Chapter 8 #2
I caught him driving home. He’d just left the station, had spent the last few hours—while I was drowning in Lyra—being interrogated by the Feds, asked a thousand questions to which he had no answers.
“Hooked me up to the fucking poly.” He sounded as tired as I felt.
They gave a twelve-year veteran of the force a lie detector test? “Assholes.”
He told me everyone in the city was looking for both me and Doctor Pearson.
The morgue’s camera system had malfunctioned—of course it did—and they had nothing to go on except pink splatter that the Feds were sending for DNA analysis, a pile of ash on the examination table, and a smear of blood on the floor.
They found my cell phone, too, which pissed off the FBI because they couldn’t use it to track my current location.
I almost felt sorry for them.
They would pick my phone apart. I didn’t care. They weren’t going to find anything out of order. I was a good fucking cop when it came to doing my job. Throw in some alien assholes? That’s where Jenkins and I both were willing to go rogue.
I told him the splatter was all that was left of the good doctor, the blood was mine—I’d been winged by a bullet, nothing serious—and the pile of ash used to be our alien corpse.
I told him about the three alien thugs, the time of their attack, and gave him descriptions so he could start a camera sweep of the surrounding area.
Assholes that big and ugly were bound to stick out.
“How the hell did you get out of there alive?” Jenkins asked.
I glanced at the gorgeous woman curled up in the cream-colored sheets. “That’s a long story. I’ll tell you everything, but not over the phone.”
“All right. Now I’m curious, but I’ll wait. You’re presumed dead, you know?”
“Am I?” For some reason, I found that information humorous.
“Nothing official, but that’s what’s on everyone’s mind. Mine, too, until you called.”
“Sorry about that.” I didn’t mean to worry him. He didn’t need to lose anyone else, even a cranky fucking bastard friend like me.
“The Feds are watching your apartment.”
No surprise there. “I’m not home.” No, I was hiding out in suburbia in a safe house commandeered by a CIA operative. No one was going to come knocking.
“I figured. You need backup? Or you wanna stay dead for a while?”
“I’m good. I could use some sleep.” I didn’t need to play dead.
But I didn’t want to spend hours upon fucking hours in an FBI debrief right now either.
All I wanted was to crawl into that big, soft, king-sized bed and wrap myself around Lyra.
Get some rest. Pearson wasn’t going to get any deader, and those alien thugs weren’t going anywhere, not if this was their turf.
I promised Jenkin’s I’d keep my burner on and crawled under the covers next to Lyra. My eyes ached. Body ached. I realized I’d been awake for more than twenty-four hours.
Which wasn’t four days, but I had a warm, soft woman in my bed and no reason to hurry my way out of the situation.
Jenkins would keep an eye on things. The FBI was probably scratching their balls, wondering what the fuck they were going to do with a missing corpse, a missing doctor, a missing cop, and no video to help them figure out what happened.
Jenkins would tell them nothing about the cyborg assholes.
At least, not until I was ready to come back to the land of the living.
He would, no doubt, take the opportunity to try to track them down himself.
Call our new friends. Make sure real justice was served, not the politicized, sanitized version the Feds would want to feed the world.
We’d still never caught the fuckers who killed Eddie.
Or Jenkins’ family. When we did, he didn’t want to wait for our justice system to deal with them.
No. We had an agreement, an understanding.
Blood for blood for Eddie, Charlene and Maddy.
If we found the aliens who tortured his family, they were dead.
Jenkins wanted to punish them first. Make it hurt.
Not my thing, but I couldn’t deny him his right to avenge the woman he loved.
If he wanted to cut them into little pieces for what they’d done, I’d guard the door.
Never thought I’d think that way, but after seeing what they did to Charlene and Maddy?
I didn’t care if Jenkins kept them alive with IVs and feeding tubes so he could make it last. Fucking Atlans.
Every time I thought about that damn Bachelor Beast television show, and how all the ladies at work swooned and adored the Atlan Warlords like they were watching a soap opera, it made me sick. They didn’t know what those Warlords were capable of. Did. Not. Know.
Lyra stirred and rolled to face me. She laid her head on my shoulder, flung one arm over my chest and one leg over my thigh until we were tangled up together. “Shhh. She can feel you.”
“Feel me doing what?” What the hell was she talking about now? I’d grown accustomed to her talking about her pussy in the third person, the same way I sometimes thought about my dick as a separate, greedy little bastard. But this didn’t make sense.
“Worry. Sad. She can tell.” She wiggled closer and kissed my jawline. “Go to sleep. We can chase the bad guys tomorrow.”
“It is tomorrow.” I glanced out the bedroom window to see the first layer of pink and orange lining the horizon. Sunrise.
I glanced down to gauge her reaction, but she was already asleep, her deep, even breathing comforting in a way I didn’t want to question.
I’d given Jenkins all the help I could, for now.
I had nothing to hide. Except Lyra, and the fact that she was the one who turned the corpse into ash.
That she—and the CIA—had access to Coalition transport technology that wasn’t supposed to exist. I was pretty damn sure the CIA didn’t want the local police or the FBI sticking their noses into their secret alien business.
To be honest, I didn’t give a shit about the CIA.
Loyalty to her—and her alone—kept me from telling Jenkins about Lyra.
She saved my life. She was mine. Part of me—fuck that, all of me—wasn’t ready to share her with the rest of the world.
Not when she was cuddled up, naked and asleep in my arms. Beautiful. Vulnerable. Trusting.
Mine. At least for now.
I’d learned the hard way, sometimes now was the only thing I got.
I fell asleep with a smile on my face.
I woke up in handcuffs.