Cipher Read online

  “Is that a warning?”

  “It’s a fact, that’s all. Kat’s got a serious blind spot when it comes to her empathy. She’s so busy angsting over the sort of damage she can do accidentally that I’m pretty sure she’s never considered the sort of havoc she could cause if someone made her do it on purpose.”

  Painful because it was true and far too close to home. “If you know that much about Kat, you must know how many people would die before they let anything like that happen to her.”

  Ben held up both hands, making a vaguely placating gesture. “I don’t know about Kat’s life outside of what she tells me. I know you two have a Lifetime Original Movie going on and that her cousin used to smother her a lot. I’ve always assumed she’s just fine over there, but if people are shooting at her…”

  “I don’t think she was the target.” It was the conclusion he’d finally reached during the long hours of waiting for Kat to sleep off her exhaustion. “Whoever was doing the shooting was trying to silence Kat’s contact.”

  “Who gave you guys a key. Listen, I started to do the research, but there are a ton of cities called Winchester, and a bunch of them have a Bank & Trust. So I got frustrated and cheated.” He tapped the side of his head.

  Technopath. He’d almost forgotten. “What’d you uncover?”

  Ben lowered his voice, even though Kat was safely behind the closed bathroom door. “In 2002, an Alyson Gabriel got a safety deposit box at Winchester Bank & Trust in Huntsville, Alabama. Two weeks later, she died in a car crash in Boston.”

  It sounded right. Andrew swallowed hard. “That’d be it, I think. Could you do some more checking, see if you can find out what she might have done during those two weeks?”

  “Sure thing, man. Kat has my cell number now. Anything you need, call. I’m used to being the geek on tap.”

  “Thanks, Ben.”

  A shrug. “I owe Kat. She got my brother out of a jam once when I was laid up in the hospital with a very unheroic case of appendicitis.”

  He had a surgical scar of his own, though it seemed like a few lifetimes ago. “Happens to the best of us.”

  “All worked out okay.” The unmistakably goofy smile of a man in the grip of serious love curved Ben’s lips. “That’s when I met Lia.”

  By complete and utter chance. Andrew had seen it over and over, events that spun off a single moment where one changed detail would have changed everything. “Fate, right?”

  “On the days I remember to put the toilet seat down. The rest of the time I’m a test from her Goddess.”

  “That just means you’re a typical guy.”

  “Who can ask nicely and have computers do things for him.” Ben flipped the folder shut and shoved it across the table. “Kat can handle reservations for wherever you end up, but I was thinking I could make a few too. In Atlanta, maybe. I can ask the system to let me know if anyone else goes looking for you.”

  Andrew nodded. “It’d be helpful. Whoever shot Kat and that woman is scared of what’s in that safety deposit box. If they knew where it was, they would have taken it already.”

  “Atlanta, it is. Course, no one may be looking, but if they are, doesn’t hurt to have a false trail.”

  Ben seemed like a nice guy, and Andrew was surprised his sword-wielding brother hadn’t already taught him the most important lesson of all. “Someone’s always looking.”

  Kat didn’t have to beg. Andrew drove them to Huntsville and straight to the Embassy Suites, where he stretched out on the couch while she dragged a couple hundred bucks of Target loot into the bedroom. The king-sized bed was vast and immaculate, with a plush comforter and a stack of fluffy pillows that took up the top half of the mattress. Pretty enough, but nothing compared to the clean bathroom with its shiny counters and polished metal fixtures.

  The tub was big enough for two, and she was pretty sure she could happily die there.

  It took an hour of soaking before she felt clean, and another thirty minutes with the scented shampoo and body wash before she was sure she’d got every last bit of dried blood and covered the pungent scent of the dye Lia had used to turn the purple streaks in her hair brown again.

  Scrubbed and buffed and smelling of almond and vanilla, Kat twisted her damp hair into a braid before pulling on her new flannel pajama bottoms and the first tank top she’d been able to find in her size—a baby-blue number with an absurdly cheerful butterfly embroidered on it in sparkly silver thread. It left her arm bare, and she ran her fingers over the mostly healed scar where the bullet wound had been that morning.

  Magic. The serious business kind that knit human flesh together with a speed normally reserved for shapeshifters. Lia had confessed, almost apologetically, that healing minor wounds was the extent of what a priestess could do on her own. To Kat it had seemed like a miracle, and she’d expressed miracle-level gratitude at the absence of pain.

  A peek into the other room proved that Andrew still slept, so Kat killed another two hours trying to catch up on her email and sending both Sera and Miguel reassuring but vague notes insisting everything was fine. Then she made herself filter through the responses from her latest round of queries in her unenthusiastic job search.

  Job search. As she clicked listlessly through the emails, she decided she needed a better description. Obligatory resume exportation. Unwilling employment makeover. “Going through the motions” seemed to fit best.

  Whatever she was doing, it wasn’t active enough to be called searching. Her qualifications and her thesis had earned her attention from researchers. Her gender had gotten her courted by every guilty tech company with a quota to fill. One of her professors had even tried to push her toward the NSA, and she’d enjoyed an evening of near-hysterical laughter trying to imagine Alec’s face if she announced she was going to work for the government.

  She went to the interviews. She wore combat boots and T-shirts that were trying too hard to be witty and outrageous. Her hair stayed purple, and sometimes she twisted it into styles that should have been impossible outside of a comic book. She played edgy hacker and social misfit with a dedication that deserved an Oscar nod. Sometimes her passive-aggressive self-sabotage worked. The truly desperate offered her jobs anyway, and she’d started “forgetting” to call them back.

  Career suicide in slow motion. That was what it had come to, since the restless need to do more had invaded her life. Maybe it had come from watching Julio navigate New Orleans’ supernatural community under Alec’s guidance, or from seeing Carmen and Alec sacrifice everything but each other for the chance to save the world. Things were changing—for the better, finally for the better—and she wanted to be a part of it.

  Maybe. Somehow…if only she could figure out where. All she knew for sure was that her college trust fund—left untouched for years by scholarships and then grants—was starting to trickle away. The money would run out eventually, if she didn’t get out of her own way.

  Whatever happened with the safety deposit box, it had to be her last self-indulgence. After this, she’d force herself back into the real world. Put the past behind her. Get a haircut, maybe a suit and a couple of nice blouses. She’d stop going to interviews in sweatshirts and steel-toed boots.

  She’d get a job.

  She’d grow the fuck up.

  By nine, her stomach was starting to rumble. For about two seconds, she considered leaving the hotel room in search of a vending machine. For another five, she considered calling room service without waking Andrew.

  Ten seconds after that she told herself to stop being a baby and made her way into their suite’s sitting room.

  Andrew lay sprawled out in nothing but his jeans. Comfortable as the couch looked, he was too damn tall for it, and a dangerous tenderness stirred inside her. He was exhausted because he probably hadn’t slept a damn second of the fifteen hours she’d spent unconscious. Two straight days of driving, fighting and worrying, and the stubborn bastard wouldn’t even claim the bed when she was short enough to fit o
n the couch just fine.

  Kat smoothed blond strands of hair from his forehead and smiled. “Hey, sleepy. Why don’t you get up and pass out someplace where your feet don’t dangle off the edge, huh?”

  He mumbled something unintelligible and rolled over, almost pitching himself off the couch in the process. Kat planted both hands on his shoulders and pushed him back to the cushions. “Wake up, Andrew.”

  His hands latched around her arms, and he lifted her clear off her feet and dropped her to the couch. The breath whooshed out of her, stealing her squeaked protest. When he loomed over her, his eyes were blank, dark. Unseeing.

  Three heartbeats stretched out to a lifetime. Her stun gun was in the other room, but even if she had it in her damn hand she wasn’t sure she could have forced herself to use it on Andrew. Knowing it was futile, she couldn’t stop her hands from flying up, bracing against the dangerously hot skin of his chest. Pushing him was like trying to push a brick wall, and the first hint of real fear uncurled inside her. “Andrew—”

  His eyes cleared, and a roar of fear eclipsed that tiny thread inside. His fear, not her own, though it vanished in the space of a heartbeat as Andrew released her. “Sorry, that was—sorry.”

  She hadn’t expected her powers to recharge so quickly. After a burnout it could take days for them to come back online at full strength. Kat reinforced her shields to be safe, but didn’t move. She barely breathed. “I know better than to poke a shapeshifter when he’s asleep. It’s my fault.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  Something inside her broke at the utter lack of self-forgiveness in his eyes. He looked exhausted. Worn out. “I was just going to let you know that I’m ordering some room service…and that you can take the bed. I’ll fit on the couch better than you do.”

  He rubbed both hands through his hair and stood. “It’s a king. Plenty big enough for both of us.”

  Share a bed with him? If she’d had a masochistic streak, maybe. Or if he was going to sleep in a parka. Fear had a funny way of waking up all of her nerves, and a lot of them seemed to be tracing the memory of his chest under her palms.

  Which made her feel warm—and she could only hope it wasn’t an obvious kind of warm. “We’ll figure it out. You need to eat something before you go back to sleep. Wanna look at the room-service menu?”

  Andrew shook his head. “Whatever you get is fine. I’m not picky.”

  Kat swallowed and eased herself upright, then rose to her feet. “Okay, but if you leave me to my own devices, I’m ordering like, every expensive dessert on the menu.”

  His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Two for me.”

  Maybe that was how she looked when she was shaking and scared that her empathy was a weapon that would destroy the people she loved. Not the mirror she’d expected to look into, but a powerful one.

  So she did what he’d done. Reached up and framed his face with her hands, and shivered at the texture of his beard against her palms. “I will never be afraid of you, Andrew Callaghan.”

  His chest heaved with shaking breaths, and he groaned as he grabbed her wrists. “It’s dangerous, Kat. I’m dangerous.”

  “So am I.” She swiped her thumbs over his cheeks and willed him to believe the same words he’d told her the day before. “Andrew, I’m still mostly burned out, and you’ve got strong shields for someone who’s not a psychic. But I couldn’t just hurt you—I could destroy you. I could drive you to your knees and make you crawl for me. I could take away everything you are.”

  He closed his eyes, but he didn’t release her. “Then that makes this a doubly bad idea.”

  Andrew was going to walk away from her again, and the tense parts of her that had started to unwind over the last few days would shatter. The only way to save anything was to let him go before he came up with a polite, stilted reason. “I understand.”

  “No. No, you really don’t.”

  He bent his head and kissed her.

  The world stopped.

  His lips were warm. Firm. As firm as the fingers locked around her wrists, holding her hands to his face. She’d played out this moment in a thousand girlish daydreams and more than one guilty adult fantasy, and imagination hadn’t provided the little details. The heat of his body, the strength of his grip, the way she melted, like chocolate left in the July sun, and from nothing but that innocent contact.

  His lips, on hers. Parting, and oh God, he knew how to kiss, like he was hungry, like he loved the taste of her, and Kat became mortally certain that her knees were going to give out if he got his tongue in on the action. Her body throbbed with the rhythm of his mouth moving on hers, until she was one exposed nerve, and she would have begged him to touch her anywhere—everywhere—if she wouldn’t have had to stop kissing him.

  When he released her wrists, it was only to grip her hips and lift her, mold her to his body, and she moaned her gratitude. He was harder than he looked, an unforgiving wall of muscle and smooth skin, so distracting and arousing that she didn’t realize they were moving until he stepped over the threshold.

  Into the bedroom.

  “Open,” he rasped, and lowered her to the bed.

  Her back touched the mattress—gentle, so damn gentle—and Andrew stretched out over her, shirtless and beautiful, and her brain fritzed out like a fried circuit board as she obeyed and parted her lips.

  He touched them with his tongue, a soft sweep of one lip and then the other, and kissed her again, deeper, one hand winding in her hair. That stirred old memories, brought to life every unacceptable fantasy she’d had of their anger and hurt and longing all coalescing into a dark passion that would satisfy her body even as it cut her heart to pieces.

  But there was no darkness in the grip of his hand, just a gentle control, a sweet hint of dominance that barely deserved the description, but thrilled her anyway. The throbbing was back, magnified into an ache that pulsed in time with the stroke of his tongue. Every time she tried to catch a breath it escaped in tiny, helpless noises that would have embarrassed her if she hadn’t been burning alive.

  He dragged his mouth to her chin and then her throat, nipping lightly when she tilted back her head. The scrape of his teeth curled her toes, and the sheer insanity of the way her body reacted splintered fear through her.

  She fisted both hands in his hair and dragged his head back, panting for breath. “What are we doing? Are we—”

  He panted too, his eyes glazed with pleasure and need. “Are we what?”

  If she let him keep touching her, she’d fly apart before she got her pants off. “We can’t do this without talking about it. Sex with an empath as strong as I am—it’s not that simple. I could hurt you. Hurt both of us.”

  Andrew’s chest rumbled, as if a growl formed that he didn’t quite voice. Then he rolled away. “I didn’t think.”

  Disappointment made her voice shake. “You shouldn’t have to. It wouldn’t be that bad if you were anyone else…but with you I’m—I’ve got—” She covered her face with her hands, and now she was disappointed and embarrassed. “My empathy might as well be hardwired into my sexual responses. Is there a girl version of premature ejaculation?”

  He choked on a snort. “I don’t think anyone minds it, usually.”

  Maybe her violent reactions had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with chemistry. Maybe wanting Andrew so long had built a tension that would make even innocent touches feel fantastic. Maybe she was in denial.

  Maybe she didn’t care.

  The room seemed too warm as she rolled to her knees. Andrew had his hand over his face, which made asking the question a lot easier. “If it gets too overwhelming…can we stop?”

  He rolled to his side, propped on one elbow, and studied her, his expression intense. “We can stop whenever you want. Whenever you need to.”

  Christ, she was a teenager, making rules about where her prom date could touch her while they groped in the back of his car. Except she’d never gone to prom. She’d been sixteen her
senior year, struggling with the violent surges in power that made puberty a worse nightmare for a psychic than for the average hormone-riddled teen.

  And Andrew—Andrew was not a teenage boy. He was six-foot-something of shapeshifter alpha bastard who had to have his share of instinctive needs. “That’s not going to drive you crazy?”

  “I have two hands, Kat,” he reminded her. “I can take care of things myself.”

  It was not remotely okay to pause and savor that image, but she couldn’t stop herself. Andrew, stretched out, his face slack with pleasure, the muscles in his arm flexing as he curled his fingers around—

  She slapped her hands over her face and actually whimpered. “That was mean.”

  “Was it?”

  Anything else she said would reveal her newly formed and overwhelming need to watch him and his two hands take care of things. So she leaned down and kissed him again.

  He held the back of her head and fit his mouth to hers, slow this time. Easy. A gentle kiss from a controlled man trying to make her feel safe, with no clue that his tender protectiveness turned her inside out.

  If her empathy had been at full power, she would have come when he stroked his hand from her hair to her collarbone, and then down to her breast. She moaned, imagining how much hotter his callused fingertips would be against her suddenly tight nipples.

  Not that the silly butterfly tank top offered much protection. Kat shuddered and tore her mouth free of his, then shoved at his shoulders until he rolled onto his back. Sliding one leg over his body was reckless, and straddling his stomach was insane. “You’re too hot. My brain is going to overheat.”

  Muscle flexed under her as he shifted slightly and gripped her hips. “Isn’t that the point?”

  The fine hair on his arms tickled her palms as she touched him, sliding both hands up until they passed his shoulders and she was stretched over him, clutching the blankets on either side of his head. A position of power—if you were fool enough to think an alpha shapeshifter couldn’t dominate a lover from flat on his back.