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He just didn’t know how.
He also needed to find out who had sent Tammy drug-running in the western sector of his territory.
~ ~ ~
Iris holstered her Sig. Her arms and legs trembled but it wasn’t from fear. Damn Connor. He’d just proven himself all over again, helping a woman like that.
And she’d forgotten how blue his eyes were.
She could hardly breathe and all she’d done was look at him and exchange about a half-dozen words. He wore the usual black tank, so his tattoos stood out like beacons. He was heavily muscled like all the Border Patrol men. How many times had she wondered if both hands together would fit around one of his biceps?
Fortunately, now that he was no longer next to her, she could think again. She looked around. On Trib orders, she’d left her garden, her owl and the potions she needed to make to fill her orders, but for what? She didn’t get it. Why had Donaldson wanted her witnessing Connor’s supposed crime?
The situation was just weird enough to force her to ask the harder questions: Who had really sent her out to Amado Bridge? And if the purpose had been to kill Connor, then why? And why her?
She turned the key in her bike and revved up her Harley once more. She took off, loving the strong vibrations on her bottom as she swept onto the street, heading toward Del Muerto Bridge. Del Muerto was one of the five main bridges of her world and connected Crescent with the dead-talker province of Shadow Territory.
With her long hair in a ponytail, she enjoyed the feel of the night wind as she moved along. She only had to head over to the Tribunal building and fill out a rep
ort, then she could return to her workroom.
In the meantime, she loved riding.
When she was well into the land of dead-talkers, whipping through some backstreets and racing over several smaller bridges, her com buzzed. She pressed her shoulder transmitter. “Meldeere.”
She heard Faith’s voice. “We’ve got a … out on Sentinel Bridge. The … Donal … wants you … now.”
She repressed a sigh. The Tribunal meant well, but dammit, couldn’t they invest in a decent com system? “Say again?”
After three more repeated requests, she finally got the gist. There was some kind of incident on Sentinel Bridge which connected Connor’s Territory and hers.
And once more, the chief wanted her out there. She almost asked Faith why, but figured she’d get the same response.
“On my way.”
“Say …” More static then a lot of broken up words.
Iris shut off her com with a heavy eye-roll and put on some speed.
“Well, Violet, what do you think?” She tended to talk to her sister when she was out on patrol.
But the spontaneous question, took her straight back to the wind that had blown through her workroom and hearing Violet’s voice in her head. Tears burned her eyes. Violet had been buried a long time ago, but for Iris, the memory was as sharp as yesterday.
Thinking about her sister, however, brought the past surging forward. Several months after their shared alter, Violet had gone to work at a sandwich shop in downtown Elegance. Without warning, she and a dozen other witches had been abducted by a number of drugged out vampires. They’d been hauled out to a place called No Man’s Land, also known as the Graveyard.
The vampires had been out of control and hyped up on blood flame. The witches’ hands had been bound to prevent the witch death touch. The women had been stabbed, choked, raped and drained to death.
The Tribunal investigation had gone on for years but died its own death some time later. It had been buried in the Trib’s paperwork morgue, no doubt at the request of one of the drug-lords.
No closure for nine years, just pain.
She traversed yet another small bridge, the bike thump-thumping at the entrance and exit.
The world of Five Bridges had about a hundred bridges scattered throughout the ripped up territory of north-central Phoenix, most of them short and only one lane wide. Long ditches crisscrossed the land, a final containment solution to the ongoing drug and human trafficking problem that had accompanied the flame revolution. The hundreds of ditches were as difficult to traverse as they were completely ineffective in stemming the export of flame drugs to the human world.
Many of the original homes in this part of Phoenix now served the citizens of Five Bridges. But at least half had been blasted away and the pits left to grow whatever the desert could manage. Or they’d been dozed out even more to create rows of ditches hard to navigate on foot. A lot of cactus took root in these places. Rattlesnakes and vermin set up camp in droves. Coyotes, too. More bridges were built, some as short as seven feet.
Five Bridges essentially had the look of a war zone, especially with barbed wire separating each of the five territories from each other as well as from Phoenix. There were a few beauty spots in some of the renovated areas or in backyards like her own. Otherwise, it was a place that looked like bombs were detonated on a regular basis and the rubble left to sprout any weed or grass that would survive without much water.
