“Good morning, Ms. Early,” she said as she closed them in together. “I’m Dr. Perez.”

She didn’t go to the computer and sign in. She came over and shook hands. And even as her dark eyes were making a sweep of Jo’s face, like she had one of Bones McCoy’s scanners implanted in her head, she wasn’t impersonal about it.

“Let’s talk about what’s going on. Matthew gave me some idea, but I’d like to hear everything again from you.”

As she smiled, Jo smiled back.

Yes, Jo thought. This was the kind of person she wanted to get answers from, not some guy who was a stranger she should not trust—as if the repertoire of replies to the question “What the hell is wrong with me?” varied depending on who was supplying them.

Whatever. She was feeling better already.

“I’m really glad I came,” she said. “So, it started probably back in November…”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

At nightfall, Syn materialized downtown without telling anyone where he was going. As he re-formed, his cell phone was vibrating like it was having a seizure, and he took the thing out so fast, he sent it sailing and had to pull a two-handed catch before the Samsung Sam-shattered all over the pavement.

Finally, his female was calling—

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Not her. But instead of letting things dump into voice mail, he answered. “Relax, I’m taking care of it.”

The old man with the cement company on the other end coughed like the carcinogens from his cigars were setting up a campground in his lungs. “What’s the fucking holdup? And I told you, you keep it quiet this time—”

Syn cut the call and contemplated throwing the phone at the building in front of him. Except then his female couldnae reach him, at least not during the dead zone between when the unit broke into a million pieces and the split second later when he got a new one. So yeah, fine. That mobster wanted that reporter dead? No problem. Syn had a fuck of a temper going on, and this was a killing-many-birds-with-one-stone situation. He could burn off his bad mood, let his talhman stretch its legs with the guy, and get that fucking human he’d used to find himself a good victim to stop calling his ass.

Win/win, motherfuckers.

Stepping back so he was shrouded in shadows, he cased the parking lot of Caldwell’s local newspaper. There was only one car there, a Volkswagen of some sort, and the compact was parked in a spot marked “Reserved for CCJ Employees Only.” He glanced at the back door into the building. There was a sign reading “CCJ Staff Only” next to it, and through the chicken-wire’d windows, he could see somebody moving around and shutting off lights in the interior space.

Good. Whoever owned that car was going to tell him where the hell he could find Joseph Early—or they were going to be used to whet his appetite.

Cracking his knuckles, he willed the exterior security lights off, the fixtures going dark one after another until the parking lot was too dim for human eyes. In the other buildings around, there were only a few offices still glowing with illumination, but no one was in them that he could see. Not that witnesses mattered to him—

The steel door opened and the light streaming from behind the egressing person made it impossible to see their face.

But he knew who it was.

Syn’s spine straightened like his ass had been hooked up to an electrical charge. Flaring his nostrils, he tested the air to make sure his sinuses weren’t playing tricks. They were not. He’d recognize that scent of meadow flowers anywhere.

What was his female doing here?

Frowning, he stepped forward, intending to reveal himself to the person who he’d been waiting to hear from all day long. But he’d killed the lights, and she was distracted texting on her phone… so it wasn’t until he put himself in her path that she stopped short. Looked up. Did a double take.

“It’s… you,” she said.

God, that voice. He had to close his eyes and consciously keep his balance as it went through him.

Then they both spoke at the same time.

“What are you doing here—”

“Do you work at the paper—”

As they fell silent together, he re-memorized her features, and found that his recollections of her were spot-on. He’d managed to remember everything about her with precision, yet the images he’d stored in his brain were nothing compared to the real thing: The three dimensions of her body. The smell of her skin. The sight of her red hair teased by the cold spring wind.

And most especially the way her green eyes pierced through his skin and bone, and went somewhere so much deeper.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She seemed too distracted by his appearance to answer. But then she nodded. “Yes. I’m good. You?” Then she laughed in an awkward burst. “I feel like we’re at a very strange cocktail party right now—”

“I’m talking about what you saw last night. On the fire escape.”

She frowned. “Wait, did you follow me after you left?”

“I just wanted to make sure you got back to your car okay.”

Those resplendent eyes of hers closed and she shuddered. “Yeah, that didn’t happen. Guess you know that.”

“You shouldn’t have to see such things. Ever.”

She shook her head. “No one should—”

The sound of a bullet being fired came from the left, and Syn yanked her behind him so fast, she stumbled. Catching her fall while blocking the shot with his own body, he got out a forty and pointed it at a junker that was traveling down the lane next to the parking lot.

Just as he pulled his trigger, his female pushed his arm out of alignment and the bullet ricocheted off a building flank, a spark flaring bright before being consumed by the darkness.

“What’s wrong with you!” she hissed. “It’s just their exhaust backfiring!”

Ignoring her, he kept his eyes on his target, and brought his arm back up. This time, he wasn’t going to miss, and he didn’t give a shit what the cause of the noise was. Bullet or backfire, those fucking humans deserved to die if only for their failure to Midasize. They’d startled his female. That was more than enough justification to pump them full of lead.

Especially in his current mood.

* * *

This time, when Jo tried to move the man in leather’s arm position, she got absolutely nowhere. She hung her entire body off his elbow, and still that gun stayed pointed at the old Civic. In a panic, she looked toward the car and could make out the profile of the driver, the man clueless that he was about to be blown sky high.

“Please…” Her voice cracked. “I can’t take any more death today.”

The gun lowered instantly, allowing the Civic to safely round the corner and drive out of sight.

And then it was just her and the man in leather in the damp, rushing spring air, standing in the darkness behind the CCJ newsroom.

As Jo started to shake, she dropped her bag on the pavement and put her hands to her face. “Oh, God.”

The trembling got so bad that she threw an arm out blindly, and the man with the gun was the one who caught her, pulling her against him just as her legs lost all their muscle tone and turned into pipe cleaners. His strength was such that he didn’t seem to notice the addition of her weight, and before she knew what she was doing, she put her arms around him, holding on as if he were the rope drawing her out of the cold, greedy lake she was drowning in.