Page 45 of Panther in the Shadows
"Not even a little bit." My hand traces down her spine again, watching her eyes darken at the touch. "But we should probably talk about what this means."
"Does it have to mean anything?" She props herself up on one elbow, and the sheet falls away from her body. The morning-after shyness I expected doesn't materialize. She meets my gaze without flinching, without trying to cover herself. Brave woman. "Can't it just be... what it was?"
The question carries weight. She's giving me an out. A way to keep this simple. Uncomplicated. One night of release before returning to the hunt.
"It could be." I study her face, looking for what she's not saying. The fear beneath the bravado. The hope she's trying not to show. "If that's what you want."
"I don't know what I want." Honest. Raw. Her hand spreads across my chest, over my heart where it hammers harder than it should. "Except more time to figure it out before?—"
My phone vibrates against the nightstand. Once. Twice. Three times in rapid succession. The emergency pattern that means someone's dying or dead or about to be.
"Shit." I grab it, already sitting up. Moira rolls away, pulling the sheet with her. "Something's wrong."
The messages from Santos scroll across the screen:
Jefe. Loading dock. NOW.
Someone hurt. Bad.
He's asking for you.
My blood turns cold. Asking for me. Someone from my organization, then. Someone who knows my name.
"I have to go." Already moving, pulling on clothes from the night before. The jeans that ended up on the floor. The shirt she tore open. "Stay here. Lock the door. Don't leave until I come back."
"What's happening?" She sits up, sheet clutched to her chest, and the concern in her voice does something to my chest. Makes it tight.
"Don't know yet. But Santos doesn't panic easily." Shirt on, buttons fumbled because my hands won't steady. Pants. Shoes. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
She stands, wrapping the sheet around herself like armor, and crosses to me. Her hand catches my arm. "Be careful."
The words stop me at the door. Concern in her voice. Real concern. For me. When was the last time someone worried about me coming back?
"Always am." The lie tastes bitter. I'm never careful. Just fast and mean and lucky. But she doesn't need to know that. Then I'm gone, taking the stairs two at a time, my panther already prowling beneath my skin, sensing threat.
The morning shipment crew should be unloading cargo, the usual chaos of forklifts and shouted instructions and crates getting checked off manifests. Instead, they're clustered at the loading dock entrance, speaking in hushed voices. The kind of quiet that follows violence. That comes when men who work with death for a living see something that shakes them.
Santos stands in the center, his Barcelona accent sharper than usual as he barks orders that no one's really following. They're all staring at something on the ground. Something I can't see yet through the crowd.
He sees me. Relief flashes across his face, followed quickly by something else. Grief. "Jefe. This way."
The crowd parts like water around stone. And there, lying on concrete near the loading dock doors still wet from morning rain, is one of my dock workers.
Marco Ruiz. Twenty-two years old. Started working my docks three months ago after his father kicked him out for gambling debts. Good kid who showed up on time, kept his mouth shut, and did the work without asking questions about what moved through my warehouse after dark. Sent half his pay home to his mother every week, even though his father didn't deserve it.
Now he's dying on my loading dock, and the smell of seawater and blood and something darker fills the air.
I drop to my knees beside him, concrete cold and wet through my jeans. Dark hair plastered to his skull with seawater, strands of kelp tangled in it like he'd been pulled from the ocean floor. Clothes soaked through, dripping steadily onto the concrete. Lips blue from cold or drowning or both. But his eyes are open, lucid, tracking my movement with desperate focus.
"Marco." My hand finds his shoulder, careful not to jostle. His skin is ice cold beneath the wet fabric. "Who did this?"
His mouth works. No sound comes out at first, just water trickling from between his lips. Pink-tinged water that means internal bleeding. Then a whisper, barely audible even with my enhanced hearing: "She said... had to deliver a message."
"Who said? What message?" I lean closer, trying to hear over the blood rushing in my ears.
"The woman in black." His hand clutches at my jacket with failing strength, fingers slipping on the leather. "At the ritual site. She was there. Made me watch while she..." A cough brings up water and blood in equal measure, spilling across his chin. "While she drowned them."
My stomach drops. "How many?"
