Princess was like his personal nympho. He’d had her in every way he wanted. She’d...
Wait...
He wandered into the bedroom again. Nothing but his tangled sheets lay on his bed. He let out a groan.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” She’d hit it and quit it.
He grabbed his leather coat off the couch and pulled out a Marlboro. Slipping it in his mouth and lighting up, he looked at the bed again. Never once had a woman left him behind before.
The nicotine billowing into his lungs calmed him, and he mulled over the night’s events. Her dark brown eyes had shimmered with flecks of liquid gold as she embraced him, and her long, black hair danced around them. A burn erupted in his chest. He rubbed his hand over the area. Heartburn? Yeah, he hadn’t eaten much the night before.
After a short shower and a quick shave, he brushed his teeth and yanked on his clothes, then threw on his leather coat. His phone buzzed. A text from David telling him it was time for yet another bitch-fest meeting. Grabbing his keys, he hoofed it out the door and down to the street, where the sunlight hit his eyes, momentarily blinding him. Squinting, he jogged to the Hummer, grimacing at the cracks spanning the back window, evidence of Francesca’s fight for her freedom. With a disgusted sigh, he hopped into the driver’s seat, revved the ignition and sped off. He cranked up the radio and drowned his thoughts with the sound of classic rock. Anything to block out memories of last night. The last thing he needed to be thinking about was her.
When Jace entered the Execution Underground’s downstairs corridor, he wasn’t sure whether the headache throbbing in his temple was an unexpected hangover or a preliminary response to the sound of Damon’s voice. He stepped into the control room, as prepared as he was ever going to be to hear the usual spiel. David and Trent were sitting at their desks talking to one another in hushed voices, while Ash and Shane stood conversing over coffee. When Jace stepped inside, their heads all turned in his direction and silence blanketed the room.
“What?” He glanced at each of their faces in turn, looking for some explanation.
They all refused to meet his eyes.
Jace gritted his teeth. It was too early in the damn day for this. “David, what’s going on?”
His best friend glanced up momentarily before his eyes returned to the floor.
Trent finally cleared his throat. “I hate to say it, J, but you really choked this time.” His Jersey accent thickened to the point that he sounded like a cartoon character. His face was nearly hidden beneath his usual baseball cap, which he wore to conceal the severe scar across his left eye, earned in a fight with a crazed shifter “I was going to try and help you on the case, but I’m thinkin’ that possibility’s been blown outta the water.”
Ash Devereaux sat down and leaned back in his seat, brushing his fingers through his silky blond hair. “I have no idea what ya’ll been up to. Someone wanna tell me what’s been going on?” he said, his good-ol’-boy Louisiana drawl ringing clear and true. He had the pretty-boy face of a male model, but he’d never felt comfortable with the fast-paced life of the big city. Half the time he moved at snail speed, but Jace knew better than to fall for it. In a fight Ash was quick on his feet and deadly in his rage.
“You mind if I take a hit off your flask, Jace?” Ash asked. “Damn ghosts have been killin’ me lately, keeping me up all night talking. I need some sleep real bad.”
“Knock yourself out.” Jace reached in his coat and handed him the liquor.
Ash chugged a few gulps of the whiskey before he passed it back to Jace. “Thanks, man. I still ain’t used to so much talkin’. There are a lot of ghosts in New Orleans, but they’re all pretty quiet, even the ones that died partyin’ during Mardi Gras. But ya’ll Northerners speak too loud and too fast, even when you’re dead and gone.”
Laid-back and relaxed, Ash Devereaux put the dead to rest and ensured they moved on to whatever lay ahead of them in the afterlife. But after years of seeing the dead and hearing their desperate pleas, he attempted to drown out their voices in any way he could. Jace couldn’t fault the man for desiring some peace. Hell, he’d been drowning his own demons for years.
“You want to tell me what the hell is going on here?” Jace asked him as he slipped the flask back out of sight.
“I’m not gonna be the one to deliver the news,” Ash said.
Jace walked to his desk with a frown on his face. “Somebody better tell me.” He glanced down at a stack of papers as tall as it was wide. “And what the hell is this?”
His answer came in the loud clank as the door to the weapons room opened and Damon’s steel-toed footsteps made their way into the room. His hand slid into view on top of the stack of papers.
“This,” he said, “is the steaming load of shit you get for being so incompetent.”
Rage coursed through Jace’s veins as he looked up at his boss. “You mind elaborating?” The ice that filled his voice rivaled Damon’s own coldness.
“You have to ask? That’s pathetic.”
Jace stood and stepped forward, his hands balled into fists. David and Trent grabbed him, fighting to hold him back. His whole body shook from anger.
“What were you thinking?” Damon roared. “You could’ve blown our entire operation.” He reached inside his pocket and flicked a cigarette butt onto Jace’s desk. A Marlboro Red.
Damon snarled. “You left that at the crime scene where any cop could’ve found it, tested the DNA and followed the trail right back to you. You’re lucky we were there first.”
Jace fought back a string of profanities that would have made a sailor wince. Adrenaline pulsed through him. But screw up or not, no one talked to him that way.
“You need to back off,” he said in the calmest voice he could muster. He stared Damon straight in the eye, daring him to continue. But Damon never knew how to stop when he was ahead.
“The only thing that needs to be done around here,” Damon said, stepping toward him, “is you need to get your act together—” he leaned in until he and Jace were nearly nose to nose “—or get the fuck out. You’re on probation. You’re not on this case anymore, and this is your last warning before I feed you to headquarters. Fuck up and you’re done for,” he snapped. “Now take your homework and get out of my sight.”
Jace didn’t need to be told twice. Without a word, he picked up the stack of papers, stormed out of the underground control room, through the warehouse and out to his car. When he reached the Hummer, he stopped and forced himself to breathe.
He had royally fucked up. Dropping his cigarette butt at the crime scene because he’d spotted Princess in her wolf form?
Damn rookie mistake.
The image of her beneath him crept into his mind, and he let out another curse. Why wouldn’t the thought of her leave him? How many women had he been with who he never even thought twice about the next morning? But something about her lingered with him.
He glanced at the workload in his arms. He wanted to throw the papers into the air, watch them scatter across the street. That would be the final fuckup, but damn, it would feel good. He cursed. As much as he hated having his balls busted, this was the only job he knew, and no matter what Damon said, Jace knew he was a damn good hunter, and he wasn’t about to lose his job. He got inside the Hummer, revved the engine and burned rubber.
After driving for several blocks, he parked the car outside a liquor store and stared out the windshield. He wasn’t even fifty feet away from where he’d found Francesca last night. “Damn it all to hell.”
He got out of the car and immediately detected the trace of her scent. He strode down the nearest alley. His bitch fest with Damon had scraped at his already raw nerves. He’d been punished over a stupid mistake—and damn if he hadn’t done the same thing to Princess. He couldn’t blame her for running away at the first chance she got. He really was a worthless bastard.
He followed her scent for several blocks and paused. He told himself he just needed to be sure she was safe. That was all. But his heart jumped in his chest at the thought of seeing her again.
Hung up on a werewolf? God, help him.
HE STARED UP at the building and repeated his mantra of curses.
He was a complete idiot. He’d stooped to a new level of stupidity with this one, and he was past the point of no return.
