I WAS STILL smiling when an SUV pulled in beside me. I didn’t know the vehicle, and it was still dark enough that I couldn’t see inside the SUV, but the driver was most likely male and tall. Then he opened his door, and the overhead light illuminated him. My stomach fell into my shoes, and my pulse rate soared. I suddenly couldn’t swallow right. It was Olaf. He was perfectly bald, with a mustache and a Vandyke beard framing his lips. When I’d first met him, he’d been clean-shaven. He looked better with the facial hair; it gave his face definition and complemented the thick black of his eyebrows. Before, he’d looked like a henchman in some big-budget action flick. Now he looked like the main villain. I hadn’t understood what other women seemed to see in him until he grew the Vandyke. Then I could finally see that he was handsome in a scary-bad-guy sort of way.
Olaf, aka Marshal Otto Jeffries, unfolded himself from the SUV and stood all damn near seven feet of him on the other side of the vehicle from me. I had a gun naked in my hand, held against my thigh like I had for Leduc after he’d threatened me. Olaf hadn’t done a damn thing to me; he was even smiling at me as he started to move in my direction. I opened the passenger door and slid out so that I wasn’t sitting there staring at him like a mouse caught in a cobra’s gaze. I even holstered my gun, because he had his badge on a lanyard around his neck. We were both U.S. Marshals in good standing. He hadn’t done anything wrong yet, so I put up the gun that my fear had made me draw, but I did start moving toward the building behind me. I tried to make it casual, like I was just going to stand on the porch with its light and people just inside to chat with him, not so that I wouldn’t be alone with him. He was one of the only people on the planet who could make me feel like a victim waiting for a crime to happen. I hated that I was afraid of him. I fought to quiet my pulse rate, though it was probably too late to hide my physical reactions from him. He was a werelion now, which meant he’d probably tasted my pulse the moment my heart rate spiked.
“Anita,” he said. He had a deep voice to go with the size of him, and it sounded like the rumble of a Great Dane.
I almost called him Olaf, but remembered in time that we were on the job, and when other cops were nearby, he used his legal identity. I could hear the murmur of voices just inside the building. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, which meant I probably could have called him anything without being overheard, but it was his secret, not mine.
My voice was even and neutral when I said, “Otto, what are you doing here? I thought you were on an active warrant somewhere else.”
He smiled again, and it almost pushed its way into the black depths of his eyes. They were set deep in his face like twin caves. Maybe it was the color of them? If he’d had bright blue eyes, would he have looked less intimidating? Maybe I could have talked him into colored contacts and see. Though any color would have ruined his style of all-black assassin chic. Whether he was out of work clothes or in them, I’d never seen him wear anything but black. There might have been a white T-shirt thrown in there once, but when I thought of him, I thought of black.
“The warrant is complete.” Which meant he’d killed someone recently, but I really couldn’t throw stones at him about that. We were both executioners with badges.
“Good for you,” I said. “Ted told me you were chasing down bad guys close to here.” I mentioned Edward on purpose, because he was one of the few people in the world Olaf respected man-to-man. Pretending to be my lover, Edward had helped me keep Olaf from pursuing his crush on me further.
Olaf smiled as if he knew exactly why I’d dropped Edward’s legal identity into the conversation. “Ted told me you were nearby as well.”
“No, he didn’t,” I said, and my voice was still neutral; even my pulse and heart rate were even. Good for me.
“How can you be so certain?” he asked.
“Because he would have told me that he’d talked to you.”
He gave a small nod. “There was a second crime attached to Newman’s warrant. As the closest U.S. Marshal, I was notified.”
I nodded, and some tension I hadn’t realized I was holding eased out. He wasn’t stalking me; he was on the job. “I thought the new protocol only alerted the nearest marshal if there was a second attack connected to a warrant.”
“As did I, but apparently it alerts for any major crime associated with the warrant.”
“So the attempted theft at the same crime scene was pushed through channels to you,” I said.
“Yes.”
“So you knew the second crime was just theft with no violence,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Then you knew that Newman and I didn’t need any more backup.”
“We’re supposed to contact the marshal in question and ask if they need help before we leave the area,” he said.
“I think that means a phone call, not a face-to-face.”
He smiled, a brief curling of lips in the black beard-mustache frame. There was emotion in the depths of his equally black eyes, but it shouldn’t have gone with the smile. I fought the urge to shiver as he stared down at me.
“I am following the new protocol, and I get to see you in person, Irene.”
“I appreciate that . . . Sherlock.”
I took in a deep breath and let it out slow. I’d made a side comment to him once that I was the Woman for him—well, the only one he actually wanted to date instead of kidnap, torture, rape, and kill. He had never read the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, so he hadn’t understood the comment. I’d explained, and to my surprise, he’d gone off and read the stories, so the next time we met, he’d suggested we have pet names for each other. I’d be his Irene Adler, and he wanted to be my Sherlock Holmes. I’d suggested he should be Moriarty instead of Holmes, but he didn’t think that made sense as terms of endearment since they’d never been a couple in the stories. My opinion had been not only no, but hell no. Edward had persuaded me to go along with it as a way to stave off the day when Olaf finally realized we’d never be a couple, or he just decided to move me from would-be girlfriend to victim.
“You know, I’m still thinking that Holmes might work better as a term of endearment,” I said.
“Have you decided that you would prefer Adler to Irene?”
“Let’s try it that way and see if it rolls off the tongue better.”
“Very well, Adler.” But he shook his head. “I prefer Irene.”
“I prefer Moriarty, but you said no.”
“You do not seem comfortable with our nicknames for each other.” His voice had gone lower, softer, and his face was sliding to something more neutral. I did not want him to look at me coldly; that could go badly for both of us. Damn it.
“I don’t have cute nicknames for any of the people in my life,” I said, which was absolutely true.
“Jean-Claude calls you ma petite.”
I rolled my eyes before I could stop myself. “He has cutesy nicknames for everyone. It’s just the way he is, but I’ve never come up with anything to call him.”
“You call him master.”
“Hell no, not unless there are other vampires around we need to impress, and even then, I usually forget.”
He smiled again, which even with the creepy expression in his eyes was better than him shutting down and going into full-sociopath mode. “I also have never given pet names to anyone.”
“Maybe we’re just not that kind of people,” I suggested.
“I enjoy calling you Irene, or Adler.”
“And I’m good with you using it for me, but I’m just saying that Sherlock Holmes doesn’t quite work on my end for you. That’s all.”
“And you think Moriarty would be better?” he asked.
“I’d like to try it if you’re game.” I couldn’t believe that I was standing here discussing pet names with him. He scared the fuck out of me. Under no circumstances did I want to call him anything but far away from me.
“Why Moriarty instead of Holmes? Give me your reasons.” His voice was serious, the smile gone. He studied me with those pitiless eyes of his.
I took a deep breath and concentrated on keeping my pulse and breathing even. He’d enjoy my fear if he could detect it, and I didn’t want him to enjoy it. “Moriarty is the bad boy, the mystery man. It seems to fit you better than Holmes’s cold logic.”
“He is addicted to cocaine. That is not cold logic,” Olaf said.
“True, but I see that as weakness, and you’re not weak.”
He smiled, and this time it was a real one or the closest his little black heart had to offer. It was good enough that I smiled back at him.
“Your reasoning is sound,” he said. “I will be Moriarty for you.”
I wondered if he understood just how true that statement was, but I kept my smile. Maybe it was more relieved than romantic, but it was still a smile. “Moriarty. Yeah, that I can call you and be happy with.”
“You are right. It does roll off your tongue better than Holmes ever did.” He managed to do that thing that men do sometimes when perfectly harmless statements turn into creepy sexual double entendres. But since we were supposed to be romantic in some weird way, I couldn’t call him on it or say something snarky in return. I lost my battle of will with myself and shivered.
His smile changed somehow, or maybe it was just the look in his eyes. He was staring at me like he wondered what I’d taste like, and not in a double-entendre kind of way but just straight-up taking a bite out of someone. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“I am glad that our new closeness has not made you unafraid of me.” He took a step toward me on the tiny porch, sniffing the air above me.
I backed away from him before I could stop myself. I was so close to him that with his new literally catlike reflexes, I’d never get to a weapon in time. I knew with good reason that he wouldn’t hurt me here and now, that if he decided to do it, it wouldn’t be like this, but damn it.
“I like the scent of you when you’re afraid, Adler.”
“I know you do.” I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice as I said, “Moriarty.”
He took another step forward, and this time I made myself step forward to meet him. We stood so close that it was almost more awkward not to touch. I glared up at him, putting all my rage and defiance into my eyes. I would not cower for him.
He bent over me, not like he was moving in for a kiss, but so he could smell my hair. His voice was a low rumbling whisper against my hair. “I am torn with you, Anita, my Irene. You would make a magnificent hunt to end as all my hunts have ended. To take all that rage and power away from you is exciting, but I can have you like that only once, and I do not think I want you only once. You are the first woman that has ever made me think I would want her more than once.”
I think I held my breath. I had no idea what to say to him in that moment, and we were standing too close for me to just pull a gun and shoot him. He’d been fast for a human before, but now he was a werelion, one that was trained in hand-to-hand combat and who outweighed, outreached, out-everythinged me.
My hand found the doorknob behind me. I could still hear the voices inside, so close, but they might as well have been on the moon at that moment.
I found my voice, and it was breathy and shaking. I hated that, too. “And you wonder why I wanted to call you Moriarty.”
“Not anymore,” he whispered, and laid his lips against my hair again.
I turned the doorknob, and he had to move back or risk us both stumbling through the door. I did half-fall through, my hand on the door handle the only thing that saved me from tripping to the floor. Olaf came through the door gracefully like the big predatory cat he was. Oh, hell, he’d always moved like that. I could bitch about a lot of things, but the man knew how to move.