The sun was bright overhead, but the air still held a cold bite. Kat shivered and pulled up the hood on her sweatshirt as she stepped onto the curb. “He’s on the fourteenth floor.”
She started to lift her bag onto her uninjured shoulder, but Andrew took it from her. Let her get pissed off about it if she wanted. “Up there, almost at the top. That’s where the condos are.”
She only nodded and studied the building. “Looks posh. Ben’s a hotshot software designer, though, so I guess he can afford it.”
“Maybe not as expensive as you think. Stuff like this in Birmingham is a lot more reasonable than in New Orleans.” Her friend had probably managed to pick up this place for half what Andrew himself had paid for his old condo on South Peters.
“Yeah?” She reached the door and tugged it open. “I forget you’re the real estate smartie. Maybe when this is all over you can help me find a place, one Sera can afford too. I keep telling her she doesn’t have to pay rent since she actually cooks and cleans, and I wasn’t so great at that, but she’s pretty stubborn about it.”
“It can’t make her feel very independent, not paying rent or anything.”
Kat’s eyes shadowed. “I know. I keep telling myself not to say anything, but then I see her mending her work clothes because she can’t afford to replace them. I feel how worried she is, and I have money.”
The fact that Kat had the money to spare wouldn’t be any easier on Sera’s pride than if they’d both been scraping by. In fact, it robbed their situation of the camaraderie it could have had. “She needs to do it on her own as much as she can. I can respect that.”
Kat’s boots scuffed the lobby floor as she crossed to the gilded elevator and jabbed her finger at the button. “Her ex-husband makes me glad all the controlling bastards in my life have always meant well. I used to say it didn’t make much difference, but I was really, really wrong.”
“Yeah.” His own limited experience with alpha bastards—knowing them and being one—had taught him that. “There’s no avoiding instinct.” Then he proved it when the elevator door slid open and he urged her inside with a hand at the small of her back. “Sorry.”
Her gaze caught his for a moment and then skipped away. “Just don’t get protective and weird because of Ben. Or his girlfriend, since she’s probably more dangerous than he is. She’s some sort of priestess.
Pretty sure she can smite people, though she probably wouldn’t do it in downtown Birmingham.”
He forced a smile. “Now why would she smite me?”
Kat’s expression stayed deadly serious. “Because I’m hurt, and Ben’s a stranger to you. And you are an alpha bastard, no matter how hard you’re choking it down. I don’t want anything to explode.”
“Least of all me?”
Her hand snuck into his. “I’d be sad if you got smited. Smote? What’s the past tense?”
Smitten. He squeezed her fingers. “Don’t know. You’d better Google it.”
Because she was Kat, she shook her hand free, pulled out her phone, and did just that. She was still muttering under her breath when the elevator doors slid open, and she stepped forward without looking up. “Fourteen-C.”
“Got it.” The hallway was clear and the door solidly closed, so Andrew knocked.
Kat laughed her triumph just as the door opened. “Smite, smote, smitten!”
The pretty brunette on the other side of the door tilted her head. “You pretty much have to be Kat, which makes you Andrew. Come on in, Ben’s finishing up in his office.”
The front room of the condo was packed with expensive electronics. A longsword that looked like it had seen some use stood propped in the corner, and it drew Andrew’s eye. “Nice sword.”
The woman gathered her hair up into a ponytail and rolled her eyes. “His brother’s,” she said in a voice that made her disapproval clear. She picked up a badge and clipped it onto her scrubs, then braced both hands on her hips. “Now, Kat. Ben told me you’re hurt. Do you mind if I take a look?”
Kat glanced at Andrew, a quiet question in her eyes, and he swallowed the protest that rose automatically. “Bathroom?” At least if there were windows, they’d be covered, with no easy visual access from someone perched on a neighboring roof.
“All right.” Kat slipped her bag from her shoulder and held it out. “Admiring the weapons should keep you entertained until Ben comes out.”
He took the bag, and she disappeared with the brunette, leaving him alone in the room. Aside from the sword, he found two guns, a taser, a collection of knives, and a scuffed set of brass knuckles.
Soft footsteps warned him before the loft’s owner appeared. Ben proved to be a lanky redhead with a neatly trimmed beard and sharply intelligent eyes. His gaze fell on the brass knuckles, and he grinned.
“My brother keeps some of his shit here.”
“So your girlfriend said.” He held out his hand. “I’m Andrew.”
“Ben. I take it Lia dragged Kat off to look at her arm?”
“Yeah. She’s wearing scrubs. Is she a doctor?”
“She’s a chief resident at UAB.” Ben jerked his head toward a smooth wooden table. “But she’s also an acolyte of Panacea. They’re a healing order of spell casters, and she’s good.”
“Couldn’t ask for better credentials, I guess.”
“Kat’ll be fine.” Ben dropped a folder to the table. “So, she finally jumped your bones, huh? Took her long enough.”
The last thing he wanted to deal with was five minutes of stammering apology or, worse, Kat killing the guy. “Yeah. Your brother’s really into weaponry, huh? What’s he do?”
“Bounty hunter, kind of. Takes care of dangerous witches and the occasional rabid beast. He’s over in Georgia, tracking down a rogue shifter who’s been causing trouble.”
Andrew was surprised he hadn’t run across him yet, since he sounded like exactly the kind of person Alec and Jackson would know. “What about you? Kat said you design software.”
“Mmm.” Ben slipped into a chair and flipped open the folder. “Not as cool as my monster-chasing big brother, but at least I can talk about my job at parties. Well, my day job.” He pulled out a piece of paper with a driver’s license and a credit card paper-clipped to the top. “This one, not so much.”
It looked like solid work, just from the glimpse he’d gotten. “Will the license records check out, or are they just for show?”
“Oh, they’ll check out. You’re Andy Normanson. Construction foreman from California. Kat picked the job and place, relevant details are attached.” He pulled out a second set of IDs, these with Kat’s photo attached. “Kate Normanson. Congratulations on your recent elopement. Elvis officiated.”
Andrew studied the dossiers. Similar backgrounds to their own, similar first names. “You do good work.”
“Sure, and I do it real quiet, just like Kat with her brain-scooping lie-detector thing.” Ben’s eyes narrowed. “Psychics are the underdogs of the supernatural world. We have a habit of disappearing down rabbit holes if we prove too useful.”
“Is that a warning?”
“It’s a fact, that’s all. Kat’s got a serious blind spot when it comes to her empathy. She’s so busy angsting over the sort of damage she can do accidentally that I’m pretty sure she’s never considered the sort of havoc she could cause if someone made her do it on purpose.”
Painful because it was true and far too close to home. “If you know that much about Kat, you must know how many people would die before they let anything like that happen to her.”
Ben held up both hands, making a vaguely placating gesture. “I don’t know about Kat’s life outside of what she tells me. I know you two have a Lifetime Original Movie going on and that her cousin used to smother her a lot. I’ve always assumed she’s just fine over there, but if people are shooting at her…”