Angela Knight - Burning Up

The shooter lay slumped over a rickety table, the back of his head blown off execution style. “Vincent knew we’d picked up his scent,” Lucas said, taking in the scene from the doorway beside Emmett. “I bet that blood is still warm.”

They both stepped back out, Emmett’s frustration making him want to kick something. “Think there might be intel in there that could lead us to Vincent?”

Lucas nodded at the neighbors in the surrounding trailers, a few of whom were openly staring. “We can’t risk going in and giving the cops a reason to hassle us. As it is, these folks saw us open the door, stand in the doorway. No harm, no foul.”

“I wouldn’t let it bother you,” Clay said, breaking his customary silence. “This guy, he was expendable. They’d have told him squat.”

Emmett tried to believe that as he circled the trailer.

A hint of movement in his peripheral vision, prey breaking into a run.

He didn’t even think about it, shifting into hard pursuit between one second and the next. The skinny guy in front of him didn’t look back as he snaked through the trailer park. Not until he passed a group of children kicking around a dusty soccer ball. Emmett’s gut chilled as the man’s hand came up. “Get down!” he yelled, thrusting himself into an incredible burst of speed. Slamming into the shooter’s arm, he pushed it up just as the man fired. The shot was silent, the bullet lost in the sky.

The shooter was already moving, using his body with the fluid grace of an experienced street fighter. His fist hit Emmett’s cheek with enough force to jerk it back, but Emmett didn’t let go of the man’s wrist, holding the gun pointed up, even as he used his free elbow to hit the assassin’s jaw. The bastard didn’t go down.

Fuck it. Emmett squeezed the man’s wrist, crushing his fragile human bones.

With a scream, the shooter dropped to his knees, the gun falling out of his hand. “Keep an eye on it,” Emmett ordered Vaughn.

The jaguar nodded and made sure any kids who hadn’t already scattered got the hell out. Emmett kept his hand around the shooter’s wrist as the whimpering male knelt in the dust. This one, Emmett thought, would know something about Vincent. Dropping into a crouch, he met the man’s shiny-wet eyes. “Tell me what I want to know,” he said very quietly, “or I’ll crush your wrist so badly, they’ll never be able to put it back together.”

The man spat at him. “I’ll get a cloned replacement.”

Emmett heard the faint sound of Enforcement sirens and knew he had a couple of minutes at most. Leaning close, he deliberately let his eyes go cat, his claws shooting out. Then he smiled. “You know, they’re not very good at cloning eyes.” He touched a claw to the very edge of the man’s right eye. “Funny how a claw can accidentally blind a man during fighting.”

Fear burned off the shooter, acrid and thick. “You can’t do that. There’re witnesses.”

“Really?”

He watched as the man turned . . . to see only closed doors and shuttered windows.

“You threatened their kids,” Emmett whispered. “Who do you think’s going to come forward to save you?” He pressed in the claw until the edge actually touched the delicate surface.

The fear turned into sheer terror. “I’ll answer your questions!”

Emmett asked them hard and fast. By the time Enforcement arrived, the Crew male was so grateful to see them, he confessed to the shooting just to get away from Emmett. The cops looked like they wanted to take Emmett in, too, but all of a sudden, there were twenty witnesses who’d seen everything—and who swore Emmett was a hero.

Faced with that many enthusiastic supporters, the cops gave up. One older female met Emmett’s eyes. “You didn’t have to crush his wrist.” It wasn’t censure, more a question.

Emmett raised an eyebrow.

She smiled and walked off. Right into Dorian.

The blond soldier grinned. “How about you let me buy you dinner?”

The cop laughed. “You’re adorable. But I gave up cradle robbing a few years back.”

Dorian was unabashed. Walking over to Emmett after the woman left, he folded his arms. “Sooooo . . . what happens if I flirt with Ria?”

“I use your ribs to make a wind chime.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Emmett told the others what the assassin had revealed. “Vincent stays out of sight by living in a mobile home—it’s a hover-truck, black, with constantly changing license plates. But it’s shiny, all tricked out. The bastard likes living in style.”

“That’ll make it easier to spot him,” Lucas said. “We’ll start circulating the description. Someone will talk.”

“He also said Vincent has a stockpile of weapons, so we need to be ready for what he might do when cornered.” The bastard wouldn’t care who he hit. “He’s got connections to one of the big crime families up north—this is a test run. We don’t kick him out, we’re going to have more problems.”

Lucas nodded. “It’s not just the human gangs we need to worry about—we don’t handle this challenge right, other changeling groups are going to start looking at our territory.”

“Then let’s make sure we take care of business.”

Emmett spent the rest of the day ensuring his more shadowy informants knew to look out for the truck. By the time night fell, there was only one thing he wanted to do . . . and only one person he wanted to do it with.

Unfortunately, though his split lip had healed with changeling speed, he still had a fairly impressive black eye. No way in hell would Ria’s family let him in through the front door, especially at this time of night. If it had been his daughter, Emmett thought with a twist in his heart, he’d have done the same. But that didn’t mean he was going to stay away from Ria.

Finding his way to the back of the two-story house that was the Wembley home, he nodded at Nate, on watch that shift, and looked up at the window that he knew faced out from Ria’s bedroom. Nate gave him an interested look. “Wall’s got no handholds.”

“If I can hook myself up to that window,” Emmett said, working out the mechanics, “I can get up.”

The other man judged the gap. “Doable.”

Decision made, Emmett backed up until he had enough distance, kicked himself into gear and jumped. The leopard made sure he caught the ledge he aimed for, and from there, it was a fairly simple climb. Holding himself up with one hand on the lower edge of Ria’s darkened window, while his feet found precarious purchase on the slight ledge of the kitchen window below, he tapped on the glass.

Silence. Then a shush of sound, as if she was wearing something that trailed on the floor. His mind filled with a thousand erotic images, but the window didn’t go up. Instead, he heard Nate’s phone ring. Ria was being very careful. Smiling as he heard the sentinel answer, he waited.

The window went up a few seconds later. “Are you insane?” Ria hissed, sticking out her head. “How are you even staying up?”

“Not easily,” he said with a grin, the stress of the day wiped away by the sight of her all sleep mussed and kissable. “Let me in?”

Pulling back, she waved him in. “Dear God, Emmett,” she said the instant he was inside. “You could’ve fallen and broken your fool neck.”

“I’m a leopard, mink. Climbing’s my thing.”

“I don’t think leopards evolved to climb two-storied—” A gasp and she nudged his face toward the light coming in through the window. “What happened?”

“I didn’t dodge fast enough.” He pushed down the window, knowing Nate wouldn’t be able to hear anything now if they kept their voices low. “My own fault.”