Chapter Two

Chapter Two

CHUNKS OF HALF-DIGESTED meat and hair splattered the ground between Cade’s bare, filthy feet. He spat the sour taste out of his mouth and then replaced it as he retched again. There wasn’t much left to expel from his guts, just watery bile and the sharp dregs of yesterday’s whiskey.

He braced his forearm against the grimy wall and rested his sweaty forehead on it. It hurt to swallow, his stomach ached, and for some reason, he stank of meat grease and burnt hair. Cade let out a ragged, shaky breath and swallowed hard to dislodge the lump of gristle and regret stuck in his throat.

“You okay there?” someone asked him. They put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed an awkward circle, as if he was a baby that needed to be burped. “Do you need me to call someone?”

“I don’t need anything,” Cade lied between clenched teeth. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look it.”

Cade looked up from under the thick straggle of his hair, grimy from the muddy puddle he’d been using as a pillow when he woke up. He curled his lip back from his teeth. It wasn’t a smile.

“Did I ask you?” he rasped, voice cold and very precise. “And if I did, was that when I told you that you could fucking touch me?”

The man looked embarrassed and a bit offended as he pulled his hand away. “I’ve never seen a wolf be sick before,” he said. “Not after they shifted, anyhow. That’s all.“

“Now you have. Change your life?”

The man glared at him as he stepped back. “I hope you choke on it,” he said over his shoulder as he stalked away.

“You too,” Cade muttered as he pulled himself together and stood up straight. “Fuck.”

It happened.

Nobody liked to talk about it—it wasn’t exactly nice dinner party conversation to have with your null neighbors—but that didn’t mean they didn’t know. Sometimes, during the full moon, you ate someone you knew. A neighbor. A spouse. That one asshole from the HOA that wouldn’t shut up about your lawn. Not often. Most nulls either stayed locked up this time of the month or were Night Shift and could take care of themselves….

That was the wrong train of thought.

Cade’s stomach wrung itself out like a filthy flannel and found a last handful of puke to add to the puddle on the ground.

It happened, but you weren’t meant to know. The wolf took the details of the night’s menu with it, and unless someone found an earring jammed in their back tooth, they never knew. Suspect, sometimes. A guilty itch that gnawed at them when the cops arrived to inform the neighbor’s widow. A shared, queasy “maybe” when the papers reported on a body found in the same area you’d woken up in. Not for sure, though.

Legally, though, the cause of death in those cases was “the moon.” It made it easier to face the widow when you dropped off a casserole, to get on with your life.

It turned out it wasn’t so easy when you’d killed the man you loved.

Cade snorted, and a sour mix of stomach acid and puke stung the back of his nose. No. He couldn’t shed his guilt by pretending this was some tragic moon-crossed romance like Bonnie and Clyde. It had been a crush and the taste of Marlow’s breath on Cade’s tongue and maybe a date one day. He’d liked Marlow.

Then Cade had torn him apart and gulped down the soft bits.

Fuck.

Tears stung? Cade’s eyes. He scrubbed them away impatiently on the back of his hand. Crying never helped anyone.

“Grief is just self-pity in a fancy coat,” the memory of his dad’s voice clipped out harshly in Cade’s mind. “Anyone really gives a shit; they get mad.”

Cade twisted his mouth into a joyless smile at how easily that came back to him. He’d tried to unlearn his dad’s lessons for years, but scratch the surface and there they were. This time, though, his father had a point.

It might have been Cade who killed Marlow, his teeth that sank into the flesh he’d kissed earlier that day. That just made him the weapon. Whoever had forced them off the road and left the moon to do his dirty work for him, they were the murderer.

And once Cade didn’t have a bit of Marlow’s liver caught between his teeth, that might actually feel true.

His stomach cramped again, but he’d milked the last bit of bile out of it already. Nothing came up. Cade spat again—the back of his tongue tasted foul—and wiped his mouth as he stepped away from the puddle of puke. He headed back into the street and stalked toward the nearest liquor store.

First of all, he needed cheap sweats and a bottle of whiskey. Those were easy. Then he’d work on answers… and payback.

When he found out who was responsible for what happened to Marlow—for what they’d made Cade do for them—he’d show them why he always did his own dirty work. It was illegal to use the moon as a deadly weapon, but only if Night Shift found out what you’d done.

Lem was good company for a black mood. He didn’t ask a lot of questions, and he liked to talk about himself.

“…Beth is awesome. Don’t get me wrong.” Lem sprawled along the gray leather couch that took up one wall of the office, his boots propped up on the arm. His self-centered ramble was a comfortingly familiar background drone. “But what if I miss cock, you know?”

Cade pulled a gray Henley on over his head and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans. His cheap sweats had been tossed in the trash to be burned. Usually, he’d just have them laundered and thrown into one of the clothes banks around the city—for the indigent or people who couldn’t afford to replace outfits they lost the night before—but the cheap fleece was stained with blood and sweat.

In the eyes of the law, Cade hadn’t done anything wrong. It still felt like evidence. He wanted it gone.

“You broke up a year ago,” he pointed out to Lem. “If you want cock, take your feet off the leather and go get it.”

Lem snorted and moved his feet but nothing else. “I mean if we got back together, obviously,” he said. “Keep up, old man.”

Cade paused in the middle of pushing his sleeves up his forearms and gave Lem a steady look.

“What?” Lem asked, one eyebrow quirked. “You are older than me.”

Vanity prickled under Cade’s skin. He was older than Lem, but only by five years—enough that he’d always felt responsible for his kid brother, even as Lem coasted through life unflappable and unfazed, but not enough to pass comment on. And older didn’t mean old.

Besides, Cade didn’t plan to look his age for a very long time. He paid a very expensive dermatologist a lot of money to take care of his skin and make sure of that.

Unlike Lem, who got tired of burning the candle at both ends and just tossed the whole thing in the fire.

“I was thinking of bidding on a contract back home. For the refinery security,” Cade said idly as he tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “It would make sense to send you since you know the area.”

Lem finally straightened up from his sprawl. He draped his arms over the back of the couch and made a placatory gesture with both hands. “Okay. Okay. I just thought I’d float it, a brotherly in-joke, see how it went down.”

“Like the Titanic,” Cade told him. “I don’t need a nickname.”

Guilt scratched at Cade. He’d killed someone that he… cared about—that struck the right balance—and yet here he was, distracted by a jab about his age from his idiot brother. Even if only briefly. He combed his fingers through his hair and grimaced at the knots he found.

Lem looked down at his nails and picked at the quick of one with his thumb. A frown pinched his eyebrows together, as if the rough tag of skin took all his focus.

“You okay?” he asked off-handedly.

The “no” stuck in Cade’s throat like a stone. It nearly choked him, but he was more surprised that he wanted to say it than that he couldn’t. He had never been the sort of man who talked about his emotions. It wasn’t how he’d been raised, and it wasn’t what people looked for in his line of work

No one wanted a thug who needed to “talk it out.” Or a CEO, for that matter. They wanted someone who’d suck it up and get on with the job. Cade had always been good at that.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Morning after the moon before.”

Lem didn’t look convinced, but then he was an idiot, not stupid. He didn’t argue. They had, after all, been raised in the same house and by the same bastard.

“Yeah. I get that,” Lem stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles. “So, you think Beth is serious about that guy she’s with or—”

“I think you should stop dating co-workers,” Cade said. He held his hand up to interrupt whatever Lem had been about to say and changed the subject. “And remember I had you dredge up info on what happened with the Night Shift under Piper?”

Lem cocked his head to the side. He looked interested. “Sure,” he said.

“I want more.”

“Like?”

Cade took a seat. The whiskey he’d bought in the store sat between the two tumblers from last night. It wasn’t open. Cade remedied that and splashed a measure on top of the dregs he’d left.

“So that nothing needs drowned, huh?” Lem said.

Their dad had plenty of vices, but he’d not been a drinker. His women had, though. Not an easy man to live with, Benny Deacon. It had never helped, but there was a first time for everything.

“It’s worth a try.” Cade took a swig of the whiskey. It wasn’t cheap, not for a wake, and the burn that spread down his throat and into his chest was mellow. The taste of oak and tannin lingered on his tongue as he leaned back into the chair. He turned the glass in his hand and watched the sun shine through the amber liquid. His phone buzzed politely on the desk. They both ignored it. “I want everything on Piper. Stripmine his life. Who’s his lawyer, who visits him, who sends him money? If there’s anyone he cares about—a mother, an ex, a child—I want you to turn their financials upside down to find any money that they can’t account for.”

Lem wrinkled his nose dubiously, “I’m good,” he said. “But—“

“Requisition whatever resources you need to get the job done.” Cade drained the whiskey and didn’t bother to refill the glass. Lem was right; the drink could wait. It hadn’t worked anyhow. Cade could still taste the bloody grit of guilt in the back of his throat. “By the time you’re finished, I want to know Piper better than his mother does. He might be in prison, but someone in San Diego is still doing his dirty work. This is how we find out who.”

“Okay.” Lem pushed himself up off the couch in one easy, angular movement. He hooked his thumbs into his jeans pockets and pulled a thoughtful face. “Shouldn’t take too long. Piper burned bridges when he went down. He can’t have that many friends left.”

Cade drummed his fingers absently on his thigh. “Don’t depend on it,” he said. “Piper made a lot of money doing odd jobs for bad men. The courts clawed some back, but he was a smart man. He’ll have enough cached away to buy himself friends.”

“Not good ones,” Lem said.

“For this sort of work?” Cade said dryly. “The last thing you want is good.”

Lem snorted acknowledgment of that. Before he could ask anything else, someone rapped on Cade’s closed door and waited.

“What?” Cade asked.

The door opened, and his assistant leaned in around the jamb. Her gaze flicked from Cade to Lem and then back again. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “Captain O’Hara from the SDPD is on the line. Are you here?”

“No.”

She looked slightly surprised at the answer. Cade didn’t often dodge the opportunity to remind the cops that he was an asshole with a smart mouth or the satisfaction of reminding them they couldn’t touch him until he went a lot further out of bounds than he did.

Not today. Cade doubted there would be anything satisfying about his next conversation with O’Hara, and it wasn’t one he wanted to have over the phone.

Lem cleared his throat. “Do you want me to go down and bail any of our guys they scooped up out of the Crate?” he offered.

A miracle, Cade thought dryly. Lem wasn’t lazy, but he didn’t look for work either. And, come to think of it, he was actually pretty lazy too. Lem was lucky he was blood, and more importantly, good at his job when he wasn’t slacking.

“No,” he said again. Lem opened his mouth to argue, but Cade cut him off roughly. The last thing he needed today was for Lem to find out what had happened from angry cops that didn’t have the whole story. “I already told you what to do, Lem. I’ll deal with O’Hara in my own time.”

Lem stood his ground for a minute—while Cade’s assistant discreetly made herself scarce—until Cade scowled at him and growled, “Do you need something else?”

“Do you?”

“Get out,” Cade told him.

“Now you just sound like our dad,” Lem cracked. He held up his hands in surrender when Cade started to get up. “I’m going. I’m going. Take a cab to the station if you’re going to try and drown anything else while I’m not here.”

Lem left, the door closed behind him, and Cade was alone with his thoughts. He slouched down in the chair until his knees nudged against the coffee table. Usually the shift left him energized, but not this time. His mind was full of things that might or might not have happened.

Cade rubbed his eyes. It wasn’t the first time he’d killed someone. That was part of the job, although it had been a while. He didn’t know if this bothered him more because he’d liked Marlow or because he didn’t remember it, as if it were something the wolf had stolen from him.

Or maybe, he thought bleakly, it’s because you ate him.

He opened his eyes and looked at the whiskey. The sun caught in the curves of the bottle and winked at him. The idea of another glass—just the one—sounded better by the second, and this time it might work.

Or maybe the glass after that one.

Cade grimaced and got up before he gave in to temptation. He didn’t want to let O’Hara pick at this particular scab, but it wouldn’t go any better if he was drunk. He stashed the whiskey in his desk drawer and grabbed his keys.

Might as well get it over with.

The vending machine had a list of drinks available. Cade would lay money that they all tasted like his cup of Bovril, thin and vaguely greasy. He tossed it in the trash and patted his pockets down for the mints he’d grabbed earlier.

He thumbed the last square capsule out of the wrapper and popped it into his mouth. By this point, he barely tasted the mint as he crunched the sweet, just registered the wintergreen sting of it in his sinuses.

“Deacon,” O’Hara said as he opened the door and held it. He gestured with his free hand for Cade to go with him. “We can talk outside. I need a smoke break, anyhow.”

It wasn’t, Cade supposed as he rubbed the crumbs of mint against the roof of his mouth, the sort of conversation you wanted to have overheard. O’Hara probably didn’t want his men to listen to how one of them had been torn apart, and Cade didn’t want to give whatever fuck had used him as a weapon the satisfaction.

The two of them headed down the hall to the elevators—O’Hara broke the stilted silence with a few awkward questions that Cade answered brusquely—and took it up to the ground floor. It was quiet. Most people still had today off to recuperate. A food truck pulled up to the curb passed out fried rice and broth so salty that Cade could feel his nose dry out from feet away.

One person was ahead of them in the queue, a slender man in jeans and a T-shirt. His dark hair curled around the collar, and Cade squashed the sentimental ache in his chest under a mental boot. He wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life, not even the rest of the month, flinching every time he saw a man in black with untidy hair.

O’Hara stepped in front of him.

“You didn’t order me coffee, did you?” O’Hara asked in a disgruntled voice as he picked up a cup and sniffed suspiciously at the lid.

“No. That’s mine,” Marlow said as he turned around. He plucked the cup out of O’Hara’s hand and replaced it with a different one. Then he turned to Cade and held out a cup toward him. There were bruises on the backs of his hands and scabs on his knuckles. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and his eyes looked very pale squinted against the morning light. “Chicken broth?”

He was alive.

The relief of it felt like a roller coaster as it squeezed the air out of Cade to make room for a breathless delight. He took a step forward, ready to forget about everyone else there and drag Marlow into a probably inappropriate hug. Then a second realization grabbed him by the scruff and pulled him up short.

Marlow was alive, and the little bastard had let Cade think he’d killed him.

It hurt.

Cade hadn’t expected that. Anger, sure, or frustration at the incompetence of it all. Instead, his chest ached uncomfortably with old adolescent vulnerability.

He hated it. The guilt had been better.

Luckily, it didn’t last. Or it wouldn’t. One thing Cade had learned over the years was act like you didn’t care enough and eventually it would be true. Indifference could be a shield. Or a weapon.

He took the cup out of Marlow’s hand.

“Dinner and conversation,” he drawled. “You’d think this was a date.”

The chill in his voice seemed to register as Marlow gave him a curious look. Maybe he’d have asked, but O’Hara was already at his shoulder.

“Marlow told me what happened last night,” O’Hara said. He waved them toward an empty stretch of railing opposite the stairs that led down to the street. Cade let himself be herded in that direction. “But he didn’t see the accident itself.”

Cade leaned back against the railing, one arm braced on the metal rod. He sipped the broth—thick enough with salt it had the tang of blood—and studied O’Hara.

“That’s because it wasn’t an accident,” he said.

“I told him that much,” Marlow said dryly.

Cade ignored him. He sipped his broth and watched the people milling around them over O’Hara’s shoulder. The Night Shift hadn’t been the only cops that Piper had in his pocket, and they weren’t the only people in San Diego he could ask a favor of. Even from prison.

“One of your men tried to kill us,” he told O’Hara.

“You sure about that?”

Cade raised his eyebrows. “Maybe not,” he said. “It was someone in SDPD gear, behind the wheel of a Bearcat. I guess it could have been anybody. Maybe you should ask your friends at the TV station to put the word out and find them?”

A muscle ticked in O’Hara’s cheek, and his mouth tightened in annoyance. Cade had been wrong. This was satisfying, after all.

“The SDPD was not responsible for that leak,” O’Hara said.

“Please,” Cade said with a sneer. “You don’t even know which of your officers are corrupt. Yet Cold Winds takes the flak for Haley’s death while you and the Night Shift stay above reproach? That leak worked out well for you, didn’t it?”

O’Hara stared at him for a moment and then tossed what was left of his broth into the shrubbery. He’d caught on. This wasn’t a friendly conversation anymore. A lizard appeared from the roots to lick at the greasy sheen on the leaves.

“I’ll give your attitude a pass, after what happened,”

“It’s the same attitude I always have,” Cade said.

“I’ve noticed,” O’Hara said bluntly. “Mr. Deacon, if the SDPD are involved—“

“If?”

“—they’ll be dealt with. The same way Piper was.”

“What? Too late?”

Marlow snorted at that jab. He shrugged when O’Hara turned to scowl at him. For a moment, it was hard to remember why Cade was angry with him. Then Cade thought of the greasy knots of half-digested meat as they slipped out of his throat, and it all came back to him.

“But let us handle the investigation,” O’Hara said flatly. “The SDPD appreciate your help on Haley’s case, but that’s where it ends. Stay out of the case, keep a low profile, and as soon as we can, the SDPD will make sure that the press have the full truth about Haley’s death. More than that, we’ll make sure Cold Winds comes out of this looking good.”

“And what if I don’t do that?”

“Then you’re an idiot,” O’Hara said. “We know what we’re doing, and just because Cold Winds calls itself a private police force, and acts as one in some locations, doesn’t give you jurisdiction to operate in San Diego. I am trying to give you every opportunity to make all our lives easier. Don’t stand in my way.”

A variety of sarcastic remarks occurred to Cade. He discarded them all. It might be fun to tweak O’Hara’s, and by extension, the SDPD’s noses, but that didn’t mean it was smart. He gave in instead, with a shrug and a thin smile.

“Fair point,” Cade said. “I don’t get paid to fix the SDPD’s fuck-ups, after all. Clean your own house, Captain, and keep it away from mine.”

He drained his cup and tossed it into the nearest bin as he stalked away.

Marlow didn’t chase after him, which meant there were at least six withering put-downs that Cade wouldn’t get to use. That was definitely what he ground his teeth on as he headed down to the street to find a cab.