I jiggled the locked doorknob. “Why didn’t you question him?”
He snorted. “You’ve obviously never seen his armoire.”
Viktor waved his hand. “Come, everyone. Let us leave Shepherd to calm down. If he needs to be alone, we should respect that. I’ll speak to him when he’s ready to come out. Perhaps next time you should monitor how much he drinks.”
Claude turned on his heel. “I’m not his mother. If a man wants to nurse the bottle, that’s his prerogative.”
I stared at the door, riddled with guilt. Maybe I shouldn’t have sat down and let Shepherd get tanked before trying to sober him up. Some people are angry drunks, some introspective, and others happy. I’d seen Shepherd with a few drinks in him, but this time I feared he might be a danger to others if we didn’t ride it out. What if he was in the middle of a psychotic break?
I jumped when Viktor put his arm around my shoulder, coaxing me away.
“Come, Raven. There is nothing you can do for a man when his door is closed.”
* * *
Shepherd sat on the floor, his knees drawn up and arms draped over them. The photograph on the floor taunted him.
Those eyes.
Wyatt handing him that photo had reawakened raw, visceral pain. Shepherd then lashed out, smashing a wooden chair against a wall. Uncertain where that anger might direct itself, he’d thrown Wyatt out of the room and locked the door. After the storm passed, Shepherd slumped down on the floor across from his bed and surveyed the damage.
There wasn’t muchtodestroy. He’d flipped the mattress onto the floor but had the good sense not to destroy the frame. His clothes were scattered from where he normally folded them on a bench by his bed, but that was all the damage he could do without breaking apart the only two things he loved: his weapons and his desk. He leaned his right shoulder against the armoire and stared at his desk by the door. By candlelight, he would quietly sit there and clean his weapons or review case files. His centrally located room didn’t have a fireplace. Didn’t need one. Stone surrounded him from all angles, and he preferred that type of environment. The bathroom entryway was across from the door. In front of it, a large green-and-gold carpet where he did his meditation and calisthenics when he wasn’t down in the gym.
Keeping his body in shape was a religion. That was how he’d begun to rebuild his life again, one push-up at a time. It kept him focused. Maybe he couldn’t control all the bullshit around him, but he could manipulate the strength of his body, the tone of his muscles, the definition of his abs, and the deadliness of his weapons.
Shepherd continued staring at the photo on the floor between his legs. The Mage had cut his hair and changed his beard to a goatee, but it was the same guy. Those electric-green eyes had haunted him for years, and he wasn’t even the man who’d almost stabbed Shepherd to death in a savage attack. That Mage had already met his maker when Shepherd spotted him a couple of years ago outside a hotel. He’d followed the man into a dark parking lot and tried to get information on the other Mage, but the man refused to talk. Enraged, Shepherd unleashed hell, shoving a stunner into his back and stabbing him repeatedly before severing his head.
It wasn’t until Shepherd had hit rock bottom that Viktor had approached him with an offer to join Keystone. It was a chance for a fresh start, but the agreement required him to walk away from his past. Shepherd left behind everything. His clothes, his memories—even his name.
The walls around him evaporated as he slipped back to a time when he used to go by the name Samuel. He looked like a Samuel. Soft in the belly, clean-shaven… even had a charismatic smile that made all the women giddy. He used to work a desk job for the Sensor Council, lifting emotional imprints off weapons collected from crime scenes. That was how he’d become familiar with weapons; he handled them on a daily basis. One day the Council reassigned him to work as a security guard at the local hospital. It was a lateral move with no pay increase, but one of their insiders had quit, and they needed an immediate replacement. Time diluted emotional imprints, which was why analyzing weapons had never bothered him. But in a human hospital, the emotions were fresh and saturated everything. He was careful not to inadvertently touch anything a patient or grieving family member might have come into contact with, but accidents happened.
All the time.
If anything, working around humans had taught him how to separate himself from emotions.
Shepherd’s job was to pose as a security guard and monitor everyone admitted, including and especially morgue duty. It wasn’t uncommon for Breed to wind up in a hospital with injuries so severe that they were either unconscious or paralyzed by a weapon. Shepherd kept an eye out for nonhumans and reported any persons—living or dead—to his contact. They sent in Regulators to collect and move the patient before doctors or pathologists got their hands on them. A Vampire usually accompanied them to erase memories, records, and video.
It was in the hospital cafeteria that Shepherd met with destiny. Maggie was the most stunningly awkward woman he’d ever encountered. She wore large, square glasses with black frames, but it was her wavy blond hair that he noticed first. She had it pulled up in a messy knot, and there was a pencil dangling from the back as if she’d forgotten about it hours ago. He stood behind her at the register, and when the pencil slipped out and dropped to the floor, he picked it up and felt her emotional imprint on his fingertips. That was how he discovered she was Breed, like him.
Shepherd rubbed his face and wondered if the fates were punishing him for striking a deal with Patrick. He had two choices. He could hand over the photograph to Patrick and let him honor his end of the deal, or he could take matters into his own hands and risk losing his position with Keystone.
Either way, that green-eyed Mage was going in the ground. It wouldn’t bring back Maggie, but maybe her soul would rest in peace. As Shepherd stared at the candle across the room, his thoughts drifted back to that fateful night, and his stone-cold heart ached for the first time in years. If someone had pushed him into the ocean, he would have sunk to the bottom from the weight of his sorrow.
The doorknob jiggled, snapping him out of his thoughts. The hinges creaked, and a slim figure tiptoed in, a sheer duster floating behind her. The candle on the desk illuminated Gem’s small frame, and his eyes drifted down to her floral leggings that she sometimes wore with her crazy-ass sneakers.
Gem approached him as she might a wild animal. Without a word, she squatted in front of him, her knees against her chest.
She held up the photograph to catch the light from the desk behind her. “You know him, don’t you?”
He gestured toward the door. “I should have never taught you to do that.”
She tucked the bobby pin back into her hair, and a long stretch of silence elapsed before she finally spoke. “Keystone wouldn’t be the same without you. We need you. Viktor needs you. I know you don’t take me seriously half the time, but I’m a good listener. Niko’s the one with all the good advice, but if you ever want to bend my ear, I’m always around the corner. Viktor probably knows more about you than I do, but nobody wants to dump their feelings onto their boss’s lap.” She set the picture back on the floor. “If you know this guy’s name or how to find him, I can help come up with a plan so they won’t know where we got the information, and you won’t have to deal with questions.”
“I don’t know his name,” Shepherd said, barely recognizing his own voice.
She touched his hand. “The fates brought him back into your life for a reason. Maybe it’s so you can get your revenge, but maybe it’s not. We still have a little baby out there whose life depends on us.”
That brought Shepherd down to earth.
