“I swear, there must be something wrong with me.” She let out a long sigh. “An hour from now, I’ll be sayingI told you so.To myself.”
Karissa continued following Hale’s bright blue SUV along the interstate and then onto the George Bush Turnpike. A few minutes later, as he pulled into the parking lot of a police station, she once again asked herself what she thought she was doing. But the truth was, the moment she’d learned Hale might be confronting that guy from the alley again, she knew she had to follow him.
Her gift didn’t give Karissa superhuman hearing or even close to it, but she’d picked up enough from Hale’s phone call earlier to figure out the cops were worried someone would try to breakthat guy out of custody. Her instincts had taken over at that point. She’d tried to tell herself it was simply because she was concerned about having someone that dangerous loose in the middle of Dallas, but a part of her knew it was something else. Try as she might to ignore the unwanted feelings, she was forced to accept that she was worried about Hale getting hurt if he went up against that guy again.
She’d known well before kicking the man in the chest that he was some kind of supernatural. No one could run that fast.
Hale ran that fast, her inner Karissa pointed out in a little voice.
Karissa chose to ignore that comment, thinking about how dangerous the supernatural was. Her kick had barely damaged the guy. And now Hale—who’d almost been killed by that creature the first time—might be dealing with it again. That bothered her on some instinctive level that almost scared her with its intensity.
Not wanting Hale to see her, Karissa turned and drove around the back side of the parking lot, staying as far away from his blue SUV as possible. Pulling into a space near one of the back corners, she slipped out of her rental car and moved carefully through the lot toward the nearest corner of the station house.
She expected Hale to immediately go inside,but instead he walked over to meet three other cops in dark blue tactical uniforms like the one he wore, standing near the front wall of the station. It quickly became apparent they weren’t moving into the building anytime soon, which gave her a chance to peek around the corner and get an eyeful of the men. All three of them were as tall and muscular as Hale, which should have been impossible because her ex-boyfriend was huge.
“Maybe they just grow them bigger in Texas,” she murmured softly to herself, keeping her voice whisper-low, not wanting anyone to overhear and think she was weird because she talked to herself.
As Karissa stood there at the corner, Hale was saying something about hoping he wasn’t too late. At least that’s what she thought he was saying. Karissa could barely hear his words over the hum of cars moving along the nearby street. Okay, if she was going to eavesdrop on Hale’s conversation, she couldn’t stay here.
“Wait. Why do you even want to eavesdrop on him anyway?” she asked herself in another whisper. “Do you really think he’s telling his cop buddies all about the woman he just spent fifteen minutes hate flirting with?”
The answer to that must have been yes because Karissa was already moving toward the back of the station house before she had a chance to argue with herself about whether she’d been engaging in hateflirting at all. She wanted to say she hadn’t but had to admit it was possible.
Two minutes later, she was on the roof of the police station, positioning herself close to the edge, directly above Hale and his three fellow cops.
“STAT came up with an ID on our suspect,” one of the men said from below. Karissa couldn’t tell which one, although he had a deep voice. “His name is Darijo Tamm and he’s from Croatia. Or at least that’s what Interpol thinks. Since he appeared out of nowhere about five years ago, they’re the first to admit it’s probably an assumed name.”
“What put this guy on Interpol’s radar?” Hale asked.
Karissa realized that Hale’s voice was even deeper than the first guy’s. Inner Karissa took note and immediately pointed out that men with deep voices were subjectively sexier. Outer Karissa ignored the entire idea, instead focusing on the conversation below her and vaguely wondering who this STAT organization was. She’d never heard of them, which was difficult to believe if they were involved in law enforcement in any way.
“It’s more than Interpol actually,” the first guy said. “Tamm has also caught the attention of the Department of Defense and the State Department, along with the law enforcement agencies in about twenty different countries around the globe. It seems that Tamm and his four buddies are wantedterrorists for hire. I’d also describe them as simple mercenaries if not for the excess levels of violence they have a reputation for. Regardless, they’ve shown up in more than a dozen different war-torn countries. If there’s fighting going on, they’ve been there. The strange part is that no one has a clue which side they even support. They show up, cause a lot of hate and discontent, kill a lot of people, and then disappear.”
“Anything on the supernatural angle?” yet a third deep voice asked. “Especially the scales?”
Supernatural angle?
Karissa was so stunned she came damn close to falling off the roof. Could Hale and his fellow cops honestly be openly discussing the existence of supernatural creatures like they were talking about the weather? And what the heck was that stuff about scales?
“STAT is still digging,” Deep Voice One answered. “If anyone can figure out what these creatures are, it’s them.”
Now Karissa was really curious about who STAT was. It sounded like they were some kind of federal organization that specialized in supernaturals. But if so, why hadn’t her parents ever mentioned them?
She zoned out of the conversation below for a moment, considering the implications of the Dallas PD knowing about supernaturals, not to mention the possibility of there being a federal agencyinvolved as well. A part of her worried about that since it just so happened that she was as much of a supernatural as the man that Hale had fought. If this STAT organization knew something about the guy currently in custody, did they know about her, too?
Karissa was so wrapped up in the idea that STAT might be keeping tabs on her that she almost missed the crashing sound coming from the rear of the station house. Then she heard the sound of thumping boots and risked a glance over the edge of the roof in time to see Hale and his fellow SWAT cops running around the building, heading for the back and the crashing sound that had only gotten louder.
Jumping up, she ran across the rooftop, but before she’d gotten halfway to the other side, the sound of gunfire and people shouting filled the air. Karissa nearly face-planted as her feet froze up in blind panic at the thought of Hale being shot.
“You still care that much about the guy who stomped on your heart?” she said out loud. “That’s sad.”
She reached the rear edge of the roof to see several large men with weapons climbing into the back of a large cargo van, the man she now knew to be Darijo Tamm with them.
The van squealed away with the back door still swinging open, bursts of automatic weapons coming out, aimed toward the police station. Fromwhere she stood on the roof, Karissa couldn’t tell if they hit the building or people. She prayed it wasn’t the latter.
As the van sped across the parking lot, Karissa was about to jump down from the roof to check for injuries when she caught a blur of movement from the corner of her eye. She turned to see Hale and two of his teammates running after the van. Chasing after a moving vehicle on foot seemed like a supreme waste of time to her—until she saw how fast Hale was moving. The other two SWAT cops easily kept pace with Hale, but Karissa only had eyes for him.
The man was pure power and grace, leaping forward like an Olympic sprinter, only no athlete in the history of sports had ever run this fast. One moment, he was twenty feet from the police station, and the next, he was halfway across the lot and gaining speed.
