The trek upstairs seemed to take forever as she replayed the past few minutes over and over in her head. She’d damn near lost it when she finally caught up with the SWAT cop chasing that supernatural creature through the back alleys of Dallas, only to realize she’d been following Hale Delaney, the guy she’d dated. Stunned, she’d stood on a nearby rooftop, too overwhelmed to do anything until the supernatural had stabbed her ex in the chest.
Karissa didn’t even remember moving, but one moment she was standing on a concrete parapet thirty feet above the dimly lit alley, the next her sword had appeared and she was blocking the blade that would have taken off Hale’s head.
The fight against the unknown supernatural hadn’t taken long. She’d been so pissed off that her kick had come damn close to killing the guy. Everything was a little fuzzy after that. She’d seen blood on Hale’s tactical gear—a lot of it. But the instincts that she’d trusted with her life a hundred times over had insisted that Hale was fine. Functioning on pure adrenaline, she’d cast a dazzling glamour to distract Hale, and then she’d run like a coward.
Karissa did her best to look casual as she reached her room, unlocked the door, and then walkedinto her suite. Once there, she closed the door and slammed home the dead bolt. Shrugging out of her leather duster, she tossed it on the back of the couch, then did the same with the weapon harness she wore underneath.
With a sigh, she sank down on the couch, laying her head back and trying to get it to stop spinning. That effort proved futile, as every time she closed her eyes, the only thing she saw was Hale getting stabbed. That image, along with the sight of all the blood soaking through his uniform, had her on the verge of hyperventilating. Leaning forward, she put her head between her knees, fighting for a calm that wouldn’t come.
“Hale was hurt, and you ran away,” she murmured, her voice trembling with some emotion she refused to examine. “What if he’s dead?
Deep down, Karissa knew that wasn’t a possibility before the thought fully formed in her head. Yes, Hale had been bleeding, but his heartbeat had been strong and his voice steady. Somehow—unbelievably—even after taking a knife to the chest, her ex-boyfriend had been fine. While that answer defied logic, she trusted the instincts that told her it was true.
“Well, he is a coldhearted bastard,” she pointed out to herself. “Maybe the blade missed his heart because he doesn’t have one. That would explain a lot.”
Karissa was on her feet the moment the door to the adjoining suite burst open. She was a microsecond from calling her sword back into existence when she realized it was only her younger brother.
Tall and dark-haired with green eyes a shade darker than her own, Deven stared at her for a moment, his gaze going back and forth between her aggressive posture and fighting gear within reach. He focused on her duster for a moment, his eyes going a little wide, and Karissa wondered what he’d seen. She hoped she hadn’t torn her jacket.
“You told me you were only going out for a simple recon of Patterson’s hotel,” Deven said. “So why are you standing here looking like you’re about to attack me, and why is there blood on your duster?”
Blood?
Crap.
It must have gotten on her coat when she shoved Hale behind her.
Sighing, Karissa flopped down onto the couch again. Dominic Patterson was CEO and majority owner of the Patterson Automotive Group and was here in Dallas to oversee the final stages of construction on a new state-of-the-art vehicle assembly plant slated to open its doors in less than a week.
Not that any of that mattered to Karissa. The only reason she even knew the man’s name was because he was currently being pursued by a hitman who was almost certainly some kind of supernatural. She and Deven worked for their family’s private security firm, which specialized in providing personal protection for high-profile people.
Unfortunately, while she might have been hired to protect the man, it didn’t mean he made it easy for her. Patterson was arrogant and stubborn and simply refused to treat the threat against his life seriously. Which explained why she and Deven were staying in a hotel almost a mile away from her client’s. And why she’d been forced to recon his hotel covertly in the middle of the night.
She’d been navigating the situation just fine—regardless of the hurdles Patterson had put in front of her—until everything had gone sideways tonight and she’d ended up in the middle of a fight she had nothing to do with, saving a man she hadn’t seen in a decade.
“When I headed out, I had every intention of doing a quick security sweep of Patterson’s hotel, then coming back here, but I’d barely started looking around when my spidey sense started tingling,” she explained. “I got curious, so I followed my instinct across town until I found…well…trouble.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Deven asked, sounding much wiser than his eighteen years should allow. “Are you okay?” he added, taking a seat in the matching chair to the right of the couch, his face full of concern. “Do I need to get the first aid kit?”
Karissa smiled, appreciating beyond words that Deven still cared for her as a sister, even if she wasn’t quite as normal as everyone else in their family. But her baby brother had never minded that she’d become a Paladin—also known as a filia palladis, or a daughter of Athena—on her sixteenth birthday. To him, she’d always simply been his sister—his cool, if slightly unusual, sister. And that meant everything to her.
“No, we don’t need the first aid kit,” she said. “I’m fine. Just a few bumps and bruises. No big deal.”
“You sure?” He frowned like he thought she might be lying about her injuries. “Because I’ve never seen you look this shaken up before. What happened? Did the hit man show up?”
Karissa knew why Deven’s mind had immediately gone in that direction. There had already been two attempts on Patterson’s life, both missing their intended target but ending with innocent people dead anyway.
The first attempt on Patterson’s life had happened before Karissa had come on board. Someone had broken into his corporate headquarters and slipped through multiple layers of advanced security, making it all the way to Patterson’s office before a security guard stumbled across him. That guard had ended up dead, but the noise had been enough to alert Patterson to the danger in time for him to escape. The ease with which the killer hadgotten through security—and the fact that they were dealing with someone who had no compunction when it came to murdering innocents—had scared enough people to convince Patterson to hire her family’s security company.
Karissa had interrupted the second murder attempt, this time at Patterson’s mansion outside Cincinnati. She hadn’t gotten a clear look at the hit man’s face but had seen enough to feel confident she was dealing with a man. She was also fairly certain he was a supernatural. There was no other explanation for how fast and silent the killer had been or the disquieting sense of dread that surrounded him. The moment Karissa had gotten close to him, she’d been sure she was going to die in the worst possible way. The premonition had been creepy.
The supernatural—whatever he was—had no problem bypassing the home’s extremely elaborate electronic security system and locked doors. Worse, his lack of remorse had shown up again. He’d cut down the two guards outside Patterson’s bedroom for no other reason than because he could. If Karissa hadn’t been there to chase him off, he would have gotten into the room for sure and Dominic Patterson would have been dead.
And yet, despite all that, Karissa decided she would have preferred going up against a supernatural hit man than whom she’d actually run into tonight. To say that her breakup with Hale hadbeen painful was putting it mildly. Truthfully, she’d hoped never to see him again.
“No, it wasn’t the hit man,” she finally said, abruptly realizing her brother was still waiting for an answer. “Like I mentioned, I was just starting my recon of the hotel’s outer perimeter when I picked up something bad happening south of my location. It was impossible to ignore, so I headed that way.”
Deven nodded, not even a little surprised that she’d dropped everything because she’d gotten afeeling. But thesefeelingswere a part of her gifts as a Paladin, and she could no more ignore them than she could the speed, fighting skills, strength, or courage to throw herself into incredibly dangerous situations when innocent lives were at stake.
