Cipher

“Maybe not, if they’re all psychics.” Patrick turned off his camera and pocketed it before giving Andrew a serious look. “Especially if they had Carmen Mendoza’s name on a list and thought her husband might have seen it.”

“Carmen? Shit.” The carnage Alec would have visited on the remaining cult members eclipsed the scene before them—and they would have known it. “That’s as good a reason to off yourself as any. It’d hurt less.”

“That’s the truth. And it’s not even taking into account what they’ve done to Kat. Making a move on her was a last-ditch effort, guaranteed to bring down a world of pain if they fucked it up.” Patrick nodded to the bodies around them. “Maybe they were ready for that.”

“Maybe.” Andrew closed his eyes and suppressed a shudder. “Do you guys have everything you need?

I don’t know—samples and pictures and stuff?”

“Yeah. It’ll take us a few days, running down the info and tying up loose ends. Anna’s going to check the IDs against what we found. But every lead we chased to get here seemed to indicate there were a dozen of them at most.” Patrick dropped a hand to Andrew’s shoulder. “I think it’s over, Callaghan.”

His tension didn’t abate. It would take time for him to believe it, to relax and let down his guard. “I’m not used to trouble being over,” he admitted.

“Because trouble’s never over,” Patrick replied, in a tone that said he understood. Completely. “But there’s trouble, and there’s catastrophe. And we’re on the other side of that now.”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t draw a deep breath, not until he’d gotten about a hundred miles away from the place. “Let’s get the hell out of here before the cops show up.”

Patrick actually laughed. “If I had a dollar for every time I heard that…”

Sometimes, you either had to laugh or lose your fucking mind. “Me too.”

Outside, Jackson leaned against the sloppily painted wall, hurriedly pressing buttons on his phone’s keypad. Mackenzie and Kat were huddled around Anna and her phone.

Kat broke away as Andrew approached. “Some of the names on the ID match the lists. The list of kids to recruit.”

A mirror of her greatest fear, realized. “That doesn’t mean they were here voluntarily.”

She stopped a foot away, her hands fisted. “Voluntarily or not…it would have been me. If my mother hadn’t—” An unsteady breath, but she didn’t look spun now. She looked like she’d finally found somewhere firm to stand. “Whatever kind of crazy she was, it wasn’t this. She had lines, and that means I can find them too.”

The words gave him pause. “Was that even still a question?”

“It has to be, at least a little. As long as I’m asking it, I’m okay.”

She never wouldn’t ask it, and Andrew had to get used to that. He reached for her, pulled her close and whispered against her hair. “You’re okay.”

“I know.” This time, she sounded like she meant it. “Are we almost done here?”

Behind them, a squat building held death, the remnants of an obsession that aimed to destroy the lives of far too many people. But at the moment all he cared about was the woman in his arms—her life and her happiness. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Fifteen

Two weeks. It had been two weeks since she’d spent any time in her own damn apartment.

Kat shifted, trying to find a comfortable position. The leather couch was the same one Derek had given her when she’d first gotten her apartment, though somewhat scratched and worn from lack of care. She’d spent hours on it every week, her feet propped up on the coffee table and her laptop balanced on her legs.

Three weeks ago she’d spent an entire Saturday afternoon in this exact spot while Sera worked her way through two DVDs of one of the eighteen billion CSI shows.

Two weeks, and it didn’t seem like home anymore.

Miguel arched an eyebrow at her. “You’re fidgety.”

Kat made a face at him and shifted again, tucking her feet under her. “It’s been a weird couple weeks. I don’t know if I remember how to relax.”

“You’ll figure it out.” He turned his attention back to the video game he was playing, though a particularly vigorous movement snapped the thumbstick on the controller. “Shit.”

It had happened enough after Miguel’s transformation to a full-blooded wolf that Kat had started keeping extra controllers in the closet. Of course, it hadn’t been happening lately, and that stirred worry.

“You doing okay? You were looking rattled the other day at breakfast.”

“I’m fine.” The words came too quickly.

With Miguel, she never felt guilty about snooping. Other than Callum, Miguel was the only person she knew with shields strong enough to keep her out if he wanted to.

And he did. Her gentle psychic touch slid across shining steel, slipping right past him. Worry twisted into concern, and she reached out to touch his arm. “If you decide you’re not…tell me? Please?”

“Kat—” His words cut off in an exasperated sigh. “I’d tell you, I swear. But there’s nothing wrong with me that time and a good, long run won’t fix, okay?”

“All right.” She settled back against the couch and watched him. “I guess…I don’t know how this goes.

There are so many rules I don’t get. The ones that no one explains, like what it means to your instincts if I’m with Andrew.”

“Honestly? Not much.” He tossed the busted controller aside and used the remote to turn off the television. “We were never going to be a thing, not like you and Andrew. There’s no sense in getting upset about it. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know.”

He always had, because she’d never lied. There was no reason to—both of them understood the futility of lies when dealing with powerful psychics. It was why she told the truth now. “I was avoiding you. If Andrew had tried to tell me I couldn’t hang out with you…it would have gotten ugly. I couldn’t handle any more ugly last week.”

Miguel snorted. “If Andrew had a problem with me, I’d know better than you. He couldn’t hide that, any more than I could lie to him if I wanted you for my own. Some things, you just can’t do.”

A dish clattered in the kitchen, and Sera stuck her head out. “He’s right,” she said, proving that she’d been enjoying the shapeshifter pastime of eavesdropping on conversations they shouldn’t have been able to hear to begin with. “If Andrew was having instinctive issues with you and Miguel, he wouldn’t have been able to leave you here. The place smells like Miguel, you know.”

A thousand little cues, and sometimes Kat wondered if interpreting the subtle intricacies would ever feel natural. “Uh-huh. To my human nose, the place smells like pizza. Is it almost done cooking?”

Sera ducked back into the kitchen, her voice drifting back down the hallway. “Five minutes.”

“Five minutes,” Kat echoed, nodding to Miguel. “If a run would help, why don’t you go take one after we eat?”

“Yeah, maybe,” he replied vaguely.

Andrew’s words came back to her, the ones he’d whispered before he kissed her goodbye. “It’s just some guy throwing his weight around. He thinks Julio and I are weak, so we’re going to talk to him, face-to- face. I’ll come to your place when we’re done. ” They’d seemed innocent, at the time.

They had better have been innocent. “Is there a reason you can’t leave?”

Miguel tensed. “Are you going to get pissed off if I say yes?”

She was going to kill Andrew, or at least beat him within an inch of begging for death. “I’m already pissed. I’m going to be fucking furious if you lie to me.”

He shrugged a split second before someone knocked on the door. “You’re not going to get to be alone much anymore. You need to talk to Andrew about it.”

Stunned, Kat stared at him as Sera started for the front door. “If something else came up with the cult, they should have told me. That shit was supposed to be over—”

“It’s not the cult,” he argued.

“What’s not the cult?” Anna asked as she walked in, a battered knapsack slung over one shoulder.