Karma Patrol (9 page)

She and Aaron exchanged friendly goodbyes, and with a sideways look at Luke that smacked of amusement, she disappeared across Seventh Avenue and into the noise and chaos of Times Square. She’d only been out of sight for a few seconds when Aaron turned to Luke and smacked his arm.

“What the hell was that for?” he demanded, and Aaron made an exasperated noise.

“You can’t be serious. Luke, did you see
that girl? She was the best thing that’s crossed your path in months and you were a complete jackass to her! No wonder you’re the only good-looking cop in Manhattan who can’t seem to get laid. You’re laboring under the insurmountable handicap of your crappy personality.”

“If you like her so much, why don’t you sleep with her?” Luke retorted, irritated all over again. Aaron was infamous among the cops at the precinct for having one of the most enthusiastic and indiscriminate sex lives in the NYPD. Surprisingly, Aaron shook his head.

“Normally I’d try, but Travis and I just got back together, and he is not the kind of guy who tolerates sharing.”

That explained more than it didn’t. Aaron slept with anything good looking, male or female, that crossed his path, but he was legitimately in love with Travis. Luke was pretty sure Aaron and Travis would end up together in the long run if Aaron could get his libido under control.

“You realize she’s just using us,” Luke said, heading reluctantly in the same direction the photographer had gone. They needed to get back to the station, but he was loath to cross her path again. “She must have followed us from the precinct.”

“To what end?” Aaron asked in a tone that suggested he saw his partner’s concerns as unnecessary paranoia. “So she could ask us some basic questions about precinct boundaries that she could have looked up on the Internet for herself? She didn’t even ask about the shooting, Luke.”

“She asked about something that happened at Le Cirque,” he persisted.

“Which is in a part of Manhattan we don’t cover,” Aaron pointed out. “We told her that, and she dropped it. If she ends up over at the Seventeenth Precinct, sleeping with some lucky East Side schmuck of a detective who was actually willing to exchange pleasant conversation with her, you’re only going to have yourself to blame.”

“She was never going to sleep with me,” Luke deflected. “She’s just interested in finding a story.”

“Nobody’s ever going to sleep with you if you keep giving people that hard-ass attitude crap when they try to be nice to you.”

“Whatever,” Luke muttered, heading down Forty-Sixth Street through the chaos of Times Square and toward the Midtown North Precinct. He did his best to ignore the clamoring little voice inside his head that said Aaron was right and Jade the photographer was the best thing to cross his path in months. She’d seemed to be reasonably intelligent and in possession of a functioning sense of humor on top of being gorgeous. If she’d been anyone else, he might even have been interested in getting to know her, but she was a photographer for a newspaper, and that meant she was only interested in him for a story.

Besides, even if Aaron was right and she had been interested in talking to them as people and not as potential sources for a story, he’d completely blown it with her. He’d be surprised if he ever saw her again.

ade navigated her way down Eighth Avenue, headed for the southernmost boundary of her catchment area. Times Square had been quiet for a change, so she’d decided to do another sweep of her entire territory, looking for problems to solve. She was crossing Forty-Third Street when her phone made the same angry siren noise it had made the night before, and her eyes widened as she dug into her purse to find it. She couldn’t remember the last time there had been two imminent danger alerts within a day of each other. Typically, karma and destiny and all of the other forces in the universe worked together to keep employees of the Fate Divisions out of harm’s way.

She unlocked her phone’s screen and found herself staring dumbly at the words in bold black font.

Imminent Danger. Midtown West/Intersection of Eighth Avenue and Forty-Third Street. Bailey, Jade: Account Enforcement, Karma Division. All Department Assistance Requested.

“Damn,” she breathed, the curse slipping from her mouth as she jerked her head up, looking for any sign of the danger she was supposedly in. She wasn’t doing anything that might provoke anyone; she’d been headed down to the lower boundary of her territory to start a sweep of the area, but she wasn’t currently engaged in any karmic enforcement.

Her safest bet was to get under cover, she realized, and before she really had time to think about it, she was moving, sprinting for the nearest building. She found herself in the lobby of the Westin, greeted by a concierge with a pleasantly concerned look on his face.

“Is everything all right, ma’am?” he asked, his tone solicitous. “Can I help…”

He trailed off, his attention caught by something on the other side of the windows. Jade turned around, the world moving in slow motion as she looked out the glass doors of the lobby and saw people ducking and running for cover. Several of them barreled into the hotel, as she had, and with the door swinging open, she heard the noise of gunfire from outside.

She broke off from the concierge, whose attention was on the chaos outside anyway, and made for the ladies’ restroom as glass shattered in the lobby. She knew from her training that if everything went sideways and someone started shooting, the safest place to be was a room with thick walls and no windows.

There wasn’t anyone else in the restroom when she got there. She ducked into the farthest stall from the door and locked herself in, drawing her feet up onto the toilet seat to keep anyone from seeing them. She also dug into her purse, slipping her hand into the small zippered compartment in the back, and drew her .380 caliber Walther PPK-S.

Karma Division encouraged their employees to carry firearms for personal protection, pointing out that despite their special assistance from Fate, employees could still find themselves in a precarious position due to the unfortunate effects of free will. Her father had bought her the weapon for her eighteenth birthday, and she carried it religiously although she’d never needed to use it for anything but target practice. If the imminent danger alert was because someone was targeting her specifically and not just because she’d been standing in an area that was about to be shot to hell, then they were going to have to work for the kill.

There was nothing but silence, though. Apparently no one else thought to hide in the bathrooms, and she spent nearly ten minutes sitting on her heels until her phone gave a happy chirp. The noise startled her enough that she almost fell off of the toilet, and she scrabbled one-handed for the phone while keeping the gun trained on the stall door with her other hand. She knew that noise, though, and she knew what the alert would say before she opened it.

Bailey, Jade. Danger resolved. No further assistance necessary.

Exhaling sharply, she hopped down off of the toilet, sliding the gun back into its hidden compartment in her purse and keeping her phone in her hand as she exited the restroom.

She walked out the door, around the corner, and straight into Luke Jackson’s broad chest. He stared blankly down at her and she summoned a halfhearted smile, cursing the Interpersonal Relations Division as she did. He might have been her soulmate, but he was also just about the last person in New York that she wanted to see right now.

“Jade?” he asked, startled, and she ignored the little flare of pleasure at the realization that he’d remembered her name.

“Detective Jackson,” she greeted him, tossing her curls over one shoulder and trying for nonchalance. “Long time, no see.”

“That’s her,” the concierge who’d spoken to her as she ran in said, and she winced.

“This guy?” Luke said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the concierge at the door. “He says you came running in here all frantic.”

“Everyone did,” she pointed out lamely. “There was a shooter.”

“He says you
came in before the shooting started.”

She had no good answer for that, and even a lifetime of coming up with flimsy excuses for karmic interventions at the drop of a hat couldn’t help her invent one.

“He’s wrong,” she said finally, knowing as the lie left her lips that her soulmate didn’t believe a word she was saying.

“You think so?” he asked, his tone skeptical. “I think you’re going to have to come down to the station with us, Ms. Bailey.”

His hand on her upper arm was firm but not rough, and she managed to stifle the happy sigh that threatened to escape her. It was girly and pathetic, but he was her
soulmate,
and this was the first time he’d ever touched her. It might have been better if he hadn’t been doing it in order to take her down to the police station for questioning, but at this point in their relationship she would take what she could get.

When they made it outside, she was stunned to see Shannon standing on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, her bright smile at seeing Jade and Luke together a stark contrast to the carnage and destruction around her. She caught Jade’s gaze and offered her a double thumbs-up, and Jade resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

“Do you mind taking me over there for a minute?” she asked Luke, tilting her head in Shannon’s direction. He gave her a baffled look, but they were already headed toward Shannon, who Jade realized belatedly was standing in front of Luke’s unmarked police sedan. She must have seen him arrive and camped out to wait for his return.

“Are you all right?” Shannon asked once Jade was in earshot, and Jade nodded as Luke looked suspiciously from one woman to the other.

“I’m fine. What are you doing here?”

“I was a block away when the shooting started. When I heard about what happened, I thought I should come down and see if there was anything I could do to help.” She gave Luke a smile that smacked of self-satisfaction. “I see you’ve already made a new friend.”

“She’s being questioned in connection with the shooting,” Luke retorted, giving Shannon a hard look. “If you’re smart, you’ll stay out of it. Unless you know something and you’d like to join us?”

Shannon gave him a slow visual once-over that managed to bring heat to Jade’s cheeks, and she wasn’t even the one on the receiving end. She had no idea how Luke was able to withstand it without blushing.

“Oh, I’d love to join you, but Jade doesn’t share well.” She paused, grinning at Jade’s pink cheeks. As Luke opened the door to the back seat, Shannon added, “Aren’t you forgetting something, Detective?”

Luke ignored her. Jade gave her a quelling look that was completely ineffective. Shannon laughed at both of them, holding her hands up with her wrists placed side by side.

“Handcuffs, Detective.” She winked at Jade. “One of the biggest perks of dating a cop.”