Before he could answer, Nick opened the car door. “Franklin’s going to meet us at your place, Andrew. You want to be at home and I don’t blame you, but you can’t be alone right now. It’s too dangerous.”
Andrew didn’t argue. “Fine. I just want to rest.”
It was a sentiment Derek understood all too well. As Nick started the car, he concentrated on summoning whatever energy he could find.
Something told him he was going to need it.
Chapter 12
Derek settled one of Kat’s bags into the trunk of Jackson’s rental car and tried not to view the action as a failure. “Nick’s upstairs helping Kat get her laptop and school books together.”
“She’s got all the numbers, including the one at my parents’ lake house.” Jackson lifted the other bag and loaded it beside the first.
Derek stepped back and rubbed his hand over his chin. His stubble had grown into an actual beard over the last week, and he needed to shave before disheveled or shaggy bled into crazed mountain-man. “I know she’s better off out of it. Just gotta convince the instincts of that now.”
“I hear that’s the hard part.”
“Sure seems to be.” Derek rubbed his thumb over the suitcase, over the monogrammed initials that had belonged to his father. “She didn’t sleep last night. I thought being in her old room at my place would help, but she was up the whole night. Lied to me and Nick about it this morning and didn’t even care that we didn’t believe her. I think she’s still numb.”
Jackson cursed, quietly and under his breath. “Wouldn’t blame her. Sometimes it’s the only thing you can do.”
It was scary, seeing Kat’s usually bright, energetic gaze slide over a room without focusing on the people in it. The part of Derek that had been responsible for her for so many years rebelled at the idea of sending her away when she was so clearly hurting, but the rest of him recognized the truth—things were getting bad, and Kat was safer far, far away.
Alec had put it a lot more bluntly when he told Jackson to load up his mother and Kat and take the potential human hostages out of the equation.
Derek gave the suitcase one last look before stepping back. “Maybe a few days with your parents will be good for her. I don’t do comfortingly parental very well.”
Footsteps echoed on the stairs overhead, and Nick leaned over the railing, her hair swinging around her face. “Just a few more things. Kat’s locking up now.”
Even with his world in pieces and exhaustion hanging heavy around his neck, Nick’s smile made his heart jump. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” She skipped the last steps and held up two bags. “Books and computer. She didn’t even want to carry it herself.”
Kat relinquishing her stupidly expensive laptop to anyone else’s care was a step short of unthinkable. Derek winced and accepted the laptop bag. “Maybe she just really, really trusts you?”
“Maybe.” She stowed the books in the backseat, and Derek glanced up toward the balcony that fronted Kat’s apartment and led to the stairs. Keys jingled, and a lock clicked into place, but footsteps didn’t follow.
He glanced at Nick and raised both eyebrows in silent question. She shook her head helplessly.
Derek handed the precious laptop bag off to Jackson and circled around to the iron steps. The staircase trembled as he took them two at a time, and by the time he reached the landing, Kat was scrubbing her hands over her cheeks in quick, furtive movements. “I’m fine.”
“Liar.” Two rickety plastic chairs sat to the left of Kat’s door, along with a planter bearing a plastic tree and enough cigarette butts to make it clear Kat had been smoking again in recent months. Derek ignored them and coaxed Kat to sit before kneeling in front of her. “It’s okay to cry, kiddo.”
Annoyance tightened her eyes and pressed her lips into a thin, hard line. “The kiddo shit isn’t as funny as it used to be, Derek. I think I grew up a lot this week.”
She needed him to acknowledge it, that much was clear. Everything inside him struggled against allowing her that growth, but he tried. “I know, Kat.”
“Do you?” The words sounded so dark, so empty. He folded both of his hands around hers and studied her face, forcing himself to look at her. To see her. Some women’s features thinned out as they aged, but Kat still looked soft and young. Derek had his mother’s dark looks, but Kat had the freckles and blue eyes that her mother and Derek’s father had both shared.
They made her look young, until she lifted her face and he got the full impact of a frozen, hard gaze in red-rimmed eyes. He couldn’t begin to untangle the emotions there, though he could imagine a few—horror, pain. Rage.
Fear. Her hands shook under his, and some instinct prompted him, recognized panic as only a predator could. Not fear of him, but of being feared.
“Kat.”
She pulled in on herself, and Derek felt the world shift a little under his feet. Thin ice, he was balanced precariously on thin ice and the wrong word would send them both plummeting.
“Kat, look at me.”
“No.” She trembled hard enough the chair shook with her, one of the off-balance legs scraping over the concrete landing.
“I’m not scared of you. None of us are scared of you.” A tiny lie, maybe, but as locked up inside herself as she was, he knew he could get away with it. “You saved Andrew’s life, and it hurt. I wish like hell one of us had been there to do it for you. But in this world we’re in sometimes that’s all we can do. Mackenzie killed someone to save Jackson, and no one thinks she did anything but what she had to do.”
Tears stole down Kat’s cheeks, and her words were thick. “I want to stay. I want to help Nick. I want them to pay for what they did to Andrew.”
“They will. You know Alec will make sure of it. But the shapeshifters can’t do their thing until the humans are safe—and that means all of you. You, Jackson and Jackson’s mother.” He wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Don’t tell Jackson that Mackenzie’s secretly bundling him off to safety, huh? You know us men and our tender egos.”
It startled a short laugh out of her. It was still half-sob, but she opened tear-filled eyes long enough to glare at him. “I hate men and their tender egos.”
“You and every other woman.” He smiled and smoothed Kat’s hair back. “You have a big project due soon, don’t you? Go have your vacation and work on it, and let me take care of Andrew.”
Kat lifted her hands and rubbed tears from her cheeks. “You gonna let Nick take care of you?”
Nick could probably hear every word they said, and he replied knowing it. “Like I could stop her. I’m helpless when she smiles at me.”
“You are.” Kat’s tilted her head and stared up at him. “You know that, right?”
“I said it, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but do you really know? I mean, you’ve had that disturbingly intense booty-call vibe around her for years, but that’s not all it is. Not by a long shot. Not anymore.”
It wasn’t something he had any intention of discussing with Kat before he’d talked about it with Nick, so he caught her hands and tugged her to her feet. “Don’t think I didn’t see what you did there. Big eyes and a wobbly lower lip won’t save you. You know the penalty for snooping.”
She smiled, wide and brilliant enough that he let himself believe for the first time that she’d be okay. She shoved her keys into her pocket and started toward the steps. “Sucks to be you. My apartment doesn’t have a swimming pool.”
“Jackson’s parents have a lake house. I bet I can get Mackenzie to dunk you.”
“Whatever.” Kat paused three steps down and turned to stare back up at him. “Thanks, Derek.”
“You bet, kiddo.”
That earned him a rude gesture and a muttered curse, and he’d never been so glad to hear his sweet baby cousin cussing like a sailor.