Cipher

the chair. “I’m getting you out of here.”

“No!” She twisted in his arms like a wild creature. “I’m not running. Put me down and help me fight, Andrew. I need to fight. I need—” A hitched breath. “So much pain. They tortured Julio, and it’s in me now.”

No time to argue. He pressed his lips to her temple, clutched her tighter and ran for the door.

Just outside, the flames had grown higher. The pyrokinetic could still lower the flames and come after them, and Andrew trembled, torn between his need to get Kat someplace safe and his knowledge that everyone involved here had to die or she’d never be safe.

Before he could make a decision, a spot of magic flared on the wall, a flash followed by a bullet that shouldn’t have passed cleanly through the side of the garage. One of Patrick’s weapons, and as it found its mark, the woman cowering on the other side of the flames crumpled to the floor.

The ring of fire on the concrete floor subsided, but the flames had already climbed the wall. When they reached the rafters, they began to spread quickly.

Too quickly.

Patrick lunged through the door, a sleek rifle in his hands. “Where’s Ben? We need to get back to the cars. The fight’s converged there.”

Shit. “He’s…” Andrew couldn’t say it, couldn’t, not like this.

“Patrick.” Kat’s voice broke on his name, and that must have been enough. Without a word, Patrick circled around them and disappeared into the back room.

Kat shuddered, pain spilling over her features. “I can stand. You need to get him.”

Anna came in, barefoot and still tugging her shirt into place. “Everyone outside is down. Jackson says

—” She froze, her gaze on the open doorway into the back room. She crossed to it, heedless of the fire overhead and its mounting intensity.

Andrew took Kat outside and set her down, but he stayed by her side. “Anna will get Patrick out of there. I’m not leaving you.”

She tried to step away, but her knees buckled, and she ended up clutching at his shoulders. “I’ll be fine when my feet wake up. Just go.”

“I can’t.”

She actually snarled, but her eyes held pain and fear, not rage. “Why not?”

“You’re all that matters.” He smoothed his hands over her cheeks and tried to make her understand.

“I’ll save every damn person in the world if I can, Kat, but if I ever have to choose between them and you… It’s not even a choice. It’ll always be you.”

And there it was. The answer to the question she hadn’t dared to ask all those endless days ago. The reason he’d learned first aid and weapons and fighting. Everything. Andrew didn’t want to be a hero.

He wanted to be her hero.

Her body trembled. Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them away, and when she met his gaze this time, clear blue stared up at him. “Do I get to save you sometime?”

“Every day. More than once, if you want.”

“Oh, good.” She shivered again, and her eyes fluttered shut. “When Patrick and Anna get out, you have to get me to Julio. I have to try to undo what I did before it hurts him.”

“It’s okay.” Andrew pulled her closer, tucked her face against his neck. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

“I killed the man who was shielding me,” she whispered. “I blew his mind to pieces, and then I went back and crushed the pieces into dust. And I don’t feel bad. Not at all.”

“Because they did this,” he whispered. “No choice, remember?”

Kat nodded. “Do you think—” She stiffened as Patrick’s voice rose in a single incoherent roar of grief and anger, audible over the crackle of the fire. A moment later he screamed again, this time in pain.

Kat’s fingernails pierced Andrew’s skin. “We have to do something.”

The others had already come running, but by the time they reached the garage, Anna had made it to the door. She dragged Patrick bodily behind her, nearly lifting him off his feet even though he was easily twice her size. “One of the rafters went,” she ground out.

A wide strip of the shirt covering his upper back had been burned away, revealing red, blistered skin beneath. “We need to get him to the clinic,” Andrew told her.

“And you,” Jackson cut in. “There’s a hole in your shoulder.”

Andrew had forgotten again. “I can barely feel it.” Then again, that might not be a good thing. “We can handle arrangements for—for all this on the way.”

Arrangements. A nice, bland way of talking about covering their tracks, but reality was reality, and sometimes it was necessary. They could never walk away from a fight clean and free, with no worry about exposure or what came next.

Kat’s hand slid into his, and he closed his fingers around hers. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

It took Sera, Mackenzie and half a bar of soap to get Kat clean.

She ended up in the shower at the clinic, stripped to her bra and panties as the two women helped her scrub dried blood from her skin. Jackson had sprung the locks on the handcuffs before they made it back to New Orleans, but the damage was already done.

Kat winced her way through a haphazard bandaging before Sera dragged her under the spray. Then she stretched her aching hands out in front of her and watched through a dream as the pinkish water circled the drain until it finally ran clear.

Sera braided her damp hair while Mackenzie found her a pair of scrubs to wear. By the time she had her wrists clean and redressed, Andrew appeared, his own bandage just peeking out of the neckline of his T- shirt.

He took her hand and lifted it, studying her wrist. “Okay?”

“I’ll be fine.” Everything felt distant—surreal—except for the brush of his fingers. Shivering, she leaned into him. “I think I have a new understanding of pain now.”

“Julio’s going to be fine,” he whispered. “Most of the wounds are already healing.”

The wounds were the least of it, and they both knew it. Julio’s berserk frenzy had exhausted his body, but it had taken Sera’s touch to lead him back to sanity. The magic of a true submissive shapeshifter, the power to balance rage with gentle acceptance. Sera might be trapped into obedience, but the true dominants—the good ones—were just as bound by their need to protect her.

Not so different from the balance between herself and Andrew, Kat supposed, though so much cleaner.

She and Andrew would always be tangled up in an edge of danger and the knowledge that they could hurt each other. It had taken her this long to realize it didn’t matter. They were creatures of instinct, both of them, and their first impulse would be to keep each other safe.

Turning her head, Kat pressed a soft kiss over his heart. “What about Patrick?”

Andrew hesitated. “The burns on his back are probably going to scar. Right now, understandably, he’s more upset about Ben. Anna took him to the apartment over Mahalia’s to get him set up there.”

Sera had been the one to break the news about Lia, conveyed in a soft whisper as she worked bloody snarls out of Kat’s hair. Maybe it was a blessing, that Ben had never found out. That he’d died so fast, so suddenly, and with no idea that the woman he loved was already gone.

Andrew stroked the tears from her cheeks. “The cleaner settled everything. He managed to stop the fire too, so Patrick can bury Ben after the ME releases him.”

“Okay.” The numbness was fracturing. No, melting—like ice around her heart laid bare to the sun.

Andrew’s warmth surrounded her, and the lingering echoes of pain drifted up. She’d made it her own, and she’d used it, and now she had to let it go, let tears wash away everything but the knowledge that she’d never have to cry alone again.