Shattered Spirits (3 page)

She got out, her low-heeled boots crunching in the gravel and snow.

Gig, the youngest member of her team, waved vigorously, the motion making his shaggy locks bounce around his head. Swipe ignored him, while Diablo glared.

“Well, hello to you, too,” Capri said.

Diablo’s glare deepened. She hadn’t thought it was possible to look so sour.

“The site’s all yours.” With a whoosh, he used his earth magic to form a gate—a black vortex appearing under his feet—and disappeared.

Ah, ever the man of many words. Obviously he hadn’t found the human mages and needed to regroup in private. He didn’t take failure well, and from what she’d heard, the last of these mages were proving more challenging to apprehend than anticipated.

She turned to Swipe and raised an eyebrow, trying not to laugh. “Someone’s in a good mood.”

“He was still swearing when we showed up,” Gig said.

Capri bit back a chuckle. As much as it was bad that the mages were still out there, it was kind of amusing to see Diablo struggle. Mr. Perfect wasn’t quite so perfect. As well, it meant more of a distraction. Maybe if she was too busy working, she wouldn’t be thinking about Eric or Detective Miller.

She shook away her thoughts and stepped into the warehouse. “Let’s see what we’ve got here, shall we?”

The first ten feet of the inside were clear, just debris and garbage piled on the floor. Beyond lay a maze of machinery and shelves and a lot more garbage. Dust danced in the sunbeams cutting through the slats over the windows, and the reek of a sewer permeated the area, overlaid with the more expected smell of age and mold. She could just imagine what the second and third stories looked and smelled like.

This was going to take some time. The bigger the location, the longer the spell’s duration and the more energy it would take for Swipe to use his magic to remove all traces that dragons—and in this case, human mages as well—existed.

Turning back to the parking lot, she let the weak winter sun warm her face. With no one around, and therefore no one to use her magic on, this was going to be one big hurry up and wait kind of assignment. Normally she wouldn’t mind. It gave her time to think, but thinking was the last thing she wanted to do right now.

She resisted the urge to sigh—it wouldn’t do for her teammates to think something was wrong—and looked at Gig. “Anything for you here?”

The silver drake’s gaze grew unfocused. His earth magic ability to communicate with technology never ceased to amaze her. She couldn’t begin to imagine how it worked. He didn’t even have to be touching the device. Although perhaps it worked a little like how she reached into a human’s mind and changed his or her memories.

Gig sucked in a slow breath, held it, and dug his toe into the ground. With a burst, he let the breath out and flashed her a wild grin. “There’s a cell phone in there. Want to see what’s on it and see if it gives us a lead on the mages? See if Diablo missed something?”

“Absolutely.” There was no guarantee it had anything to do with the human mages, but the thought of one-upping Diablo with new information was the best thing that had happened all day.

She turned to Swipe, always handsome in his black tailored winter coat, short-cropped blond hair, and square jaw. “How much time are you going to need?”

“A while.” The Texan accent he’d been working on last week was gone. Guess he’d gotten sick of struggling with it. “The mages were here for over a day, and that leaves a lot of stuff.” Stuff being DNA evidence, fingerprints, hair, footprints, anything that might be traced. Anything that wasn’t technology. Swipe could remove the DNA and fingerprints from the phone, but not the contents within it.

“Well, have fun. Gig and I are going to look for a cell phone.”

“In that mess? I think I should be telling you to have fun. At least I don’t have to touch anything.” Swipe flashed her a hint of teeth and trudged through the snow along the side of the building, already working on setting up a magical perimeter for his spell. With so much evidence in such a large space, setting the perimeter would help focus his magic and hopefully shorten the duration required to remove all traces.

Capri turned to Gig. “All right, lead the way.”

He clicked his tongue, and his gaze grew unfocused again. He couldn’t have looked any more different from Swipe in his baggy, worn-down clothes and hair in desperate need of a cut. He’d unzipped his jacket and underneath was a comic T-shirt reading, “Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.” He tilted his head left then right, then back to left. “It’s this way…and up.”

She nodded. She’d learned a while ago that if she said anything, he wouldn’t respond, not without her raising her voice and giving him a good shake, and that would break his connection, and he’d have to refocus.

He shuffled along the wall through the open area to a narrow hall created between towering shelves and looming machinery. More weak bands of sunlight shot through holes in the grimy windows, making it too bright for her night vision to kick in and yet dark enough to soften the details of the garbage piled on the floor.

At the back of the factory, they found a set of rickety wooden stairs, and followed them up to the second floor into a dark hall lined with doorways, some with doors, some without. Her night vision wavered in and out, showing glimpses of broken doors and furniture crowding the walls and moldy fast-food packaging.

“It’s really close. In here.” Gig stepped through a doorway a few feet down.

Inside, shelves had been cleared to the right wall, and a rat-eaten couch sat in the middle of the room, facing two large windows with most of the panes broken or missing. Ice and coarse snow slicked the floor.

To the left stood an open doorway, the door lying on its side against the wall. Empty beer cans and liquor bottles and more rotting take-out bags and pizza boxes were strewn about. Wonderful. This was going to take forever. Somewhere in this mess was a phone.

* * *

Ryan entered the abandoned factory and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. When he’d driven past, Jones had been standing in the doorway with two men. He hadn’t gotten a good look at them and by the time he’d pulled a U-turn out of sight down the road, they were gone. Jones’s SUV and a van, however, remained, and Ryan could only assume everyone was inside. From the look of the place, he didn’t think this was where his future flash would happen, but he couldn’t be sure. Besides, even if it wasn’t, he still needed to tell her.

But tell her what? That he’d seen the future, and she was going to get shot… maybe? She was going to think he was crazy. Hell, there were days when he wondered if he was crazy.

Yet he couldn’t stop if he’d wanted to. If there was a chance, any chance, that he could save her, he had to take it. And it had nothing to do with his attraction to her. Really. Honestly. Besides, trying to warn her would probably ruin all hope of anything happening between them.

He knelt and examined the footprints on the muddy floor. There were a jumble of them, all different shapes and sizes, confirming his suspicion that this was a local hangout for the neighborhood youth. It didn’t, however, explain why the FBI was here. If he was lucky, it would have something to do with the decapitated body in the M.E.’s examination room. And if he was really lucky, he’d be able to get some details from Special Agent Jones.

Yeah, right. If looks could kill, she would have killed him back at Hiro’s office. She hadn’t looked happy to see him, and he doubted she’d be even more impressed to learn he’d followed her here.

Two sets of fresh tracks, still damp from the snow, led along the left wall to the back of the building: one small enough to be a petite woman’s, and the other most likely a man’s. It looked like the second man had stayed outside.

A bang exploded above and to his left. Then another.

Ryan’s heart leapt into a quick tattoo. Gunfire. Maybe this
was
where the future flash happened.

He drew his sidearm and raced after the tracks. They led to rickety stairs. He took them two at a time.

Bang. Bang.

Someone yelled. It sounded like a man, but he couldn’t be sure.

Another bang.

He paused at the top of the stairs. Beyond lay a dark hall with doorways and partially opened doors allowing weak light to reveal mounds of debris. A large shadowy figure at the end of the hall, with a gun held at the ready, slipped from one room to the next.

The urge to race to the end of the hall and confront whoever it was swept through Ryan, but he needed to clear the closer rooms first. Besides, he had no idea if that man was friend or foe.

Another volley of gunfire. Close. But which room?

Ryan eased to the first doorway and glanced in. Empty. Debris littered the room, and a partially blocked doorway indicated the rooms were interconnected.

A man yelled, “Give it up.”

Someone screamed.

Ryan rushed to the next doorway. Silent, efficient, like he’d been trained.

Another quick glance, and there was Jones, crouched behind an overturned desk, weapon in one hand and reaching into a pile of garbage on a shelf with the other.

What the hell was she doing?

Two more shots exploded in the room. Chips from the desk flew into the air. She didn’t even flinch.

Movement to her right caught his attention. A heavyset man jumped out a doorway faster than Ryan would have thought possible, gun pointed at Jones’ head.

She glanced up, hand still in the garbage, gun trained on the man in the other doorway.

Instinct kicked in. Ryan squeezed off a shot and dove for Jones. The man’s shot exploded. Ryan tackled her, and they skidded across the floor through a pile of something foul. Chips of floorboard, shattered from the bullets, flew past his head.

Another gunshot sounded. Ryan kicked the shelf, knocking it over for more cover, and garbage and debris tumbled behind them. Jones wrenched in his grip, rolling on top of him, her Glock pointed at his head.

Her eyes widened.

Time froze, suspended between one breath and the next. All sound vanished. The reek of rot and decay, even the threat of danger, disappeared. There was only Special Agent Jones… straddling him. The heat of her thighs, pressed tight against his, seeped through his jeans. Her hair had fallen free of its knot and framed her delicate face in a strawberry blonde halo. Bright blue eyes held him prisoner. Her surprise was clear. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She captivated him, and he couldn’t explain why, as if something deep inside him, something he hadn’t even known existed, flickered awake when she was near.

Then her expression hardened.

The world rushed back in, the smell, the gloom, and the roar of gunfire.

She leaned close, nose to nose, the length of her body hot against his. “What the hell are you doing here?” she growled.

Anticipation shivered through him. God, what did he say? That he’d seen her in trouble and thought she needed help. She was an FBI agent, for goodness sake. With a team. He didn’t doubt she was more than competent, and, now that he thought about it, his instinct had made him look ridiculous.

Bang. Bang.

Someone yelled and footsteps pounded away.

Jones inched up and glanced over the fallen shelf, but didn’t move her gun from his temple, and didn’t stop straddling him.

A man swore.

“Let him go,” Jones yelled. “Not our job.” She shoved Ryan in the chest, using more force than necessary to get to her feet, and leaving him cold where her body had been.

“Why are you following me, Miller?” Her gun stayed trained on him.

“Saw the guys sneak in behind you. Thought I’d give you a heads-up.” See, he could come up with something intelligent, even with her gun pointed at him.

“Oh, really?”

He became aware of the silence in the room beyond.

A man whose clean-cut look screamed federal agent—well-tailored coat, close-cropped blond hair, and hard profile—stepped into the doorway. Something dark glimmered against his shoulder like water or blood, but with the weak light and his black coat, Ryan couldn’t quite tell what. The man’s gaze slid from Jones to Ryan, then back to Jones.

“We shot one,” the man said, “but he won’t be talking.”

Capri rolled her eyes. “That’ll make Diablo happy.”

“And I got the phone,” a young tenor said. A teenager shoved past Mr. Clean-cut, holding a mangled phone. It looked like it had gotten shot. The teen stumbled to a stop, staring at Ryan. “Who’s this?”

“Special Agent Patterson, Special Agent Valverdis,” Jones said, “meet Detective Miller.”

This was not the way he’d wanted to meet her coworkers: prone, covered in something disgusting, and held at Capri’s gunpoint.

CHAPTER 5

Swipe met Capri’s gaze. Blood seeped through the shoulder of his black coat, clear in the dim light because her night-sight had kicked in. He’d been shot. Just great. Not that it would kill him, but he’d be grumpy for days.

His frown deepened. Definitely not happy thoughts. Well, she wasn’t particularly happy, either. Miller was going to need to do a lot of explaining for following her and then getting involved in the gunfight.

As if he could hear her thoughts, he stood and holstered his gun.

“Make it fast.” Swipe grabbed Gig by his collar and yanked him away.

Right. She’d just rip into Miller’s mind so Swipe could get home sooner. She resisted the urge to bare her teeth. Neither a sign of aggression or sexual attraction was appropriate with the human watching. He wouldn’t understand either meaning of the action.

She turned to him. “Detective Miller.”

He squared his shoulders, not bothering to brush the dirt and goo from his clothes. His winter coat strained against his broad chest, as if he’d put on more muscle since he’d bought it. Nothing for a detective to do in Elmsville but work out? Mother of All, she’d love to see what lay beneath the heavy material.

The memory of running her hands over tight muscles flashed through her mind. But it wasn’t
his
chest she remembered, it was Eric’s.