Body Thief (18 page)

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Authors: C.J. Barry

BOOK: Body Thief
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It was after four A.M. when they got back to his apartment. Tomorrow would be a busy day, and Griffin wanted to get as much sleep as he could on that uncomfortable couch.
Because, tomorrow he was going to ask Ernest to break every protocol XCEL had to find out why they lied to him. Those other attacks followed the MO exactly, and they should have been on his list. They should have been investigated just like all the others, but he wasn’t supposed to investigate those.
And the only reason they wouldn’t be on his list was if XCEL already knew they weren’t Shifter hits.
The niggling suspicions he’d carried through this entire mission parked front and center in his mind. XCEL was hiding something big, and he was about to go into dangerous territory. If he was wrong and there was a good reason that the human hits weren’t included, he’d be in the clear. If not . . . if not, this whole situation was a setup from the beginning.
Cam headed to the bathroom, and Griffin punched the flashing answering machine button before walking into his bedroom.
“Mr. Mercer, this is the Greenville Recovery Agency. We are calling about an unpaid debt you owe. Please return our call as soon as possible.” The woman left a number and hung up.
He pulled off his shirt and grabbed a pair of workout shorts.
The next call was from a company looking for two thousand dollars they weren’t going to get out of him. And then the answering machine clicked to the end.
Only two collectors. Things were looking up.
He flung his shorts over his shoulder and walked out into the living room to find Cam standing next to the answering machine. She had already changed into her signature pajamas—one of his T-shirts. Long legs were smooth and sexy. Well, pretty much everything about her was sexy.
“How can you stand these calls? Why don’t you just change your number?” she asked, confusion etched in her face.
And yet, she had a way of destroying fantasies with one sentence. He walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water. “Because that’s the only number my grandfather knows.”
“Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he said.
Cam came over to the other side of the island, a slow smile growing across her face. “I’m seeing a whole new sensitive side to you, Mercer.”
“Don’t get used to it,” he warned her.
“Oh, I won’t.” She sat on the stool and leaned forward. “You work for a very powerful organization. Just have them deal with all these calls.”
“No,” he said quickly, and her eyebrows rose in question. He was so used to her prodding that he didn’t even wait for her to ask. He put the glass in the sink. “They don’t need to know.”
Cam shook her head. “Your ex-partner is destroying your life, one call at a time. At the very least, your credit rating.”
His credit rating was shot. Griffin put his hands on the island. “I’m aware of that, thank you.”
“You think XCEL would hold this against you?”
Sure as shit. “That’s part of it. Let’s just say I don’t want to remind them of past history.”
She cocked her head. “You’re doing all of this just to get your job back. This mission. Following Harding’s rules.”
“That’s right.”
She studied him. “Do you want it because you want it, or do you want it because a Shifter took it away from you?”
He wasn’t expecting that question. “Does it matter?”
“Not to me,” she said and stood up. “But it should to you.”
She stared at him for a while, waiting for his response. He didn’t have one. Then she frowned as she focused on his shoulder.
“What?” he asked as she walked around the island and stopped in front of him.
Griffin inhaled sharply when she ran her fingers along the knife wound on his shoulder. He’d pulled the stitches out this morning, and it was still tender. But that wasn’t exactly why he was breathing heavy.
“You healed,” she whispered, her fingers tracing the edge of the cut. “That was fast.” Her eyes met his. “Too fast for a human.”
“Not for me,” he answered, hoping to fend off another interrogation. He hadn’t recovered from that last one yet. “Runs in my family.”
“Must be a very special family,” she said, sounding skeptical.
He contemplated telling her about how Sani had taught him to heal his wounds quickly when he was young, but the words stuck in his throat because she was still touching him. He grabbed her fingers in his and pulled them away from his skin. “It is.”
She didn’t fight his grasp. “So you heal fast. What about Shifters? Can other members of your family see them? Can they freeze us like you can?”
The warmth of her fingers felt good. “I don’t know. I’ve never talked to them about what I do.”
“Never?” she asked.
He squeezed her fingers slightly. “Never. We both need to go to bed.”
Finally, she tugged her hand out of his. For long moments, she didn’t move, and then she turned for his bedroom. “ ’Night, Mercer.”
He waited until the bedroom door had shut before exhaling. Then he grabbed a towel and hit his personal gym.
 
Cam closed the bedroom door on Mercer and leaned back against it. He never told his family about his abilities? The man was an island. An impenetrable, dangerous, solitary island.
She sat down on the bed, the long night catching up with her in a yawn. She picked up her phone. It was far too early to wake her father, but she needed to hear his voice. Needed to know for herself that he was okay.
“Camille,” her father answered. “Are you alright?”
She wasn’t the one dying. “I’m great. Easy night.”
“That’s good,” her father said, relief in his voice. “Then I can sleep too.”
She smiled. “You do realize that I stopped being a child some years ago.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’ ll always be that squirming bundle of energy I held in my arms the morning you were born. One of the happiest days of my life was watching you enter the world.”
Cam swallowed the lump in her throat, not knowing what to say. Thanks? That’s nice? None of those worked. “How do you feel today?”
“Oh me,” he said briskly. “I’m fine.”
But he wasn’t. Her hearing picked up his weak heartbeat and the shallow, quick breaths he took. “That’s good. Did you see Ernest today?”
“Yes. He was here late last night,” he said.
“That’s good,” she said. “Sorry to wake you.”
There was a long pause before her father replied. “Do you want to do this, Camille? Do you want to help XCEL stop these Shifters?”
Ernest must have told him. Guilt threatened, and she tamped it down. This wasn’t about her. “They’ve blown up places and businesses. Destroyed property—”
“That’s not what I’m asking,” he said. “Do you
want
to do this?”
No
was on the tip of her tongue.
I don’t
. But if she told him that, he’d do something noble like up and die on her so she wouldn’t have to follow through.
“Yes,” she said. “If I don’t do it, they’ll find another Shifter who will.”
“I see,” her father said, sounding quiet. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Tears broke down her face. “Good night.”
“Good night, child.”
 
Harding paced his office. He never paced. He was the man in charge. People paced
for
him. “You’re sure they canvassed the other sites?”
Roberts nodded. “We followed them to two sites, neither of which was on their list.”
“So how did they find them?” Harding asked.
“We believe Agent Ernest Vincent may have provided them with the locations.”
Harding stopped and faced Roberts. “Vincent? That geek?”
“I’ve been monitoring his activities, and I find them rather irregular. He is getting into systems he shouldn’t need. Running an abnormally high volume of queries. Some queries are so short, they barely show up on the monitor reports. I think he may be digging deeper than necessary.”
“He’s not smart enough to do anything stupid,” Harding said.
“Perhaps he’s just following orders,” Roberts replied.
Mercer.
That man was going to be the death of him. Harding walked around and sat heavily in his chair. He couldn’t pull Mercer from the case without raising suspicion. And he couldn’t contain Mercer too much, or they wouldn’t find their Shifter cells.
But he could pull the plug on Agent Vincent. “I want you to work with Agent Vincent more closely.” Harding met his gaze. “Keep tabs on everything he does, every keystroke. All queries need to be approved before they are run.”
Roberts nodded. “For how long?”
“Until this son of a bitchin’ case is over.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed,” Harding said. Roberts turned on his heel and left. Harding had his cell phone out before the door closed. Mercer wasn’t the only bad news today. It had occurred to Harding last night that he had other problems.
He placed a call and waited for three rings, an interminable amount of time before Braxton picked up. “Yes?”
“We have a leak,” Harding said, keeping his voice low. There were no listening devices in his office, but he didn’t take any chances. “The Shifters knew the shipment was coming through the transport center. How?”
“I don’t know, but I can find out.”
“You do that. And you make damn sure that there is no trail left for anyone to follow. Not even a Shifter.”
“In other words, no trail to you,” Braxton said.
“Exactly,” Harding said. “And don’t forget it.” Then he hung up.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
 
C
am heard the phone ring and rolled over to look at the clock. It was only eleven A.M. She almost rolled back over until she heard Mercer’s grandfather’s voice. Then she threw off the covers and padded to the door, curiosity getting the best of her.
“Hello, Griffin. This is your grandfather, Sani.”
Cam cracked the door open and peered out. The shower was running, and Mercer was nowhere to be seen. She opened the door and walked to the answering machine.
“I had a vision this morning,” Sani said. “Under the harsh sun, the Skinwalker left a trail through the desert.”
She listened to every word, every pause. The calm, gentle way he told his story. It reminded her of her father when he told his stories. Before he started to forget them.
“Her footprints left marks in the sand.”
Her?
Cam stared at the machine. The Skinwalker was a woman. She wasn’t sure what a Skinwalker was, but it sounded a lot like a shapeshifter. A prickling sensation spread across her body. Was he talking about
her
?
“And where her tears landed, flowers grew. The Skinwalker mourned the loss of her family. She mourned the loss of her home.”
His words spoke to her, and Cam sat on the couch. Somewhere deep in her mind, Cam saw the image. The lone woman walking through oppressive heat and unforgiving land. Unloved. Unwelcome.

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