Page 37 of Sinner's Secret

“Why?” Thomas asked with a sneer. “So, you can get your stories straight?”

Baz met the other man’s gaze. “No, so I can tell him that if he doesn’t help me get her back, I’ll rip his fucking heart out with my bare hands.”

All the cops blinked. Then Smith asked, “While it’s still beating?” He might have sounded only mildly curious, but his wide eyes told Baz he was starting to look like that out-of-control serial killer.

Baz forced himself to relax his shoulders and shrug. “I’m not picky.”

Lieutenant Thomas shook his head. “I don’t trust you.”

“Ditto,” Baz said.

The lieutenant shook a finger in Baz’s face. “I think you’re mixed up in this human trafficking operation up to your neck.”

“I think you talk too much and too loudly. Now get out of my way or I’ll run you over with my shitty car.” Baz turned to walk back to his vehicle.

“That’s it, you’re under arrest,” the other man shouted.

Baz turned, but kept walking, backwards. “For what, calling you a useless blowhard?”

“You’re a lowlife thug who’s probably responsible for the deaths of his wife and son,” Thomas shouted.

Rage rolled through his body, a tsunami of pain, sorrow, and need to destroy the one who caused it. Once upon a time, he’d have surrendered to it, allowed it to suck him under, and annihilate everyone and everything in his path.

It took all the control he’d worked over several centuries to learn to stay where he was and not rip the idiot lieutenant’s head from his body.

When the red haze cleared from his head, he found all four men staring at him, all of them pale, their hands on the butts of their weapons.

Shit, he was smiling. The smile that showed off his oddly sharp canines.

“What the fuck did you do to your teeth,” Williams asked slowly.

Baz sucked in a breath. These men weren’t prey. Not yet, anyway. They might even be helpful, so he gave them an honest answer. “The result of my wild and misspent youth.”

“Ah, okay,” Williams said, relaxing his stance and taking his hand off his gun.

“Okay?” Thomas asked the younger officer. “It’s okay to file your teeth down until they’re sharp enough to rip out a man’s throat?”

“I didn’t say it was a good idea,” Williams said. “My nephew did the same thing to his teeth. My sister was pissed.”

“They’re more trouble than their worth,” Baz said, letting the casual words cool him down further. “Most of the time.”

He studied the cops and very deliberately shifted his weight to one leg. “I’m going to find Nika. Are you going to help or what?”

“And just how are you going to do that?” Thomas asked with a sneer.

“That was a yes or no question, not an invitation for a debate,” Baz replied.

“Something tells me your search may result in broken laws as well as broken people,” Smith said.

“I don’t know,” Baz said. “All options are on the table.”

Thomas muttered a bunch of swear words under his breath, but Smith studied Baz with a shrewd gaze. “You saved my life. Why?”

“Do I need a reason besides it was the right thing to do?”

“Yes. You put your life on the line for a cop who didn’t trust you. I want to know why.”

Wow, and he thought Yvgeny was a cynic. “The night Nika nearly got snatched, all of you had Nika’s back.”

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