Rapture (Fallen Angels #4)(36)
Author: J.R. Ward

Mels turned all the way around. Rubbed her neck some more.

Man, this mist was creepy.

Checking her watch, she cocked her phone and hit send. When the call was answered, she cupped a hand around her mouth. “Mom? Hi, it’s me. Listen, I know I said I’d be home early, but I’m still at work. What? I’m sorry I can’t hear— Okay, you’re back. Yeah, I’m— Oh, no, don’t worry. I’m with about half the CPD—” Probably not the best thing to say. “No, I’m fine, Mom. Yes, it’s a homicide, but it’s a big case, and I’m glad Dick gave it to me. Yes, I promise. Okay—yup, okay, listen, I have to go—and I’ll knock on your door as soon as I get home.”

As she hung up, she didn’t think that was going to be anytime soon—and she was prepared to wait things out no matter how long it took. The body would need to be photographed, and CSI would also come in and do their thing, and then the victim could finally be removed.

Mels was going to stay until the CPD packed it in, and the newscasters went home, and any other reporter gave up.

Going over to Tony’s car, she texted him to let him know that, in fact, she hadn’t totaled his vehicle—and that she was going to treat him to lunch tomorrow as well as pick him up at eight thirty on her way in to the newsroom.

And then she crossed her coat around herself and settled back against her colleague’s front bumper.

Immediately, she stiffened again and glanced behind her. Nothing but streetlamps on the far edges of the motel’s fat parking lot. No masher sneaking up on her, no one at all, as a matter of fact.

So why the hell did she think she was being watched?

Massaging her temples, she wondered if Matthias’s paranoia wasn’t rubbing off on her. Or maybe it was more like what had happened on that bed had scrambled her brain.

Say what you would about his not remembering much, that man sure as hell knew what to do with his mouth…

On some level, she couldn’t believe that it had happened. She’d never been into casual hookups, even in college—but if Matthias hadn’t stopped them, she just might have let things go to their natural, naked conclusion.

Shocker. Especially as she knew she’d go there again.

If she ever got the chance.

Frozen in the Marriott’s basement corridor, with Jim Heron going blanket all over him, Matthias felt like a boxer. And not as in Muhammad Ali or George Foreman. As in their schlub sparring partners, the guys who the real fighters worked over at the gym before they punched the crap out of people worthy of their skills: Gun empty and by his thigh, rib cage panting, head swimming, he was beat to shit with all that running, and running into things. He didn’t think he’d been hit, however.

Someone had. The smell of fresh blood wafted down to them, and there was a dripping sound that suggested a pipe had a leak in it—and it probably wasn’t something tied to the hotel’s water system.

“Stay here,” Jim ordered.

Like he was a girl? “Fuck you.”

Together, they marched down toward the incapacitated shooter, with Jim in front because he could go a little faster.

Just inside the doors they’d busted through, a man in black, tight-fitting clothes lay flat on his back, eyes fixed and dilated on the afterlife. His throat had been sliced right under the jawline, the arteries and veins not nicked, but split clean apart.

“Messy,” Matthias muttered, glancing around and wondering about cleanup—and who in the hell their savior had been.

As he considered the pros and cons of various corporeal disposal techniques, he was dimly aware that he was totally unfazed by the death, the body, the violence of having nearly been gunned down: this was just business as usual, nothing but the practicalities of not wanting the police involved weighing on his mind.

This was how he’d lived, he thought. This was his zone.

Leaning into his cane, he lowered himself to his haunches, one knee cracking like a tree branch. “Do you have a car?”

“Not with me, but I can handle this. Do me a favor and—”

Matthias started working the body over, patting it down, peeling off extra ammo, a knife, another gun.

“Okaaaaay,” Jim said dryly. “I’m going to step outside and see if we’re clear.”

“So you don’t know who our Good Samaritan was, either.”

“Nope.”

The steel door squeaked again when Jim opened it, and for a split second, Matthias was paralyzed with fear, the terror freezing his body from his heart to his heels. Eyes bouncing around, he sought the shadows in the dark corridor, expecting them to jump out and glom onto him.

Nothing moved.

Muttering under his breath, he refocused and yanked up the man’s shirt. Kevlar vest had at least one slug in it—so he and Jim hadn’t wasted all their lead. No cell phone. And assuming Jim didn’t walk out into a bullet shower, it would appear that there was no one waiting in the wings to back this soldier up.

Sitting back, Matthias assessed the steel doors. In the center, around the locking mechanism, there was a scorched blast mark from where the now-dead attacker had blown the shit apart with some kind of a pocket bomb—

In a sudden burst, Matthias remembered his own hands on a detonator, saw himself fingering an IED with a vertical focus. He had prepared the thing for himself, the combination of electronics and blast potential a carefully constructed exit strategy….

Jim was wrong. He hadn’t hated himself or what he’d become. He’d just gotten exhausted with being who he was.

And that had been—

The headache came on strong, like his brain had the equivalent of a muscle cramp, the pain wiping his cognitive slate clean, his memories blocked by the agony.

Shit, he wanted access to what was hidden, but he couldn’t afford to get stuck defenseless, and crouching over a stiff.

Glancing down into the face of the dead, he forced himself to pull out of the amnesia and note the color change in the guy’s skin, the ruddy complexion from exertion draining out and being replaced with an opaque gray. Tracking the death process, focusing on it and it alone, he dragged himself back to reality.

“Do I know you?” he asked the remains.

Part of him was convinced he did. The face was a young white guy’s, lean from lack of body fat, pale from lack of sun, as if he were used to working at night. Then again, how many millions of midtwenty Caucasians were out there?

No, he thought, he knew this kid from somewhere.

In fact, he had the sense he had chosen the son of a bitch.