Behind us, the Court went about doing whatever it was that occupied a nest of elfin in the middle of an enormous overgrown park. Ryder was up before me, leaving the bed we shared before I’d been forced out from under the bedsheets by my ravenous cat. The sheets still smelled of him, and I’d taken a long moment inhaling his scent on my pillows before creakily stumbling toward the bathroom. There was a part of me aching to crawl back into that bed and bury myself back into its soft caress, but Kenny had a piece of my past I wanted and I had a piece of his I needed to give to him. The wafer of Dempsey’s ashes was beginning to weigh on me, a negligible white disk shaped out of the remains of the man who’d fed me, taught me how to shoot, and in his own way, called me son.
And now I was going to hunt down his brother, force him to hand over whatever it was Dempsey gave him to hold on to, and possibly drag him back to the Post to cash in on the bounty on his head while trying to avoid getting killed by anyone coming after me like Gibbons did.
Or, a typical Gracen Tuesday.
“That Mom?” Razor’s voice cracked, at odds with the growing redwood height he’d also gotten from his father. His face was all Najiri—elegant lines stamped with a regal beauty—but the rest of him was pure Jonas, including the healthy respect he had for the woman who’d brought him into this world. “Because if you don’t answer, she’s going to ping me next, and there’s nothing you can promise me that’ll make me not answer.”
“Hold on. Just….” Jonas gritted his teeth, huddling over his link. “Give me a minute. She doesn’t know I came with you.”
“Well, that takes the teeth out of the dog’s bite,” Cari drawled, swinging a duffel into the Scout’s open back hatch. “And it’s not like you’re going to be alone. I’m coming with you.”
“Don’t get me started on you going with him,” Jonas hissed under his breath, one hand covering his link. “Because—”
“Hi, Najiri,” I said loudly toward Jonas’s wrist as I walked by with the bag I’d packed up. He gave me a panicked look, and I heard Najiri’s querulous prod at her husband, asking him where he was. “Thanks for dropping the truck off, Jonas. I should let Razor take you back home.”
“Oh, that’s just cold,” Razor called out from the Chevy’s open window. “Dragging me into this. Dad, get into the truck!”
“I’ll be fine, Jonas.” I dumped my bag into the Scout, then ambled back over to where he stood, still trying to dampen down Najiri’s rising voice. Patting him on his uninjured shoulder, I murmured, “Thank you for letting me borrow the Scout. If it gets blown up, I’ll buy you a new one.”
“Do not—Najiri, let me call you back. I need to talk some sense into this boy,” Jonas muttered. “No, the pointy-eared one. The one you and I made is hiding in the truck trying to pretend he didn’t just yell at me to move my ass.”
Razor rolled up the window and began to studiously ignore all of us, burying his nose into a battered paperback I’d read more than a few times myself, its pages rolled and stained from living in the Chevy’s glove compartment.
“There’s going to be hell to pay when I get home, but I couldn’t in good conscience let you go wandering off to get killed without at least trying to talk some sense into you.” Jonas lurched his way around to the back of the Scout, his mouth set into a thin, painful line. Medical probably argued like hell to keep him in, but knowing Jonas, he’d bullied his way out, promising to do everything his spouses told him to do in order to get better… then promptly broke every single one of those promises before Medical was even a dot in the car’s rearview mirror. Still, I appreciated his stubbornness, even if I thought it was misplaced. “Did you pack enough sterile shot packs? Different sizes? You’d be surprised at how many of those thin ones you go through. Seems like I’m constantly replacing them.”
“I wasn’t planning on getting shot that much,” I drawled. “It’s a simple recon. Go down, ferret him out, and drag his sorry ass back up to the surface. He shouldn’t be that hard to find. I’ve already got a lead on where he’s holed up. I just need to pin him down. The med kit is set up, and if push comes to shove, we just blitz out of there.”
“I just think it’s a mistake. And yeah, I know you can handle yourself. Christ knows I’ve watched you get out of some tight scrapes, but this time it feels different. I don’t like someone putting a target between your shoulder blades.” Jonas wiped at his face, but the fatigue graying his skin didn’t magically disappear. He looked beyond tired, edging close into old, but I wasn’t sure how much of that was his needing to step back from Stalking or the stress of Gibbons’s attempt on his life. “How far in are you going to be going? Past the river?”
“Yeah, past the river.” I mapped out in my head where one of my contacts said Kenny was spotted. “Not past the tik-tik lines but close. I’m guessing he’s trying to avoid any LEOs. Farther in you go, the less badges you run into, but people are going to know he’s got a bounty on him. He’s got to stay hidden, but why come down here? At least up in Vegas, he’d have his own contacts. He’s spinning in the wind here.”
“Unless he’s burned all his bridges there and someone down here owes him a solid. Kenny’s worse of an asshole than Dempsey ever was.” Jonas grunted, and he shifted, easing his shoulder. “He’s down here for something or someone. Think he’s going to pull you into something?”
“Hasn’t tagged me, so I don’t think so, but Kenny’s never met a knife he didn’t love to stick into someone’s back.” I shook my head. “I don’t know why Dempsey gave him the contract stuff to hold on to, but he said it seemed like the last place in the world anyone would think he’d stash it.”
“This stuff’s that important?” Jonas eyed me. “What do you think it’s going to tell you? You know where you come from. I mean, you said you’re wearing your daddy’s face. What more do you need?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, scratching at the black-pearl dragon scale beneath my skin. “It’s stupid, and it’s not like it’s going to change who I am, but I feel like I’ve got to at least know who is out there putting targets on me. Tanic made me. I don’t even know the Sidhe he used to get that half, but I can’t imagine their family being too thrilled about it, if they even knew. There’s just too many pieces floating around out there, and I’ve got to put a face on whoever knows I exist and wants to make sure I stop existing.”
“And we’re sure it’s not the Wild Hunt Master? Wouldn’t put it past him to want someone else to do his dirty work. He’s sent others before. Maybe he figures sending a human this time will do the job.”
“Now, maybe? Back then, no. It was someone else. Dempsey was paid to pull me out of there and hand me over, dead or alive,” I reminded him. “So that’s one unknown. The contract on me now could still be that person or Tanic. Whatever Kenny’s got will give me some idea on where to start on the past, and push comes to shove, I’ll start digging into the now if he doesn’t get me any answers.”