Karma Patrol (15 page)

“I’m sorry,” Shannon told her, her heart breaking for her friend. Most people thought it would be great to have a soulmate, but most people didn’t understand the incredible amount of pain that soulmate bonds could produce when they were strained. Shannon spent her life helping other people through that pain, and she wouldn’t be willing to go through it herself for any relationship, no matter how perfect the guy might eventually turn out to be.

Luke walked the streets of Midtown without a specific destination in mind, his thoughts a chaotic jumble as he tried to make sense of what had happened.

It was insane. All of it was insane, from the idea of Jade being some sort of karma cop to the concept that karma was even a real thing. He knew better than anyone how rare it was for bad people to actually get what was coming to them. In his line of work, he saw the system fail every day, saw criminals get away with everything up to and including murder. It was a nice thought, the idea that there was some sort of cosmic justice that punished those people when the regular judicial system couldn’t or wouldn’t, but that wasn’t the way things worked. Hell, if there was any truth to what she’d said, his bastard of a father would’ve met a gruesome death years ago instead of living out his retirement in Brooklyn.

He was unsurprised when he looked up from his preoccupation to find himself standing at the front steps of the police precinct. It was the place he spent most of his time, the one place in the world where he felt most comfortable, and his feet had taken him there automatically. He briefly considered continuing on past the precinct, maybe heading for Central Park to give himself a mental break before throwing himself back into the thick of things, but he’d already been gone half the day. Aaron would’ve covered for him that morning, but the captain would only let him slide for so long.

It was business as usual in the precinct, with cops and civilians milling around in the lobby area. He nodded absently to several uniformed officers as he headed up the stairs to the homicide squad room. His partner was standing in front of the bulletin board that held the copies of their notes from the shootings, but he turned around when Luke entered the room.

“The prodigal detective returns,” Aaron greeted him, raising his eyebrows at Luke. “Should I ask where you’ve been, or am I safe in assuming that you stalked Jade Bailey around the city all morning like a creepy, gun-toting lunatic?”

“Drop it, Sanford,” Luke muttered, folding his arms across his chest in a vain effort to ward off the unexpected stab of pain his partner’s words elicited. Not for the first time, he wondered what Jade had done after he left the apartment. If she was smart, she’d called her friend Shannon to demand a new soulmate. Maybe she’d already replaced him with another guy who could give her what she wanted. Somebody who could love her the way she deserved to be loved.

Aaron usually would have kept pushing, but Luke’s expression made it clear that the subject needed to change.

“I talked to Chuck Montoya over at the 1-7 this morning,” he said instead, gesturing to the bulletin board. “He had some interesting things to add to our investigation.”

“Any clues on who the shooter is?” Luke asked, pushing away all thoughts of Jade in favor of studying the bulletin board. Unlike the situation with Jade, a spree killer shooting up half of Manhattan was something he felt capable of handling.

“No, but I found out what happened at Le Cirque two nights ago.”

“What does Le Cirque have to do with anything?” Luke asked, confused, and Aaron shook his head at his partner’s distraction.

“When we ran into Jade yesterday, outside the deli, she asked about the precinct boundaries, remember? She wanted to know about something that happened at Le Cirque the night before?”

“Yeah,” Luke said, belatedly recalling the conversation. “And?”

“And it wasn’t at
Le Cirque, exactly. It was in the street out front.”

“What was?”

“Another shooting.” He dropped a stack of papers in front of his partner, watching as Luke scanned the top page.

“Is this—seriously? It’s the same guy?”

“Ballistics from the 1-7 are a match for our shooter,” Aaron confirmed. “He gunned down two people in their precinct the night before he did the Forty-Eighth Street shooting. Which means—”

“Which means he didn’t start with the senator and the Serbian national. He started with whoever he killed in the 1-7.”

“Yeah, but get this: the two guys he killed over there? They were big fish.”

“More politicians?” he guessed, but Aaron shook his head.

“Montoya said they didn’t pop in any local or federal database, but they were pretty important to someone. A couple of guys from Homeland Security showed up and took over the case before the crime scene unit was finished clearing the scene. That’s why we didn’t connect the shootings before this; Homeland Security slapped a lid on the first shooting and told the cops working the case to keep their mouths shut. Even Montoya wouldn’t have talked to me if I hadn’t asked him specifically about it.”

“So the victims were either politically important but flying below the radar, or they belonged to one of the alphabet agencies,” Luke realized, feeling like he’d been kicked in the chest. “If they were CIA—”

“CIA, or NSA, or DHS, or whatever,” Aaron replied. “It doesn’t matter which agency is involved. What matters is that there’s some serious shit going on and your girlfriend is in the middle of it.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he replied, unable to hide his flinch at the word, and Aaron groaned.

“What happened? Did she catch you stalking her this morning and threaten to call the captain on you? I told you, you completely screwed the pooch on this one. That girl is never going to have sex with you.”

“It’s not like that,” Luke retorted. “It’s—”

He stopped abruptly, because there was no way he was telling Sanford that Jade was a member of a secret organization that enforced people’s karma, nor did he have any plans to repeat her claim that he was destined to be her soulmate.

“I know what it’s like,” Sanford replied, leaning against the edge of Patel’s desk. Patel and Parker were mercifully absent, probably because they were out canvassing for witnesses, so at least the entire homicide division wasn’t passing judgment on his pathetic love life. “You’re not the only guy who’s ever made an idiot of himself over a woman. Granted, I’ve never stalked a girl around the city, but I’ve done plenty of other dumb crap. Give her a few days to cool off, and if you’re still hot for her after that, then go apologize to her. Tell her you fell for her at first sight and you were so head over heels that you went a little overboard. Women love that stuff. Hell, even Travis loves that stuff.”

It was true that telling Jade he’d fallen in love with her at first sight would be the easiest way to make her feel better, but it would be a cold day in hell before he actually did it. He wasn’t in love with her. Just because he couldn’t stop thinking about her and the mention of her name caused a dull ache in his chest didn’t mean he had feelings for her.

“We need to figure out who this guy is before he kills someone else,” Luke said finally.

“Yeah, like your girlfriend,” Aaron replied, his tone grim, and the ache in Luke’s chest turned to agony at the thought.

Jade was curled up in a ball of misery on the couch when Shannon reappeared from the kitchen, carrying a bottle of wine and two glasses.

“It’s not the end of the world, Jade,” Shannon told her, setting the glasses down on the coffee table and unscrewing the cap from the wine bottle. For a woman with a predilection for high-end designer stuff, Jade’s taste in wine was surprisingly unpretentious.

“He walked out on me,” Jade wailed in response, ignoring the way Shannon’s lips twitched in an effort to hide her smile.

“You nearly got shot yesterday and you handled that like a pro. Can you drum up a little bit of that courage and apply it now, so we can talk about this without you turning into a puddle?”

Jade continued to sniffle but shifted into a sitting position, making a visible effort to regain her composure, and Shannon rewarded her with a hug.

“Better,” she told Jade, passing her the bottle of wine and an empty glass. “Here. Drink up. Wine always helps.”

“Oh, Shannon. This is so bad I don’t think even wine can fix it.”

“First of all, that’s blasphemy, and second, it’s never as bad as you think it is. Here,” she added as she grabbed Jade’s purse from beside the couch. Jade watched blankly as Shannon dug around in her bag, coming up with the tube of Dior 999 every true southern belle carried in case of emergency. “Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick, and pull yourself together.”

Jade blinked at her, momentarily startled out of her grief.

“Did you just quote Elizabeth Taylor at me?”

“If you don’t put on some lipstick and start drinking, I’ll quote Coco Chanel,” Shannon threatened.

“You couldn’t quote Coco Chanel if your life depended on it,” Jade accused, but she filled her wine glass obediently before trading Shannon the bottle for the tube of lipstick.

“Great loves too must be endured,” Shannon replied, her smile widening at Jade’s disbelieving expression. “Let’s go, Coco. Wine and lipstick, now.”

Jade shook her head but uncapped the tube, applying the bright red lipstick with an expert hand, and then left a perfect red lip print on her glass as she drained half of her wine in one swallow.

“Satisfied?”

“You’ll do.”

“Since when do you quote Coco Chanel?” Jade pressed, still baffled. “What happened to my boho-chic best friend who hated all forms of makeup and had never even heard of Coco Chanel?”

“She met you,” Shannon retorted with a grin. “Even I couldn’t be friends with you for this long without learning a few things. Now that you’re wearing lipstick and drinking wine, we need to engage in the time-honored best friend tradition of talking about boys. More specifically, what just happened between you and Luke.”

“I can’t.”

“I promise that whatever happened, it can’t be that bad. He’s your soulmate. You aren’t going to lose him.”

“I told him we were soulmates and he walked out on me. Are you telling me that’s not bad?”

Shannon sighed. “Jade, you’ve had your entire adult life to get used to the idea of having a soulmate. He’d had—what? Five minutes? You have to cut him some slack.”

Jade held her wine glass in both hands, staring at it for a long moment before replying. “I’m overreacting, aren’t I?”

“Just a little,” Shannon agreed gently.

“I’m sorry. I just—it’s been such a crazy couple of days. Finding out about the promotion lists, and then the sentinel event, and then meeting my soulmate and realizing he didn’t want anything to do with me. And like you said, I got shot at, which doesn’t exactly happen every day. When I talked to Talli yesterday, she said—”

“Talli can shove it,” Shannon interrupted, surprising Jade. “Your sister might be a good account enforcer, but she’s also an enormous pain in the ass.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call anyone a pain in the ass before,” Jade replied, intrigued enough by Shannon’s irritation to be diverted from her own woes. “Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you say anything negative about anyone before.”

“She treats my entire division like we’re a bunch of petty dictators out to destroy people’s lives. My job is to make people happy, but she acts like I’m a monster.”

“She has some pretty strong feelings about soulmates,” Jade agreed, managing a wry half-smile. “You only met her once, though, didn’t you? Last year when she came to visit me? I don’t remember you two getting into any arguments while she was here.”

“It was after the three of us went out to dinner, when you got called by the
Bulletin
.”

“I’d forgotten about that,” Jade said. It was one of the few times when the newspaper had called her instead of the other way around; the mayor was giving a last-minute press conference, and Mike chose to call her for pictures rather than calling one of their more frequent contributing photographers. She suspected the job offer had more to do with her bra size than her photography skills, but she’d needed the money, and Shannon had offered to walk Talli back to Jade’s apartment.