I closed my eyes, manipulated my consciousness until I stood at the periphery of my thoughts, and allowed the gruesome scene to replay in my mind, along with a deep, pounding ache.
Through a thick, gloomy fog, I see two women; one is a human, the other is alien. They are facing each other. I can’t make out their coloring, can’t make out anything except the shape of their bodies. A man bursts into the room, behind the alien. I know this man, his scent, his energy, but his identity escapes me. He shoves the alien aside. The human woman fires a pyre-gun. The man falls in a puddle of his own blood.
The vision left me in the next instant.
I cracked open my eyes. My hands clenched at my sides as my helplessness intensified, more real than the aches and pains of my battered body. I didn’t know why the man had pushed the alien aside, or why he’d taken a blast of fire for her. Nor did I know why a human would want to hurt him. And I still didn’t know the identities of the victim or the killer.
I drew in a deep breath, then slowly released the air through my lips. No friend of mine was going to die tonight. I simply wouldn’t allow it. I would suspect every human female I encountered, and I would save this man.
If we could just find Lilla, we could lock her up, and Dallas and the others could go home, away from danger.
My movements were clipped, jerky, as I spun around and strode back to the car. The passenger door was still open, so I slid inside and slammed it shut beside me.
Dallas was plugging away at the computer console. He shot me a glance. “Better now?”
“Yes.” I didn’t explain further.
The edges of his month twitched. “You always have PMS this bad?”
“This is actually a light case,” I replied dryly.
He chuckled, the husky timbre of amusement mingling with his next words. “God help us all when it’s bad, eh?”
I opened up to tell him to go to hell. Before one word emerged, however, his expression sobered, and he cursed under his breath. He pounded a fist into the keyboard. “I’m having a hell of a time getting back into Lilla’s file. Damn it! If I could match her voice frequency, we’d be set.”
“Forget voice. We’re missing something,” I said on a frustrated breath. In my mind, I pored over everything I knew about her, everything I’d learned from our meeting. “The woman isn’t very discriminating. Is she linked to any more men?”
“Not that I’m aware of. She’s been seen with William Steele, of course, and Mark St. John, but no one else. Well,” he added, “unless you count George Hudson, her arresting officer.”
The moment Dallas spoke those words, several pieces of the puzzle connected in my mind. “You’re a freaking genius, Dallas.” I flopped back against the headrest and laughed with excitement. “Hudson. We haven’t yet talked to Hudson. He’s involved somehow.”
“But why did Lilla allow him to arrest her? Her capacity for mind control is staggering, as we both found out.”
“Wait. Remember what she said? That she couldn’t force Steele to do what she wanted? Maybe she can’t control everyone. Maybe she can’t control the men she screws.”
“Oh, that’s good. That’s very good. Since she couldn’t convince Hudson to forget her arrest, she must have clocked in a few hours between the sheets with him.”
I was intrigued—and disgusted—by Hudson’s supposed behavior, which didn’t fit with A.I.R. standards. Agents did not sleep with other-worlders. Ever. For any reason. “If they were sleeping together, though, why didn’t he simply let her go? Why go to all the trouble of taking her down to the station, booking her, and then burying her record?”
“Maybe he was jealous of her association with Steele and wanted to teach her a lesson: obey me or pay the consequences.”
“There are other ways to teach an alien a lesson. Ways that don’t include incriminating himself.”
“Witnesses,” Dallas said, slapping his thigh. “There would have been witnesses to her crimes, and Hudson had to make her arrest appear real.”
My eyes widened. “God, this all seems so clear now,” I said, and with that, relief hammered through me. Knowing exactly who had hidden Lilla’s file wiped away my worries about the station house. I could take Lilla into custody now; I could interrogate her on my turf.
This didn’t mean my friends were completely safe, of course. It just meant I had one less worry on this shit-filled night.
“What do we know about Hudson?” I asked.
Dallas punched some keys. A picture of George Hudson filled the screen, his information posted beside his smiling face.
“Forty-one.Brown hair, brown eyes.” Dallas paused. “I’d forgotten his coloring. A perfect match for our missing men.” He rolled his neck, and the bones popped. “Do you really think she’d go to him? That she’d go to the man who arrested her?”
“Oh, yeah. She’d feel safe with the A.I.R. agent who’s protected her twice already.”
“Should I call for backup?”
I nodded. “Have Ghost and Kittie meet us at the old warehouse on Water.”
Dallas radioed the two agents, then programmed the address into the car. Our tires squealed as the vehicle veered onto the street, high-tech sensors guiding it and keeping it from crashing into objects. “I told you the night was going to be interesting.”
“Interesting?” I shook my head. “No. It’s about to get ugly.”
A flash of movement captured my attention. My eyes narrowed, and I intensified my focus, my head turning as the car sped farther and farther away. When I saw a second flash, a peculiar, familiar energy washed over me. Just like at the club. And I knew. It was the male Arcadian.
“Stop the car.”
“Again?” Dallas asked.
“Pull over,” I shouted.
At his command, the car once more jerked to a stop, and I propelled forward in my seat, then back. At this rate, I would have whiplash by morning.
“Stay on your guard,” I told Dallas, then said, “Open,” to the car. As the hatch lifted, I added, “I spotted someone I want to question.” I jumped out, my weapon already drawn, my feet already moving, causing me to leap into a run the moment my shoes touched the ground. This was not the setting of my vision, so I had no compulsion to guard Dallas.
“Why the hell—” I heard Dallas shout behind me, his voice traveling with me. I didn’t slow down to explain. Couldn’t. He’d follow. He always followed when I took off. His protective instincts wouldn’t allow him to wait passively behind.