Foul Play, page 5
part #1 of BOOK SIX Series
Alpha-Delta-Six!
Annoyed, dazed, and more relieved than she cared to admit, Peri watched the man she’d crossed paths with that morning smash his fist into the Albino’s face. The pale man fell back and shook his head like a wet dog. His fist shot out. Alpha-Delta ducked and drove another punch into the Albino’s belly.
Peri rolled to her feet and staggered; her brain shifted, and blood slid down her throat. She hurt from landing on her bike, the sidewalk, the earth. Her face throbbed. She sucked in a breath and squinted at the violent altercation playing out a few feet away.
The sun was sinking beyond the horizon; street lights flickered to life. The library faced Egret Lake. A small park sat on the northern side, and a strip of thick pine trees lined the southern edge. There was no one around to witness the crazy taking place. And no one around to help.
Not that Alpha-Delta appeared to need any help–
The Albino landed a blow, a good one, but Alpha-Delta barely moved. Instead, his hand shot out and he slapped the Albino across the face. Hard.
The Albino staggered back a step and shook his head again.
Alpha Delta–who looked more like the Grim Reaper than GI Joe–only followed and struck again, so fast his movement was a blur. Another brutal slap; the Albino went to his knees.
The sudden screech of car tires made Peri turn to see a familiar black town car lurch to a stop at the curb. The blackened passenger window slid down; a 9mm appeared, and she hit the ground. Bullets spat into the air; a heartbeat later, a hot, huge body landed atop hers and rolled them behind the weathered wooden Hidden Hills Library sign. Pine splintered into the air as the rounds penetrated the wood; thud, thud, thud!
The tires squealed again, and the car took off.
Silence fell like a hammer, and for a long moment, Peri didn’t move. Her heart beat like a drum in her ears; a wall of heated, tensile muscle and hard bone surrounded her. The scent of sandalwood and spice filled her nostrils, and a harsh breath touched her cheek. She closed her eyes, savoring, for just a brief moment, the strange, otherworldly sensation she felt.
Safe. She felt safe.
Her eyes popped open, and terror tore through her. She turned and shoved Alpha-Delta aside.
“What’d you go and do that for?” she demanded. “I had him right where I wanted him!”
SIX
Soren glowered at the woman who was beginning to vex the hell out of him, his blood hot, his temper climbing.
“You did not have him,” he bit out. “That bastard almost broke your jaw.”
“He was mine!” Peri pushed to her feet, stumbled back a step, and when he went to steady her, she snarled at him.
“Now he’s gone,” she continued and stomped over to her fallen bike. “So thanks for nothing!”
Soren took a deep breath and told himself to calm down. “You need to tell me what you’re caught up in.”
She swung around and glared at him. Her cheek was bleeding. Again. And she might have been a tiny, delicate looking thing, but the ferocity and skill with which she’d fought that pale bastard had shocked Soren.
And aroused him.
Goddamn it.
“I mean it,” he growled. “I want some answers.”
She only snorted. “Get in line!”
He strode toward her, adrenaline flooding through him. His hands clenched, unclenched, clenched again. Every muscle was taut.
He despised the persistent, foreign, unwelcome something she stirred; harrowing and thrilling, like a wild, dangerous ride that threatened to intoxicate the most sober part of him. Unpredictable; enthralling.
The loss of control that beckoned incensed him. Nothing pushed him toward surrendering the tight rein he kept on himself. Nothing.
He’d had one goal since his sister’s death. His sole purpose; a singular reason to stay above ground and breathing. That this case and this woman threatened to disrupt that objective–when nothing had ever threatened that objective–aggravated the hell out of him.
“We’re going to talk,” he told her. “One way or another.”
Amber eyes flashed at him. A band of vivid turquoise blue ringed her iris, a flash of brilliant, unexpected color that made something inside him clench hard. When he halted in front of her–looming and aggressive, letting her glimpse his darkness–he fully expected her to back off. Instead, she gave him an insulting once-over with those gorgeous eyes, a look that made his ego bristle and lust stir in his belly.
“Don’t you threaten me, soldier boy,” she hissed softly. The angrier she got, the more apparent her southern roots became, shaping her words with a charming, lyrical fury. She leaned toward him and narrowed her gaze, the warning in her as sharp as any blade. “Not ever.”
The lust swelled, making Soren’s skin prickle. He stared at her, his hands fisted, his heart beating too hard.
She smelled like the ocean and thick pine forests of the coast; like woman and warmth and sweet, impossible temptation.
Fuck.
“I’m not military,” he told her. “I’m FBI, and you’re in a shitload of trouble.”
Fear flashed in her gaze, and she turned away to jerk her bike from the ground.
“G-man,” she muttered in the same tone she might have said serial killer. “That’s just doggone perfect.”
She was trembling, but he knew it wasn’t from the attack.
It was because of him.
Soldier boy. G-man.
Who knew what she’d experienced at the hands of the men who’d stormed her father’s compound? Soren had read the reports, but they were only pale imagery of what had occurred that day. He knew the ruthless brutality of which his compatriots were capable during an op.
Especially an op to stop a man who’d been deemed a threat to national security. No one would have cared that she was just a kid, innocent of her father’s treachery. They’d have treated her the same way they treated any enemy combatant–maybe worse, considering her bloodline.
Daughter of the Diviner.
What the hell kind of life had that been?
A question Soren didn’t care to contemplate. He knew too much about monsters. How they thought; how they behaved. The acts of which they were capable. Cult leaders were often sociopaths, but a special few were actual psychopaths.
Josiah Dearing had definitely been a psychopath.
Which made Peri O'Brien, who was already an unknown–untested, untrusted, and someone whose history was exceptionally treacherous–even more unpredictable and dangerous.
Because how far from the tree had the apple fallen?
The thought that she might be her father’s daughter sickened Soren, but he’d known too many devils. None of them wore horns and few breathed fire. They looked normal, bland, benign.
A fact he never let himself forget.
One he couldn’t afford to forget now.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree, G-man.” Peri leaned down and swept up her fallen backpack. “Whatever’s going on is not about me.”
Her hands were white-knuckled around the handlebars of her bike, and Soren could see the furious beat of her pulse in her throat. Her cheeks were flushed; her eyes glittered. She wore a pair of cut-off jeans shorts, battered tennis shoes, and a Dunder Mifflin Paper Company t-shirt.
She didn’t look like a renowned climate scientist. Or the daughter of an infamous mass murderer.
She looked like a college kid.
What else lay hidden beneath that golden, deceptive surface?
A foreign agent? A homegrown terrorist?
Worse?
The disquiet she engendered made Soren angry, and another sensation he didn’t want to name–something heavy and cold, a terrible kind of helplessness–churned within him.
He reached out and pulled the bike from her hold. Then he turned and carried it to his truck.
“Hey!” she protested.
He put the bike in his truck bed and opened the driver’s side door.
“What’s your dang problem?” she yelled.
“One way or another,” he replied coldly.
Then he climbed in the truck and waited.
For a long moment, Peri didn’t move. Then she stormed over and wrenched open the passenger side door.
“You are a very unpleasant man,” she informed him.
Soren only blinked at her.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” she added.
“Tell it to the people shooting at you.”
“Maybe they were shooting at you.”
“No,” he said. Nothing more.
“I don’t like you,” she said flatly, a sentiment that shouldn’t have annoyed him but did. “And I sure as shinola don’t trust you. So if you want me to get in this big ole banana, you’d best start talking turkey.”
“This truck is a classic,” he retorted, insulted.
She rolled her eyes. It would have been more effective if there wasn’t blood smeared across her cheek. “What do you want from me, G-man?”
“Jorgen Bernason,” he retorted succinctly.
But any reaction he might have expected from that announcement was notably absent.
“Okay.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I’ll play. Who is Jorgen Bernason?”
Her gaze didn’t waver, and instinct told him the question was genuine. He trusted his instincts, relied on them; they’d saved his life more times than he could count. But everything about this woman messed with him.
Everything.
So he wasn’t taking anything at face value.
“The man from the theater,” he elucidated. “The Swede.”
Shock touched her features. “How do you know about the theater?”
“I was there.”
She took a step back. “What?”
Soren stared at her; fear darkened her gaze, and suspicion lined her body. She hid nothing. If she was an agent–or a spy, or an operative, a plant, or a mole–she was among the best he’d ever seen.
Or the worst.
Which meant she was either in this thing up to her eyeballs, or had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Better be goddamn option number two.
Another errant, unwelcome thought.
“Bernason was under surveillance,” he told her shortly. “I was tailing him.”
“You were?” She blinked. “Why?”
An ancient Volkswagen van suddenly turned down the road and drove slowly past; Soren’s nape bristled. “Get in the truck.”
But Peri didn’t move. “Did you kill him?”
“No, I didn’t fucking kill him.”
Her eyes narrowed. She said nothing.
“Get in the truck,” Soren said again.
“He is dead, though, isn’t he?” she asked softly.
“Very.”
Sadness flickered across her face. “Was he poisoned?”
The question surprised him. “Toxicology isn’t back yet.”
“Did it have to do with the accident that killed the Ambassador?”
His gaze narrowed. “What do you know about the accident?”
“Just what was in the news.”
She blinked at him. Another car turned down the road.
“Get in,” he growled. “We need to get the hell out of here.”
“Keep your britches on. That’s Ms. Duncan; she’s eighty and harmless. No reason to get all hysterical.”
Soren stared at her. Hysterical?
He was the consummate calm in the storm. Without fucking fail.
The men he’d fought alongside in Afghanistan had called him “the Rock” because he was always on task. Focused and in control, regardless of the disaster that befell them. He acted with a cool head, methodical and without emotion, no matter the situation. He still did–that was what made him so valuable and effective in the field.
He was the one who did what needed to be done while everyone else freaked out.
He was not the one who freaked out.
The idea was ludicrous.
It was her! That unsettling, unwanted thing she set off inside him. And he didn’t like it.
Not one bit.
“Get in the truck, Peri,” he bit out, and for a long moment, they glared at each other like gunfighters ready to draw.
“Please,” he grated when she didn’t move.
Her brows rose. “Pretty please?”
He snarled softly, and she sighed. Then she looked down the street, and Soren could almost see the wheels turning inside her.
“Peri,” he repeated.
“You know my name.” She didn’t sound happy about it. “But I don’t know yours.”
“Blackbird. Soren Blackbird.”
“Ahoy, matey.”
He scowled at her. “That’s Blackbeard.”
Another eye roll. “Arg!”
But she finally climbed in the truck. A heartbeat later, they were headed toward the white clapboard house where she lived.
“Tell me what happened at the theater,” Soren ordered shortly.
She gave him an ornery look. “Why don’t you tell me.”
“That albino dickhead just tried to kidnap you. I want to know why.”
“I don’t know why.” She looked out the window. “But I’m pretty sure that was the same car that tried to turn me into roadkill.”
“It was.”
A dark look. “Did I say thanks for nothing?”
Guilt stabbed through him. He’d almost been too late. “I got here in time to stop him.”
“I was stopping him. You just got in the way.”
Aggravation tightened his hands around the steering wheel. “Noted. Next time, I won’t bother.”
Fear washed over her features.“You think there’s gonna be a next time?”
And Soren almost reached out and touched her.
Goddamn it. “Tell me what the hell is going on.”
“I don’t know what’s going on!”
“Start at the beginning.”
Peri only shook her head and looked out the window.
“Should I make it official and take you in for questioning?” The words were harsh. “Put you in a tiny, windowless room and keep you there until I’m done with you?”
Her head whipped around, and she stared at him, wild-eyed, her pulse fluttering like bird’s wings. Terror and hostility filled the space between them, and Soren instantly regretted the threat.
He needed her trust. The truth, whatever that turned out to be. And threatening her was not going to get him there.
Looking at him like he was–
“I’m not the fucking enemy,” he said sharply, before she could respond. “That goddamn Albino is the enemy.”
But she didn’t look like she believed that.
Not that Soren could blame her; he was making a fucking mess of this.
He knew where she came from; he understood better than any profile could convey. He lived and breathed monsters. Peri had been fighting for survival since the day she was born.
He’d known she wouldn’t trust him. Wouldn’t look to him for help, would immediately turn aside any hand he offered and go it alone.
He would’ve done the same.
A similarity he didn’t welcome. He didn’t want to relate to this woman—but he needed to understand her if he was going to figure out what the hell was going on.
“I didn’t know the man you call Jorgen Bernason,” she said finally. “I was standing outside the theater, minding my own business, when he ran over me.”
“But he took you inside.”
A muscle ticked in her jaw. Her gaze was locked on the window, her hands twisted together in her lap. “He apologized. Helped me up. Insisted on buying my ticket.”
“Lethal Blood III.”
“He wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I let him. Then I went in and watched the movie.”
“What happened after that?”
“Halfway through the movie, he showed up. Landed in the seat beside me, wheezing like he couldn’t get enough air. I wanted to get help, but he grabbed ahold of me and wouldn’t let go.” She rubbed her arm with a faint frown. “I told him I needed to find someone who could help save him, but…” The words trailed off.
She glanced out the window again.
“But?” Soren prompted.
“He said I had to save her.”
“Her who?”
“I don’t know.”
That damn foreboding spilled through him. “What else?”
“He warned me.”
“What kind of warning?”
“He said ‘beware the black sheep.’” A snort. “He probably meant blackbird.”
Black Sheep. She didn’t seem to understand what that meant, but Soren did.
He fucking did.
“He begged me to save her,” Peri said softly. “And then he died.”
“He died,” Soren repeated. “You’re sure?”
She turned and glared at him. “You’re the one who said he was dead!”
“He is—now.”
“He was then, too!”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” A cold, unexpected smile curved her mouth. “Death and I are old friends.”
A chill slid through Soren. It was too easy to forget who this woman was, what she’d experienced. Like the day Josiah Dearing had died, when most of her people had perished and the only world she’d ever known had burned to the ground.
Now was not the time for that conversion.
But it would come.
One more aberrant, unwelcome thought. Because Soren had no intention of getting any more involved with Peri O'Brien than he had to. Not unless she was his prey–something he had yet to determine.
For now, she was simply a suspect and would be treated as such.
Which meant: interrogate her (currently not going well); track her movements; dig into her contacts; uncover her conversations; and pinpoint any potential motive. None of which he’d even begun to do.
Then, provided none of that raised any red flags and she could be cleared, figure out who’d targeted her and why. The answer to that question would hopefully–with any goddamn luck–lead to the who and why of Bernason’s death. Which would likely lead to the who and why of the Ambassador’s alleged “accident.” Because at this point, Soren was all but certain Sven and Ana Nilsson had been murdered.
