Julie Leto - Something Wicked

The perfect woman she was not.

And yet, Rick couldn’t get her out of his mind.

“In the mood for pizza?” he asked after she finally answered the phone with a breathless hello that made his skin dance with a shamefully electric thrill.

“Deep-dish?”

The relief in her voice was unmistakable and incredibly appealing. She knew he’d been on the job tonight. She’d been worried, too. And as much as he didn’t want to cause her any anxiety, he liked the idea that she cared.

Liked it a lot.

“Is there any other kind of pizza in this town?”

“Want to go out or order in?”

“In,” Rick said instantly, then caught the eagerness in his voice. After the make-out session they’d shared last night, he didn’t want Josie thinking he just wanted to get her into bed. Even if he did. Badly. “Unless you want to go out.”

Josie hummed shyly. “I’m okay with either. Let’s decide after you get here. How’d everything go? Are Mac and Lilith with you?”

Rick glanced back at the service door he’d used to exit the office building, expecting his former boss and his lover to appear at any moment. He hadn’t wanted to tell Josie about tonight’s operation. Hell, he hadn’t wanted to take part in the interrogation in the first place. He wasn’t a stickler for every single rule in the law enforcement handbook, but he did have limits. And tonight, nearly every single one had been pushed to the breaking point.

If Mac Mancusi hadn’t been the one asking for his help, Rick would have refused. Mac had been chief of detectives in the Chicago P.D. since Rick joined the unit. Though Mac had been suspended from the job a few days ago for pissing off the mayor, he was still Rick’s friend. Rick trusted him implicitly—even after he’d come to him with a story that might have made a great feature film. A mutually hated defense attorney had supposed ties to a massive drug shipment their sources reported was about to hit the streets. Believable enough. But then Mac had added in the possibility that the well-connected lawyer was also, possibly, a warlock.

Cue the creepy soundtrack.

And yet, Rick had still listened. Lilith St. Lyon had backed up Mac’s outlandish suspicions and though she was a little woo-woo herself, she’d never steered Rick wrong, even if she did scare the crap out of him. He’d grown up in Little Havana and while he had a healthy respect for the brujas and santeros, he certainly didn’t subscribe to their ways. The one and only time he’d met his maternal great-grandmother, a woman whose Sight had reportedly once caught the attention of Fidel Castro, Rick had been freaked out enough to never want to visit his parents’ homeland again. When Lilith, a psychic, had asked Rick to be a conduit through which she could listen in on his interrogation of Boothe Thompson, the defense attorney suspected in the murder of a low-level drug dealer, Rick had reluctantly agreed. The ends justified the means. And he wasn’t six years old and in a foreign country anymore.

But they’d learned nothing new. Before Rick had left the building and called Josie, Mac and Lilith had been right behind him.

“Maybe they came out in the front,” he said, more to himself than to Josie.

He started walking as he told her more than he should about their operation. He’d already fractured just about every department regulation tonight by conspiring with a suspended officer to interrogate a respected defense attorney. Telling Josie the outcome wasn’t going to get him any more fired.

“We got nothing,” he admitted. “The man is slippery. I didn’t think we’d get him to fess up to anything, and I was right.”

“And Lilith couldn’t sense anything?” she asked.

While Rick asked the questions, Mac and Lilith had been in a nearby room, listening in through a psychic connection Rick didn’t even try to understand. But Lilith hadn’t discovered anything they could use to connect Thompson to the murder of the dealer or the impending drug shipment.

“Nothing we could use,” he admitted, gulping down his frustration.

For as long as he could remember, Rick had wanted to be a cop. He’d finished high school a year early, studied criminal justice in college and joined the Miami-Dade department before he was twenty-one. Known for his efficient, cool and reasoned thinking, he’d moved up quickly to detective. After five years of an endless battle against the influx of drugs in Miami, he’d moved to Chicago, hoping to broaden his knowledge base. Deal with crimes that weren’t always about smack, crack and pot. But now, he was back where he didn’t want to be—in the middle of yet another drug war, one that was being influenced by someone very powerful and, as of yet, very unknown.

“And what did it feel like, having Lilith use you that way?” Josie asked. “Was it cool?”

The fascination in her voice made him chuckle and forget how the whole setup had initially unnerved him. As a cop, he was used to dealing with hunches, and he’d always guessed that Lilith just had better hunches than most. In Little Havana, however, he’d met a few brujas, like his great-grandmother in Cuba, whose insight had been downright scary. A witch in Miami had predicted his father’s heart attack only days before he’d been felled by a cardiac episode that should have killed him. But because of the witch, he’d put an aspirin in his pocket—and that little pill had saved his life.

“It was freaky,” he admitted. “I could sense that she was there, listening in. At one point, she even suggested that I ask a certain question and I just—”

Rick, help us.

What the hell?

He pulled the phone away from his ear. A few people strode beside him on the sidewalk with heads down and strides swift. At the curb, a driver leaned lazily against a stretch limousine, tapping into his iPhone. Rick peered into the office building’s lobby. No sign of Mac or Lilith, even though he could have sworn he just heard her voice.

“Rick? Rick, are you there?”

Tinny and distant, Josie’s voice echoed from the phone, which he lifted back to his ear.

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “I just—”

Rick, please. Hear me. He’s not a warlock. The mayor is. Thompson’s a witch. Black magic. He’ll kill us.

“Just what? Rick, what’s wrong?”

He shook his head, but the crowded feeling in his mind didn’t lessen. Lilith was invading his consciousness, but this time, she was calling for help.

He stopped walking and turned. He spied the plates on the limousine. City government issue. The mayor?

At that moment, the driver spared him a glance. Rick gave a nod, then turned and cursed. “It’s Lilith. She’s connected to me again. They’re in trouble. He’s going to kill them. He’s a witch, and he’s using black magic.”

Josie gasped. “Can you—”

“Yes,” Rick said, “I’ve got to go.”

“Be—”

He snapped the phone shut. He didn’t need Josie’s warning. For the benefit of the limo driver, he strode casually back down the sidewalk, but broke into a run and yanked out his firearm once he cleared the side of the building. If Lilith had called for help, she and Mac were in deep. Witches? Warlocks? Black magic? This was all too fucking weird, but he had to try and help. He couldn’t leave them to die.

He’d used a service door to exit the building, but it had locked automatically behind him. If he tried the front entrance and alerted security or the mayor’s driver, all hell could break loose. Demanding instant cooperation from his frazzled brain, Rick spotted a ratty cushion protruding from a nearby Dumpster. He grabbed it, placed it over the unyielding knob and fired his weapon into the lock, muffling the sound as best he could. For a split second, he considered calling for backup, but this had been an unauthorized operation from the start. Rick had helped Mac out of loyalty, out of trust. The backlash against both of them could ruin their careers forever. He’d trust Mac a little while longer. His suspension notwithstanding, Mac was a good cop. And a good friend.