10. Chapter 10
10
F or the first time since taking command, Rebecca felt completely hopeless in her ability to protect this organization. Or even to take action when action was needed.
For the first time, she had zero leads, no shred of evidence left behind, and a slew of potential culprits among Shade’s list of enemies to suspect. Without being able to pin this on any one of them, she also had zero opportunity to retaliate.
Shade couldn’t pick a war with anyone before they knew for certain who was responsible. And they certainly couldn’t afford a war with every enemy all at once.
After dismissing the witch sisters as the final operatives on her list to question, Rebecca wove her way through the crowded common room, avoiding as many gazes as possible so she could focus instead on maintaining an air of confidence and certainty she didn’t feel.
It was one thing for her task force to know their Roth-Da’al cared about them and had their backs.
It was an entirely different thing to let them see the frustration of helplessness sinking in, only a few hours after some sneakily anonymous bastard attacked one of their own and left him on Shade’s doorstep.
If Rebecca hadn’t noticed the semi’s front passenger door hanging open, if her instincts had been any less honed in recognizing potential dangers and minute shifts in the natural order of things, they might not have found Archie on time at all…
She couldn’t think like that. It didn’t help anyone.
She’d almost made her way through the thickest part of the crowd in the common room when she looked up at the branching hallway leading to the second-story stairwell. There, she found another surprise.
This one felt worse than all the others today.
A flare of tingling heat pulsed from Rebecca’s core to race down her shoulders and arms, pins and needles biting at her fingertips and palms.
Of course it was Maxwell.
She’d tried to ignore the strengthening sensation of his presence while she questioned the task force, but now it blazed with new strength inside her, even before the shifter’s sweeping gaze settled on her face.
When it did, he pinned her in that gaze and stiffened with his arms hanging straight against his sides, his silver eyes flashing once before he got a hold of his emotions again. Or tried to.
The sight almost stopped her in her tracks, but she pushed herself forward against the discomforting sensation. Why give him the satisfaction of witnessing its effect on her? Especially after the intensity of his emotional roller coaster today.
By the Blood, had it really been just this morning that she’d almost opened up to him about her past despite all the new complications of being able to trust him?
Though she couldn’t tear herself out of his gaze as she headed straight for the archway into the hall she wanted, she didn’t slow or stop in her approach. Even when Maxwell stepped aside to let her pass into the hall, Rebecca continued past, as if she hadn’t seen him at all.
“Roth-Da’al,” Maxwell murmured as she barged past him and continued down the hallway. “Do you have a moment?”
The blaze of heat, desire, longing, and rightness surged through her with a mix of the nerves and remorse wafting off Maxwell and into her. But it all faded beneath the striking stabs of pain through her chest, shoulders, and along the back of her neck as she continued past him.
That horridly painful separation made her suck in a sharp breath, but she shoved the sensation aside and tried to bury it beneath the biting disapproval in her words. “That depends. Is this another—”
“I was out of line,” he blurted behind her.
Rebecca stopped short, fighting off the compulsion to let herself be tugged back toward him in every way.
Maxwell Hannigan didn’t blurt anything.
This was new.
He clearly took her pause in the hallway as an invitation to continue. Even if his footsteps hadn’t echoed closer, the agony of leaving him faded again beneath the swell of rightness and dark belonging as the tingling warmth spread through her limbs.
He was coming after her anyway.
She’d stood against him in the Security office to put him in his place—to knock him out of his rampage, because she’d had to.
But By the Blood, trying to resist him now, hours later, was almost impossible.
He stepped in front of her and stopped tantalizingly close, not to block her path but to let her see the earnestness in his eyes. To ensure she heard the genuine remorse in his words when he continued.
Or maybe their connection had rendered him as incapable of being farther from her than this as it had made Rebecca incapable of storming away from him.
When she looked up into his darkly glowing silver eyes, any last chance of escape she might have had disappeared.
“I let my anger get the better of me earlier,” he said. “It doesn’t excuse my actions or the way I conducted myself. I spoke to you in a manner unbefitting of both my position and the respect I have for you. It was unacceptable. It won’t happen again.”
Well, what a surprise. Her Head of Security describing his own shortcomings and reprimanding himself for them on her behalf.
It was more than she’d expected, but now that they were here and she’d heard it straight from his mouth, it still wasn’t enough.
“I’m glad you’ve come to that realization,” she said flatly. “Because if it happens again—”
“It won’t.” He nodded curtly, all formality and decorum restored.
So why didn’t she feel like anything had changed?
She had to get away from him. Dealing with this thing between them, whatever it was, on top of the very real and still unidentified threat facing all of Shade, was too much to take on at once.
She couldn’t do this with him and effectively do her job.
“Good,” she muttered, then slipped around him to continue down the hall.
“Rebecca…” A warm hand slipped around her own, gentle and pleading.
She could have ripped herself out of his grasp so easily, but the pain in his voice made her stop anyway.
Then she found herself turning back toward him without consciously deciding to, her hand lit ablaze within his and intensifying the tingling burn now racing up her arm and neck and bringing an instant flush to her cheeks.
“I also want to apologize to you personally.” The way Maxwell growled out the words made them no less genuine. “And I hope that lapse of judgment on my part doesn’t reflect poorly on me or my dedication.”
“To your duties? Of course not.”
“To you .” He stepped closer, his brows drawing together in pain and hope.
Rebecca couldn’t very well steel herself against such an apology when she could literally feel how much he meant it.
“Please forgive me,” he murmured.
By the Blood, she was entirely helpless against such a confession and its plea.
This was real. He’d meant every word, and his fear of her holding it against him tightened deep in her gut as if it were her own.
As far as apologies went, that one took home the gold.
“I do,” she finally murmured, surprised she didn’t sound more breathless. “And I won’t hold it against you. As long as that remains an isolated incident.”
She’d softened to his apology, but she couldn’t let her guard down with him, either. Not because he’d lost his shit in the security room. Not because she wanted to punish him.
His apology had been sincere and without conditions, but that didn’t mean she could fully trust him with anything else. Not yet.
And here she was, hiding her own vulnerability behind forced formality and professionalism, just like Maxwell had in the beginning. It was all she could give him.
It seemed to be enough for him, though. He nodded and relaxed at her words, his rigid stance loosening and his features softening as he held her gaze. “Thank you.”
His voice had dropped so low, she could barely hear it.
Afraid the last of her resolve would melt beneath his stare and she lost all self-control, Rebecca dropped her gaze and found herself staring at the shifter’s fingers still closed gently around her hand.
She almost couldn’t feel it anymore beneath the irresistible pull toward him, tugging every physical part of her closer.
Not now. Not like this.
She swallowed the enormous, painful lump in her throat like a dry rock and pulled her hand away.
Maxwell’s grip offered no resistance, but a heavy, shaking sigh escaped him as he watched her fingers withdraw from his. Feeling that same pain of separation like she did.
He had to feel it like she did. That was how this thing between them worked.
Then he cleared his throat and nodded, clasping his hands behind his back to resume his usual stern rigidity as Shade’s Head of Security and the Roth-Da’al’s right-hand man.
“I appreciate your time,” he grumbled.
He wouldn’t cut that out until she acted normally around him again first, would he?
Back to business, then.
“I just spent the last two hours questioning everyone about the last twenty-four hours,” she said. “Yes, including the new recruits. No one noticed anything out of the ordinary around the compound. No one had anything to hide. Not good news, I know, but at least we can rule out this attack having come from one of our own.”
His frown darkened. “It’s a start.”
“Nothing new from Security, either. I really thought we would have found something on the video footage, but it’s another dead end.”
“And one more item to mark off the list. I just finished going through all the new inventory and supplies we pulled out of the trailer. Emptied every crate, searched through every box and package looking for evidence or other hidden messages from the attacker. Nothing there, either.”
Rebecca looked him up and down. “That must have taken you hours.”
“It did. Bor wasn’t happy about it.”
She huffed out a wry laugh. “Bor’s never happy about anything.”
The shifter briefly met her gaze again with a flicker in his silver eyes, and one corner of his mouth twitched. “True. For now, unfortunately, until Archie regains consciousness and we can question him, we’re out of leads.”
Rebecca had come to the same conclusion, but now that they’d exhausted their options inside Shade Headquarters, a new idea had room to form in her mind, and she had the time to pursue it.
“We’re out of leads here , yes,” she said. “But Archie didn’t spend the whole day at the compound.”
“Was there sign of someone else in the truck with him?”
“You mean while our guy was tossed unconscious into the back of it? No. But he didn’t do that to himself.”
Maxwell’s frown turned momentarily inward before he widened his eyes in what looked like realization. Even if he wasn’t ready yet to guess her intentions out loud. “What do you want to do?”
Rebecca spread her arms, feeling suddenly more hopeful than she had all day. “I think we need to take a look at the source. Follow this as far back as we can.”
“The warehouse.”
“It’s the only place we haven’t looked yet.”
He clenched his jaw, then nodded. “Agreed. I’ll assemble a team.”
“A small one. Investigation -size. Not for staging an attack.”
“Understood.”
“Everybody geared up and briefed in the garage in twenty minutes,” she said. “I’ll meet you down there.”
She turned to walk down the hall, figuring she’d grab a little space—a fifteen-minute breather on her own in her office before piling into a vehicle with a new team and Maxwell. Then she’d have her head screwed on straight again before returning her full focus to the bigger issue at hand.
Maxwell, however, clearly didn’t feel the same sense of resolution. “One more thing before you go.”
Rebecca had only gotten a few feet down the hall, but she turned back to give him her full attention.
The shifter’s jaw muscles clenched furiously beneath her gaze. He stared down the hallway, as if expecting something or someone else to pop up and interrupt them, like usual.
He didn’t look particularly nervous, but she sure could feel it.
“I want to make it clear, about my reaction earlier today—”
“You apologized once already, Hannigan,” she said. “That’s enough for me. If you disagree, I need it to wait until after we figure out what happened to Archie. That comes first.”
His mouth snapped shut as he regarded her curiously. Then even more tension seeped out of him before he dipped his head. “Of course.”
“Good. See you downstairs in twenty.”
Despite the agonizing tug at her core as she walked away from him to head up to her office, she couldn’t stop analyzing the strange look he’d given her at the end.
There had been surprise there, for sure. And acceptance. But also something else.
Something she wanted to label as either suspicion or his fairly recent new expression whenever she managed to impress him.
But that didn’t make sense.
Why would he be impressed by her response or her decisions? Rebecca was Shade’s Roth-Da’al. It was her job to put her operatives first, above everything else.
Or maybe he just hadn’t thought her capable of holding him off until they solved this new and dangerous little mystery.
Admittedly, though, she hadn’t cut him off with only Shade’s interests in mind. She’d also used it as an excuse to end the conversation and to keep him at arm’s length.
Because Rebecca still couldn’t decide what to think about her shifter Head of Security walking around with an ancient elven rune tattooed on his chest, no matter how many apologies he made or how genuine they were.
With that new knowledge, being able to trust him again would take a little more time and a lot more getting used to. If she ever felt she could trust him again on a personal level beyond their professional relationship and their duty to Shade and its members.
Rebecca didn’t doubt Maxwell’s commitment to the task force, what they represented, and what they strove to achieve for magicals in Chicago. Beyond that, she just didn’t know.
She wouldn’t know until she discovered how the hell that tattoo had gotten there and what it meant.
Her only option was to hope more fervently than ever that Maxwell’s odd and surprising connection with Xaharí elves had nothing to do with whoever was behind the attack on Archie and a possible attempt to pick apart her task force one operative at a time.
And if it was connected?
Rebecca climbed the stairwell to her office two steps at a time, eager to be alone again behind a closed door, with nothing but her own thoughts for company. Just for a few minutes.
If that elven rune on Maxwell’s chest was connected to the new attack, she’d cross that bridge when she got there.
Right now, more than anything—more, even, than wanting to nail Archie’s attacker or prevent anyone else from being next—Rebecca’s hoped she could physically bring herself to move against Maxwell Hannigan if it turned out that was exactly what she had to do next.
No matter how desperately she might not want to.