to steal a laptop, he wasn’t going to need what was in his palm. But if Devina had sent over a minion or two to distract them, the weapon was going to come in handy.
Pushing the connector open an inch or two, he leaned in.
A black shirt came flying out of the bathroom. Then a pair of beat-to-shit jeans.
Boot.
Boot.
The shower started running and then there was a hiss, like Jim hadn’t waited for the water to warm up first.
Shit. He hadn’t just been to see Nigel, had he.
Reholstering his dagger, Adrian shoved the door wide, walked through and sat on the other angel’s bed.
God knew there was no reason to ditch the duds and hot-water it right after you met with the archangel. Poor bastard must have been to Devina’s—and nobody needed two guesses to figure out what had happened.
Listening to the sound of Jim washing the stank of the demon off, Adrian was weary to the point of blurry- vision exhaustion. This path the savior was on? Been there. Done that.
Lost his mind over it.
That was the thing with Devina. She got into you. Even though, in the beginning, you thought you were the one in control? Eventually, what you were making yourself do with her, for reasons that sounded entirely sane, ate at you until she was inside your skin and driving your bus. It was how she worked, and she was very successful at it.
When Jim eventually stepped out of the bathroom, he stopped with the towel stretched across his back, one arm up, the other down. There were scratch marks on his thighs and abdomen, and his sex hung low, as if it had been used hard and left for dead.
“She’s going to eat you alive,” Adrian said.
The angel who was responsible for saving everyone and everything shook his head. “The hell she will.”
“Jim—”
“She’s going to tell us who the soul is.” Jim wrapped the towel around his hips. “We’re meeting her tomorrow morning.”
Holy. Shit—“Wait, she didn’t give the info to you now?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
Ad just shook his head. “She’s fucking with you—”
“She’ll show. And she’ll tell. Trust me.”
“She’s not a reliable source. And this is not the way to win.”
“So you liked last round’s outcome better?”
Well . . . fuck.
Jim went over to his black duffel and took out a pair of fatigues. As he turned away and pulled them on, that massive back tat of his, the one featuring the Grim Reaper in a graveyard, distorted and then refound its shape.
Maybe Jim was tougher.
Which would be a slap in the balls, and something Ad would admit only over his own steaming carcass. But if the guy could hold it together . . . if he could somehow sustain himself . . . then they had the best weapon in this fight because the demon had a jones for the guy. Bad.
Jim went over to the jeans he’d tossed out of the bathroom and rifled through the pockets. When he stood back up again, he had a square of folded paper in his hands.
Hands that shook ever so slightly.
As the guy carefully brushed off the thing, even though there was no lint on it, Adrian scrubbed his face and wished a Lexus would fall on his own head: He knew damn well that had to be the article on that girl they’d found hanging over Devina’s tub—the virgin Jim was obsessed with.
Tougher his ass, Ad thought. They were fucked.
They were
CHAPTER 5
Veck woke up on his living room sofa. Which was sort of a surprise, because he didn’t have one.
As he rubbed his eyes against the cheerful spring sunlight, he was amazed that he’d taken the desire to sleep closer to the fine Officer Reilly as far as dragging the POS in from his man cave of a family room.
Sitting up, he looked out into the street. The unmarked was gone, and he wondered when she’d left. Last he’d checked, she’d still been out there at four a.m.
Groaning, he gave things a stretch, his shoulders cracking. Details from the night before filtered back, but he instinctually stayed away from the Monroe Motel & Suites part. He already felt like hell; he didn’t need to add a headache to the steaming pile of fuck-me he was rocking.
When he stood up, he had to rearrange an obscene morning erection—which gave him another thing to studiously ignore. He had a feeling he’d been wrapped up in a fairly raunchy and totally spectacular dream about him and his Internal Affairs shadow. Something about her riding him raw . . . he’d been mostly clothed; she’d been completely naked—
No, wait, she’d had her badge and her gun and her hip belt on.
“Fuck . . .” As his cock kicked hard, he put in a prayer for another round of short-term memory loss, and cursed at the porn cliché.
Then again, he could now see why guys found that shit attractive.
Given the direction his brain was heading in, he wasn’t sure that adding caffeine to the mix was a good plan, but his body needed the lift. Too bad he’d discovered he’d lied to Officer Reilly: after coming back inside from talking to her, he’d realize hern out of Folgers.
Upstairs, he showered, shaved, and put on his working uniform of slacks and a dress shirt. No tie for him, although a lot of the detectives wore them. No suit jacket; he didn’t wear one unless it was leather and of the biker or bomber variety.
Downstairs, he got his backup coat out of the closet, grabbed the key to his bike, and locked things up. As he walked over to the BMW, he was dogged by the night before, but also feeling too light: No cell to check for voice mail. No badge in his breast pocket. No gun in his holster. No wallet on his ass.
Officer Reilly had all of that. And his BVDs.
Squeezing on his helmet and mounting up, the morning was too frickin’ bright and shiny for him—and this was without the sun being fully up. Hell, given the squint he was rocking, it was a good thing his bike knew where he was going.
De la Cruz had introduced him to the Riverside Diner just the other day, and already Veck wondered how he’d managed without the greasy spoon. Heading for the place, he took the surface roads in, because even at seven forty-five, the Northway was going to be crowded.
The dive was right on the shores of the Hudson, only about four blocks from HQ—and it wasn’t until he pulled into the parking lot full of unmarkeds that he second-guessed his destination. Chances were good that half the force was sucking java inside, as usual, but it was too late to go anywhere else.
Just before he went in, he palmed up seventy-five cents and grabbed a
And there was his name. In bold.
Except the reporting wasn’t about him or Kroner. It was something on his old man, and he quickly avoided the piece. He hadn’t kept up with the charges, the trial, the death row sentence, anything that had to do with his father. And gee whiz, when he’d been taking criminal justice, he’d been sick the day they’d covered the case.
The rest of the first section was clear, so was the Local, and naturally, there was nothing in the Sports/Comics/Classified caboose. The lack of coverage wasn’t going to last, however: Reporters had access to the
