“We will almost certainly screw some things up,” Ethan said, coming toward me. “But we both love her already, and I suspect our being guided by love will go a long way. And even if we are the worst parents imaginable, she’ll probably be smart enough to find a way around us.”
He put a hand on my belly, smiled at her responsive kick.
“She knows you’re there,” I said. “Oh, and while we’re discussing small parasitic creatures, Mallory’s pregnant!”
His eyes went wide, then narrowed. “Does Catcher know?”
“Ha ha. Yes, and she said he was excited. In his, you know, Catcher way.”
“I know they love each other, and I know she loves you. But I have a difficult time imagining them as parents.”
“She can use magic to warm the bottles, and he’ll get a snarky T-shirt,” I said. “And like us, they’ll probably figure it out.”
I wrapped my arms around him, although I had to turn to the side to do it. “I love you.”
“And I love my girls.” He dropped his head atop mine. “Until you both gang up against me. Which I assume is inevitable given I’m going to be outnumbered.”
“We’re going to paint Cadogan House pink and cover it in glitter.”
He snorted a laugh. “I doubt pink. But possibly yes on the glitter, especially if Aunt Mallory is involved.”
I couldn’t fault his logic.
“Now,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “Let’s go check Margot’s nighttime basket and find you a snack.”
I grabbed his tie, pulled him down. “I have something different in mind,” I said, and kissed him hard and lavishly, with plenty of promise of things to come.
His eyes silvered. “I’m yours, Sentinel. But be gentle.”
“No,” I said with a grin, and proceeded to show him just how ungentle I could be.
5
Dusk fell again, and I refused to give up my nightly walk. But I agreed to tone it down a little.
I told myself I was just trying to avoid a battle with Ethan, but as time passed, the more the Incident began to bother me—and scare me. I didn’t scare easily, not anymore. But it wasn’t just me I was protecting, it was her. And something about the way the attacker had looked at me, the way he’d looked at my belly, made me uncomfortable in retrospect. I didn’t know if one failure would be enough for him. So I’d be careful.
I got dressed, confirmed with Luc there’d been no communication from him, and walked outside to the front portico. I stretched my calves along the edge of the bottom step and waited for Margot to switch from clogs to tennis shoes. Then we took the sidewalk to the trail that bobbed and weaved around the edge of the property just inside the fence. Not the most exciting walk, but likely a safer one.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Like I always have to pee.” And like my own personal rebellion, I took another drink of the chocolate banana “health” smoothie she’d made for me.
She grinned. “I mean about last night.”
“Nervous,” I admitted. And confessed I was feeling more uncomfortable about it tonight.
“That strikes me as an entirely logical reaction. The baby is your new House.”
“I think you have that backward?”
“No, I mean now you’re protecting the baby, where before you were protecting the House. You may be on Sentinel hiatus, but you’re still protecting something.”
Even as she said it, I was surveying the top of the wall that surrounded the lawn, checking that the security camera lights were green and ready. You could take the sword from the Sentinel, but you couldn’t take the Sentinel from the girl.
“We’ll find him,” I said, and that I believed one hundred percent. I just didn’t know the how or when.
“How are you doing?” I asked. There’d been darkness in my friend’s eyes this week, shadows that I thought originated from her heart, but I wasn’t sure. Margot was bright and charming and thoughtful, but she was also guarded.
I still wasn’t entirely sure why she and Jonah hadn’t gotten together. He’d refused to talk to me about it given our past non-relationship, and Margot had been just as mum.
“Did Jonah find you last night?” she asked, trying to sound casual and not succeeding very well.
“You mean, on the street?”
She laughed, as I’d meant her to. “No, after that. After he’d talked to, I think, Malik about negotiations with the city. I told him you were in the apartments.”
“No, he didn’t come by. But you saw him?” I asked, trying to hide my enthusiasm. We were both playing coy.
“Just for a second. He came by the kitchen to say hello.”
So he was interested, I deduced. I just wasn’t sure where she was.
“Cool,” I said, and then failed at being nonchalant. “And are you two . . . ?”
“We aren’t.”
“Okay. Are you not feeling it, or . . . ?”
She ducked to avoid a flowering limb that dipped over the trail. “It’s just . . . I’m working through some stuff from a previous boyfriend.”
I stopped short. “Oh, damn, Margot. I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize,” she said. “I told you I was ready to start looking again. And I like Jonah. But when we went out, I wasn’t as ready as I thought.” She started walking again, and I let her set the pace.
“I’m sorry I shoved him at you when you weren’t ready.”
She arched a gorgeous, dark brow. “Shoved?”
I grinned. “Gently nudged. Trust me—those wheels were already greased. You’re sexy and gorgeous and smart. And I think he likes food nearly as much as I do, so the fact that you’re a chef is probably a plus.”
She lifted a shoulder. “I’m just trying to figure some things out right now.”
“Totally fair,” I said. “And a good thing we’re immortal.”
“Preach.”
* * *
* * *
We’d made our third loop around the property—and avoided any further talk about romance, even though I wanted to burrow into the subject like a honey badger—before my phone rang.
I pulled it out, smiled at the name on the screen.
“Hi, Grandpa.”
“Hey, baby girl. How are you feeling tonight?”
“Very secure,” I said, as we rounded the corner to the front of the House and the bevy of watchful guards. “And fine other than that.”
“We’ve got a potential development.”
I stopped, motioned Margot to do the same. “The gun? The pizza box?”
“Neither, unfortunately. The gun doesn’t have a serial number. We found plenty of fingerprints, but they don’t match anything in the human or supernatural databases. No DNA, presuming we’d be able to match it. But when we find him, they’ll be nails in his proverbial coffin. Oh, goodness. No offense meant there.”
He sounded horrified by perceived slight. “None taken. So what’s the development?”
“I think we’ve found the getaway car.”
* * *
* * *
“You aren’t going.”
I slipped into a pair of Pumas that didn’t have laces, praise be, and wiggled my toes until my feet were in the correct position. “I absolutely am going.”
I stood up, adjusted the jeans I’d paired with the wide elastic band to cover my belly and the Cadogan House T-shirt I wore over it. “Can you stick a dagger in my shoe?”
His expression remained flat. “Could you draw it even if I did?”
“Probably not. But that’s why you’ll be there—strong and sexy as hell—to help me out.”
Still flat.
“I know you want to protect me, and I appreciate that. But I’ll be with you and the Ombuddies, and none of you are going to let anything happen to me.
That’s as safe as it gets.” I rose, walked to him. “He tried to make me a victim, Ethan, and he believed I was helpless. I need to be part of the team that brings him down.”
“You aren’t helpless,” he said. “But you are worth more than money to me.”
I put a hand on his cheek. “I know it. But I need to do this. And I don’t want to have to do it on my own, behind your back.”
“Blackmail, Sentinel? Really?”
“It’s not blackmail. It’s the truth. If you block me out, I’ll have to find another way.”
He was quiet for a moment. “All right,” he said. “But you owe me one.”
I wiggled my eyebrows. “Do I get to pick the one?”
* * *
* * *
We drove Ethan’s other baby, a red Mercedes-AMG GT Roadster which he swore he wouldn’t destroy (unlike the last Mercedes of his acquaintance) southwest across the city.
Beverly was a residential neighborhood with plenty of big trees and brick houses. The Ombuddies’ gleaming white van, OMBUDSMAN painted on the side in bold black letters, was already there, parked on a side street in front of a CPD cruiser. Two women in uniforms guarded the squat sedan, the pizza sign still attached. A few curious humans looked out from windows, curtains pushed aside.
Ethan parked, and we walked over to greet them. My grandfather, who wore khakis, a long-sleeve plaid shirt, and shoes with thick soles, pressed a kiss to my cheek. His head was bald but for a crown of silver, his face lined, his eyes sharp.
“Good to see you, baby girl.”
“Good to see you, too, Grandpa.”
I waved to Jeff Christopher, the third of my grandfather’s crew. He was tall and lanky, with floppy brown hair. Catcher preferred jeans and snarky T-shirts; tonight’s shirt read MCSNARKY above an emoji with a flat expression. Jeff stuck to business casual khakis and a button-down.
“How’d you find it?” Ethan asked.
“APB,” Catcher said. “Cruiser spotted it and alerted us. We figured you’d want to join us for the search.”
“We appreciate it,” I said, before Ethan could say something snarky about my tagging along.
“It’s a 1993 Festival GVS,” my grandfather said. “That particular brand didn’t last very long, so there aren’t many still on the road.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” I said, and circled the car, looked inside the dingy windows. An insulated pizza bag was on the front seat, along with plenty of detritus and garbage.
My grandfather gestured to Jeff and Catcher. “Let’s take a look.”
Both wearing disposable gloves, Jeff popped the trunk while Catcher opened the car doors. Scents wafted out: grease from fast food eaten on the road, the astringent smell of the green pine-tree air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, and the must of old and dirty fabric.
“He’s not tidy,” I said. “Or much concerned with clean.”
“No, he isn’t,” Catcher agreed. He popped the glove box, which was empty but for a tire pressure gauge. Flipped down the visors, and found less than that. “No registration or insurance docs.”
“There’s bound to be DNA in here,” my grandfather said, his gaze skimming over a pile of discarded fast food cups, the lids and straws still attached. “Your criminal doesn’t seem especially savvy.”
“He didn’t succeed in grabbing me,” I pointed out. “And he said he owed someone big money. Maybe we aren’t the only ones who weren’t impressed by his skills.”
“Could be,” my grandfather said. “Given his fingerprints weren’t in the system, it’s likely his DNA won’t be either. On the other hand, it seems unlikely he started with kidnapping, so we’ll see what the forensics people can do.”
“Well, well,” Catcher said, climbing out of the front seat with a white disc of paper.
“What have you got?” my grandfather asked.
“Coaster from the Brown Mule,” Catcher said. The thick cardboard bore a cartoon of a kicking mule and an address.
“It’s down the road,” he said. “It’s a hard bar and a hangout for members of Chicago’s, shall we say, connected families. You don’t casually visit the Brown Mule.”
“You’re talking about the mob?” I asked.
“And several other varieties of organized crime,” Catcher said. “The bar doesn’t discriminate.”
“It’s a bad thing to owe money to the mob,” Ethan said.
“That it is,” Catcher agreed.
“It doesn’t mean that’s what’s happening here,” my grandfather said, frowning with concern as he looked at me, “but we’ll send some officers over to the bar to inquire.”
“Will patrons at a mob hangout talk to cops?” Ethan asked.
“Maybe, maybe not,” my grandfather said, but gestured to one of the uniforms standing nearby. “But we check the box anyway.”
Catcher looked back at the garbage. “Let’s dive into the rest of it.”
“Your job is very glamorous,” I told my grandfather with a smile.
“We occasionally have to get our capes dirty,” he said with a wink. “But it’s usually worth it.”
6
They picked through car garbage for more than an hour, looking for identifying information. Given the volume, it seemed likely there’d be a discarded bill or traffic ticket or receipt, something with the owner’s name or contact information. But while he’d left plenty of paper behind, and probably a lot of DNA, none of it bore a name or address.
My grandfather looked at Ethan. “Anything from the House’s surveillance video?”
“Nothing useful,” Ethan said. “No frequent vehicle, no obvious stalker. Any luck on your end with the canvass?”
“Nothing,” Catcher said. “There are a few houses we haven’t gotten to yet—where no one answered the door on the first pass—but so far nobody has remembered an unbranded pizza delivery guy or anyone watching Merit.”
“So we’re at a dead end,” I said, feeling more than a little unsettled.
“We’ll find him,” my grandfather said, peeling off a glove and putting an arm around me. “He won’t lay a finger on you or . . .” He dropped his gaze to my abdomen, then up at me again, a questioning look in his eyes.
“We haven’t decided on a name,” I said with a smile. “But we’ll let you know as soon as we do.”
Hopefully, that would be before she decided to make an appearance.
* * *
* * *
“Are you all right?” Ethan asked, when we were in the car again and making our way north.
I shifted to get comfortable in the narrow seat. “I’m fine. Just . . . discombobulated.”
“Because a madman tried to kidnap you, or shoot you, or both?”
“Both,” I said with a smile. Ethan was so serious that it wasn’t often that he made light of a threat. But he also wouldn’t have wanted me to worry and stress the baby.
“He can’t get to you,” Ethan said. “And he won’t get to you. The House is secure, and you’ll stay in it unless you’re with me.”
I had to work not to bristle at the authoritative tone of voice, even though I knew he was trying to keep me safe. “And if we don’t find him?”
“I’ll be honest with you, Sentinel. And I’ll tell you something that I believe you’d have concluded anyway if you were less emotional about this particular situation.”
The look I gave him should have lowered the temp in the car a few degrees. “Less emotional? Because you’re cool and collected?”
“I’m always cool and collected.”
I snorted a laugh.
“I just mean it’s difficult to be objective when you’re the victim,” he said gently. “But it’s inevitable that we’ll find him. He’s not savvy, and he’s leaving a very obvious and literal trail of bread crumbs.”
But when would we find hi
m? I wondered, leaning against the window, the glass cool against my forehead, and watching the city spin past us. How long would this particular sword hang above our heads?
I wasn’t going to let him control us forever. And when we rolled through Hyde Park, I had an idea.
“Hey, pull over, will you? At the blue house?”
I pointed and Ethan pulled to the curb, and I climbed out, waddled toward Mrs. Plum, who stood at the gate.
She was sixty-four years old and shared the house with her grown daughter, her son-in-law, and their children. She was ten years a widow, still wore her wedding ring, and still preferred to be referred to as “Mrs.”
Her skin was dark, her hair a short crop of silver curls, the lines around her eyes the only suggestions of her age. She was slender and elegant, and wore jeans, a Northwestern T-shirt, and a gardening apron, as she watered the annuals near the fence. Mrs. Plum didn’t sleep much, and she said she liked to give her plants—a bed nearly overflowing with pink and white petunias—a drink at the end of a long day.
I wasn’t sure if my grandfather’s canvass of the neighborhood had made it to Mrs. Plum, but it seemed worth the check. She knew my walking routine better than anyone else outside Cadogan House, and more importantly, she knew the neighborhood itself.
She looked up when we walked toward her. There was suspicion in her eyes until she recognized us, and the distrust faded to pleasure.
“Merit! I’m so glad you’re here.” She reached over the low fence to offer a hand, and I squeezed it.
“Mrs. Plum, I don’t think you’ve met my husband, Ethan Sullivan. Ethan, Mrs. Donna Plum.”
“A pleasure to meet you, dear.” That she called him dear, when he was more than three hundred years older than her, was one of the reasons I adored her.
“The pleasure is all mine,” he said, and pressed his lips to her hand. And even the unflappable Mrs. Plum looked a little flapped. Ethan’s charms were pretty much universal.