Never in her life had Kalina imagined she’d be wearing such clothes, walking in these shoes and heading into the DEA satellite office in DC. It almost felt like déjà vu, since about three months ago she’d done this very thing—different clothes, of course. Still, she looked damn good, felt spectacular, and let her cat purr just slightly as she knocked on the door of Agent Dorian Wilson’s office.
It took only seconds for him to beckon her in, and she moved with the slow, sleekness of a cat. Her lips spread into a friendly smile, while her hazel eyes found his glare and locked into place. Gentleman that he was, Dorian stood, extending a hand across the desk toward her immediately. Kalina accepted his hand graciously while surreptitiously glancing around his office.
The space consisted of a cluttered desk, a high-backed faux-leather chair for him, two hard need-to-be-reupholstered chairs for guests, a file cabinet that looked to be on its last leg of life, and no windows. Four walls surrounded the closet-like space, effectively boxing its occupants in for the duration they stayed. Kalina felt claustrophobic already.
“Nice to see you again, Kalina,” Dorian said as she let her hand slide from his grasp.
He had a nice, firm handshake and was dressed in dark brown slacks and a beige dress shirt. He’d forgone the tie but from the haphazard way the top button of his shirt was undone she knew it was most likely somewhere in this office. Probably beneath the suit jacket that hung on the back of the door Jax had just closed. Her guard with his six-plus-foot, 285-pound body looked like he was being stuffed in this Cracker Jack box of an office. But he wasn’t leaving Kalina’s side, not for one instant.
“Hello, Dorian. It’s been a while” was her cordial response as she took a seat.
Dorian’s gaze went to Jax, who’d fitted himself in a corner, crossing his beefy arms over his massive chest.
“Jax is my guard,” she said nonchalantly. “He goes where I go.”
Dorian nodded, giving Jax no more than another quick stare before returning to Kalina.
“So you need a guard now?” he asked, taking his seat again and coming forward to rest his elbows on his desk. “Somebody after you?”
Kalina shrugged. “You never know. My husband would rather be safe than sorry.”
“That’s right.” Dorian nodded as he spoke. “You married Roman Reynolds. The subject of your previous investigation. How’s that going?”
“It’s going very well, thank you” was her quick reply. She was sure to keep a smile on her face and her gaze on Dorian. He looked at her as if he could see things that weren’t there. A few months ago this might have made Kalina nervous, as she was just getting used to the feline side of her gene pool. Now, as comfortable in human form as she was on four legs, she simply watched him in return.
There was something about the agent that he didn’t want people to know, a part of him that wasn’t quite the norm. She recognized that as a trait she’d carried for most of her life and wondered briefly where Dorian’s secret door would lead. But that wasn’t why she’d come.
“I understand you’re investigating murders now? Has the illegal drug trade dried up?”
Her words were only a mild surprise, which Dorian masked with a tentative smile. “You know how it is, Kalina. You find a clue that seems to connect the dots and you follow the trail. That’s what I’m doing, following the trail.”
“And it’s led you to Xavier Santos-Markland?”
“It’s led me to a suspect.”
“He’s not a killer,” she said, knowing in her mind that was only half true. “He couldn’t have done that to that girl.”
“How do you know what was done to her? And what are you, his character witness?”
“I’m his friend. And I know what was done to her because I’ve seen the autopsy report. And before you even bother to ask, I probably got ahold of it the same way you did so don’t get all dignified about your precious confidential information.”
“You’re no longer with the MPD,” he told her. “You shouldn’t have access to any of their records for any reason.”
“And you should? This is a local crime. You’re a federal drug enforcement agent. Out of your jurisdiction seems to be appropriately pinned on your collar.”
“Like I said, the murder connects to my active drug investigation. But I must say this is a pleasant surprise—to have you here defending one of my top suspects.”
“If he’s a top suspect, your case isn’t worth crap. All you have on him is his business card. How many strippers or prostitutes have your number, Agent?”
He looked startled for a brief second, then sat back in his chair. His hair was like ebony, cut low and smoothed in thick waves; his eyes were dark and pensive in a face that was handsome but definitely stressed. He wasn’t married and had never been, had two sisters and his parents were still alive. Dorian Wilson was the average male, overworked, underpaid, and unhappy. But there was something else. Kalina couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she knew instinctively that there was more to this man than what the eye could see.
“I’m not the one being investigated. Markland is. What happened to you, Kalina?” he asked her seriously. He didn’t look to Jax again, but she knew he was asking specifically about her union with Rome and subsequently her departure from the police force.
“I grew up” was her simple reply. “I opened my eyes and realized that no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves otherwise, this world we live in is not black and white. There are always shades of gray that we overlook because we’re too afraid to accept or to not be accepted. That’s how I know Xavier is innocent and why I came here to tell you to step back and take a hard look at this situation. You might just see the things I’ve seen.”
Not that she wanted him to see the Shadow Shifters—no, that was absolutely not what Kalina wanted. She only asked that Dorian take a deeper look into this murder to see that X wasn’t capable of doing those horrific things to Diamond Turner. The girl’s primary cause of death was an overdose of an unnamed drug. Only she knew the name; they’d begun calling it the savior drug, as evidenced by the shield on its package. It was Sabar’s greatest creation—a deadly mix of an herb called damiana and acids used to base cocaine. It was imperative that the shadows put a stop to him before any more people died because of it. If Dorian directed his energy toward getting the drug off the streets, that would be a tremendous help for the shadows. If he continued to look at X, Kalina was afraid it would end in his demise, because neither Rome nor Nick was going to allow X to be put away for murder. And knowing X, he’d kill anyone who even thought about throwing him in jail.
“Sounds like you’re writing a book,” Dorian quipped with a shake of his head. “But I’m living in the real world. I didn’t drop my job and all my responsibilities because some rich playboy decided to look my way. You breached one of the department’s most profound rules: You slept with a suspect. Hell, you married him when you know there’s a possibility he could be as dirty as his friend. So I have to ask you again, why are you here? Why come to me about Markland? You have to know that your character is just as tainted as his now. What makes you think I’d take anything you say seriously?”
His voice sounded incredulous, as if he really didn’t take stock in anything she’d said. Kalina knew this would be a possibility. To the human eye she had done the unthinkable. But to herself, for her own peace of mind, she’d done the only thing she could have. She’d chosen to be who she was and to live the life she was destined for. Unfortunately, Dorian would never know that.