Cipher

Chapter Six

The safety deposit box looked mundane—until you touched it. It zinged with energy, and the lock refused to yield, even with the key.

Andrew sighed. “If it weren’t practically vibrating with magic, I’d say maybe we had the wrong key.”

Frustrated, Kat twisted the key again. “Do you think it’s a spell? A charm?”

“It has to be. The question is, what’s the trigger?”

Whatever it was, the knowledge had died with the woman who’d given them the key. “Words, maybe?

Or…well, it couldn’t be anything I wouldn’t have access to, unless my mom expected me to find a spell caster.” Abandoning the key, she ran her fingers along the metal edges of the box’s lid, tracing every irregularity until she found a small indentation.

She tried to wedge one finger under the edge, but a quick tug proved that the metal was unyielding-and unforgiving. Pain zipped up her hand as her fingertip slipped over a sharp spot.

Magic crackled through the small room and then vanished.

The lock clicked, and Andrew reached over and lifted the lid. One edge bore coppery traces of her blood. “I guess that answers it. Are you okay?”

Kat winced as she checked her hand. “Yeah. Just looks like the world’s ugliest paper cut.”

He poked at the contents of the box—a lone manila envelope. “Want me to open it?”

She almost said yes, but felt like a coward. “No, let me see.”

He handed her the envelope. Kat opened the top and upended it, spilling out a black square of plastic.

She stared at the blocky Iomega logo, confusion warring with abject disbelief. “A zip disk? Are you kidding me?”

Andrew eyed it with raised eyebrows. “It has been in here a while.”

Somewhere around a decade, which she supposed explained the outdated method of data storage.

“Yeah, well, my netbook isn’t going to read this. And I doubt Staples is selling external zip drives these days.”

“There’s always eBay, or maybe your friend Ben has one lying around.”

“Maybe.” Kat tugged off the scarf Sera had knit for her and wrapped it around the disk for extra padding, then tucked it into her bag. “Figures none of this could be easy.”

“Finding the place was pretty damn painless.” He cast his gaze around the tiny room, with its bare desk and one-way mirror. “Is that all that’s in there? Clean it out and let’s go.”

The box looked empty, but Kat ran her fingers along the inside, as if she might find a hidden catch or secret compartment. Instead she felt the smooth metal of the box and not a damn thing else. “That’s it.”

His hand grazed the back of her shoulder. “Then where to now?”

Warmth followed the path of his touch, streaking through her to settle low in her belly. Kat closed her eyes and thought of ice, of the vast snowy expanses of Antarctica, Alaska, or—hell, a walk-in freezer.

Cold. Safe. She used the brutal training Callum had given her and wrapped herself in chilly quiet.

It was enough. Barely. God help them both if he touched more than her shoulder. “If we get to the car, I can use my phone. I was thinking of checking Craigslist. Maybe I can find someone who wants to unload some old computer parts. I’m better with hardware than Ben is, anyway.”

“Local’s quicker than an online auction,” he allowed as he guided her through the door.

Outside the sunlight seemed too bright compared to the chill in the air. Not so cold—the red LED display on the bank’s sign put the temperature at a reasonable fifty-two, but a decade in the South had thinned her Boston-born blood. Kat let Andrew herd her toward the SUV, forcing her brain to stay on the puzzle of the zip disk and how she’d retrieve its contents.

If she concentrated on that, she could pretend the previous night had never happened.

“What are you thinking?”

“Zip drives.” Only a little lie. “And what might be on the disk. I mean, I don’t know what file types they might be, or what sort of software I’d need to read them. It’s got to be important though, right? If people are killing over it?”

“Important to someone.” He unlocked the SUV and pulled open her door. “I don’t know if it’ll give you your answers, but it was important to your mom.”

Inside the vehicle, Kat tucked her bag between her feet and fiddled with her phone as Andrew climbed in. “This is all crazy, isn’t it? Us, acting like we’re in the supernatural version of National Treasure.

Safety deposit boxes and snipers… This is crazy. Nuts.”

He buckled his seatbelt and shook his head. “The crazy part is that I’m getting used to it.”

It was hard to get out the words, but she needed to ask one question. “You still want to see this through?”

“Hell yeah. I’m not going anywhere.”

Relief. Confusion. Andrew had her twisted in knots so complex she couldn’t begin to see how to unravel them. Talking to him about anything serious felt like the first time she’d tried to understand recursion. Maybe they were recursive, cycling back through the pain they’d caused each other, each hurt built upon the last. He hurt because she hurt because he hurt because she hurt…

Back and back until they hit the base case. The night she’d lost control and nearly destroyed them both.

She had to say something. To find some rapport, casual small talk to fill the time between awkward moments that were too real. “I’m glad you’ve got all that new training then. If we’re about to embark on a caper adventure, I’ll need an action hero.”

His brows drew together. “That isn’t who I am, Kat. Why I train.”

So much for light hearted. “I know. I’m just… It’s a joke. Laugh.”

His mood didn’t change. “I’m not a hero.”

“Who gets to decide that? Is there a guild? A committee?”

Finally, a hint of a smile appeared. “You can’t take my word for it?”

“Don’t see why I should,” she retorted, then smiled. “You’re not taking mine.”

“Fine, you got me. I’m a hero, and this is a big damn grand adventure full of thrills and spills.”

It was exactly the way they’d always talked to each other, but the ease was gone. She might as well be writing her own dialog in script format. Smile here. Laugh there. Insert pithy pop-culture reference. She was a walking, talking parody of the girl who’d died the night she’d killed.

So she broke script. “You’re here. You’re helping. Right now, that seems pretty heroic to me.”

He stared straight ahead, even as he reached out and grasped her hand. “I always will, no matter what happens between us.”

Callused fingers against her skin triggered a rush of need totally out of proportion with the gentle touch.

She knew the pleasure of his touch now, and her body wasn’t going to let her forget it. Her cheeks heated, and she squeezed his fingers once before easing her hand away. “Maybe we shouldn’t touch while you’re driving.”

“Good plan.” He started the engine, backed out of the parking space and angled the vehicle toward the main road. “Back to the hotel, then, and we’ll figure out the next step.”

A solid enough plan, but even she could tell that Andrew was headed in the opposite direction from their hotel. Back to the hotel apparently involved complicated evasive maneuvers, another piece in the overall puzzle of the new Andrew.

Carmen had taught him first aid. Zola and Walker had taught him how to fight. Alec… The Devil himself might prefer not to ponder Alec’s skill set, which had always seemed geared more toward covert ops than private investigation. They were surrounded by dozens of supernaturals with unique skills, and Andrew had been collecting them like a kid with Cracker Jack toys.

That isn’t who I am, Kat. Why I train.

Not to be a hero. She couldn’t imagine any other reason. So ask, dumbass. Just ask.

“Andrew—”

“Check your seatbelt and stay low in your seat.”

The words were calm. Composed. The faint buzz of background nervousness that she’d barely noticed faded until the SUV was a quiet pool of emotional silence. Not the terrifying blankness from before, but a studied focus that reminded her of Alec at his most calculating.

It scared her enough to obey without question. She tugged her seatbelt until it pulled tight across her chest, and hunched down for good measure. “What’s going on?”

“Someone’s following us.” He’d realigned the rearview mirror earlier, but she’d thought nothing of it.

Now, he seemed to be watching the road and the mirror simultaneously. “Tried to shake them, but they’re persistent.”

Fear made her skin prickle. Kat curled her hand around the door handle and fought not to twist and look behind them. “This is why you made me pack everything up and bring it with us, isn’t it? Because you knew we might not be able to go back.”

“Looks like Andy and Kate Normanson had to leave town on the spur of the moment.” He tightened his hands around the steering wheel. “Do you need to go anyplace in particular?”

There was only one thing she could say for sure. “Not back to Birmingham. We can’t lead them to Ben and Lia.”

“Someplace no one else knows, then.”

Her brain wouldn’t settle long enough to think. “How do you think they found us? Ben’s IDs are always flawless.”

“Maybe we were followed. From Mobile, even, and they’ve been waiting for us to lead them to the box.” He glanced over at her. “Better warn your friend.”

Ben’s line rang five times before sending her to voicemail, so Kat left a brief message, then powered her phone off, just in case someone was using the GPS to track them. “Maybe we need to go back to New Orleans and regroup. We’ve got resources there. And backup.”

Andrew nodded. “How long will it take from here? Seven or eight hours?”

She reached for her phone before she remembered it was off. “If we go back the way we came? Yeah, I think so. Maybe a little longer?”

He hadn’t sped up or made any turns, and now he looked at her, his face tense. “There’s still some morning traffic left on the interstate. I’m going to try again to lose our tail. If I can’t, it could get rough.”

“If you can’t…” Kat drew in a breath. Let it out. Trusted him. “There’s something I could try. It’s dangerous…but I’m a human, Andrew. My survival probability for a high-speed chase isn’t as high as yours.”

“If I can’t pull this off, it’ll be time to break out whatever we can use.”

This proved to be waiting until they’d reached a crowded part of the interstate. Andrew maneuvered the SUV in between two trucks while Kat focused her attention on reinforcing her shields. Brick by brick, piece by piece. She’d had two good nights of sleep since the burnout, but it would take one more before she would be at full strength again.

All the better for this. No matter how much she’d trained with Callum, the idea of unleashing her empathy as a weapon made her queasy.

Not as queasy as the idea of a broken neck, though. She clutched at the door handle until her knuckles turned white as Andrew signaled for the next off-ramp. The wheels of the SUV were seconds from touching it when he whipped back across traffic, cutting off a red pickup that laid on its horn until they were in the far lane.

She didn’t dare look around. “Did it work?”

It took him a minute to answer. “I think maybe so.”

Kat blew out a relieved sigh and released her death grip on the handle, one finger at a time. “So where’d you learn defensive driving? Is someone in New Orleans giving Car Chase 101 lessons?”

“That?” He laughed, the sound only mildly shaky. “I learned that from your cousin.”

“Derek? Damn, I would have guessed Mackenzie. Have you ever been in a car with her when she’s late? I’m surprised she hasn’t had to take out a second mortgage on her dance studio to pay all the tickets.”

“I should teach her how to flirt her way out of those.”

Kat almost choked. “The officers of New Orleans love you lots, huh?”

“Sure, they—” The mirror drew his gaze again. “God damn it.”

Relief melted away. Terror took its place. Her stomach twisted into a tense knot, and she ignored it and tried to keep her voice steady. “Before I can do anything about it, we need to get to a place where there aren’t so many other cars.”

“Hold on.” He jerked across the lanes again, his jaw tight with concentration, and took the next exit, tires squealing on the ramp as it circled around. “How remote?”

“The fewer people, the less chance that I’ll hurt a bystander.”

“I’ll try.” The intersection was clear, so he ran a red light, though several horns blared in protest.

“Damn it, I wish I knew this town.”

Kat twisted just enough to peek behind them. A dark car with tinted windows darted through the red light, almost sideswiping a station wagon. “I’m going to try to read them. Get a sense of what they’re feeling.” How big a threat they were.

“Go for it, but keep hanging on.”

Some of Callum’s lessons she’d excelled at. Burnout, synesthesia, building shields that could withstand the pressure of a thousand frantic hearts. This one, though… Well, strength came with its own drawbacks.

Callum could pick out people in a crowd and touch their auras with the precision of a sniper. Kat felt more like a grenade, sending shrapnel flying in every direction. Trying to narrow the scope of her gift was difficult enough under calm, stationary conditions. In a high-speed car chase, there was no way to narrow her reading to the car behind them.

Still, she’d endured worse. Kat closed her eyes and opened herself, fighting to keep the gap in her shielding focused on their pursuers. It didn’t work, of course. Andrew was a quiet knot of tension at her side. They zipped past someone who echoed shock and outrage so sharp it tasted metallic.

Two distinct sets of emotions filtered through. One, fierce concentration cut through with satisfaction and determination. The other, ruthless, unabashed pleasure.

Déjà vu made her dizzy. For one terrifying moment she wasn’t in the SUV. She was in her old office, watching a shapeshifter pound a fist into Andrew’s stomach over and over while ruthless pleasure drowned her.

“Kat?” Andrew took his hand off the wheel for a moment, dropping it to her knee for a little shake.

“Kat!”

His fingers burned. The heat skittered up her skin, flames licking over her, struggling to find a way past the ice living inside her. Andrew was fire and passion and animal instinct, but nothing could eclipse the desperate need to protect.

Protect. It resonated with the darkest places inside her. Tiny, weak girl, fragile psychic playing with the big bad shifters. They could break her body into a thousand pieces, but they’d have to get to her first.

It was easier than breathing. Stopping would have been harder. No need to worry about Andrew this time. He lived inside her. She could feel him under her skin. Her power would flow harmlessly past him, because he was already a part of her, whether she wanted him to be or not.

“You’re scaring me,” he whispered, just before she let go.

Not all the way. Not even that much, just a little of the pain that had lived inside her, a little of the rage that built at the thought of someone hurting Andrew. She braided them into a shining arrow of psychic power and sent it twisting back.

Distance was meaningless in the vastness of her gift. The heart traveled at the speed of light. She felt her attack slam home, slicing through the driver’s mind like a well-honed blade. When he lay open and vulnerable before her, she called up the one memory that would never fade.

Andrew, on the office floor. Her hands clutching at his abdomen, holding things inside that she’d never seen before outside of a biology textbook. Bright red blood everywhere, on her face and her hands and his clothes, and his life pumping out through her fingers as she sobbed and he flooded her with loss and pain that faded to numbness. A thousand missed opportunities slipping away, and her lips too numb to form the words she should have said. I love you, I love you, I love you-Pain. Pure, unrelenting terror. More than a year and she could still smell the metallic stink, feel the slick heat of blood drying tacky on her skin. Even with Andrew’s hand gripping her leg, for one endless moment she felt the loss of watching him die.

Her heart broke in two.

So did the driver’s mind.

Tires squealed behind them. Kat opened her eyes in time to see the dark car fishtail. It momentarily righted itself, then spun out. Gravel flew in every direction as it swerved onto the shoulder, then back, narrowly missing a giant red pickup truck. The driver of the truck wrenched his vehicle out of the way as the car careened through an intersection and into the ditch, rolling out of sight.

Kat.

The small things came back first. Fingers on her leg. A firm grip. Steady, considering the fear dancing up and down her spine, a wicked tickling like bugs over her skin.

“Kat, I swear to God, if you don’t answer me, I’m stopping right here.”

She followed the thread of his voice back to sanity, even though her own came out rusty. Hoarse.

“Andrew?”

“Jesus Christ.” He was driving up a ramp, getting back on the interstate. “Are you okay? Do I need to stop?”

Her mouth was so dry that swallowing hurt. “They wanted to hurt us.” He had to understand. He had to believe her.

“I know.” No hesitation. No doubt. “We’re headed toward New Orleans now. I think we’ll be all right if you need to rest.”

She felt naked, laid bare to the world. She’d spent more power than she should have, certainly more than she should have had to spare. Rebuilding her shields and gathering the shreds of her self-control would take most of the endless drive back. If she concentrated on the ritual of it, the trancelike beauty of Callum’s waking dream, she wouldn’t have to face the stark, ugly truth.

Darkness lived inside her. Thrived, even. The slightest hint of danger to Andrew, and she lost her grip on morality. She maimed. She killed. Worst of all, she regretted it, felt the pain she’d caused, felt dirty and sick…and then she did it again.

All that training, and she was right back where she’d started. A broken girl with too much power and an unraveling grip on reality.

“Hang in there.” Andrew moved his hand back to the wheel. “Just hang in there if you can.”

“I’ll be okay.” Carefully phrased to avoid an outright lie, but maybe one anyway, if only because she didn’t really believe it.

“We’ll have to stop eventually, for restrooms or gas,” he murmured, “but we can take precautions.”

“Okay.” A shiver claimed her so hard her teeth knocked together. “I need to find the quiet place for a while. It’s like a trance, I guess. I need to rebuild my shields. As long as my breathing stays steady, I’m fine.”

The fear in the car spiked. “If you say so.”

Some tiny piece of her shattered, and her heart bled from it. “I won’t hurt you.” Don’t be afraid of me.

He answered as if he’d heard her silent plea. “I’m not afraid of you, Kat. I never have been.” He glanced over. “I’m afraid for you.”

The hardest thing she’d done in months was hold out her hand. He took it and breathed a shaky sigh of what felt like relief.

Her body was too conflicted to stir with desire, her mind too fragmented. She moved their joined hands to rest on her leg and closed her eyes. “You can let go when you need to,” she whispered. “But it’s…nice.

It makes me feel like I’m not alone.”

His answer was concise—and anything but simple. “I’m here.”

Waking Kat seemed like a bad idea, so Andrew drove. He drove for nearly two hours, straight down the interstate, and pondered taking the exit ramp into downtown Birmingham—and back to Ben’s condo.

But he couldn’t guarantee they’d lost the trouble following them, couldn’t guarantee the safety of Kat’s friends.

He kept driving. The best thing to do would be get them home.

Home.

He finally had to stop just outside of Montgomery, and he reached over to shake her shoulder gently.

“Kat, wake up.”

At least she didn’t seem too deeply asleep. Her eyes fluttered open, and she squinted against the early-afternoon sunlight. “Where are we?”

“A place called Prattville. On the way back home.”

“Gas station munchies?” A ghost of a smile curved her lips. “I could use some chocolate. Three or four pounds of it.”

He could pay for the gas at the pump, but the only way to grab food was if she went in with him. “Got your land legs yet?”

“I’m fine.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and stretched. “I didn’t need that much sleep to get past it. The drain was more…emotional.”

He stuck close, even hovering outside the women’s restroom while she was inside, but the station was deserted, save for the bored clerk behind the counter. They piled its surface high with drinks and snacks, enough to keep them going until they’d reached New Orleans.

Outside, Andrew hustled Kat back to the SUV. “I’m not going to be able to rest until we get home.”

She must have had some sympathy, because she tolerated him opening her door and holding it as she climbed back in. When they were headed toward the interstate again, she dug through the bag and surfaced with a bag of Twizzlers. “Home, New Orleans? Or home, like your place?”

She sounded tense. “Got a preference?” he asked quietly.

“Do you?” Not just tension now, but a challenge.

“Makes sense to stick together until you get the information you need.”

Her fingers tightened around the Twizzlers until the plastic crinkled loudly. “So we’re just being practical?”

He made a concerted effort to breathe, to relax his hands on the steering wheel. “It would make me feel better—more secure, I mean—if we went to my place.”

“Okay.” The tips of her fingers barely brushed his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.

You’ve had a shitty couple days, thanks to me, and hardly any sleep.”

Admitting as much felt like weakness, and something in him railed against it. “Just need to get you safe, that’s all.”

“Then go home, Andrew. To your home, if I’m invited.”

Having her there would soothe him. He knew it because he’d wanted it a hundred times over the last year. A thousand. “You’re always welcome.” Wanted.

“Good.” Plastic crinkled again as she stored the candy and retrieved her phone. “I need to call Sera, then. If I were with anyone other than you, she’d have tattled on me already.”

He believed it. The young coyote tended to think every human belonged to the strongest shapeshifter with a claim. “Who would she tattle to? Julio?”

Kat actually laughed. “Hell, no. She wouldn’t go within ten feet of Julio if you paid her. She’d tell her dad, who would tell Alec, who would fly down here just to call us idiots to our faces.”

Maybe he would have, once upon a time. But now he had the Conclave to deal with, a million problems more pressing than Andrew and Kat getting themselves offed on a fool’s errand. “She could always call Derek, I guess.”

“I think I’ll keep her updated and happy.” Kat started to dial, then froze with her thumb hovering over the screen. “Unless you think she’s not safe in my apartment. They have to know where I live.”

“Wouldn’t hurt to get her out,” he admitted.

“Okay. Shit.” Guilt laced the words. “Damn it, after everything she’s been through… I was supposed to give her somewhere safe to crash. This went so wrong, so fast.”

Andrew could think of only one good option. “Send her to Anna.”

Kat stiffened, enough to be telling. “Yeah, you’re right. Anna’s tough. She can take care of anyone who needs help.”

Shit. “You said she wouldn’t go near Julio. What about Miguel?”

“Anna,” Kat said, her voice careful and precise. “Sera needs a break from male shifters bossing her around. Anna makes sense, and my tender little feelings don’t get a vote.”

“I’ll call her.” He reached for his phone without taking his eyes off the road. “Want to give Sera the heads-up, maybe get her out to the bar?”

She made the call and laid out the situation for Sera in a calm, clear voice. Judging by the coyote’s reaction, Kat’s previous updates had glossed over all of the details involving danger and violence.

The conversation lasted through Montgomery and another ten miles past, both sides clearly audible in the silence of the car.

Kat hung up looking ragged around the edges. “Wow. Shapeshifters don’t like it when people shoot at their friends.”

“That can’t be news, sweetheart.”

“Maybe you’re throwing off the curve. You kept it together okay.”

She never seemed to understand how hard he worked not to freak out at the slightest hint of danger to her. “Still a work in progress, but I figure you should have one alpha bastard in your life who doesn’t flip his shit every time you get a paper cut.”

Kat swallowed and looked away from him. “You haven’t been in my life much lately. I kind of figured you weren’t comfortable there.”

The bare truth, Callaghan. Too late for anything else. “I haven’t been comfortable much of anywhere lately.”

“Is it the wolf stuff? I thought—I mean, when you joined the council with Julio and Alec, I thought you had a place.”

“They made a place, Kat. There’s a difference.” An uncomfortable one.

“I suppose there is. Prejudices don’t change overnight.” She sighed softly. “I remember, from when Derek was turned.”

“Yeah, Derek’s smart.” He’d done what he had to for Nick and her family, and then he’d walked away.

“Andrew?”

“What?”

“Do you want to be on the council?”

Want had never much figured in to it. “I’m needed. Before Alec brought me on, I had no idea things were as fucked up as they are. I barely believed it.”

“Does helping out at least make you happy?”

He had to think about that for a moment. “Not happy, not exactly. Content.” Satisfied in a way he still didn’t entirely understand.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her staring at him. Studying him. “Instinct,” she offered after a moment. “Taking care of people. If I thought the shifters could help it, I never would have put up with it all these years. But it was something I could give them, something that made them feel content.”

“I need it,” he confirmed. “I never understood that. Before, I mean.”

She wet her lips, a gesture as nervous as her sudden quickened heartbeat. “You can take care of me, if it helps. I mean—if you want to.”

Of all the things she’d never wanted, that was king. The ultimate cap on her own self-sufficiency. “I know how much it means to you to stand on your own, Kat. I get it.”

“I wanted to stand on my own.” She hesitated, and her breathing sounded too loud, raspy and hoarse. “I didn’t want to be alone.”

He didn’t take his eyes off the road, but he held out his hand. “You’re not alone.”

“I know.” Her fingers trembled as she curled them around his.

Part of him wished they were in New Orleans already, locked away in the confines of his home, safe and untouchable. The rest of him was glad for the drive and grateful for the tentative truce they’d reached.