Chapter 4

4

Okay. I slept in a man’s bed without knowing his name, but in my defense, he wasn’t in it.

Score one point for me.

I slept under Morpheus’ tender watch until my internal clock screamed to open my eyes, or was it my empty stomach? Healing takes a toll on me, the same as others in my former pack, except when they’ve finished repairing their bodies, they shift, hunt, and eat their kill.

I end up at the nearest Mexican food drive-thru.

Which sounded like heaven right about now.

Groggy and a bit confused, I discovered I still lay in the lush bed with the black satin sheets and the light-as-gossamer red comforter. The bad news? I was still in the care of my last client, and the more I remembered our recent conversation, the less I desired to wake up.

Mr. X claimed he didn’t intend to kill me to remove his weird magical shrunken hand, and I sure as sweet hell don’t want that thing inside of me. But how the hell do you trust someone with your life when they won’t even tell you their name?

“At least for the moment I’m alone.” My voice breaks the silence, feeling unnaturally loud, scratching its way out from the Saharan desert in my throat.

I pressed my hand to my sternum and psychically felt for the artifact. Sure enough, a tiny buzz inside me hummed, “Yes, I’m here. I’m home.”Home, it says. Fucking hell.

But that doesn’t get me out of here or supply the answers I need, the ones Mr. X will soon demand.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed.

Okay. The second nap performed its magic, and now an overwhelming need for a beef burrito with extra cheese, sour cream, and jalape?o sauce burned through me.

For a hot second, I heard something outside the wide double door at the far side of the room. So I sucked in my breath, one foot on the floor, half sitting on the bed, and waited.

But whatever it was, it vanished just as soon as it arrived. Hmmm.

I slipped off the bed, curled my toes into the plush rug covering half the room, and stretched again. As Mr. X said, I’d have died if I was human. But aside from the gnawing hunger and the sense I may have lost a little weight, I feel fantastic.

Almost great enough to track Kye down and kick his ass for getting in my way and sabotaging this job. I also should get my ass kicked for not noticing that he’d caught my scent. How else could he have known I was out there or followed me to the artifact?

Then again, he seemed to know where the object was, too.

Had I stolen something from Kye? Was Mr. X the true owner of the object? Or had I crossed Kye and stopped him from doing something stupid?

My guess? Stupid is as stupid does, and Kye has a penchant for choosing stupid.

I caught sight of myself in a mirror across the room. I’m no longer in my stinky, muddy clothes but in a soft pair of lounge pants and a tank top that hangs so light that it feels like I’m naked. With its sheer texture, I may as well be.

This was too much. How dare Mr. X strip, wash, and dress me in something that left my unmentionables visible?

Despite the lack of decency, this thing was heaven to wear.

Across the room from the double doors are three more, a glass French door that I assume heads out to a balcony and two sleek steel doors that match the decor on the third wall, with the bed, side tables, and a modern armoire.

“Guessing one is the bathroom, and the other is a closet?” I said, taking stock of the place. “Here’s hoping because my bladder is about to explode.” My voice sounds unnaturally loud in the utter silence of the room, and I realize I can’t even hear an air conditioner running in this perfectly temperature-controlled room.

“Jesus, I should’ve demanded more money. He’s fucking loaded.”

I opened the first steel door and glanced into a walk-in closet filled with women’s clothes. It’s half the size of the tiny two-bedroom apartment I share with Chastity. It’s filled with stuff I would wear. I’m getting creeped out because this level of detail implied someone spent time and money investigating me and made plans for contingencies. How did I not notice someone spying on me? What if getting me here had always been the plan?

I huffed and opened the next door to a gleaming white and steel en suite. The porcelain goddess beckoned.

“Thank, fuck.”

After taking advantage of the facilities and gratefully unwrapping the toothbrush I had discovered packaged in plastic on the edge of the sink. I surveyed myself in this full-length mirror, but every bruise and scrape I had sustained earlier had vanished, leaving my skin perfectly smooth beneath the sheer pajamas. My hair was shiny and clean, despite what had to have been at least a full day or more of sleep while I recovered from my injuries.

I combed it out with the brand new boar bristled brush I discovered on the counter—suspiciously similar to the one I kept in my bathroom—and went back to the closet. There’s only one outfit that’s mine folded on the dresser in the center of the closet. The rest of the clothing was all my size, tagged, and freshly pressed.

Worry niggled my brain. With only a moment of hesitation for the soft silk blouse I ran between my fingers, I dress in my own clothes as I considered my next steps. The fact remained that Mr. X knows I have the stone claw inside me, and I shuddered as I contemplated it lodged inside my chest.

I placed a hand over my sternum and reached past the steady, if a little fast, beating of my heart to the thrum of magic underneath. There’s no mistaking the sensation of wholeness I feel pressing back against my palm.

The artifact resides there, and it is happy in its new home.

Shit.

No wonder Mr. X was furious with me. He paid me to retrieve it, and though I possessed it, I couldn’t hand the object to him. At least I was correct about one thing. Kye didn’t get his hands on it, and I did find it, as I promised.

I wonder if he’ll be any more forgiving when he discovers the artifact wants to live in my body. I doubt it. Mr. X doesn’t strike me as the forgiving type.

Ten minutes later, dressed, cleaned up, and with my breath no longer capable of knocking a full-grown man to his knees, I pulled the double doors. To my surprise, they weren’t locked. When I stepped outside, I found no guard, but a sleek hotel with the same industrial accents in ‘my’ room. The doors closed behind me, and I stopped short as the latch clicked.

Oh, fuck.

I whirled and re-tried the doors to my room, and thankfully, they opened. I stepped back inside and searched the rest of the room for more of my things, finally discovering my house key, phone, and wallet in one of the island drawers in the middle of the giant closet.

A glance at the phone tells me I’ve been asleep for almost three days—longer than I usually take to heal. Shit. I was even closer to death than I initially suspected. Maybe long enough for Kye to have moved on from losing the artifact and decided I’m dead. But I doubt I’m that lucky.

My hip bag is gone, possibly torn off in the water or when I was fighting Kye. I didn’t think about it when we were both trying to get the magical hand. Realizing it’s gone hurts now. It took me months and several lesser bags before I found “Carl, the sidekick side satchel,” and I already feel the loss keenly. The right bag could make all the difference in a job.

I tucked my wallet into my back pocket and my keys into the front and wedged my phone in my bra. It’s not ideal, but whoever collected my things didn’t also think to grab a pair of cargo pants from my place, so I’m now stuck with the usual girl-sized pockets and the problems they create.

With my pounding heart pulsing at the back of my throat, I exited the room again, this time venturing down the stairs of the balcony and into what I assume will be a lobby, only to find that the decor grows more industrial and less posh on the ground floor. Not a lobby at all, by the looks of things.

The room was half the height of the warehouse, meaning that someone built the second floor by halving the interior space upward. The corrugated steel warehouse walls had been covered by drywall. On second glance, I find the dull beige walls and ceiling were constructed of the much more expensive acoustic board. Smart. No sense in letting Law Enforcement overhear your nefarious conversations. Make them work for it, right?

The floor was polished concrete, like the big box warehouse store, though several oriental rugs of various sizes graced it. I shuddered with an image of dead bodies getting rolled up in whatever rug was handy and dragged to the swamp. Mr. X seemed smart enough not to do his dirty work here, wasn’t he? Still, I suppose, a criminal must be prepared for every contingency.

A single woman wearing a headset sat behind an ebony half-circle desk, and several men with their weapons in clear view stand in the open area. Three more are hunched over a table playing poker. Others loitered outside the building through clouded panes of glass.

The woman barely glanced at me as I approached, and her practiced look of boredom almost seems believable.

“Sleeping Beauty finally wakes up, huh?” she drawled as she typed away at her computer.

I felt eyes on my back and resisted the urge to look toward the men on the other side of the large room. Everybody’s pretending to be oblivious, but they know I’m here, too.

Drumming my fingers on the counter, I nodded. “Yeah. Thanks for my clothes and the toothbrush and whatnot. You’re the one who went to my apartment, right?”

She finally gives me her full attention. “I did, but how did you know that?”

“Oh,” I paused, weighing the risk of telling her I wasn’t technically human over lying and her seeing through it because I’m a terrible liar. “I smelled you on my clothes and in the bathroom. You wear a nice perfume.”

“You could smell that still?”

I shrugged. “It is a nice perfume.” And nice styling products and nice laundry detergent. But I think I’ll leave the rest out. At least then, it’s not a lie.

The woman blinked as she studied me. Finally, she said, “Well, thanks. You should probably go back to your room, though. I can order lunch if you’d like.”

I glanced toward the door. There’s nothing directly between it and me, and no one’s pointing a gun at my head or telling me to stay inside. “No, thanks. I’ll just run out and get myself something. Am I still in Baton Rouge?”

She nodded. “Still in Baton Rouge.”

“Next question. If I leave, will that stop me from being able to come back?”

She stared at me like I just sprouted horns. “Um, no, you can come back. This is a safe house for people he needs to keep out of sight.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Seems like plenty of people are in sight here?”

“Those are the people the Boss wants to be seen. Security.”

I must have displayed disbelief on my face because she bit her lip and handed me a business card with her name and number on it. “I’m Casey. Call me if you need a ride, okay?”

“Thanks, Casey. I’m Elena. I appreciate it. Don’t worry. I want to figure out what happened just as much as your boss does. I’m not going far.”

Just home. But first a Mexican drive- thru. Then maybe a steakhouse. Yeah, I am definitely low on iron right now. Steak sounds better now than it has in a long time. Spinach and a side of beans might help with the low-iron thing, too. A girl has got to get her veggies. My mouth salivated as I planned my hypothetical meal.

I waved to Casey. “See you soon.”

She nodded and returned to her work.

The men playing poker barely even looked at me as I crossed the room to the rusty metal door. The one staring out the window gives me a quick appraising look followed by a nod.

“Don’t go too far,” he commanded casually. “I only enjoy chasing girls on my own time, not on the company’s dime.”

I slowed as I passed and flashed him a grin. “I would’ve thought getting paid for it would make it more fun.”

He leaned in, eyes narrowing. “They don’t let me play with ’em like I want to when I’m on the clock.”

I gulped and took a quick step away from him before he burst into a belly laugh.

“Just don’t go getting yourself in trouble before the boss is done with you, kid,” he added. His brown eyes gleamed with innocent mirth, then he pointed to himself and added, “The name’s Hoss, in case you need it.”

I nodded, then squeezed between him and the doorframe before anyone can change their minds or have more fun at my expense. Not that it matters. Mr. X will pick me up again whenever he wants.

Hopefully, it’s before I run into Kye again.

Because a reckoning was coming. I could feel it in my bones.