“Easy for you to say.”
“Ah, no it’s not. Remember who’s in heat?”
“Oh, right.” He coughed to distract himself. Because the thought of her heat turned his thoughts from Logan to impregnating Kate. And the last thing he needed in his life right now was a kid. Thank God she wouldn’t be fertile during this first heat. “I want you again, believe me,” he said with feeling. “But Logan’s not back. Something’s not right.”
“Let me get dressed.”
“Hurry.” He waited while she took a quick shower and dressed in a rumpled shirt and jeans.
“Don’t worry about the room. I rented it for a few days.”
He frowned.
She huffed. “Give me a break, Jesse. I was horny, hurt, and not happy that two dickheads ruined my Monday morning.”
“We didn’t run into you until last night.”
She blinked and tried to curb laughter, but he saw it. “Um, I wasn’t calling you and Logan dickheads. I meant the two Ravagers I ran into near the Voids.”
He tensed. “What?”
“It’s nothing. I took care of them.”
He grabbed her by the arm and halted her in her place. “It’s not nothing. What the hell are you talking about?” The urge to hunt down and kill anyone who’d threatened Kate shadowed his need to find Logan.
Before she could answer, they both heard a scream from several floors below. Jesse and Kate shared a glance then raced for the door. They cleared the hallway and stairwell and exited on the fourth floor, where Jesse could scent faint traces of blood. And Logan.
His senses flared, his hearing, sight, and sense of smell on overdrive as he sought his missing mate.
Instead of Logan, he ran into a crowd milling around a dozen Salinas near the open door of a room down the hall. At the edge of the crowd, he and Kate stopped. He kept his hand on her, not willing to chance her running or being pulled from him, not with Logan already absent.
“Do you see anything?” she asked.
He shook his head. Taller than most of the people around him, he could only see the backs of several Salinas. A few paramedics suddenly left the room rolling a gurney. He blanched seeing the bloody sheet covering a body being wheeled away.
“It’s not him. Too small,” he whispered to Kate, almost weak with relief. But their worries weren’t over, because he scented Logan on that sheet, and that couldn’t be good.
One of the Salinas met his stare and nodded to his friends. “You, there. Come here.”
Shit.Jesse couldn’t ignore him. Everyone turned to look at him, suspicion, fear, and tension thick in the suddenly quiet atmosphere. He turned to Kate and ordered in a low voice, “Go back to our room and stay there.”
“Hell no. I’m not leaving you.”
Proud she wanted to stand by him, he was torn between wanting to keep her by his side, where he could keep an eye on her, and wanting her far away from this mess. Then the choice was taken out of his hands.
“Jesse and Kate Savage?”
“Yeah?” Jesse put himself between the Salinas and Kate.
“Come with us.”
They didn’t say he was under arrest, but the way they surrounded him and Kate spoke volumes.
“Come on.” Jesse held Kate’s hand and pulled her protectively into his side while they rushed from the crowd for the elevator.
He turned to one of the Salinas. “What the hell’s going on?”
No one answered. They rode the elevator to the first floor in silence. Jesse growled when one of the men stepped too close to Kate. At the sound, the cop took a healthy step back and put his hand on the butt of his weapon. Smart guy.
