CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jace was dressed and ready to head to work, practically skipping down the stairs. She stopped, though, when she heard the doorbell. No one else was around, so she went to answer it herself.
“Oh my God!” she gasped before thinking. “Your face!”
“My face?” Eriksen asked from the other side of the doorway. “What happened to your face?”
Jace immediately touched her cheeks, her fingers gliding along the stitches Tessa had put in the night before. She’d completely forgotten about them.
“Oh. That.”
“Yeah. That.”
“I was thrown into a mirror. And out a window.” She thought a moment. “I think that’s it.”
“Oh well, that’s good.”
She frowned. “The sarcasm is unnecessary.”
“Is it?”
Ormi, who stood beside Eriksen, leaned in and said, “Jacinda, dear. Would you mind taking us to Chloe? We need to see her.”
“Oh sure.” She turned and headed off to Chloe’s private office.
“Aren’t you going to ask us why we’re here to see Chloe?” Eriksen asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You might tell me.”
She heard Ormi laugh and Eriksen grunt.
They reached Chloe’s door and Jace raised her hand to knock. But she instantly froze when she heard Chloe screaming from the other side, “I know you’re fucking that Valkyrie whore from Vegas!”
“So?” a male voice shot back. “I know you’re fucking that plastic surgeon from Beverly Hills! Is he why your tits are suddenly bigger?”
Something crashed against the wall, and Jace spun around to face the two Protectors. “Why don’t we go see Tessa? She loves helping! She was a nurse!”
Without waiting for either to reply, she pushed past them and walked back through the house; the screaming still coming from Chloe’s office thankfully fading away as they moved.
She cut through the living room, where the Crows who worked from home or were waiting for acting jobs to come in looked up from painting their nails or watching TV, silently observing Jace and the Protectors walk by.
She opened the sliding glass door and led them out to the back patio, where Tessa was having breakfast with the rest of Jace’s Strike team except Kera. Based on Kera’s absence and the extensive paperwork covering the large, round table, that meant they were in the midst of finalizing the plans for her welcome party.
Poor Kera was still convinced by evil Erin that her party would consist of six people and processed cheese.
“Tessa, the Protectors are here to see Chloe.”
“Oh, just take them back—”
“But Chloe just found out that Josef is dating a Valkyrie who is also a stripper and he just accused her of getting her tits done, soooooo . . . yeah.”
Tessa dropped her head into her hands. “Seriously?”
“Things are being thrown.”
Without lifting her head, Tessa pointed at Annalisa. “Go deal with it.”
“Why me?”
“You deal with hardened criminals every day as a psychiatrist. I’m assuming you can handle two people who can’t move on from their shitty marriage.”
“Of course I can handle it,” she said, getting to her feet. “I just don’t want to.”
“Well, you might as well sit.” Tessa gestured to Annalisa’s empty chair, then the breakfast foods. “Melon ball?”
Ormi blinked. “Uh . . .”
Jace heard a whistle and looked over her shoulder.
“Couple of guys here to see you,” her sister-Crow said.
Jace frowned. “To see me? Are you sure?”
“They asked for you. One’s a Claw. The other’s some black guy.” The other Crows stared at her until she threw up her hands. “What? He is.”
“I’ll deal with it.” Jace gave a small wave to Eriksen before walking back into the house.
As she followed her sister-Crow, Lev ran up to her, and Jace stopped long enough to pick him up and snuggle him close, laughing when he chewed on her nose.
She was led into the study by the front door, but Jace stopped as soon as she walked inside.
Her feet felt like lead once she stood in that room and, she had to admit at least to herself, all she wanted to do was turn and run. Especially when she saw the expression on the face of the man she knew so well. A combination of apology and regret.
Norris Bystrom was a lifelong member of the Claws of Ran. He and his brethren still ruling the seas, dragging boats and the contents down to the bottom of the ocean just as the Nordic goddess Ran and her nine daughters once did to the Vikings when the mood struck them.
This Claw was also the ATF agent who’d been the first to see Jace at her absolutely most terrifying two years ago, when her Second Life had just begun.
Now he and the federal prosecutor who’d handled the case stood in the Bird House study, waiting to speak to her.
The prosecutor had always been so kind to her, too, and he wore the same expression as Bystrom. Apology and regret. She hated that expression. Hated it more than most things.
Both men tried to smile.
“Hi, Jacinda,” the federal prosecutor said. His name was Dave Jennings. He was tall. Handsome. Of black and Mexican descent. And was steadily working his way up in the prosecutors’ office. She had no doubt that he would be attorney general one day.
But not today.
“Hello.”
“How have you been doing?”
“Fine.”
Lev whimpered and snuggled close to her neck.
“He’s kind of big to hold, isn’t he?” Jennings asked, trying desperately to lighten the mood.
“He’s not even three months.”
“Seriously?” Jennings’s eyes briefly widened. “He’s going to be huge.”
“Jace—” Bystrom began.
“Let me handle this.” Jennings gestured to the couch. “Why don’t we sit down?”
“That’s okay.”
“No. Really. I think you should sit and—”
“He’s out,” she said for them, when she saw they were doing that thing that men do when they hated telling a woman something. They’d sit her down, hope to keep her calm. Offer to get one of her friends. Or some tea. Anything to avoid the torrent of tears they were expecting.
Although maybe dreading was a better word than expecting. They were dreading those tears. And this conversation.
“Jacinda—”
“It’s all right,” she said, deciding to let them off the hook. Because they didn’t understand. They never did. No matter how many times she told them, explained to them, they kept treating her like a traumatized wife rather than a woman who’d seen everything. Understood everything because she had no choice.
Her husband had never bothered to hide anything from her. He’d considered her property, and why would you hide anything from property? She didn’t hide popping her zits from Lev.
“I told you this would happen,” she reminded them. “I told you that you’d never keep him in.”
“We haven’t given up,” Jennings quickly insisted.
“The cops caught him burying me, and you still couldn’t keep him in. So maybe you should give up.”
“We still have the weapons charges.”
“Weapons charges, but the judge let him out? Yeah . . . okay.”
“We have very high hopes—”
“You shouldn’t. You should never have high hopes. The others, my husband’s . . . parishoners, will protect him with their last breath. All of them will. You’ll never get them to turn. Ever.”
“You could testify.”
“I’m his ex-wife.”
“You can’t testify about what he told you as his wife, but you can testify about what you’ve actually seen. No one can stop you from doing that.”
She wished she could say she was frightened by Jennings’s words. She wasn’t. Instead, she was irritated. She’d spent so much time explaining to him how this would work. This wasn’t just some hick cult with no pull. True, it would have been if her ex-husband had started it himself. He didn’t. His father did. A man who turned a long con into an actual religion. And to protect himself he’d made sure his group had contacts, connections, and anything else that got him control.
She’d tried again and again to explain that to Jennings, but he was one of those guys who believed justice ruled all. He really thought that someone as dangerous as her ex would get thrown into prison and stay there because that’s how it was supposed to work.
The man understood so little about this that he thought Jace was afraid of testifying against her ex. She wasn’t. She was afraid of what she’d do once she was in front of that court. In front of him. She could easily see herself climbing over the witness box and wrapping her hands around the bastard’s throat in the midst of her testimony. Choking the life from him right there. In front of the world.
So . . . no. Testifying against him would not work to her benefit.
She felt her rage welling and she worked hard to calm it down. To get it under control. She had to. Jennings was an outsider. Not one of the Clans, unlike the Claw who’d hauled her away from her ex after Skuld had brought her back. Bystrom had immediately known that she was a newly spawned Crow because he was descended from the Vikings who used to fight them. He was one of the Claws of Ran, West Coast. A human clan that was still female led, and still didn’t much like the Crows, often sending seagulls to attack the avian Clan when they were forced to travel over the Pacific. But Norris had always made an exception for Jace after realizing it had been her husband who’d killed and buried her in the backyard of the compound.
Norris suddenly glared at Jennings. “I thought we weren’t going to discuss testifying until later.”
“It seemed as good time as any,” the prosecutor said, glaring right back. He was the prosecutor, after all. Norris was just some ATF agent who didn’t understand these things. At least that’s how she was guessing Jennings saw this situation. But he didn’t understand. He would never understand.
“Well, that was a dumb thing to do.” And then, Bystrom looked behind Jace and she knew, without looking, that her sisters now stood behind her. They stood outside the glass doors. They sat on the chairs. They crouched on the staircase banisters.
Like a scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds, they had appeared in order to protect one of their own. And they’d done it without Jace saying a word because they just knew. They knew something was really wrong.
Bystrom’s body tensed, recognizing how dangerous this all was.
But Jennings merely saw a bunch of nosy women who apparently lived in an expensive rehab center, which meant they were rich. He might have even recognized a few faces from TV or movies. He didn’t understand the fear that was welling up in his gut. Instead he would ignore that fear. Tamp it down. Pretend there was nothing to be frightened of.
Oh, how wrong he was.
Not wanting the situation to get out of hand—and it was about to—Jace said, “I need to think on this.” She turned toward the glass doors, but Jennings caught her arm. Not harshly. She knew harsh; this wasn’t close.
But Bystrom took in a sharp breath and she could feel the eyes of every Crow locking on where Jennings’s hand touched her elbow.
“Please, Jace, you have nothing to be afraid of. We’ll get you protection. We’ll take you someplace where you’ll be safe. And when the trial is over, we’ll put you in witness protection. He’ll never find you.”
Jace patted his hand, forced a smile like she used to when she stood beside her husband and greeted newcomers too foolish to realize what they’d just given away. Their freedom.
Jennings was such a sweet man, and he believed every word he was telling her. That he would manage to protect her. Protect her from a past she understood all too well.
“Let me think on it,” she insisted before pulling away.
One of her sister-Crows opened the door from the outside and she walked through and away.
Norris watched the Crows closely. This was why he’d wanted to take Jacinda out of here to have this discussion. But no. Jennings didn’t want to “take her out of where she’s comfortable. She’s already been through so much.”
Which was very true. The woman had been through hell. But if she were like most people, she’d still be dead. The reason she wasn’t dead was because of who she was deep down inside. Because of her power. True power. Not that typical human shit, but the kind of power that frightened the hardest of true men. Of Vikings.
And with reason.
She hadn’t even said a word and the Crows had sensed her need. Her growing rage.
Gods, how could Jennings not see it? The man always wore a small gold cross around his neck. Did his Christian belief system really make him that blind?
The Crows continued to watch them as Jennings hemmed and hawed about whether they should keep trying to talk to Jace now or wait. But it wasn’t long before Chloe Wong walked into the room.
She smiled sweetly at both men, but Norris wasn’t fooled. Not by her.
“Gentlemen. It’s good to see you again,” she greeted. “What brings you here to Giant Steps?” She dipped her head a bit, dark brown eyes locking on Norris. “Little drinking problem?” she asked.
Norris started to reply to that bitchy remark—everyone knew he didn’t have a drinking problem because he could out-drink everyone at the yearly Tournaments—but Jennings placed his hand on Norris’s shoulder.
“We came here to talk to Miss Berisha.”
“About that horrible ex-husband of hers?”
Jennings glanced down before admitting, “He’s getting out. The charges have been dismissed.”
Chloe looked at Norris. “I thought you and several other ATF agents caught the man in the act of burying her.”
“We did but—”
“Those charges,” Jennings interrupted, “were dismissed due to problems in my office. I take full responsibility.”
“Problems?”
“Information that was not properly passed along to the defense.”
“So her ex has contacts in your office who are helping him.”
“I doubt that.”
“I don’t.” She put her hands together. “So what’s the next move?”
“We move ahead on the weapons charges.”
“But he’s already out.”
“We’ll get him back in.”
“Uh-huh. And other than to inform Jace about this, why else are you here?”
“Well, that’s between me and Miss Berisha.”
Chloe turned her gaze to Norris, and he knew he couldn’t ignore her question the way Jennings could.
“They want her to testify in court against him,” Norris explained. “About what she saw. About the organization.”
“I see. Skylar?” Chloe called out.
Norris knew Skylar. Still had scars from that time she’d slammed her talons into his back during an ugly Clan fight, nearly destroying his kidney in the process.
Jennings knew her, too. Had his ass handed to him in court on more than one occasion by that woman.
“Gentlemen,” Chloe said, placing her hand on Skylar’s shoulder. “From now on you’ll be dealing with Skylar Nosek on any issues regarding Jacinda.”
“That is unnecessary—”
“Is it?” Chloe asked, held tilting to the side, her face mockingly scrunched up with bullshit concern. “You let this motherfucker loose and then you come here and have the nerve to ask that poor girl to face him in court. You must be kidding.”
“We’ll put her in protective custody right now.”
“You will leave this house. Right now. And if you want to discuss anything with Jace, you can talk to Skylar first. Right, Skylar?”
Skylar’s response was to smile. Her bright white teeth flashed.
“Okay,” Norris said, grabbing Jennings’s arm, “time to go.”
“We’re not done here.”
“We are so done here.”
He pulled the protesting man toward the hallway, the Crows silently parting. As the last of them split into two groups to allow them to pass, Norris was brought up short by Danski Eriksen, second in command of the Southern California Protectors and his Clan leader, Ormi Bentsen.
But it was Eriksen who was staring Norris down, and Norris was wondering why the uptight Protectors, with their books and glasses and ideals about justice, were in the Bird House. He knew when he got out of here he would need to give his own Clan leader a heads-up. Rada wouldn’t be happy. She never liked when the other Clans got along.
Finally, Eriksen growled at Norris, “You failed her.”
Not willing to listen to shit from an uptight Tyr lover, he shot back, “Fuck you.”
Eriksen had Norris by the neck, powerful fingers digging into thick flesh. Norris knew what the Protector could do with that move. He’d seen the man tear heads off of beings with far thicker necks than his.
Norris released Jennings and grabbed Eriksen around the waist, ready to break the man in half.
“Gentlemen!” Chloe barked.
Without looking away from each other, they knew they were surrounded by Crows.
If they had this fight here, they’d have to kill Jennings and get rid of his body. Something the Crows would not like happening on their territory.
But it was Ormi Bentsen who pulled them apart.
“Not the way to handle this,” the older man chastised his second in command.
Still unable to let it go, though, Eriksen said in Norwegian, “Nice fuckup, asshole.”
“Suck my big Claw cock, book reader,” Norris shot back in Swedish.
“Isn’t that the same insult your mother uses?”
Norris almost had his hands on Eriksen again when Bentsen grabbed him by the throat. The strength of his tensed fingers told Norris it would take nothing for this man to crack his neck like so much kindling.
Bentsen nodded toward the completely confused Jennings. “Just go.”
Letting out a breath, trying to get his anger under control, Norris yanked away from Bentsen and grabbed Jennings by the arm. He pulled him out of the house and to their government-provided car.
“What the fuck was that about?” the prosecutor demanded.
Norris looked at him, shrugged, and replied, “Nothing . . . why?”
Jace made it as far as the garages where they kept the Bird House cars. From high-end to used-simply-to-abuse, they had every kind of auto and motorcycle currently available. Vehicles that could be driven at any time by any Crow. It was one of Jace’s favorite places. She liked to find a quiet spot to settle down and read. But she hadn’t been out here since she’d started to work for the Protectors.
She stood beside a bright blue Bentley. A special order that Chloe must have gotten. She had a thing for Bentleys.
“You have to come with me.”
Jace faced Eriksen, her mouth open, aghast.
“Come on,” he pushed.
“Seriously?” she asked. “You really think I need your protection?”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“You, big, strong Viking, are here to protect me from my ex-husband, right? Because I can’t do it on my own, right? I can’t protect myself. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”
“No, actually. I was sent to get you out of here before—”
“Jacinda, we need to—”
Without thinking, Jace spun toward the familiar voice entering the conversation and punched with her left fist. Hitting Rachel right in the throat . . . and possibly breaking something important.
The bigger woman stumbled back, swayed, then fell over, landing hard on her side. Jace covered her mouth in horror.
“Oh shit!” She looked at Eriksen. “I panicked,” she admitted. “I heard her voice and I panicked!”
He grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the front of the house.
“We have to help her!”
“No. Tessa and the others have to help her. What I have to do is get you as far away from that very angry female as quickly as humanly possible because she looks like she’s about to kick your ass.”
Running behind Eriksen, Jace looked over her shoulder and saw that Rachel was trying to get to her feet, teeth gritted together, eyes raging . . . even though Jace was pretty sure the woman couldn’t swallow.
She might have crushed Rachel’s windpipe. An action that would kill a typical human in several short minutes. But a Crow? She could last awhile like that. And keep fighting to boot.
By the time they reached the car, Ormi already had the motor running and Eriksen shoved her into the backseat and closed the door. A few seconds later, he opened the door again and Lev tried to jump in, but he didn’t quite make it. He dangled there a moment, front paws tearing across the nice leather interior, little legs trying to push himself the rest of the way.
Hand under his ass, Eriksen shoved him in and jumped into the front seat. He slammed his door closed and barked, “Drive.”
Jace held Lev in her lap and turned so she could look out the back window. Rachel was trying to run after the car, but now Erin, Kera, and Alessandra were holding her back as the rest of the Crows streamed out of the house and joined in.
“It was an accident!” Jace argued with absolutely no one.
“Was it?” Eriksen asked, sounding less than convinced.
“Of course it was!”
“Did you think it was your ex-husband?” he asked.
Jace flinched. “No.”
“Did you think it was one of the cult members?”
Now she let out a sigh. “No.”
“Then it really wasn’t an accident, was it? You knew it was her!”
“You don’t understand. She’s very irritating!”
He looked at her. “Why? Because she won’t stop talking to you?”
Jace scrunched up her nose before admitting, “Maybe.”
Rolling his eyes, Eriksen turned back around and kept shaking his head.
Ormi looked at her in the rearview. “I have to say, Jacinda, I really enjoy having you around. It’s all so exciting when the Crows have come to town, as my grandfather used to say.”
Slowly, Eriksen turned his head to look at his leader and snapped, “Shut up.”