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Chapter 27
Boys in blue
LENNOX
S omething’s not right. Edie should be here by now. She’s too smart not to know where I live and if our positions were reversed, my apartment would be the first place I’d look.
“Stop pacing.” Charlie caresses my arm as I pass her and a wave of calm goes through me. She trusts me to take care of her.
“I need to do something,” I tell her. “The waiting is killing me.”
“You’re not very patient for a 700-hundred-year-old.”
I run my hands down her arms, savouring the silky warmth of her skin. “I’m usually the model of patience but when it’s my mate’s life on the line, patience doesn’t figure in.”
“We’ll protect her,” Officer Burton pipes up from the doorway where he’s stationed watching for Edie to make her appearance. “You have nothing to worry about.”
“Overconfidence won’t protect you,” I reply coldly. “Edie Thornton murdered an officer this morning with her bare hands. He didn’t know what hit him. Keep your eyes on that hallway and when she gets here, shoot her and run. The bullet won’t stop her, but it’ll slow her enough that you can get behind me. I’ll deal with her.”
We’ve gone over the plan half a dozen times, but I don’t trust the officers stationed around the building not to try to kill Edie themselves. They’re angry over the deaths of Officer Bates and their colleagues tasked to take her to Rikers and want to be the ones to bring her down. She’ll ignore them if they stay out of her way, but if they get too close to her, she’ll kill them too.
I’ve been an officer of the law for hundreds of years, working closely with humans. They can be astonishingly brave, but they can also be foolhardy and I don’t want to lose another one on my watch. Officer Bates’s death is on me. I was the one who sent Charlie to the basement without enough backup.
She picks up my thoughts. “We didn’t know there would be a shifter in the building.”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter now. Our only job is to take Edie down. We’ll sort out who’s to blame later.”
“It’s not you,” she says stubbornly and I smile at her fierce determination to protect me, even from my own thoughts.
“Can someone check on Luke?” she asks, her thoughts turning anxiously to her son. “Is he on his way to my parents yet?” She changed her mind about leaving him at school, worried Edie might go there if she knows about him. I couldn’t fault her logic and told the captain to have a unit pick Luke up and take him over to Charlie’s parents.
I call Captain Charlamagne, putting him on speaker so Charlie can hear.
“The school administrator just called. An officer picked him up five minutes ago.” Charlamagne pauses and then says to someone else, “Put her through on line 3,” then to us, “Hang on, she’s calling back.”
We’re on hold and Charlie looks at me, a worried frown marring her brows. “I hope everything is okay.”
Seconds later, Charlamagne is back on the line, his words rushed. “The officer we sent to pick Luke up just arrived at the school.”
“But you said he was already picked up.” Charlie grips my wrist bringing the phone closer to her mouth. “Where is he?”
“We’re doing our best to find out. It’s most likely a mix-up in messages and two officers were dispatched to the school instead of one. I’ll get it sorted out and call you right back.”
He hangs up and Charlie looks at me desperately. “What if Edie got to him?”
I pull her into my chest, cradling her head with my hand. I don’t tell her it’ll be alright. My senses are telling me something is wrong. If Edie can’t get to Charlie, or suspects an ambush, she might go after the thing Charlie loves most in the world: her son.
The minutes tick by, the atmosphere in the room growing heavier as we wait.
Charlie calls her parents to see if Luke has arrived. He hasn’t and now they’re worried too. Charlie is too upset to reassure them.
Her fear beats at me. I’ve never in my life felt so helpless.
Could I have stopped this? Yes. I should have stayed away from Charlie. Edie wouldn’t have had a reason to target either Charlie or Luke if I’d kept my distance.
Charlie shakes her head as she listens into my thoughts. “We were worried about the curse, not Edie. If the curse didn’t exist, then we’d be telling the world I’m your mate.”
She’s right. This isn’t the curse.
My phone rings and I answer quickly, putting it on speaker. “What’s going on?” I demand.
“We think Edie got to him,” the captain says grimly, his words coming out in rapid-fire. “Your bear friends were scouring the area where they think Edie made her way out of the water and into the city and they discovered the body of a policewoman with bite injuries to her neck. She was stripped of her uniform and dragged into some bushes. The officer who picked Luke up was a woman matching Edie’s description, wearing a police uniform. She gave her name as Officer Callie, the name of the dead officer.”
Charlie’s knees collapse and I drop my phone, catching her before she hits the floor. Officer Burton rushes to the kitchen, coming back with a glass of water. Charlie shakes her head and huddles against me on the floor. Her mind is blank with panic.
“What’s happening?” Charlamagne’s concerned voice comes from the phone.
Ignoring him, I say to Charlie, “I’ll get him back.” Cradling her head, I force her to look at me. “He’s alive, Charlie.”
“How do you know?” Her words are the cry of a wounded animal, her fear so great she can’t think of anything other than the danger her child is in.
I shake her gently, forcing her to focus. “I know because he’s part of you and you’re my mate. I can feel him.” I press my hand over my heart and a spark of hope leaps into her eyes. “He’s alive.”
It’s the truth. After our day at the zoo, Luke holding my hand for much of it, I forged a connection with him. It’s secondary to the connection I have with his mother, but it’s in there, a bright spark of orange, a tiny flame of life that hasn’t been extinguished yet. Charlie can hear my thoughts; she knows I’m telling the truth.
She shoves me away from her, but not angrily. “Go!” she says hoarsely. “Go get him.”
I stand, pulling her up with me. Her legs are shaking but she finds the strength to steady herself. “You bring my son back alive.”
“I promise.”
And you kill that woman. For me. For Luke. End this, she adds silently.
I will .
I turn to Officer Burton. “Duncan Sharptooth’s head of security is on his way over with reinforcements. I want them in this apartment with Charlie in case this is a ruse to get me to leave her.”
“You’re wasting time, Lennox!” Charlie snaps, shoving me toward the door. “It doesn’t matter if she’s coming here. Go save Luke!”
I head for the door, pinning Burton with a look.
He nods his understanding.
I don’t look back, don’t try to reassure Charlie again. She’s in my mind anyway, following me every step of the way as I make my way up to the roof, leaving my clothes where they drop. Once on the roof, I shift into my huge white wolf.
I pad to the edge of the building and close my eyes, inhaling deeply, concentrating.
Charlie has gone silent, but I still feel her. She doesn’t want to hamper my ability to find her son, though it’s killing her not to scream at me to hurry.
I push everything aside except Luke, conjuring his image in my mind, allowing the orange flame of his spirit to unfurl in my chest. So like his mother, but so independent too. His spark is strong and steady, lighting a path straight to him.
I have him, I tell Charlie, leaping from the roof, aiming for a window ledge on the next building, using it to propel myself higher. I run faster than I’ve ever run before, climbing and leaping, using the metal jungle to my advantage as I close in on Edie’s position.
I figure out where she’s heading and realize she knows about my special spot on the bridge.
She probably knows everything about you , Charlie says and I have to agree. I’ve had a stalker for a very long time and never realized it.
I have to cut Edie off before she can make it to the bridge. If she throws Luke off before I can stop her, he’ll die.
Charlie’s scream of fear echoes through my mind so loud it makes my head ring and nearly stops me. My wolf is torn. He wants to go after the child, but protecting our mate is his number one priority and she’s in distress.
Charlie says through her connection, I’m sorry, I’ll shut up. Please, keep going, Lennox. I’ll die if anything happens to Luke.
And I’ll die if anything happens to Charlie. I have no choice but to do everything in my power to keep them both alive.
I push myself harder and faster, my heart exploding in my chest, my paws burning from the sharp gravel and rough cement as I leap and jump through the city. I hear a shout from below but ignore it. I’m not being careful to conceal myself. My only goal is to get to Edie and save Luke.
Finally, after several more blocks, I see them. Luke is dangling from Edie’s mouth by his shoulder. He’s conscious, crying and injured where her teeth have dug into his tender flesh.
Fury rips through me and every protective instinct I have zeroes in on the woman harming my mate’s offspring. If it wasn’t before, her death has now become a foregone conclusion.
Edie’s nearing the building line where she’ll have to make her way down to street level before climbing the bridge. Before she can get there, I let out a deep howl, drawing her attention.
She stops, turns on the spot to stare at me, and hesitates, her eyes flitting around, assessing what to do next. Does she confront me here on the rooftops of New York, or does she draw me to the bridge?
I stalk closer, moving slow so I don’t alarm her into dropping Luke.
Her glittering eyes track me and when I reach the edge of the building next to the one she and Luke are on, she turns human.
She grips Luke by his injured arm, ignoring his cry of pain as she holds him over the edge of the roof. “Come any closer and I drop him!” Her voice echoes between the buildings.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
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- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28 (Reading here)
- Page 29
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- Page 35
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- Page 40
- Page 41