Page 36 of Sinner's Secret

He’d stopped a few feet away and pointed something at her.

Two darts sprang at her, attaching with the pain of wasp bites to her arm, then she was bathed in light and pain. Her body shook as the electric charge from the Tazer rolled over her like an entire swarm of killer bees.

Her muscles locked up and she fell sideways, her head hitting the bedside table.

Everything went dark.

***

Someone pounded on the lid of his cab’s trunk, jerking Baz out of a semi-conscious haze.

“Breznik, you son-of-a-bitch,” someone shouted. “Are you in there? Where is she?” The outrage, anger, and threat in the voice was clear.

Baz wasn’t inclined to pop the lid until things were less likely to blow up in his face.

More voices, one of them urging calm and cooperation. Then another knock, a more polite knock, on the trunk lid. “Baz, this is Detective Daniel Smith, Nika’s partner. She’s missing.”

Holy shit.

Baz hit the release button and jumped out of the dark space.

He glanced at the window and noted that the sun hadn’t gone down yet, but sunset wasn’t too far off. Good enough.

“What happened?” he asked Smith. He looked past Nika’s partner to see Lieutenant Thomas pacing the floor with Officers Williams and Davis watching him. “What’s got him wound up?”

“Got a strange text from Nika,” Smith explained. “It was a little garbled, but given the shit that’s happened, we checked her house. She wasn’t there. Signs of a struggle. No bodies, but multiple blood pools and a few shell casings. The calibre matches her weapon.”

Baz pulled out his own phone and found a text from her as well.

Someone is he The text abruptly ended.

“Fuck.”

They’d gotten her.

Whoever they were, they’d finally succeeded in taking her.

A gut-churning heat rose from deep inside him, until it filled his throat with fiery coals and scalding ash. It got hotter and hotter until he was sure his skin was going to peel off his body and fall, smoking to the cement floor of the garage.

He’d worked so hard to keep the monster contained inside him for a long time, hundreds of years, but not anymore. No one was going to take another person he cared about from him. And somehow, in the last few days, Nika had come to mean something to him. Like Joe and the rest of the drunks who were regulars at his pub, and the other waitresses at the diner—they were his people, living in his territory.

He’d failed to protect his people before.

Never again.

“Did you try to track her using the RFID tag?” His voice came out in a hard, abrasive growl.

Smith studied his face, then took a careful step back.

Baz threw a mental saddle on his rage and settled in for a long, bumpy ride. He might need Smith’s help, and he wouldn’t get it if the man thought he was out of control and would murder anyone between him and Nika.

“Yes,” Thomas snarled as he walked up. Williams and Davis stood on either side of their lieutenant as if they were certain he’d try to do something stupid. “We tracked it to a dumpster five blocks from her house.”

“I need to see her house,” Baz told them. “I might see something you missed, or you didn’t know was relevant.” Or smell something you couldn’t.

The lieutenant bristled, but Smith nodded. “Fine.”

“I’m also going to talk to my cousin.”

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