Chapter Seven: Derek

 

 

Gaby gave Derek directions to her apartment building. He pulled up behind the unmarked police car, which he recognized by guesswork: it was the only car, in the long row of street-parked vehicles, with anyone in it, a man and a woman who had their heads bent together in a sort of halfhearted necking posture.

Derek knocked on the window and the two of them broke apart. When the window rolled halfway down, he recognized the woman inside. He'd met her at the police barbecues that Keegan had a habit of inviting him to.

She recognized him, too. "You're the lieutenant's bodyguard buddy, right? I guess this means we stand relieved, JJ," she said to her partner.

"Thank God," the man beside her said with fervor. "If I have to pretend to kiss you one more time, my wife's gonna kill me when I get home."

The female cop rolled her eyes. "Like it's such a treat getting your beard burn on my face."

"No sign of anything hinky, right?" Derek asked.

"Nah, just the usual pedestrian traffic. We saw the old lady and the little boy leave the building awhile back, then come back with some shopping bags."

"I hope she was using her walker," Gaby said anxiously, pushing up next to Derek. "Mama hates using the walker in public, but she's not supposed to walk all the way to the store without it, let alone try to carry anything."

The female cop glanced at her partner, who shrugged and said, "She was pushing some kind of little cart-type thing."

"Yes, that's her walker. It's got a basket on it, for putting things in," Gaby explained to Derek.

The security situation got worse and worse. An infirm, elderly lady and a little kid ... and just thinking about it, he could feel his bear flexing its claws and showing its teeth, ready to defend his mate's family.

"Anyway, we're headed back to the station." The female cop raised a hand and their car pulled away from the curb.

"Oh, I forgot to ask them if Mama was actually using the walker or just wheeling it along," Gaby fretted. "She does that too. She had hip surgery just recently, and she's supposed to be taking it easy, but with me working all day, she has to do most of the shopping—"

"Gaby, your mom's fine." He squeezed her hand and forced his nervousness off his face. "Come on, let's go meet them. Which floor are you on?"

"The third." She unlocked the door and let him in. "At least it's a secure building."

"Just the one entrance?"

"There's a utility door in the back."

"Do people use it?"

"None of the residents have keys, but the door opens from the inside, so sometimes people go out that way as a shortcut through the alley."

Which meant the Ghost could get in that way. He wouldn't even have to wait for someone to leave, come to think of it. With his powerful polar bear body, he could probably force either door; they were designed to stand up to human burglars, not a half ton of apex predator.

And that meant having a guard on the front of the building wasn't going to be enough, especially under the cover of darkness. The Ghost could come and go from the back at will. Moving Gaby's family to the hotel was probably the best option.

"Is something wrong?" Gaby asked anxiously, moving closer to him.

"No, just thinking about security details. It's my job; I can't help it." As his mate, she was already picking up on his emotional state more easily. It wasn't precisely telepathy so much as a strong sense of being in tune with each other; they were more aware of the subtle tells of each other's faces and bodies and, in his case, scents. And at least some of the nervousness she sensed in him was because of meeting her family, so he tried to crush it down so as not to alarm her unduly.

"Third floor, right?" he said, and she nodded.

She let him check the stairwell before they stepped inside. By now it was becoming second nature for both of them; she automatically fell back as they approached a door, stepping behind him without needing to be told and resting her hand against his back, the softest of touches as if a butterfly had alighted there.

He'd known her for half a day and already he could work more smoothly with her than with teammates he'd worked with for months in the past.

But that was what having a mate meant. She was a true partner, joined to him body and soul.

On the third floor, she took the lead, stopping in front of a scarred wooden door. Derek made a move to stop her as she got out her keys, but aborted in mid-movement, realizing he could hear the happy babble of a playing child from behind the door, with occasional interjections from a woman's voice. If anything had happened in their absence, and in particular, if the Ghost was waiting for them inside, he didn't think a small child could be induced to sound that naturally happy.

Gaby unlocked the door.

"Mama!" came a joyful squeal, and a little boy with a riot of brown curls bounded up off the floor, where he'd been sitting surrounded by blocks and snap-together toys, and flung himself at her knees. "You're home early!"

"Oof! Watch out! Don't kneecap me!" She swept him up in her arms. "How was your day? Did you and Grandma Luisa have a nice time?"

"We went to the park! I petted a dog that was very soft and I asked the lady before I petted him and she said I could. She said his name was Tiger. I'm going to name my dog Tiger when I have a dog. When can I have a dog?"

"When we live in a place that allows pets," Gaby said in a tone which suggested this was a question she'd answered a number of times already.

She stepped forward into the apartment, with a giggling Sandy dangling from her neck. Derek followed her and closed the door quietly behind them.

The apartment smelled of potpourri and warm, pleasant cooking smells. It was small but tidy. The furniture crowded the living room somewhat, but had been arranged so there was room to move about between couch and armchair, coffee table and TV stand. The walls held an assortment of collectible plates with cute big-eyed children and animals on them, framed paintings of flowers, and a large gilt crucifix on the wall opposite the TV, above a bookcase crowded with paperbacks.

Derek had felt out of place in the coffee shop, but in this warm, homey room, he felt a thousand times more so. This was exactly the kind of place that men like him didn't belong, not with the air of darkness and danger that surrounded him. He shouldn't have come—

"Gabriella?" An older woman appeared from the nooklike kitchen, coming out from behind a freestanding cabinet that held the family's dishes. She was limping slightly and drying her hands on a dish towel, which she threw over her shoulder before flinging her arms around Gaby, child and all. "What a terrible day for you, my heart! And you didn't answer my texts!"

"Mama, I texted you from the car to let you know I was bringing someone for dinner."

"Yes, but you didn't answer the next three texts asking who. Oh!" Gabriella's mother switched her attention to Derek, like lightning. Startled, he found his right hand engulfed in both of her small, strong ones. "Is it this fine young man? When I said you should find a nice man, I didn't know you would take my advice so quickly!"

"Mama! This is the man I told you about who is keeping me safe. He is my bodyguard. Derek," Gaby sighed, "this is my mother, Luisa Diaz, and my son Sandy."

Some parents resemble their children closely. This wasn't the case with Luisa and Gaby—Gaby was curvy and medium height with a cascade of thick black hair; Luisa was short and round all over, her face made even rounder by its frame of brown curls.

But he could still see echoes of Luisa in her mother, especially around Luisa's generous mouth, in her eyes, in the set of her stubborn chin. He thought he could see where Gaby had gotten her courage and determination from.

He tried to let go of his feelings of discomfort. If Luisa felt that he was a man who shouldn't be around her daughter, he had no doubt that she would have told him so. Instead, she was beaming up at him.

"Ma'am, it's a pleasure to meet you," he said, closing his left hand around the short fingers clasping his right. "Your daughter's safety is my only priority."

Luisa turned to Gaby with a wide smile. "I like him! You can keep him," she declared.

"Gosh, thanks, Mama." Gaby rolled her eyes and smiled at Derek, but despite the mock exasperation, she looked genuinely relieved. And he felt as if he'd passed a test.

"I'm going to want to hear the entire story, every bit of it, but not in front of small pitchers with big ears." Luisa tweaked Sandy's ear, making him squirm. "But first, we should eat."

"Can I help with anything?" Derek asked. In retrospect he should probably have thought to stop somewhere and pick up something to bring along for the meal. He hadn't even thought about it. He was completely unused to deal with family occasions.

"No, no. You're a guest." Luisa hustled him to the couch. "Gaby, set the table while I check the casserole. Alejo," she added to the little boy, "come here and help me check if the oven timer has failed to ring again."

Derek helped Gaby drag out the table, which turned out to be folded in a corner, since there wasn't room in the small apartment to set it up without pushing the furniture out of the way. Gaby shook a flowered tablecloth over it and got down dishes from the cabinet. As she passed them to Derek to lay on the table, he noticed that they were nice dishes, with little roses on them; they made him think of a set his grandmother used to have.

"Are these antiques?" he asked.

"Only in the sense that my mother is an antique."

"I heard that!" came a call from the kitchen.

"I'm sorry, Mama!" Gaby said, winking at Derek. "No, Mama and Papa bought these when they were married." She knelt to open a drawer in the bottom of the cabinet, and got out several rolled cloth napkins.

"I promised on my wedding day to Alejandro—God rest his soul—that I would always set a nice table," Luisa declared from the kitchen. "And I always shall. Gaby, put the flowers from the top of the bookcase on the table. The vase with the sunflowers. It will make a nice centerpiece."

Gaby handed the napkins to Derek and went to get the vase off the bookcase. "Before she got sick, my mother was the office manager at a rental car franchise," she told Derek softly, wearing a trace of a smile as she set the vase in the center of the tablecloth. "Now she's got no one to manage except her daughter and grandson."

"She's not badly sick, I hope?" Derek asked, just as quietly, glancing into the kitchen where Sandy was standing on a stepstool and helping Luisa rinse a serving spoon in the sink.

"She's much better now than she was," Gaby murmured back. "She's always had problems with arthritis in her hips, but it got so bad she couldn't even sit up, let alone work. She had to have both hips replaced, and she's just recovering from the second surgery."

His poor, brave mate. No wonder she was so serious and responsible. She had been carrying the weight of her family's worries on her shoulders, all alone. Derek brushed a hand down her elbow, eliciting a brief, pleased shiver. You don't have to carry it alone anymore, he wanted to say with that gesture of support.

"I see you are telling all our family secrets," Luisa said, coming out of the kitchen with a casserole dish in both hands. Sandy trailed her, clutching an iron trivet. "Now put that there, sweet one, beside the flowers." Sandy stretched to set the trivet very carefully with both hands, and Luisa put the casserole dish on it.

"Mama, you aren't supposed to be carrying heavy things," Gaby fretted.

"It's not so heavy compared to this one." Luisa tousled Sandy's curls. "I pick him up a dozen times a day."

"Yes, you're not supposed to be doing that either. Derek, what would you like to drink? We have, uh, apple juice and milk, I'm afraid."

Her slightly abashed expression made him smile. "Milk is fine. It's good for healthy bones. Right, Sandy?" he asked the little boy who had climbed into the chair next to him, staring at him with open curiosity. "Or, did your grandmother call you Alejo?"

"Alejandro," the little boy said. "I'm named after Abuelo Alejo who is dead. Who are you named after?"

"No one. I'm just named Derek."

"That's a crane," the boy said promptly.

"... what?"

"He means 'derrick,'" Gaby said, setting a glass of milk in front of each of them. "Except it's not exactly like a crane, kiddo. What's the difference?"

Sandy screwed his face up. "A crane is tall and—no—"

"A crane is a bird," Luisa said with a mischievous smile, reaching over to unroll Sandy's napkin for him.

"Oh, Mama, don't confuse him! There's a new building going up on the next street over," Gaby told Derek, "and we're learning about all the construction equipment. Sandy is fascinated by big machines right now."

"I remember going through a big-trucks phase too," Derek said to Sandy, but absently, because something had caught his attention. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but his bear, which had been quiescent inside him, had begun to stir. Something was bothering it.

"I prefer the trucks; it is better than Gaby's horse phase," Luisa said.

"Mama!"

"What? At least Alejo doesn't ask me constantly if he can have a real bulldozer, not like you asking for a pony six times a day. Where would we have put it, in the kitchen?"

"I was perfectly aware we couldn't have a pony in an apartment in the city even at Sandy's age, Mama—oh, Derek, where are you going?" she asked as he rose from the table, reaching a hand after him. "I'm sorry, this is just our family's usual sort of dinnertime conversation. Don't let us scare you off!"

"I'm the one who should apologize. Excuse me," Derek said, as politely as he could with his bear increasingly tense in his chest. "Is there an opening window in the kitchen?"

Luisa started to rise, but Gaby hopped up. "Mama, you shouldn't be getting up and down. I'll show you, Derek. There's actually a very small balcony, really more like a fire escape except without the escape part. You aren't feeling unwell, are you?" she asked anxiously, hovering close by his side.

"No, I'm fine. It's not that."

Gaby let them out onto a tiny balcony—she hadn't been joking; it was just wide enough to accommodate a cheap plastic chair (with a cushion on the seat and a book lying on it) and a large pot with a healthy-looking tomato plant in it. More plants, giving off pleasant herbal smells, were lined up on the railing.

"Did you hear something?" Gaby murmured.

"I'm not sure." He was glad his mate was here, close enough to touch, since his bear was getting increasingly agitated. Having her hip pressed against him and the smell of her skin (still lightly spiced with sex, even though she'd showered at the hotel) was distracting. But having her back in the living room would have been even more distracting, where she was out of sight.

Something subconscious had set off his bear's finally honed danger sense. He wished he could figure out what was bothering it. He trusted those instincts. The problem was, in the complicated modern world, his bear's idea of what constituted danger wasn't always accurate. Right now it could be anything from a distant car alarm to a smell that had triggered some buried memory of another time he'd been attacked. It was so much easier in the mountains, where his bear's instincts were adapted to the world around it, a world without cars or high-rise buildings.

If the Ghost is here, he's not being obvious about it. I don't hear him, or smell him ...

"Derek, how worried should I be?" Gaby's eyes were wide, staring up at his.

Trusting him. Trusting him to protect her.

He wanted to tell her not to worry, but he was worried. Something was upsetting his bear. And it wasn't anything obvious, which made him even more worried.

"Well, if we're not in danger, we should go back inside," Gaby whispered. "We're being awfully rude, hiding out here with dinner cooling on the table. My mom might get the wrong idea."

"That would be terrible," he murmured, sliding a hand down to cup her round bottom, even while his sharp shifter senses tried to sieve through all the many smells and sounds of the city, trying to find the one thing that had tripped his bear's danger instinct.

The anxiety pinching Gaby's face was chased away by a smile, as he'd hoped. "You're terrible," she said, swatting at his hand with no real force.

He caught her fingers, caging them with his own, and grinned at her. God, being around her was like nothing he'd ever experienced. She made him feel light. Playful.

"I'll show you how terrible I can be. Later."

Gaby wrinkled her nose, looking amused. "You really need to work on your sweet talk, buddy."

He opened his mouth to respond, when he finally caught a whiff of something that struck a wrong note in the sounds and smells of an ordinary, peaceful city evening.

Smoke.

He hadn't noticed it before, with the cooking smells to cover it up. But now that the wind had changed, there was no mistaking it.

Gaby instantly sensed the tension in him. "What is it?"

Before he could answer, the building's fire alarm went off.

"Oh no," Gaby gasped, and darted into the kitchen. "Mother!"

"I hear it," Derek heard her mother say calmly. "Come on, Alejo. Dinner will have to wait."

Derek leaned over the railing. He couldn't see any smoke, but he could smell it more strongly now.

Ghost. It has to be. It could be a coincidence—but he was betting it wasn't. He'd thought Ghost would wait until nightfall to strike. But what better opportunity could there be? Ghost had seen the cops leave; he'd seen Derek go into the building with Gaby. And regardless of whether he's after me or her, now he's got both.

And dinnertime would be the perfect opportunity, because no one would be going anywhere. They'd be busy and caught off guard. All the Ghost had to do was get everyone out of the building and then pick off his targets.

The question was, where would he be? Waiting out front, where the crowd was going to congregate, or in back of the building?

Front. Probably. It depended on how wary he expected them to be.

Derek turned away, steeling himself, and checked the load in his gun.

Inside, he found Luisa helping Sandy put his shoes on, while Gaby was grabbing items and shoving them into a backpack. "Sandy's birth certificate and vaccination records—Papa's photo album—what else do we need? We should have some clothes—" She yanked open a drawer and started stuffing items into the backpack.

Derek took her by the shoulders. "Gaby. It's not worth your life. We have to get you and your family out."

"Yes," she gasped. "Yes, of course." She stilled, looking up at him. "Derek, is it—Ghost?"

"We have to assume so," he said quietly. "It's not likely he'll try anything in a crowd." At least, it was better for her to think so. He didn't need panicking civilians on his hands. "Stay with me. We're going to be heading for the car and getting all of you out of here."

"Yes. That makes sense." She slung the backpack onto her back. "Mama, get your walker, would you?"

"I don't need to deal with that thing in a crowded stairwell, Gabriella—"

"You can't walk a block without it. Just get it, Mama, please? It folds up, so we'll carry it down the stairs."

They made a strange procession trooping out into the hallway. Luisa held Sandy's hand, while Gaby carried the folded-flat walker in one arm and had her other arm around her mother, the backpack dangling from her shoulder. The hallway was half full of panicked building residents, but Derek could no longer smell smoke. If he was in Ghost's place, trying to flush out his quarry, he wouldn't set the entire building on fire. That'd be a good way to end up in danger himself. He'd break into an empty apartment and create enough smoke to set off the building-wide fire alarms, which was the only thing he'd really need.

Still, they couldn't count on it, certainly not enough to stay inside a building that might be on fire. Around him, he saw old people, families, little kids. People were clutching bundles of belongings, or empty-handed and crying.

If the Ghost had done this, Derek thought grimly, he was going down.

As he shepherded his charges toward the stairwell, Derek realized that there were two entrances and exits downstairs, but a strategic bottleneck inside the building. Nobody would be using the elevator during a fire. So everyone had to go down the stairs.

I hope what I said to Gaby is right and he really won't attack in a crowd, because otherwise, we're all in trouble.

He paused at the stairwell door, causing a pile-up behind him, as he tried to figure out the best way to do this. Gaby was going to be the target, but the old woman and child were too vulnerable to leave unprotected. Danger would most likely come from below, but he couldn't see what was happening to Gaby and her family if he put them behind him. At times like this, working with a partner would really come in handy ...

"What's the holdup?" someone shouted angrily from behind.

"I'm going to have you three go in front," Derek told Gaby. "I'll be right behind you. Trust me."

"I do," she said softly, and with her arm around her mother, she nudged open the stairwell door with her elbow.

The four of them joined the crowd of fleeing residents jostling their way down the stairs. Derek took advantage of his natural size and generally intimidating nature to stay so close to Gaby that he was almost stepping on her heels. He could hear sirens wailing now. Good. If we can just get out of the building, it ought to be easy to make our escape in the confusion, with emergency vehicles everywhere—

At the bottom of the stairs, the Ghost was waiting in the hall.

It was a good location. Derek had to admire his strategic sense, if nothing else. Every person on the upper floors had to come out the door into the hallway. The stairwell door swung open and closed as each little family-sized knot of refugees pushed out into the hallway. As they reached the ground floor and Gaby started to push it open, Derek glimpsed sudden movement in the hall, going against the tide of escaping building residents.

"Move!" he snapped, pushing Gaby and her family unceremoniously out of the way.

Ghost slammed into him.

It was definitely Ghost. There was no mistaking those ice-pale eyes, not to mention the massive size of him. He was actually bigger than Derek, but Derek had fury on his side. Through sheer bodily force he pushed Ghost out into the hallway, slamming him into the wall so Gaby, her family, and the rest of the refugees could get out of the stairwell.

"Give it up, Ruger," Ghost snarled.

"Shut up!" Derek headbutted him, and as the Ghost reeled, Derek briefly freed a hand to hook his keys out of his pocket and fling them in Gaby's direction. "Gaby! Get to my car. Get out of here. I'll hold him off."

"What about you?" she protested.

"Just go!"

All he could do was hope Ghost still worked alone and didn't have a partner waiting out front. However, he suspected that if Ghost was working with someone, he wouldn't have risked an attack in the crowded hallway; he'd just have had both exits covered and made his move outside.

There was no choice but to gamble Gaby's life on it.

Ghost snarled and his canines lengthened as he went for Derek's neck. Derek twisted to take the bite on his shoulder rather than the throat, turning his body to knee Ghost in the stomach. Ghost tried to twist away to go after Gaby, but Derek kicked his legs out from under him and the two of them went down to the floor in a tangle.

They were too close together for Derek to try for his gun; he'd be just as likely to shoot himself. Ghost hadn't shifted completely, but his face lengthened into a muzzle as he snapped and bit at Derek, savaging his shoulder.

Derek's bear was fighting to get out, too, roaring its fury inside him. He struggled to hold it back. If they both erupted in a full-fledged shift, the building residents would have to deal with two battling, giant bears rolling around in the hallway.

Still, if Ghost shifted all the way, Derek wouldn't have a choice. He couldn't win in hand-to-claw combat against a polar bear.

Got to keep him from shifting—but how?

Talk to him.

When the human side was fully engaged, it made it harder to shift.

"What'd you do, set off a smoke bomb down here?"

"Grease fire," Ghost said indistinctly through his fangs.

"I'd admire your style if I didn't want to kill you for it. This is between you and me. Gaby has nothing to do with it." Too late he realized he'd used her nickname. He should have stuck to Ms. Diaz.

"She's a witness," Ghost growled. "She's nothing, all right—nothing but a job."

How dare he talk that way about our mate!

Derek roared in Ghost's face. He could feel his fingers trying to lengthen into claws. The human part of him fought for control. I gotta get us out of here before he shifts or I do ...

Ghost curled his lips back from his teeth in a snarl. His face was nearly all bear now. In the dim hallway, with the frightened building residents interested only in getting out, no one was paying much attention—but they'd notice in a hurry if a couple of bears started getting into a knock-down, drag-out fight.

There's no room. If we fight here, we're going to kill someone.

He couldn't drag Ghost out of the hallway, and if he let him up, Ghost would go after Gaby. The only thing he could think to do was to make Ghost so angry he'd forget all about Gaby.

"So you'd rather go after a helpless human than fight me, huh? Did I really beat you that bad in Peru?"

"You lost in Peru," Ghost growled.

A quick flare of remembered pain in his scars reminded him how true that was. That fight had bloodied his claws too, though, and he snarled back, "Seems like I remember you got torn up pretty bad. Or is that why you've been avoiding me all over this city, because you're scared you'll 'win' again?"

"I'll show you how fucking scared I am!"

Ghost's body bucked, humping up with muscle and fur. His clothes tore off him as he shifted, and Derek was flung off. He caught himself and rolled, and came up drawing his gun, but he didn't dare fire. The hallway had mostly emptied out, but there were still a few stragglers. Too much chance he'd hit a civilian.

His plan had worked, though, sort of. Ghost's attention was definitely off Gaby and onto Derek. Except now, he had a pissed-off polar bear after him.

Yay?

Rather than shift in the hallway, he turned and sprinted for the rear exit. He slammed through the exit door and stumbled into the alley behind the apartment building. He'd hoped it would be deserted, but instead there were scattered groups of apartment residents standing around, looking up at the building.

"Get out of here!" Derek yelled at them, waving the gun. He didn't point it at anyone, but the combination of armed, angry, and disheveled worked like a magic charm to get them moving out of the danger zone toward the street.

Just in time, too, as an enraged polar bear slammed into the exit door just as it swung shut.

Derek leveled the gun at him. He still didn't dare shoot until the Ghost was in the alley, because a stray bullet could go straight down the hall and into some hapless grandma. Maybe even into Gaby. He'd rather die than be responsible for hurting her.

For a moment he thought Ghost wasn't going to be able to get through the door without having to shift. Ghost's massive shoulders were too wide. As he angled for a safe shot, finger on the trigger of his gun, all Derek could see in the doorway was a seething mass of yellow-white fur and snarling fangs and small, enraged eyes.

Then Ghost powered through the door on sheer fury, scraping off fur on both shoulders. Derek got off one wild shot before the massive, furious polar bear flattened him.

NOW I'd better shift! He let his bear surge upward as he held Ghost off, both hands clutched on the fur under Ghost's chin. The bear's strength, added to his own, gave him that extra bit of muscle to keep Ghost from ripping his throat out as he felt his own body start to change—

Something slammed into Ghost and suddenly the bear was no longer on top of him, rolling end over end across the alley to slam into the wall.

There was a screech of brakes.

Dazed, Derek stared up at the bumper of his own car, inches from him.

The car ... had hit the bear?

The driver's door cracked open and Gaby leaned out. "Derek! Get in!"

Derek scrambled to his feet, curling his hands to force his claws back into normal human fingertips. His bear snarled inside him as he fought it down. But this wasn't the time or place for a bear fight. Too many possible witnesses. Too much potential for someone to get hurt.

Too much potential for Gaby to get hurt, since she plainly wasn't going to stay out of it.

As he piled into the passenger seat, he snapped, "I told you to leave!"

"Not without you!" Gaby shot back, though she looked terrified. She stamped her foot on the gas pedal, sending the car roaring out of the alley. Looking back, Derek saw the polar bear struggling to get up.

"Gabriella dear, did you just hit a bear with this man's car?" Luisa said from the backseat.

"That was awesome, Mom!" Sandy crowed. "Do it again!"