Sentinel Lost (Mind Sweeper Series Book 5) (13 page)

I was going to be an adult. I’d left the office earlier so I wouldn’t skewer Dalton, but now I was in a better frame of mind. I decided to go back, and if he was still there, I wouldn’t let my emotions get the better of me. While I was being an adult, I called Griffin to talk, but got his voicemail, so I left him a message that I wanted to see him. One item crossed off on my adult check list.

My
I-can-handle-this
-
mantra
repeating resoundingly in my head, I took a deep breath and walked into the office with a confident bounce to my step.

Misha and Jean Luc were sitting at the table, and Talia was busy in the kitchenette. All three studied me, concern etched across their faces.

“Is Dalton here?”

“No,
ma petite
, he left right after you did.”

I let out my breath in relief. Maybe I wasn’t as confident as I thought.

Talia set two mugs on the table for me and Misha. “Coffee for you two. French roast.”

I looked at Misha, who in turn looked at the mugs like they were going to explode. We had been down the coffee-as-sludge road with Jean Luc many times before.

When she saw our hesitation, Talia laughed. “No worries, unlike Jean Luc, I make good coffee.”

“
Excusez-moi
? I know how to make coffee.”

Talia wrinkled her nose. “Your coffee smells like something that could raise the dead, Jean Luc. I can’t even imagine what it tastes like.”

Jean Luc sputtered in an adorable French kind of way. “I do not make bad coffee. I have never had any complaints.” He glared at Misha, who suddenly became very engrossed in his computer. Then Jean Luc’s gaze swung to me.

“Ah. Well…your coffee is a little strong.”

Misha snickered.

I glared at him. “Help me out here, you chicken-shit demon.”

“I’m sorry, my friend, but your coffee is abominable.”

I nodded my agreement.

“
Mon Dieu!
Why have you not said anything before?”

Talia walked over to Jean Luc and ran a soothing hand down his arm. “Because they love you and didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “And yet you have been on the team for two weeks and felt the need to announce it?”

“I would have done it sooner, but it took me a while to figure out.” Talia turned to me as if to change the subject before Jean Luc could sputter again. “How are you doing with everything, Kyle?”

“I’m okay. This Key business has me a bit freaked out. I’m worried it might trigger Dalton’s memories.”

“We cannot hide everything from him,” Jean Luc replied. “Maybe he is here for a reason, like Running Wolf said.”

“Running Wolf?” Talia asked.

Jean Luc squeezed my shoulder and then sat next to Talia.

I bit my lip and heard Doc’s voice in my head telling me to get on with it. “When I realized I had absorbed the Key,” I told Talia, “it directed me to a man named Running Wolf, who is kind of a spiritual welcome wagon. He told me the names the Key shares with me are people who have done or will do something important. The problem is, I have no clue what to do with the names once I receive them.

“But the real kicker was when he told me I wasn’t the one he had been expecting. He had been given visions of a man with turquoise eyes.”

“Dalton,” Talia whispered.

“Right. Even though my brain has all the info from the Key, I apparently don’t have the actual power, which is probably why I short-circuit when it tries to tell me something. We don’t know if the power’s been lost, or if Dalton still has it locked inside him.”

Talia grimaced. “God, this is…”

“A disaster in the making?” I supplied.

Misha came around the table and hugged me to him. “You can’t think that way, little one. We’ll figure this out. You’re not alone.”

“I know, big guy. It helps to have you three here backing me up.” I pointed to the table and the running laptops. “Have we learned anything new about the case?”

Misha sat again and started typing. “My father said the elders of our clan might have some information for us about the demon clans who don’t live on earth.”

“Oh, good,” I said.

“Yes. They’ve asked to meet with me tomorrow.”

“Do you mind if I tag along?” I asked.

“Let me call my father to see if we can all be part of the meeting.”

“You mean we finally might get to meet your elders?”

“You are an official part of the clan now, Kyle.”

“True, but I didn’t think it meant I get to ride on the rollercoaster. I thought I was still relegated to the kiddy rides.”

Misha chuckled. “Father has been asking to see you.”

I grinned. “Who would have guessed that Boris would actually come to like me?”

“You grew on him.”

“You make it sound like I’m fungus.”

Misha’s chuckle blossomed into a full belly laugh.

Chapter 16

All this talk of Running Wolf and the names the Key teased me with reminded me about the most recent name the Key had given me—Marlene Thompson. She had to be connected with the case. Maybe if I concentrated on her name, I would be able to see her face, or flash on something else about her.

It was worth a try, and Jean Luc, who closed my office door behind us with a definite
click
, was here to help with the experiment.

He reached for my hands. “Are you ready to try,
ma petite
?”

I grasped his strong fingers, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. I tried to clear my mind of the museum, and the realm, and demon crossovers, and Dalton. Dalton who’d come back as a different person.

Focus!

Deep breaths again, and I concentrated on one thing: Marlene Thompson. I pictured the name and let it float around inside my skull. Jean Luc’s hands grounded me, and the warmth of his thrall inched up my arms.

Come on…show me something.
Muted light flittered in my brain, and fuzzy images appeared like old-timey movie newsreels. But the reel picked up speed and slammed my cerebellum with too many images to process. My head snapped back.

My chair was wrenched to the side, and someone grabbed me.

“Kyle!”

I opened my eyes and looked up into Jean Luc’s worried face. He stood in front of me, hands cupping my cheeks.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” I blinked a couple of times. “I was close, but the Key tried to tell me too much, too fast. I can’t interpret it.”

He nodded. “We will figure it out, Kyle. It is only a matter of time.”

Except, now that the realm demons were after the Key, I wasn’t sure we had the luxury of time.

* * *

I answered my cell as I walked toward my apartment building. “Hey, Mish.”

“Little one. We have a green light about meeting with the elders.”

“Great. What time?”

“9:00 am tomorrow. We’ll pick you up at eight.”

I unlocked the building door. “I’ll be ready. I’m getting antsy waiting for Eli to call. Hopefully they can give us some info to break this case. ’Night.”

“We have a break in the case?”

I jumped at the voice. Dalton stared down at me from the landing. Memories of him carrying me up these very stairs flooded me. But that had been another lifetime.

I stopped myself from groaning, jogged up the steps, and passed him on the landing. Dalton followed me. I was sure he would, but a girl could dream.

I opened the door and flipped on the light. “Why are you here?” I asked, not bothering to ask how he knew where I lived, since he was a cop. I stood in the doorway, blocking the entrance to my apartment.

His frowned. I was being rude, true, but 1) he had shown up unannounced, and 2), I didn’t know if my heart or sanity could handle having him in my apartment.

After a second, common sense prevailed, and I stepped back and let him in. Whatever we had to talk about shouldn’t be discussed in the hall. Most of my neighbors were elderly, but they had supersonic hearing when it came to gossip, or what they called scuttlebutt.

“Who were you talking to?”

“Misha. The elders of his clan want to talk to him about the demons who live in the demon realm. They might be able to help us figure out what type of demon robbed the art museum. We’re supposed to meet them tomorrow morning at nine.”

“I’m coming, too. No more leaving me out of this case.”

I stared at him, and my internal radar started beeping. “How are we leaving you out?”

He moved further into the living room. “You’re not telling me everything.”

I pulled my coat off to give myself time to settle my nerves. “Like what, exactly?”

“Why were you at Gesu Church today?”

My nerves jumped to attention. “You followed me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because this case reeks! Tell me what I’m supposed to think when one of the items stolen from the museum looks exactly like the box you have stored in the office safe? How much coincidence do you think I can take?”

“This case does stink. We have a dead human, and a demon that’s too dangerous to live on earth, yet it’s somehow crossing to our world.”

“So why did you go to Gesu?”

I crossed my arms. “For a personal reason, which is none of your damn business.”

He started to pace, ignoring my indignation. “Then you go to some run-down building by the river. What the hell aren’t you telling me?”

“That building houses our lab and storage facility. We keep it looking run-down on the outside so people”—I narrowed my eyes at him—“don’t come snooping. I stopped in to see Doc. She’s the ME we told you about. Are you happy now?”

He scowled. “You’re acting awfully jumpy. If you’ve been doing this for ten years, I wouldn’t expect you to be this jumpy.”

“
If
…I have been doing this for ten years. Maybe I don’t like the Feds sniffing around our case.”

“What does that mean?”

“Trust goes both ways. How do we know you aren’t going to spill all this to your FBI buddies in Chicago? Our job is to solve this case and stop humans from finding out the truth about the supernatural. If they find out, how do we know the government won’t turn supes into lab animals?”

“You’ve seen too many conspiracy movies.”

It was hard not to scoff at his naïve response. “We still have people who hate others for the color of their skin, for the Gods they worship, and the gender they want to sleep with. Do you honestly think humans can cope with learning about the supernatural? Races that are more powerful than they are. That live centuries longer than they do and can travel to and from another realm!

“I’m not the one living in a dream world, Special Agent Dalton. The government would try to control them, and we would have a bloodbath.”

His eyes widened at my tirade, and I plowed on before he could say anything. “So forgive me if I don’t trust you with the whole truth. You haven’t earned it yet.”

I yanked open my apartment door and gasped at Griffin, who stood in the doorway.

He glanced over my shoulder and focused on Dalton, his eyes flashing amber for a split second before he subdued them. “Am I interrupting something?”

“No. He was just leaving.”

Griffin walked into the room and stood to the side, so Dalton could make his exit. I simply waited with the door open. No more words needed to be spoken. I had spewed enough for one day.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Dalton announced on his way out.

I shut the door, my back to Griffin, and closed my eyes for a second.

“Kyle?”

I turned to face him and tried not to lose it. One false step, and the ice would crack…and I would fall through. “I’m fine. Dalton is being a control freak about this case. He thinks we’re keeping things from him.”

Griffin’s eyebrow rose. “You are, aren’t you?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “For his own good.”

“I’m not questioning why you’re doing it, but he obviously can sense something is wrong.”

“Everything is wrong.” I paced into my living room. “He’s so suspicious and closed off now. Jean Luc thinks it has to do with the memories I implanted in him last year. I erased the torture only to replace it with other things that have screwed him up.” I stopped pacing and turned to him. “You don’t want to hear this.”

Griffin opened his arms, and I just stood there. Trying to breathe. After three shaky breaths, I launched myself into his arms, and he held me. His warmth wrapped around me even though my insides felt frozen. “I’m sorry.” I whispered.

“Shhh.”

“I’m sorry.” And I was. Sorry for Dalton, and sorry for Griffin. Neither of them deserved this. Why did I have to inflict pain on everyone I cared about?

Chapter 17

It had actually stopped raining, so I waited on the sidewalk to soak up any stray UV that
might
make its way through the clouds. Jean Luc pulled in front of my apartment building at 8:00 am sharp. Talia nodded at me through the front passenger window, eyes smiling. The back door of the van opened, and I handed Misha a bag of apple turnovers fresh from the nearby bakery. He grinned like a silly schoolboy, and I grinned right back. At least I had figured out how to make one male in my life happy.