We’re so close, I can smell his soap. Or cologne. Or maybe that’s just him. Whatever it is, it’s intoxicating. Like leather and fine scotch, along with a hint of smoke, and I breathe deeply. He lifts his hand, as if he’s about to touch my cheek, but then blinks hard and takes a step back.
“You weren’t about to try toglamourme, were you?” I ask.
With his fingers splayed over his heart, he focuses his stare on me, and the ring of red around his irises deepens. “I swear to you, Zoe, I will not feed from you without your permission, and I willneverinfluence you. Your mind is your own and always will be.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you?” His tone and his body language tell me he’s being truthful—or they would if he were human. I’m just so out of my element with a demon as a partner I don’t know if I can trust my own senses.
“Believe what you want.” Sin drops his hand and returns to his seat at the table. “It is time for us to get to work.”
Eight
Sin
Two hours later, Zoe is on her third cup of coffee and she has filled two entire screens of the conference room wall with notes.
“So, across nine cities, the timeline stays almost exactly the same?” Zoe shakes her head. “Three men, then nine women. Four days between the abductions of the men, three between the women. But there’s no pattern to when the bodies are discovered. Why not?”
I rub the growing ache in my forearm, screams overwhelming my memories. A pretty young wolf begging me to kill her. I can still see the rune Thorn carved into her forehead to stop her from shifting. I had my hands around her throat, ready to end her suffering when Thorn found me and compelled me to release her.
I still bear scars from that day. One of the few memories from my time as his prisoner that has always been clear in my mind.
“Sin?”
Another voice, another time.So faint I can barely hear it.“Sin. Help me. I can fight him. I know I can.”
“Hey. Partner. Sinclair. Did you hear me?” Zoe asks.
I dig my fingers into the burned remains of my tattoo, using the pain to keep me focused. “Some of them resist longer than others. I cannot say for certain, but from the bits and pieces I remember, the women are not taken until all of the men are mindless slaves. Those of theOtherare strong, Zoe. Stronger than humans, and Thorn takes no chances. He insists the men be the ones to secure the women. To beat them. To arrange for their transport.” A violent shudder causes my chair to scrape along the floor, and I push up and start to pace.
“Transport? To…where?” Zoe asks.
I pause and take a deep breath. I do not want to tell her the rest, but from the look on her face, she is starting to put the pieces together on her own. “Somewhere other demons, sometimes even humans, pay for the opportunity to do…whatever they please to these women.”
Her shoulders hunch inward, and she shivers. “Wh-whatever they please. Like he sells them for sex?”
How I wish it were only that. “Often. Sex is profitable. That has not changed throughout all of history. Every culture and every creature has a dark side. Most never give in to their basest desires, but there are enough who do. Thorn feeds off of terror, misery, and pain. He delves into his victims’ minds, into the deepest, darkest recesses where we hide all of our fears. And he uses them,consumesthem. Until the women—and the men—can no longer muster the will to live.”
Across the table, Zoe shrinks further inward and covers her mouth with her hand. A choked sound might be a sob, but she swallows hard and straightens, though when she speaks, her voice is not steady. “So that’s why he doesn’t just stay in one place and keep the women…for as long as they’re marketable.” She grimaces. “That’s a horrible way of putting it, but, most sex trafficking rings are in it for the long haul. Until the women—or girls, really—age out or are so damaged no one wants them, they’re sold over and over again.”
“The mind is beautiful, complex, and resilient,” I say, staring at a photo of another dead shifter, this one from Washington D.C. “To a point. What do you fear most, Zoe? You do not need to tell me, but do you know?”
Her answer is only a whisper, so faint I must strain to hear her. “Losing who I am. Like…Temple did.”
I stop pacing. The urge to comfort her, to touch her, is so strong, I almost reach out and lay a hand on her shoulder. “The women are killed—either by Thorn or by their own hands—when they have lost so much of themselves, they go insane.”
Zoe’s emotions infuse the room. Compassion. Understanding. The scent…it is both familiar and strange, comforting and disconcerting. She tips her face up to meet my gaze. “Sin, did you...?”
“Yes. I tried. More than once. And I failed at every turn.”
I need air. To move of my own free will. To feel the wind, the sun on my face. To be surrounded by nothing but silence rather than the horrors in my head. And to figure out how the fuck Thorn escaped from Hell. Before Zoe can stop me, I am out the door, taking off at a run for the stairs.
I can move faster than most humans, and I draw on a bit of my glamour to hide me from my partner’s sight as I speed through the bullpen.
By the time she slips through the Bureau’s doors, the Audi’s purring like a kitten, and I slam my foot down on the gas pedal and speed away as Zoe calls my name.
* * *
From high onthe hill overlooking the Golden Gate, the San Francisco Bay appears as if it is full of glittering diamonds. A stiff breeze stings my cheeks, reminding me I am alive and free.
