Chapter 7
He hated it when people treated their cars like this. Dings all over the side, a long scratch on the passenger door, an edge of rust around two of the wheel-wells. And then they brought them in for a wash and complained when he couldn’t clean out scratches or dings or rust.
He sighed. You couldn’t clean off damage, any more than you could explain reason to stupid.
I frowned. These thoughts clearly didn’t belong to the owner of the car. Almost certainly someone who worked at a car wash. Not terribly helpful to the case, except that I could explain that the vehicle they were looking for had dings, scratches, and rust. But so did a lot of cars.
I went deeper.
He’d argued with the stupid woman for a good forty minutes before giving up and calling his boss.
She’d insisted that it was their fault she needed to replace the bulb in her front headlight, nevermind that the housing was clearly cracked.
Probably because she’d hit a parking barrier or a tree or something because the fool woman didn’t know how long the front of her own damn car was.
He knew people did that with these long Cadillac sedans.
Let the boss argue with her.
He was done.
Still not particularly helpful, although it was possible that the person responsible for the hit and run was a woman. The owner of the car was a woman, at least. And the car they were looking for was a Cadillac sedan. It was something to go on, anyway.
But I wanted more.
I went deeper.
The stupid bitch deserved whatever this divorce was going to cost her.
He paused, leaning his hand on the car. This fucking car.
She’d whined and whined until he’d bought it for her, insisting on this car, even though they probably shouldn’t have spent that much on a car, much less one this flashy.
Flashy cars got broken into. Dented by people who didn’t like your parking job, and Pamela was an absolutely terrible parker.
He drew in a shuddering breath.
He hated that he wished they could go back to the way things were. Hated that he missed her, even though he’d barely walked out the door.
But she’d joined that fucking cult, and he couldn’t do that. Just couldn’t support her joining that stupid Church of Holy Judgment.
I dropped out again, but this time, I offered a sickly smile to Raj and Hart. “The car is a Cadillac sedan, the owner is a woman named Pamela, divorced or in the process of a divorce, and she joined something called the Church of Holy Judgment,” I told them.
“Tell us fucking everything,” Hart said, leaning forward.
I nodded, then started from the beginning.
I stabbed my bowl of cavatappi a bit more savagely than was necessary to skewer a noodle covered in a creamy tomato vodka sauce. “I’m not getting a ride share to go to work,” I grumbled, glaring down into my aluminum container of pasta to avoid glaring at Raj.
“Fine,” he said, equally as annoyed with me as I was with him. “I’ll come and drive you.”
I set my fork down, now looking up at him. “You will not,” I retorted. “First of all, you don’t work regular hours, and I usually do. Half the time you’d be leaving work—which you know you can’t really do—to come and get me to drive me one mile. That’s ridiculous.”
“You’ve already been kidnapped walking from work once!” he argued. He wasn’t wrong, and that irritated me more than the fact that he was insisting that I get a ride share to work a mile away so that nobody would target me as a hit-and-run victim.
“Second of all,” I said, choosing not to respond to his comment. “These killers are targeting visible Arcanids. I’m human, even if I am Arc-human, so they wouldn’t know to target me.” I scowled at him. “Any more than they’d know to target you.”
“I don’t walk to work,” he retorted.
I rolled my eyes. “And I don’t walk to work in the middle of the night,” I countered.
“Because if I have to work a late séance, someone will drop me off.” I wanted to add that it was because it was just a nice thing to do at two in the morning, but it was also to keep me safe, although more from muggers or drunks than the hit-and-run-killers.
“Rayn, it’s dangerous.”
“It’s not any more dangerous than it already was,” I hissed back. “You’re being paranoid.”
“It’s not paranoia if it’s literally already happened once!”
I pushed back in my chair, crossing my arms over my chest. I really didn’t like the fact that he kept bring that up.
“I am actually very aware of that fact,” I snapped back.
“Since it happened to me. And since it happened to me, I feel like I should get to be the one who decides whether or not to walk home.”
Raj stared at me, his expression a little odd.
As though surprise were warring with anger or some other unpleasant emotion.
“I—” He cut off whatever he’d been about to say, then dropped his gaze to stare into his carbonara before letting out a long sigh.
“I’m worried about you,” he said softly.
“I worry for you.” He looked up at me, his eyes searching mine for…
something. “I don’t know what I’d do if—” He broke off.
I drew in a deep breath, unfolding my arms and picking up my fork again. I poked the tines through a piece of cavatappi much less aggressively this time. “You’d rescue me,” I replied. “Or you’d hunt down whoever killed me.” I put the pasta in my mouth.
“God, Rayn,” he hissed. “Don’t even say that.”
I looked at him, then felt a little guilty because he’d gone slightly greyish in tone. “I don’t want either of those things to happen,” I said.
“Neither do I,” he replied, his voice almost pleading. “Which is why I don’t want you to walk. Not while these people are out there hunting down Nids.”
I huffed, loading my fork again more because it gave me something to focus on that wasn’t being irritated with Raj’s overprotectiveness. I knew it was because he cared, and I really liked the fact that he cared about me. “I don’t look like a Nid, though,” I reminded him again.
He sighed again.
I spoke before he could. “This is how I live my life,” I told him. “I’m not asking you not to go to work because you might be in danger,” I pointed out. “Because that’s your job and you chose it.”
He looked startled. “I’m an FBI agent,” he said.
“I know that,” I replied. “And that makes you a lot more likely to get shot than I am.”
“I’ve had training to avoid that,” he argued.
I nodded. “Yes,” I agreed. “You have. Because your job is at least ten times more dangerous than mine.” I met his worried golden-brown gaze. “And because I trust you to know what you’re doing.” I paused deliberately. “I’m asking you to do the same.”
He made a soft grumbling sound in the back of his throat, clearly unhappy with that. “You’re going to keep walking,” he said, and it was clear he didn’t like it.
“Yes, I am,” I replied firmly. “At least until there’s more reason for me not to.”
He sighed again. “Will you at least…” he trailed off, sticking his fork back into his pasta and starting to twirl it.
“What?” I asked, trying not to sound as exasperated as I felt.
“Check in with me?” he asked. “When you get home? Just so I know you’re okay.”
I almost pointed out that I texted or talked to him—or saw him—almost every night, anyway, but I didn’t want to argue with him. “Okay,” I agreed.
A smile flashed across his full lips. “Okay,” he repeated, then put one hand over mine—the one not holding my fork. “Thank you,” he said softly.
I still kind of wanted to be annoyed with him, but I felt myself relaxing, now focused more on the warmth of his hand than on my irritation at him. It was an odd set of emotions, and I wasn’t sure what to do with them. So I just nodded, poking at my pasta.
He squeezed my hand gently, then went back to his own dinner. “Drew is already researching this Church of Holy Judgment,” he said.
I nodded once.
He sighed, twirling more noodles. “The beginnings of cases are always hard,” he said, although I wasn’t sure if he was telling me or reminding himself of this fact.
“It’s not really the beginning,” I pointed out. “It’s pretty new to the FBI, but doesn’t the RPD have actual information on it?” The first hit-and-run had been months ago, back in March, and it was now—as of today—the first of October.
Raj grimaced. “Annoyingly, not much,” he replied, his tone grim. “And I really don’t like that it’s escalated this quickly.”
“Because this one happened so close to the last one?” I asked.
He nodded, chewing a mouthful of pasta. He swallowed. “It’s been less than two weeks, where there were—as you say—more than six months between the first and the second.”
“Unless there were others somewhere else that we missed,” I pointed out. “Or that failed to actually hit the target.”
He paused, fork full of pasta partway to his mouth. “Shit,” he said, then got up.
“What?” I called after him as he hurried out of the kitchen.
Curiosity won out over hunger, and I got up and followed.
He was pacing my living area, holding his phone up to his ear.
“Yeah,” he said to whomever he was talking to.
“I need you to look at the surrounding counties for hit-and-runs that were targeting Arcanids or with Arcanid victims, either fatal or nonfatal.” He paused, presumably listening to someone on the other end of the line.
“Let’s say an hour around Richmond. South Petersburg up to Fredericksburg, out to Williamsburg, then, say, Charlottesville in the other direction, just to hit the bigger cities.
” Another pause. “And I want any reported attempteds in the Richmond metro area, too. Where some Arcanid reported having been chased by a car that seemed intent on actually making contact, not just stalking them.” He grimaced.
“Yes, I know how fucked up that sounds.”
Which meant he was probably talking to one of his team. Drew or Cass. Not Hart. There hadn’t been nearly enough insults for the other person to be Hart.