Pulling her arm from his grasp, she gave a light chuckle. “I’ll always be a cop at heart,” she said. “I just think we should keep our relationship casual.”
“Oh, I’m all for casual,” he said, but his hands found their way to her hips, pulling her closer to him in the small confines of his cubicle. “No strings attached. You know what I mean?”
What Kalina knew for certain was that he was making her sick—literally. Her stomach roiled and she thought she was going to hurl right on his Pittsburgh Steelers tie—which wouldn’t have been a crime at all since they were rivals to both the Baltimore Ravens and Washington Redskins.
“What I mean, Reed,” she said, pushing away from him and pulling her purse onto her arm in a defensive manner, “is that we should stay co-workers. That’s all. I’m not interested in anything more.” There, that should be clear enough.
Reed nodded, dragging his tongue over his lower lip in a move that was probably meant to arouse. Instead it sort of provoked. Kalina took a step closer to him using the point of her finger to poke into his chest.
“Just co-workers. Got it?” Her last poke sent Reed stumbling back, and he looked at her strangely.
“Cool. Cool,” he said, holding his hands up in the air as if she were about to arrest him. “I get it. Don’t get all huffy. Actually, why don’t you get moving to your big assignment with the feds? I’m sure they need you there,” he said snidely.
Yeah, he was jealous and now scorned. She didn’t care, she was tired of talking to him anyway. “It’s the DEA and yes, they need me there.”
Walking out of the precinct, she was racked by unsteady feelings both physical and emotionally. The DEA didn’t need her; she was a nobody, remember? Just like those dead girls. Her stomach roiled again almost in rebellion against the words spoken in her mind.
In the safety of her car she cranked up the air-conditioning and set out for home, her mind tracing over the facts.
Four people had been killed. Mutilated.
The females sexually assaulted, then mutilated.
Connected?
Not to her case, Kalina thought as she drove back to her apartment. It had nothing to do with her. While she was at the station she’d plugged in descriptions of the three goons she’d seen last night and come back with nothing. Something moved inside her, pushing past the nausea that had assailed her just moments ago. She rolled down the window, needing new air to breathe, and was greeted with a dry wind that filtered into the car’s interior.
From the passenger seat her cell phone chirped. She activated her Bluetooth and answered, “Hello?”
“Hi. It’s me, Mel. So we’re having a cookout tomorrow and I thought about you. You know, being alone and everything, I figured you’d like to come over, have a couple burgers, and hang out.”
Her co-worker, the chipper secretary with the envious home life. The word no was on the tip of Kalina’s tongue. She did not want to be around people she didn’t know, had too much work to think about socializing.
On the other hand, she’d never had a real friend. In all her years Kalina could count her personal acquaintanceships with males and females—outside of work—on one hand. She did not build relationships, didn’t share any part of herself with anyone else, and had never experienced a giving of the same. Maybe it was time she opened the door just a little bit. Maybe this time would be different.
As more maybes rolled around in her head her mouth answered, “Sure. Sounds good.”
Chapter 12
He called this room The Point. It was where he housed his shipments and distributed them to the dealers who would go out and make him and his growing establishment money to live on.
As rooms went it was large: twelve-foot ceilings with beams and wiring crawling overhead like veins. There were few windows, small and clouded with dirt and located high up on the wall so anyone looking in would most likely only see the old pipes and structure of the old warehouse.
On the floor nine-foot tables were lined as if a school of kids were expected for lunch, except there were no chairs. On each table at any given time a variety of items could be found, most often cocaine, since that was the drug he harvested and manufactured for himself. All the years he felt trapped and cheated being born in the bowels of the rain forest with all those other animals had finally paid off. Almost a hundred miles from where he was born in a dingy old hut at the base of the Gungi was where his empire had begun. Two years ago he’d found the land, or actually found the useless natives tirelessly working their callused hands to manufacture cocaine. The coke was being shipped to Raul Cortez in Peru then on to the United States, where Cortez had his army of dealers pushing it to those weak enough to become addicted.
After doing the useless minions a favor and ending their meager existence, he’d slept in the middle of what was nothing more than a huge tent. Sleeping and thinking, thinking and sleeping was what Sabar did for seven days. And in the same time that it had taken the God that humans worshiped to create this foul world, he had come up with a plan to control it.
Except instead of resting on the seventh day, Sabar killed. He hunted and devoured whatever crossed his path, letting the thrill of the hunt, the thirst for blood run gracefully through his veins. The idea had manifested over the weeks he stayed exiled in the forest, and eventually he’d gone out to find his own workers. Only these workers weren’t filthy humans, they were shifters. Ones like him that the Shadow Shifters didn’t want, felt like they didn’t need. When, in essence, they were the better of the species, they were superior. He would show them, once and for all.
He could simply attack the tribes in the forest: take his growing group of Rogues and pillage their camp in the deep recesses of the night. But that wouldn’t have the effect he wanted. It was too quick, too painless. What he had in mind for the Shadow Shifters was something much more drawn out and deadly. As the laws of revenge went, there were none.
Manufacturing his own product, shipping it to the States on security-cleared US military aircrafts, and having the humans he allowed himself to deal with push the product gave a much better profit than Raul Cortez had ever seen. The Cortez Cartel had nothing on Sabar and the Rogues.
Less frequently he worked in ammunition. One thing Sabar had learned from his military contacts was that the US government loved to fight, and they loved to have the upper hand in a fight. So they were always in the market for the latest and greatest in warfare. It just so happened that one of Sabar’s newest associates had exactly what the government wanted—and more excitingly, what America’s allies wanted.
So for the moment life was sweet.
But only for the moment. There were still some glitches in his plan, some issues that he needed to resolve.
The Kalina Harper thing, for instance. A chance encounter he’d never quite forgotten, one he’d finally realized was meant to be.
There were other issues, other legs of his plan he’d yet to reveal, but tonight was about taking the next step. Facilitating his plan was of utmost importance. If he wanted to rule he needed an army behind him. Drafting new Rogues wasn’t difficult; there was a lot of unrest among the shifters, both the shadows in the forest and the ones stateside. The Shadow Shifters prided themselves on sticking together, following their rules, and living the life outlined for them—inside ridiculous parameters. They were loyal to one another, dedicated to their Ètica and their way of life. But there was division, an act Sabar had foreseen years ago. Now a shifter himself, he coddled the philosophy of breaking with tradition like a newborn baby.
Humans, on the other hand, loved three things: money, power, and respect.