18

I knocked on the door, the lacquered hardwood smooth under my knuckles. The corridor I stood in matched the barrier before me in style if not in substance. Wood paneling down low, pristine white paint up high, floors clean enough to eat off of. It wasn’t the sterile nature of the place that made it feel more like a hospital than an upscale apartment complex, though. It was the lack of discernible smells and sounds: no frying sausages or dried fish paste or concentrated garlic, no yelling or laughing or clumsy footfalls, no pattering feet or children’s giggles. The last wasn’t surprising. It wasn’t the kind of place that tailored to families.

I could feel Quinto and Rodgers’ gravitational pull at my back, a combined five hundred pounds of agitated police power. Despite the lengthy trek from the prison, they hadn’t asked me where we were going. Maybe they’d figured it out for themselves, or maybe they’d taken a good look at me and realized engaging me in conversation could spark yet another murder attempt against an officer. I don’t think I looked quite that dangerous, but I’d also failed to pass by any mirrors of late.

I heard the click and drag of a latch bar. The door opened slowly. Sensuously. The elf woman who opened it hung on the door’s edge, her body stretched like a bowstring with all the same flexibility and accompanying snap. A pair of brown leather pants hugged her lean legs, and a white spaghetti strap camisole left a smidgen of her midsection bare. She swept a lock of honey-amber hair out of her face as she took stock of me.

“Well, if it isn’t Drake Baggers.” She looked me up and down me again and bit her lip. “You’re looking good.”

“I started working out. You’re not looking too shabby yourself, Kyra.”

She shrugged. “In my line of work, it pays to stay fit. Literally. What’s it been? Seven months since our game of cat and mouse?”

“Eight,” I said. “Though I wouldn’t call our previous encounter a game, even if the guy in charge of putting it together treated it like one. Both of us almost died.”

Kyra glanced at her left hand, which happened to be missing its ring finger. She filled the gap with her thumb. “Oh, it was definitely a game, though not without consequence. And I was definitely the cat.”

“Can we dispense with the back and forth? We need to talk.”

I took a half step into her apartment, but she stopped me with a hand to my chest. “Hold on there, cowboy. You got a warrant?”

I was too angry to be offended. “Are you serious? I’m not here to bring you in. I don’t care what you’ve been up to, or who you might’ve robbed.”

Kyra tsked at my mention of the last part. “Why would you say something like that? And if so, why’d you bring your goons?”

“Goons?” said Quinto. “You do remember Rodgers and I are the ones who saved you from Bonesaw’s apartment before he made a snack of you, right?”

“On Detective Daggers’ hunch, if I recall. But don’t take it personally. You’re not as handsome as him.” Kyra glanced at Rodgers. “No offense.”

“None taken,” said Rodgers. “A lot of women tell me I’m too pretty for their tastes. Handsome yes, but not ruggedly so.”

I glared at my fellow detectives. “Guys…”

“Sorry.” Rodgers eyed Kyra. “He’s telling the truth. We didn’t even know where he was taking us. This is between you and him.”

Kyra regarded me with a narrowed eye. “Is it? Alright. You’ve piqued my interest. Come in. Watch the rugs. I just had them cleaned.”

Kyra stepped from her door and sauntered into her apartment. It said something about my mood that I barely noticed the seductive way she undulated as she walked. I did notice, though. I was furious, desperate, and as shaky as a guy with a central nervous system disorder who’d drunk too much coffee, but I wasn’t dead.

Quinto, or perhaps Rodgers, shut the door behind me as I reached the living room. Afternoon light streaming through the windows, which reached from floor to ceiling across two full walls. I suppose when you lived in a sixth story penthouse, it made sense to take advantage of the views. At least that way you got something for your stair-climbing troubles.

Kyra had decorated the room sparsely, with a ten by ten foot lambskin rug, a pair of sofas with low backs and no armrests, and pristine coffee table, free of any and all mug rings. Everything in the room was modern, lean, and expensive. Kyra was no exception.

She sat in the middle of one of the couches, a cool gray in color, and threw an arm across the back, inviting me to take a seat beside her. Almost. “Don’t get any ideas. Stick to the living room, Daggers.”

“Pardon?”

Kyra kicked her bare feet onto the coffee table. “I recognize that look. Studious. Far-off. Tense. You’re mentally cataloging everything you see. I invited you in in good faith. Don’t test my limits.”

I tried to soften my look. I failed. “It’s not you. I act this way every time I arrive somewhere new. Even more so lately. It’s a force of habit.”

“Aren’t we the cryptic one?” Kyra smiled, but just a hint. “But I’m not buying it.”

I inspected a narrow side table, one that had been placed in front of the only section of living room wall not lined with glass. A decanter sat there alongside a few glasses. “You’re not buying what?”

“That you always act this way. Last I saw you, you weren’t ready to chew rocks and spit gravel.”

“Ever think there might be a reason for that?”

Kyra’s smile expanded. “Believe it or not, I did. I’m smart like that.”

Rodgers and Quinto had stopped at the mouth of the room, out of respect I guess.

Kyra flicked a hand toward the free couch space beside her. “Lighten up a little. Have a seat.”

“No thanks.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “That’s no way to treat your host. All I’m asking for is a little levity. I know you deal with grizzly murders on a daily basis, but—”

I slammed my fist against the side table, rattling the glasses and almost toppling the liquor. “Damn it, Kyra! They have her.”

Kyra drew her arm slowly off the back of the sofa. Her face lost its mirthful aura. “Your partner?”

“You are smart, aren’t you?”

Being angry didn’t give me the right to be an asshole, but she let it slide. “Who’s they?”

“Remember when we last parted?” I asked. “After Rodgers and Quinto saved you, after you got patched up, when you ran after me on the front steps of the precinct?”

“I remember. I gave you a kiss on the cheek. Said I owed you one.”

“Did you mean it?”

Kyra’s gaze hardened. She drew her feet off the coffee table and back onto the plush rug. “I keep my promises. What’s going on, Daggers?”

My teeth clenched. “Bonesaw’s out. I don’t know how. I just found out.”

Whatever mirth lingered in Kyra’s face vanished. Her eyes widened. She rubbed at her missing finger reflexively. “You’re serious.”

“Deadly. He seems to have engineered a prison escape. Stabbed a guy to force a transfer to Stinking Baths and managed to arrange for a fake transport to pick him up from Coldgate. But he had help from the outside. Whoever sprung him had the resources to make it look legit. Nobody at Coldgate had any idea anything about the transfer had gone amiss until I started sniffing, and even then I wouldn’t have known to look if not for a chance sighting at a tattoo parlor.”

Kyra looked me over again. “You’re working out and getting inked?”

“Give me a break, Kyra. I was canvassing shops looking for the guys who tried to kill me last night.”

“Your sour mood is starting to make more sense.”

My hand hovered over the tumbler on the side table. I wanted to pour myself a glass, maybe two or three, but at some point over the past year my self-resolve had hardened. I settled for clenching my fist as I skirted the sofa and took a seat on the couch opposite Kyra.

“I need to call in that favor,” I said, rubbing my fist with my free hand. “I need you to help me track down Bonesaw, Kyra.”

“What? You’ve got to be kidding. You do remember what that psychopath did to me, right? He tied and gagged me, cut off my finger, and probably would’ve raped and murdered me if you and your police friends hadn’t come along. As it was, he…” She shivered. “Well, he got plenty.”

“Which is why I need you to help me find him,” I said. “Someone came after me last night. Evidence suggests it was his buddies. Now Steele’s gone, and while I don’t have a scrap of evidence to support it, I’ll be damned if he’s not behind it, too. You think he’s going to treat her any better than he did you? All you did was catch his eye and piss him off. She and I put the bastard in jail. Besides, who’s to say he won’t come after you again after he’s done with us?”

Kyra looked into my eyes. Hers were amber in color to Shay’s azure pools, but they were captivating nonetheless. “You love her, don’t you?”

I didn’t hesitate. “I do.”

Kyra regarded me for a little longer before snorting and looking away. “Can’t say I’m surprised. I had my hopes for you, but you were always too much of a do-gooder.”

I caught a snippet of something from Rodgers and Quinto’s direction, a hushed “Are you kidding me?” if my hearing wasn’t failing me. If so, this was so not the appropriate time for that.

“Are you going to help me or not, Kyra?”

She sighed. “You sure know how to pull on a gal’s heartstrings. Like I’d abandon your partner to a fate worse than I went through after you tell me that. But I’m not sure how helpful I can be. I haven’t seen Bonesaw since you dragged him off to jail.”

“But you knew him beforehand,” I said. “When I first met you, Bonesaw was there. When we all tried out to join the Wyverns. You spoke to him with a level of familiarity. You guys worked together at one point?”

Kyra shook her head. “We’d heard of each other, that was it. I never did a job with him, thank goodness.”

“But you’re still in the game. You have contacts.”

Kyra leaned back a little. “I’m not entirely sure what you mean by game.”

“Gods damn it, Kyra, I’m not playing around! I told you I’m not here for you. You could tell me you have five thousand golden crown from the city’s strategic reserve in your bedroom, and I wouldn’t bat an eye. I’m here for Shay. Are we clear?”

Kyra had the wherewithal to look chagrined. “Yeah. Right. Sorry. I’ll do what I can. Ask around. See if anyone knows anything. You got anything else to go on other than a suspicion that Bonesaw’s out and that he’s behind everything?”

“He might be in a new gang. The guys who tried to separate my guts from my stomach last night had tattoos on their inner forearms. Bonesaw has one, too.” I stuck a hand in my jacket pocket for one of the sketches before remembering they were still in my leather jacket at my place. “It’s a simple design. Three lines, the outer ones at a bit of an angle from the inner one, with some bunched half-circles at the end. I can draw it if you like.”

Kyra didn’t say anything, but her brow furrowed slightly, and the tiniest of gaps opened between her lips.

“—or, I’m guessing I don’t have to draw it. You’ve seen it before.”

“What?” The confused look disappeared. “No. It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“The new gang part. I’ve heard a rumor.”

“Just one?”

“None, if we’re being honest,” said Kyra. “More like a scrap here, two-fifths there, and brain power on my end to fill in the gaps. But you might be right. There may be a new gang forming. Let me look into it, and I’ll get back to you.”

That was probably my cue to leave. I didn’t. “I don’t have a lot of time.”

“You presume you don’t, rather,” said Kyra. “But I know what you mean. I’ll work as quickly as I can.”

Now I stood. “Send for me as soon as you know anything. Preferably within the next few hours. Any more than that…”

I couldn’t bring myself to finish the thought.

I think Kyra understood. She stood and put a hand to my elbow, just for a second. “Go. I’ll be in touch.”

I turned and nodded to Rodgers and Quinto. They led the way out.

Rodgers gave me a nod as I closed the door to her apartment behind me. “Think she’ll uncover anything?”

“I have no choice but to believe she will.”

Rodgers swallowed hard. He got my gist.

“What now?” said Quinto. “The Captain left you in charge. Unless you don’t feel fit for the task.”

I gave him the fisheye. “What are you implying?”

He shrugged, as innocently as he could. “You’ve looked better.”

I realized I was still clenching my fist. I shook it loose. “I’m fine. Tell you what though. I need to get the hell out of this suit. After that? I’ll think of something.”

I led the way down the stairs, mostly because I knew the best route to my apartment, but also because Rodgers and Quinto would’ve been suicidal to get in my way. Not that I’d ever hurt them. Not on purpose.