“So it seems. There’s an awful damned lot I don’t know yet.”
“Why’s the dragon here? He part of this?”
“The part I can’t tell you about.”
“You’re sounding like a Fed, Lily.”
“Sorry.”
The closer she got to Rule, the clearer her awareness of him became. It was distinctly sensory, this knowing, but not like any of her other senses. Touch, hearing, vision—they brought her information about everything around her: all the objects that contacted her physically, disturbed the air to create sound waves, or reflected light into shape and shadow. The mate-bond sense perceived only one thing: Rule. It told her nothing about him except where he was . . . less than thirty feet away now.
Yet if moonglow were a wind, Lily thought, it might feel like this.
Up ahead at the command post, Deputy Chief Hennessey—easy to spot in any crowd, even in his rig, because he was only a few inches shy of seven feet and skinny as a teenage boy—appeared to be arguing with a much shorter man in a wrinkled white shirt. When one of his people interrupted he listened briefly, nodded, then left with his man.
And when he and the other firefighter left, she saw Rule. He lounged against the side of a pumper truck, looking bored. His hands were behind his back, but she could see the blood on one sleeve.
His head turned. He straightened, and their eyes met . . . and she understood why his hands were in that odd position. They were cuffed behind his back.
Anger, raw and red, poured through her. They’d trapped him—handcuffed him, treated him like a felon, when he was injured—when he hated being trapped, feared it, fought that fear—
No. No, she was overreacting. The cuffs probably didn’t trigger his claustrophobia, since he could leave them behind simply by Changing. They were an insult and an offense, but they weren’t harming him.
But she let the anger carry her forward, moving faster now. “Which one’s Dreyer?” she asked T.J.
“Little guy, mostly bald, white shirt, glasses. Bear in mind that you can’t kill him. And if you scare him, he’ll bite.”
“I’ve got bigger teeth.”
“Lily—”
“Don’t worry. I remember what you said about the bone.” And as they approached the small group clustered around the command cars, she pulled out the chain around her neck. She unfastened it.
Rule’s gaze was intent on her. He didn’t say a word. She walked straight to him. A short man with glasses, very little hair, and a wilted white shirt with gold bars on the collar barked at her. “Who the hell are you?”
She ignored him, stuffing the chain and the toltoi into the pocket in her slacks. “You’re all right,” she told Rule.
One corner of his mouth kicked up. “I am.”
She heaved a breath of relief. “Your arm—?”
“Hurts, but it isn’t serious.”
Deliberately she slid his ring on her finger, then turned. “Captain Dreyer,” she said to the short man who was scowling at her. The eyes behind his black-framed glasses were small and close-set.
“Who the hell are you?” he repeated. “If my boys have let a damned reporter get through, I’ll string someone up by the balls.”
“Their genitals should be safe, then. Though you may be fascinated to learn that you have women on your squad, and women lack those particular dangly bits.” She held out her shield. “I’m Unit 12 Special Agent Lily Yu. FBI. Why do you have my fiancé in handcuffs?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
THE look on the captain’s face was deeply satisfying. His jaw dropped. His face, already red from the heat, hit a dangerous level of crimson. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“My fiancé, Rule Turner. You’ve got handcuffs on him. He was injured disposing of a bomb that might have killed dozens or even hundreds of people, and you’ve cuffed him.”
“He’s a lupus.”
She allowed her eyebrows to lift slightly. “And . . . ?”
“And he threw a goddamned bomb. And how the hell do you claim to know what he did or didn’t do?”
“The dragon told me.” She glanced at Rule. He wore his bland face, but something coursed behind his eyes. Humor? Incredulity? Anger that she’d chosen this of all moments to announce their engagement? “Did Sam have it right?” she asked him.
“Basically, yes. I saw the, ah, perp leave a sack outside Cullen’s room.”
“Outside the room? He didn’t go in?”
Rule shook his head. “My nose told me what it contained. I carried it to the window behind the nurses’ station, broke the window, and got rid of the bomb. An orderly saw me. I’ve described him to the captain. I don’t know if anyone has spoken to him.”
“Lieutenant James,” Dreyer demanded of T.J., “who is this woman, and why did you bring her here?”
“She told you who she is, and you’ve got it backward. She brought me.”
Rule’s eyelids dipped to half-mast. He spoke too softly for the others to hear. “Your sense of timing amazes me.”
It wasn’t what he said. Maybe it was his voice or the look in his eyes. For whatever reason, one kind of heat flashed over into another—inappropriate as hell, wild as a grass fire, and just as hard to ignore. She took a second to settle her breath, then answered him, pitching her voice so low only he could hear. “He’s pissed me off. And I get hot-mad, not cold-mad like you.”
Again something flashed in his eyes—something she could almost read.
Lily turned back to the captain, placing herself between the little man and Rule. “Do you have anything—anything other than blind prejudice, that is—to discredit Rule’s account of events?” She paused barely long enough for a hiccup. “I didn’t think so. You need to have those cuffs removed now. You also—”
“Wait just one second. You can’t tell me who to arrest or not arrest.”
Her eyebrows climbed again, higher this time. “Is Rule under arrest?”
“He’s a suspect. Until I—”
“Has he been disruptive? Violent? Is there any bloody damned reason for those cuffs?”
“It’s simple common sense to restrain a lupus!”
“The courts do not agree with you. Have the cuffs removed. Call the officers who are trying to remove Special Agent Weaver and the others from hospital room 418.”
“If anything your fiancé says is true, that room’s a crime scene.”
“The perp never entered the room. Your officers need to look for evidence in the hall. The patient in that room is under the Bureau’s protection. He is a high-value consultant who has been targeted by the perp who damn near blew up this hospital. He and those guarding him will not be moved until we’ve completed preparations for secure and medically safe transport. In addition, you need to follow standard protocol for dispersing the crowds gathered outside the police barriers.”
“Listen, I don’t care who you are or what you’ve been sleeping with. You are not in charge here. This is a local matter, not federal, and I can have you removed if you interfere.”
“Captain Dreyer.” Lily advanced on him. “Magic was used in the commission of multiple felonies—attempted murder, arson, possibly conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism. So yes, I can come in here and interfere.” She smiled the way a knife smiles at the prospect of parting flesh. “And that’s who I’m sleeping with, Captain. Not what. Who.”
“That is well-done,” said a clear but accented female voice, “but we cannot waste time on this pig-eyed fellow.”
A tiny Asian woman wearing black slacks and a thin silk shirt in purest white marched up to Lily and the captain. Her hair was silver-shot midnight, twisted on top of her head in a tight bun and pinned there by delicately jeweled hair sticks. Her posture was impeccably straight. The fine tracery of wrinkles in her face seemed an embellishment of the ivory skin, artfully spun by that great spider, Time.