“Yeah,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head. “It’s big.”
Chapter 11
Mac woke to tangled sheets and tangled limbs and tangled thoughts.
Tangled, but all his own.
His arms still throbbed beneath their pink wrappings; the pendant pressed into his skin beneath a stiff layer of duct tape. Pink cyborg warrior. No burn, no blade-given healing.
The tangle of limbs was mostly Gwen, delightful soft skin pressed against his in every possible way.
“Healthy,” he murmured into her ear, “but not safe.” And loved her awake to prove it, watching sleepy confusion warm to a languid sensuality, her hands reaching and then clutching—that particular surprised and husky noise he’d learned to wring from her. Once, and then he buried himself in her and did it all over again, greedy with the scent of her, the sound of her, the gift of her.
While it lasted.
He left her catching her breath and made the shower quick and careful. Even then the water in the wake of the night’s activities shifted the duct tape—shifted the pendant—enough so a warning slice of retribution doubled him over beneath the pounding water.
Oh, yeah. He straightened, slow to pull himself back together. Much better to choose his own time and place.
He opened the bathroom door wearing nothing more than a pair of briefs, and ran right into Gwen. She burst into laughter as she pushed past him to close the door on his heels, trailing the sheet she wore.
“Laughter,” he told the door, “is not the appropriate response to seeing me naked.”
“Not naked enough,” she told him, muffled by the door. “Go away. I’m busy.”
Fair enough. He pulled a protein drink from the fridge, a fresh pair of jeans from his giant duffel, and downed one while climbing into the other. The knife found its way into his front pocket, and he pulled a plain heather T-shirt over his head, careful of his arms. He left his wrists to the open air—bruised, swollen and weeping—and his duct-tape arm torque peeking out from beneath his sleeve.
As he sat on the end of the bed to pull on a pair of socks, he eyed the discarded handcuffs—lying there, right next to the key—and inevitably, he scooped them up.
He didn’t know who he’d be when the blade came back. That was the hard truth of it.
Gwen popped out of the bathroom long enough to grab her newly acquired toiletries and disappear again. By the time she came out for good, still draped in the sheet and heading for her suitcase, Mac had a pretty good idea what they’d be doing next.
Not what they wanted to be doing, he was sure.
“We need to go back to that warehouse,” he told her.
That stopped her short, clothes gathered in her hand, sheet slipping and blue eyes narrowing. “I think some words just mistakenly came out of your mouth.”
He grinned. “Nice try. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
Spark showed in those eyes, faint freckles on pale gleaming skin and the red in her hair glinting with its dampness. “Damned right I don’t want to. But I don’t want you to, either. We need to figure out what’s going on, but surely there are other options.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Wander the city and follow the hate? We already know it’s out there and where it’s coming from. I need to know more about the warehouse guy. I need to know if he’s working with other blades.” Such as the man who’d accosted them near the hotel, his words blunt: This is my turf.
“That’s it?” she asked. “Not interested in who that woman was, or why he took her, or why he killed her?”
“She was no one,” Mac said harshly. “She was everyone. It doesn’t matter to him. He took her for the same reason he offered her to me—for his blade to feed on. And if I’m going to stop him, I’ve got to know more about him.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “And you think he’ll have left some honkin’ big clue for us to find? As opposed to, say...a guard of some sort?”
“I think he underestimates us.” Mac looked right at her. “I think he underestimates you. We wouldn’t be here now if he hadn’t.”
“Bullshit,” she said, but her flush looked pleased. “If I hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t have hung around talking to him. You who can see in the dark, you with your ill-mannered blade. You’d have taken out those guys and gone for him. Or you wouldn’t have left the diner parking lot in the first place.”
There was something to that.
“Doesn’t change anything,” Mac said. “You got us out of what it was.” He touched the duct tape on his arm, pushing cold, lumpy metal beneath it against his skin. “I don’t think he knows about this, either. Maybe he gets some sense of it—I did—or maybe not. But if he’d truly known, then he wouldn’t have let us go.”
“He might not let us go a second time.” She’d scrambled into her clothes, a pale green summer top of some filmy material with cap sleeves and a neckline of which he approved, and white capri pants that turned out to be perfectly snug across her bottom and loose below the knee. “Are you listening to me, or are you looking at my ass?”
“Looking at your ass,” he said promptly. “And I don’t think he’ll be hanging around at the warehouse. It’s too exposed.”
She plunked her hands on her hips, pointedly turning her bottom in another direction as she picked up her sport sandals. “And what if he is?”
He shrugged. “We’ll knock.” And then, at her impatience, he added, “I need to know. I don’t think he’ll have left any easy clues, but maybe the blade can pick up on something.”
Alarm replaced her impatience. “But that means—”
“That’s the other thing,” he said gently. “It’s a big place. You’ll be safe.”
“When you let the blade back in.” Her voice was flat with disbelief. “You can’t—”
“I have to!” he snapped, up on his feet and stalking in close, ignoring her widened eyes. “You don’t get it, Gwen. This pendant isn’t a magic pill. I’m free, but the blade is there—it’s trying to get in. Always. And if it does that, in a place and time not of my own choosing? If it does that while we’re in public? What if it happens while I’m around someone’s kid? Someone’s mother? While I’m with you?” One more step, taking her upper arms with a ferocity he hadn’t expected to pour out so unfettered. “Because that’s what I want, Gwen. You. I don’t know you, but dammit, I do. Call it one of the blade’s few gifts.”
She reached across his chest with one encumbered arm, touching the duct tape. “And this,” she whispered, more sadly than not. “So fast...”
“Sometimes,” he said, easing his grip on her to rub his hands more gently up and down soft bare skin, “it’s like that. Even without such things.”
“It’s why I came to Albuquerque,” she said simply, meeting his gaze without qualm. Big, pale blue, full of life—and then suddenly narrowing. “Not that you should think I’m a pushover. I still have a brain, you know. I can do what’s best for me.”
A smile tugged the corner of his mouth. “Noted.” But then he had to do it—to take a deep breath and push. “But this warehouse thing...it has to be done.”
She turned away from him with a grumble; he let her go. “Check it out,” she said, so obviously changing the subject as she pointed to her suitcase. “My purse was in there, too. Along with the credit cards I’ve already replaced—those should get here today.” She picked it up, pawed briefly through the contents, plucked out a small ID wallet and slipped it into her back pocket. It hardly made a ripple against her magnificent—