He had to give Monica credit. She didn’t back down, refusing to lower her gaze. “Your pack member is safe.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
This time she didn’t try to stop him when Jono walked around her, striding toward the lifts. Wade had texted him their room number while he’d been en route. He could feel people’s eyes on him, and it made his skin crawl and his temper worse. Jono shoved his anger down, trying to shake it off. He didn’t want Wade to think Jono was angry at him.
Jono took the lift up and wasn’t at all surprised to find Wade waiting for him literally right outside the doors when they opened on the twelfth floor. Wade blinked at him before darting in for a quick, hard hug, nearly bowling Jono over.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Wade mumbled into his chest.
Jono wrapped his free arm around the teenager, hugging him tight and breathing in his scent. “Where’s Pat?”
Wade pulled back and stepped out of the way so Jono could exit the lift. “Working still. He’s been out all night. The only time he wasn’t working was when he came to drop me off back here and told me to wait for you.”
Jono jerked his head in the direction of the hallway for Wade to follow him. “You eat yet?”
“I ordered room service earlier.”
“Right, then. Let’s get my things in your room so we can be off.”
“Patrick said not to leave the hotel. He said he’d call us when he was free.”
Jono smiled tightly as he waited for Wade to unlock the door with the key card. “Yeah, that’s not happening.”
“Do you know what happened? Did he tell you?”
“No, and keep your gob shut about it. Too many ears about.”
Wade made a face, his nose scrunching up. “Yeah, okay. Who’s down there?”
“Met the Chicago god pack’s dire.” Jono tossed his duffel bag on the half-made bed, assuming it was Patrick’s considering the other bed was unmade and filled with empty snack wrappers. “Clean up your mess, Wade. Don’t be rude to housekeeping.”
Wade grumbled but did as he was told while Jono texted Patrick that he was with Wade. He stared at the screen, hoping for a quick response, but none came. It was barely eight in the morning, and he knew from experience that cases could swallow Patrick for days at a time. Despite whatever had happened last night, Jono didn’t want that to happen.
He needed answers, and he had to find some way to break it to Patrick about what was going on in New York.
“Did you rent a car?” Wade asked.
“No. Patrick has one. Figured that should be enough.”
Jono’s mobile buzzed in his hand, and he quickly unlocked it to check the text. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief to see it was from Patrick.
Meet at Eiketre at 1000.
Beneath it was a link to a web page, and Jono clicked on it. “He wants us to meet him at a bar called Eiketre in two hours.”
“That’s the place that burned last night.”
Jono glanced at him and frowned. “Should you be chatting about that?”
Wade shrugged. “It’s on the news.”
Jono weighed their options, stared at the two empty room service trays dumped on the dresser, and decided he could sort the news out on his mobile somewhere else that wasn’t crawling with werecreatures.
“Let’s get you breakfast,” Jono said.
Wade perked up, scrambling for his hoodie. Jono didn’t know where his jacket had gone. “There’s a café nearby we can walk to.”
“It’s bloody pouring out, mate. We’re taking a taxi.”
Killing time by feeding Wade seemed like the best course of action. It wouldn’t ease Jono’s nerves any, not until he had eyes on Patrick, but it would at least keep Wade occupied.
It hadn’t stopped raining by the time they reached the bar by the cemetery a couple of hours later, but at least it had let up some. It was more a heavy sprinkle rather than a deluge, but the wind still blew hard and cold, shaking the bare branches of nearby trees. Jono paid the taxi driver in cash before getting out, holding the borrowed hotel umbrella over both himself and Wade.
The melted iron fencing around the front patio of the bar was wrapped in yellow crime scene tape still. Perhaps as a warning to pedestrians until the whole lot could be removed and replaced. The building itself seemed badly scorched, but the damage didn’t seem destructive to the point the whole building needed to undergo construction.
“I thought you said it was a hellfire bomb?” Jono asked as they walked toward the bar.
“It was, and then we ran into the cemetery over there,” Wade replied.
Jono followed where he pointed, seeing the blown-open fence across the street crisscrossed with yellow Police Line – Do Not Cross tape that moved rapidly in the wind. Considering the weather, he had a feeling it would be torn off before the day was over.
Jono breathed in deep, catching some of Patrick’s scent beneath the underlying smell of wet cement and embedded smoke. The soulbond tugged in his chest, and Jono lengthened his stride. They reached the sidewalk in front of the bar right as the damaged door opened up. All the tension seeped out of Jono’s body once he got eyes on Patrick.
“Pat,” Jono breathed out, handing the umbrella to Wade.
He closed the distance between them, not caring about the rain. Jono framed Patrick’s face with both hands, kissing him with a fierceness that had Wade groaning behind them.
“Oh my god, get a room,” Wade told them.
Jono pulled back, smoothing his thumbs over the dark circles beneath Patrick’s green eyes. “You look knackered.”
Patrick shrugged tiredly. “I’ve been overseeing the processing of the
