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“You’ve been here all night?” Callahan piped up. “You were here while the killing took place?”
“I was upstairs, in Nova’s apartment with her.” He didn’t have to elaborate on what he was doing up there. The looks he was getting from all four men said they understood plainly enough. “I didn’t know about the attack until after it was over. The boy, Eddie, was in the shop when the killer arrived. Eddie hid back there, in the storage room. He ran upstairs to Nova’s afterward, in a state of shock.”
“He didn’t see who did it?” Deacon asked.
“No, but Nova did.” At the round of confused glances that fixed on him, Mathias explained. “She’s a Breedmate. Her gift lets her see the final moments of someone’s life when she touches them. When she touched Ozzy, she saw a Breed male in a hooded jacket. She saw this male slash open her friend’s throat.”
Mathias now looked to Sloane. “That’s what Nova was doing at the morgue this morning, when she touched the dead men with the scarab tattoos. She saw that there was some kind of meeting taking place between those men and a group of Russians. The thug who confronted her here in Ozzy’s shop the other night was there too. She saw him execute his own men.”>As much as Mathias hated that she’d used her ESP gift to try to identify Ozzy’s murderer, he had to admit he’d been hoping the vision would have given him something useful to go on in his pursuit of the bastard.
He hadn’t wanted Nova to do it. He tried to stop her, knowing what that horrible glimpse would cost her. The experience of Ozzy’s death would be one she’d have to carry with her forever.
She’d already known enough pain and ugliness in her life. Mathias wanted to shield her from any more. Difficult to do, when she wasn’t even speaking to him now.
He cursed and sent his fist into the nearest wall.
He’d failed her tonight.
If he hadn’t been so caught up in his enjoyment of Nova’s body, of her sweet but fiery passion, maybe he would have heard the confrontation taking place in the shop two floors down. Maybe he would have scented the blood in the air before Eddie came to the door. Maybe he could have stopped Ozzy’s killing and spared Nova the grief that was tearing her apart now.
Maybe...
Fuck. All he had was maybes when it came to that woman.
His woman.
To his astonishment, he realized he couldn’t think of Nova in any other way.
He was about to turn around and tell her when the Order’s black Range Rover rolled up to the curb outside the tattoo shop. As Thane and Deacon jumped out, Sloane blazed in behind them in an unmarked vehicle with its dashboard LED flashing, another JUSTIS unit pulling up behind him. Not a few moments later, Callahan emerged from somewhere in the darkness and came jogging up to the shop.
Mathias walked out to greet the arriving warriors and his friend from JUSTIS.
His talk with Nova would have to wait.
Right now, he had a killer to hunt down and destroy.
~ ~ ~
Nova had done her best to clean up Eddie and herself in the shop’s small restroom.
There wasn’t enough water in London to wash out all of the blood that stained the shell-shocked kid’s shirt and trembling hands. She’d tried to scrub it off her too, from her fingers and bare feet, the knees of her dark sweats gore-soaked from when she’d knelt down beside Ozzy to relive his last moments of life.
The sink had run red down the drain for fifteen minutes straight before she’d finally given up. Nothing to do for their clothes but burn them.
She dropped Eddie’s ruined T-shirt in the restroom trash bin and gave him a tender look. “You okay?”
He nodded weakly, then shook his head. His eyes were still puffy and moist from his tears. His mouth quivered as he spoke. “What are we gonna do, Nova?”
She offered him a smile, but it felt wobbly and uncertain on her lips. “We’ll figure it out.”
The same words Mathias had spoken to her earlier that night, when she’d finally admitted to him that she didn’t have her shit together at all, that she was scared.
She was still scared, even more so now. Not only because Ozzy was gone, and she didn’t know what her life was going to be like without the old man being part of it, but because she had somehow let another man into her life.
Into her heart.
Mathias.
How had she been so careless as to let her guard down with him, after a lifetime of keeping herself safely closed off, her wants and desires sealed up behind steep, unbreachable tower walls?
