever her mother had done, it had been over for at least a decade. She’d been dead almost that long, and maybe proof of her misdeeds needed to die with her. Ignorance was bliss, wasn’t it?

Holding her breath, Kat clicked on the email.

From: 876@johndoeanon.com To: kat@katgabriel.com Subject: Regarding your mother’s association with the Cult of Ariel I have information about the Gabriel family’s past and present involvement with the Cult of Ariel, and I’ll trade it for protection from the Southeast council. I’ll be in Mobile, Alabama tomorrow. Meet me at the USS Alabama at 10 AM. Bring Andrew Callaghan or Julio Mendoza.

Kat ignored the way her stomach flip-flopped and read the email a second time. No signature, no name.

Just the attachment which, judging by the extension, was an image. The virus scan seemed unbothered by it, but she still spent a few minutes double and triple checking before opening it.

When she did, she wished she hadn’t. Her mother’s face stared up at her, but not the mother she’d known. This woman couldn’t be any older than twenty-five—not so long after Kat had been born. But it wasn’t her mother’s youth that made dread curl in Kat’s gut—it was the wide, crazy grin and the way her hands gripped an automatic weapon.

So much for the waffles.

Kat stormed the Southeast council’s newly acquired headquarters armed with a laptop, a printout of the offending email, and all of her arguments carefully marshaled. Then she went in search of Miguel’s brother.

When she knocked, an unintelligible shout from inside beckoned her. She found Julio stirring a big pot of something on the industrial range, and he waved her over as she walked into the kitchen. “I guess those wards Mari put up work. Unless…” He eyed her as he wiped his hands on a towel. “You’re not here to kill me, are you?”

She flinched, and hated herself for it. Julio was joking. He wasn’t afraid of her—sometimes she thought the damn man wasn’t afraid of anyone —and even knowing it in her bones, with the confidence only empathy could bring…she flinched. If she closed her eyes, she might see the office, echoes of the nightmare that still woke her in a cold sweat. Walls painted in blood, wolves howling in challenge-“You hungry? I got a head start on lunch.”

Kat dragged in an unsteady breath and used Julio’s confidence to ground herself. He wasn’t afraid of her, and the easy strength that surrounded him was better than a warm blanket for a jumpy empath. “No, I was force-fed waffles before I left the apartment.”

He laughed. “I know my brother was there, but I’m guessing he wasn’t the one who made breakfast.”

Of course he knew. Kat had rolled from her bed into the shower, but one shower wouldn’t be enough to erase Miguel’s scent from her skin, not when he’d spent the night hogging more than half of the bed. Kat felt her cheeks heat and compensated by dropping her laptop bag onto the wide island in the kitchen. “He kept me and Sera company last night and didn’t want to drive home.”

One dark eyebrow shot up. “Tell the truth—he didn’t want to go home, full stop.”

Kat eased her laptop out of its case and shrugged. “You know Miguel. He’s not all that interested in the shapeshifter new world order.”

“That’s putting it mildly. Joke’s on him, though, because I was here all night.” Julio slid onto a stool and propped his elbows on the countertop. “What’s up?”

She’d thought of all of the arguments to convince him to help, but the one thing she hadn’t considered was where to begin. “You know my parents died a while ago, right? My parents and my aunt and uncle, all at the same time.”

“Andrew told me about it, yeah. He said that’s how Derek ended up taking care of you.”

Andrew’s name shouldn’t make her heart twist, not after this long. “Derek came down to New Orleans when his parents died, because I was already living here. With his parents, I mean. My mother…” There was no good way to put it, though her father had always tried. Your mother’s not feeling so great right now, munchkin. “My mom was a little nuts.”

He was too polite to let his sympathy show, but she felt it all the same. “I think we’ve all had a bit of experience with that, but something tells me you’re speaking literally.”

“Psychic cults.” The outside zipper of her laptop bag held the printout of the email and the photo. She dragged the folded stack of papers out and fiddled with the edge. “Sometimes when I can’t sleep I poke around, see if I can find out what really happened. No one’s ever replied before.”

He rubbed his jaw. “I’ve heard of some. Anyone who’s tuned in to the psychic community has.”

Damn, she’d forgotten that Julio was psychic. Again. Miguel’s telepathy was powerful, almost as strong as her own empathy, but Julio was a precog, and one whose gifts seemed more prone to evidence themselves in hunches than Technicolor visions. It was easy to forget he was anything more than a shapeshifter.

Of course, it might make him doubly useful now. She unfolded the paper, and handed him the email and printed photo without comment.

“Cult of Ariel,” he read aloud. “Your mom?”

“Yeah.” She reached out and touched the edge of the picture. “She cut all of her hair off when I was ten and kept it short the rest of her life, so this must have been before that.”

“And this contact says he has information.” Julio flipped through the photos and the rest of the papers.

“Do you know who this person is? Anything?”

“Nothing concrete yet. But I should know in a few hours.” Hopefully no one would ask how many laws she’d broken or asked others to break to get the information. “I know you wouldn’t want to walk into it blind, but if I figure out who it is…” Please, Julio.

“Not asking for myself, ’cause I’m not going. But you shouldn’t walk into it blind, either.”

It took her a moment too long to understand what he’d said. “Julio, please . I can’t ask Andrew. We’re not—” What, Kat? Friends? “He wouldn’t do it anyway.”

“Can’t ask Andrew what?”

Julio had to have known. He would have heard Andrew’s footsteps, would have caught his scent.

Would have seen him, for Christ’s sake, which meant the bastard had set her up.

Kat pivoted and promptly forgot she needed oxygen.

She avoided Andrew as a general rule, and over the past year he’d seemed happy enough to return the favor. It was supposed to make dealing with him easier.

Instead, she felt like she’d taken a roundhouse kick to the gut. Sometime in the past month, Andrew had lost his razor. The reddish-blond beard made him look older. More intimidating. Not that he needed it-he was the tallest man she knew and looked like he’d been carved out of stone. The gun tucked into the shoulder holster was overkill.

Andrew Callaghan looked like he’d stepped out of an action movie, and her sluggish libido that felt so stunted around other men began to stir.

God, she hated him.