Chapter Five #2
The coffee finished. He poured two mugs, added nothing to his own and remembered without asking that Malik took his black, which he knew because he’d watched his mate drink coffee three times now and at no point had anything been added to it.
Indy was not keeping a mental inventory of Malik’s preferences.
Simple observation. Purely professional.
He pushed through the office door with both mugs.
The room was crammed and slightly dim, lit by the overhead fluorescent that Indy kept meaning to replace with something warmer.
Buckets of stems lined the walls in varying stages of processing.
Malik was looking at a bundle of eucalyptus that Indy had left hanging to dry from the ceiling hook.
Their eyes met when he strode in.
Indy held out the mug. “Eucalyptus,” he said. “It dries better hanging. It gets sad and flat-looking if you don’t, which is not the aesthetic I’m going for.”
Malik took the mug, his fingers brushing Indy’s in the handoff. “I wasn’t judging the eucalyptus.”
“It felt like judgment. The eucalyptus is sensitive.”
The corner of Malik’s mouth twitched. He looked back at the bundle then at Indy, and then he took a sip of coffee and said nothing, which was deeply unfair given that he was doing that focused quiet thing with his eyes that made Indy feel like the only object in the room.
Indy was about to say something when the bell above the front door chimed.
Setting his mug on the worktable, Malik stepped back, moving deep into the shadow near the rear wall. By the time Indy had turned toward the door, his mate had gone completely still, vanishing from sight.
With a shake of his head at the fact his mate was so good at disappearing, Indy walked up front.
The man standing inside the shop door was large with broad shoulders and a heavy build. His hair was dark, cropped close, and his face was arranged into an expression that was technically a smile.
Indy’s fox stilled, recognizing something that didn’t fit the category of anything safe. The smell hit him a half-second after the instinct, a wrongness that coated the back of his mouth.
The same wrongness as the two figures in the rain.
Indy didn’t react. He kept the counter between them, his expression pleasant, his hands loose, and his voice normal when he said, “Hi there. Can I help you find something?”
The guy looked around the shop in a slow, proprietary way that started at the window display and ended on Indy.
“Nice place.” The stranger’s voice was low and unhurried, each word given enough room to breathe.
“Thank you.” Although Indy’s fox was screaming, he managed to maintain his neutral expression. “I like it. We’ve got some really nice seasonal stock in right now if you’re looking for something for someone. Freesia, a few late dahlias, the sunflowers are amazingly good this week.”
Instead of glancing at the flowers, Mr. Mysterious took one step farther into the shop then another, his pace relaxed.
“I’m looking for someone,” the guy said with a slight accent.
Indy’s pulse climbed ten notches. “I deal in arrangements, not people. Maybe the cops could help you.” And hopefully arrest you for looking so menacing.
Something moved behind his eyes. Then he tilted his head slightly and inhaled slowly through his nose. Indy watched him do it and felt his stomach drop all the way to the floor.
“He’s here,” the stranger said with a deep growl. “Or he was. Recently.”
Indy kept his hands flat on the counter, his expression mildly puzzled. “I’ve had a few customers in this morning. Mrs. Park, a couple of walk-ins. I don’t know everyone’s name.”
The guy studied him for a long moment then walked toward the counter, moving closer like he was about to round it.
“You’re not allowed to do that!” Indy squeaked. “Customers stay on the customer side. It’s some kind of law.”
The stranger didn’t slow down.
He moved around the end of the counter with the unhurried ease of someone who had never in his life encountered an obstacle he considered worth acknowledging. Indy’s fox launched itself against the inside of his skin so hard he actually took a step backward.
“That is genuinely not allowed,” Indy said again, louder this time, because apparently volume was the strategy his brain had selected. “There are rules. There’s a counter. The counter is a boundary. Boundaries are important.”
The jackass passed the register and kept walking, heading toward the back of the shop, and Indy realized with a lurch of his stomach what the man was angling toward.
The office door.
“Hey!” Indy hurried around the counter, tempted to jump onto the goon’s back but stopped himself from getting pulverized. “Hey, you can't go back there. That’s a private area. That is extremely not open to the public. This is not a self-guided tour.”
The guy’s hand closed around the office door handle.
Indy was right behind him, feeling the wrongness, like walking into a cold pocket of air.
“I’m serious!” Indy’s voice squeaked even higher. “Whatever you’re looking for back there, you’re not going to find it. That room has flowers and a broken office chair and exactly four hundred rubber bands. I know, I’ve counted. There’s nothing interesting back there.”
The door swung open, and the guy stepped through.
Indy followed because he was either very brave or a goddamn moron, but he would fight Mr. Scary to defend his mate.
Except…Malik wasn’t there.
The room was empty.
Huh?
Indy glanced at the hanging bundles, the buckets of stems, the worktable with both coffee mugs still sitting on it. His gaze swung to where Malik had been not five minutes ago, and then he looked at the other corner, as well as the ceiling because his brain had run out of places to check.
His mate was gone.
The empty room made Indy’s stomach drop through the floor and keep going.
Malik been right here, and now he wasn’t. The other door led to the alley, but the door was closed. Indy had no way of knowing if his mate had used it.
The stranger moved through the room, nostrils flaring. He walked the perimeter, taking it in.
Indy stayed near the door, quietly having a meltdown.
The guy stopped at the worktable, gaze locking onto the mugs.
Fuck.
Indy watched him study the cups and felt something cold move through him.
Then a sound came from deep in the stranger’s body, from somewhere sounds weren’t supposed to reach.
It was quiet, and it was brief, and it was the single most wrong thing Indy had ever heard with his ears.
Every instinct he had pointed in the same direction, away, fast, now, making him gripped the doorframe with one hand.
The stranger pivoted, his malevolent gaze moving over Indy, the cold he’d felt inside returning.
“Tell your friend,” the stranger said quietly, “that the clock is running out.”
Indy stepped aside as the guy moved past him, heading toward the door. The bell chimed, then it was quiet.
For several seconds, he didn’t move, his entire nervous system wrung out like a wet cloth.
Walking to the worktable, he picked up his mug. The coffee was cold, but he drank some of it anyway, needing something to do with his hands.
Tell your friend the clock is running out.
He set the mug down carefully.
The man knew Malik had been here. Had smelled him or tracked him or done whatever it was demons did to find whoever they were hunting for.
He was still standing at the worktable, both hands flat against the surface, when something moved at the alley door.
The handle turned.
In the half-second between the handle moving and the door opening, a very undignified noise shot out of Indy’s mouth.
Malik ducked slightly to clear the frame, his eyes already taking stock. He looked toward the front of the shop, then at Indy. His mate was alive and breathing, thank fuck.
“You,” Indy snapped, “gave me a fucking heart attack. I am too young to keel over.”
In a few strides Malik was inside the office, his gaze sweeping over the small space.
“He’s gone,” Indy said. “Left a minute ago.” The hand pressed against his sternum was unhelpful. “Where did you go? You were right here and then the door opened and you were just gone, poof!”
Malik’s expression was controlled, but his eyes were moving over Indy.
“I went out the alley door when I heard him come in,” Malik said. “I circled around to see if he came in alone.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.” A pause. “As far as I could tell.”
Indy was trying very hard not to spiral, but it wasn’t easy.
“He knew you’d been here. Smelled you. He saw the mugs.
” Evidence of a morning that had been going great until about five minutes ago.
“He said to tell you that the clock is running out. His words. Very dramatic. Zero out of ten. Would not recommend the experience.”
Malik’s jaw tightened.
“Do you know him?” Indy studied his mate carefully, noting the muscle along his jaw moving. “The man who just walked through my shop, ignoring my protests and made a sound that I never want to hear again. Do you know who he is?”
“No,” he said.
The word was flat, which somehow made things worse instead of better. He’d expected Malik to recognize the guy. A thug his mate didn’t know meant… What exactly? Indy had no idea what it actually meant, but it sure as hell wasn’t an invite to tea.
The alley door was still slightly open. A strip of sunny afternoon light ran along the floor.
He looked back at Malik.
“Okay,” Indy said, his voice only an impression of calm.
“So we have the demons from before, who we know about. And now we have someone you don’t know, who sniffed around and left a message.
” He picked up both coffee mugs and carried them to the small sink in the corner.
“Great. Excellent. This is a very manageable situation.”
He rinsed both mugs, turned off the tap, then set them on the drying rack. His hands were only slightly unsteady, which was a miracle given the day he was having.
“Indy.”
“I’m fine,” he argued. “I’m fine. I’m just recalibrating.
Again. I’m doing a lot of recalibrating this week.
” He leaned back against the sink and crossed his arms, hoping his face wasn’t broadcasting just how rattled he was.
“What does the clock running out mean? Is that a specific thing, or is it general ominous threat?”
Malik slowly shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know who he is, and you don’t know what the message means?”
“No.”
Just great. Now Malik had three men after him and Indy was smack-dab in the middle of the insanity.