Protective Ink (Urban Fantasy) (11 page)

“I love you, Dory. I loved you even when you were making me terrible food and driving me crazy from next door. I’ll love you for as long as you’ll have me.”

“Forever, Garrett. Say forever.” Another step and their hands were clasped together. Dory rested a hip on the edge of the bed.

“Forever, then. I’ll love you forever and beyond if it’s possible.”

Lissa used the tip of her finger to dab at the moisture pooling in her eyes. “Some damned ninja must be cutting onions in the next room. Excuse me.” She rose from the chair at his bedside and walked toward the curtain.

“Will you marry me, Dory?” she heard as she wrestled with the fabric.

“I thought you’d never ask, Garrett. Dory Blackwell. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“It will. And I’ll get you a real ring tomorrow.”

“You bet your sweet bippy you will.”

Lissa left the cubicle, smiling for the first time in days. They were going to be okay and that made her happy. She had more work to do before she’d find personal happiness, but at least she was on the right road.

Chapter Ten

After rummaging around the lab, Jackson decided to take a quick trip back to Wicked Ink before bringing Lissa, Garrett and Dory back to the tattoo parlor. He wanted to check the safety of the parlor before he brought Garrett anywhere near the place. Whoever this asshole after Garrett was, he was stepping up his game. Now Jackson wanted to go on the offensive instead of being stuck reacting to each new attack.

Plus, something was bothering him, something beyond the fact that Garrett had been foaming at the mouth after a tattoo. He would look into Garrett’s suggestion that the ink had been tainted, but that wasn’t the only thing on his mind. He’d heard a strange noise in the building.… He hadn’t been able to place it at the time, but he was going to check it out.

Parking around back, he left the car and took a moment to just look at the store. Lissa was really making something for herself here. It was too bad things had gone wrong from the start—from Jackson’s tattoo to the opening day bash. Someone was out to get Garrett; they had already figured that out. But the how and the why were bugging Jackson. How did this person know to go after Garrett? How did they know when to pose their attacks and how they could hurt him?

A memory rose to the surface of his mind. A long time ago, he had bypassed a security system so that he and his team could infiltrate a penthouse where black market business was being conducted.

Could someone have wired Lissa’s building for video and sound? Maybe the contractor when he’d done the work Cameron had hired him for? Jackson would check every nook and cranny. That noise he’d heard could have been a break in the system.

Hell, he should have checked out the security situation earlier, but he’d been too pissed that she’d let someone else hook the place up. He should have been given that job. Instead she’d let Cameron make decisions for her that might ultimately have led to all this shit. How many times had they all been in here talking about private matters?

Shit.

Apparently he wasn’t the only one swearing. He heard a muffled curse through the thin sheet of plywood he’d placed on the back door to cover the broken window.

He immediately went into stealth mode. He didn’t know what else to call it, and that was as close to true as anything. As he filled his head with memories of the war, he felt that telltale tingling that meant he was disappearing from sight. He carefully opened the door so that it was wide enough to slip through, hoping that whoever the intruder was, he wasn’t standing right inside it. He had to take that chance.

A guy stood on a chair in the room where Lissa did her tattooing, his hands thrust under one of the ceiling tiles as he continued to curse under his breath.

“Goddamn thing. Boss is going to have my head for this. Already getting shit and I haven’t even seen any money out of this mess. Thankless bastard.”

The smart thing to do would have been to take the guy out quickly, so that he wouldn’t know what had hit him, but Jackson wasn’t feeling too smart at the moment. He was feeling angry and pissed off and about a million varieties of mad.

He blinked into sight right in front of the guy’s face and hit him with an upper cut that threw him across the room. The intruder sputtered as he got up and started crawling away backward. It wasn’t a big space, though, so he couldn’t get very far.

“You fucked with the wrong person,” Jackson said. “Now, you’re going to tell me what I want to know and we’ll go from there.”

“Screw you.” The guy came off the floor with a knife in one hand and a set of brass knuckles on the other.

He got in a few good licks before Jackson nailed him with an elbow to the back of the neck. He’d ask questions later.

Grabbing the guy’s laptop from the old barber chair, Jackson tapped into the network and watched as line after line of code scrolled by. He had training in coding and would figure out what it all meant later. For now he wanted to lock into whatever network the bad guys had and get a few answers.

He was typing furiously, banging the keys with more gusto than necessary, when a walkie-talkie on the filing cabinet squawked to life.

“Bryson, report. What the fuck is taking you so long? One of them is bound to come back soon and I have to know the system is up and running if that last attempt didn’t work. I have to have the all clear before I check the hospital for a status update.”

Jackson recognized that voice and his anger soared into monstrous proportions. He had a name and a face. And now he was going to kick some serious fucking ass.

Grabbing his cell out of his back pocket he placed a call to Lissa, which went straight to voicemail. She probably had her phone off since they were all at the hospital. The same thing happened after he tried Garrett and Dory. Well, shit.

“Bryson? If you’re not done soon, you’ll never see a penny. You’ll be next after I finish off Garrett.”

And the radio went dead.

After shoving Bryson into the storage closet, Jackson raced out of the parlor. He had to get to Garrett and Lissa before Cameron did.

* * *

“Darling!” Cameron DiMaggio came striding through the front door of Wicked Ink, looking as dashing as ever in a pair of professionally faded jeans and a dark blue silk button-down shirt.

Well shit
, as Jackson would say. This was neither the time nor the place to see Cameron. Lissa hadn’t heard from Jackson yet, but she expected him at any moment. She, Dory and Garrett had left the hospital fifteen minutes ago in a cab after she’d tried to call Jackson several times with no answer.

“Hi, Cameron! I wasn’t expecting you today.” Dory and Garrett were upstairs in her apartment. She didn’t want them going home until they had formed a more concrete plan on how to stop the person who was trying to hurt Garrett.

Cameron kissed her cheek and gave her a hug strong enough to break a man. He copped a feel of her butt, too, and made her want to cringe. Even though this thing with Jackson was going nowhere fast, one thing hadn’t changed: Cameron still did nothing for her.

“I got out of the bustle of Washington, D.C., sooner than expected. I wanted to surprise you. I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t call.”

“Of course not.” But in her mind she was racing for any excuse to get rid of him for a few hours. “You must be tired from the trip, though. Do you want to rest for a while? We can get together for dinner tonight. I have some things to clean up around here.”

His eyes hardened for such a brief moment that she wondered if she had imagined it. He smiled. “Dinner would be great. I can just hang out here while you’re finishing everything up. I won’t get in the way. Or I could wait up in your apartment.”

Forcing a laugh she didn’t feel, she laid a hand on his arm. “Oh, gosh, no. It’s a mess up there right now. I can call you in an hour if you want.”

“Why do I get the distinct feeling you’re trying to get rid of me?” He manacled her wrist, giving her a moment of unease. That unease morphed into panic—the smoothness of his palm was familiar.… His hands felt like the hands of the man who had attacked her the other night.

No, it couldn’t be him. He had just returned from D.C., after all. She was seeing shadows where there were none because she was still shaken over what had happened to Garrett.

“Not avoiding you, just trying to put you off. I really do have work, and I’m supposed to be tattooing Garrett in about an hour. You remember Garrett, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, I remember him very well.” And there was that fake smile again.

She tried to tug her wrist from his grip, but he wasn’t budging. “You can let go now,” she joked.

“Oh, I don’t think so. Not this time. And if the footage I’ve seen from the cameras I installed in here when I had the place refurbished is any indication, your talents are far greater than I’d even hoped. Maybe we should talk about how you can use those talents to pay your debt to me.”

She stared at him in horror, her mind racing.

“I have a better thought,” he continued. “Why don’t you have Garrett join us and we’ll settle this once and for all.” He used his other hand to pull a syringe out of his pocket. “I’ll make sure Dory isn’t close enough to heal the bastard this time, and then you can tattoo all the people who are going to be a part of my business. Think of the damage we could do with an army of superheroes.” He laughed. “Excuse me, I guess that would be super villains. You can start with me, of course. I’ll keep Garrett alive as long as you do what you’re told. If you had done your job this morning like a good little girl, he’d already be dead, and this wouldn’t be an issue. But I hadn’t counted on that stupid woman he’s seeing. How the hell did she keep him from dying?”

It was all too much for her. She hadn’t heard one negative word about Cameron when she did her research on him after he approached her through the bank. The others he’d worked with had issued only glowing reports. And this had still happened.…

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“Oh, my little Lissa. All that angst over making Garrett, all that turmoil about coming back to town. And for what? They don’t want or need you…not like I do. You can have it all with me.”

“I don’t believe that. Garrett and Dory care about me.”

“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen on the cameras when you’re out of hearing range. They only want you for what you can do for them. Garrett comes to you for one reason—your tattoos make him more powerful. He doesn’t want you around. In fact, he preferred when he could just come to see you every once in a while. Once he even said that he’d gladly go to another tattoo artist if he knew of any who could do what you do. Now he won’t have to worry about that.”

“So you switched my inks?” Her mind was reeling with all the implications.

“Bingo, darling.” He gave her wrist a yank. “Aren’t you going to offer me a drink? Or should I worry that it will be laced with something terrible?”

“I don’t know the first thing about poisons.”

“But I do. Or did you think it was an accident that the punch at your party only affected Garrett and no one else? Even though your girl healed Garrett this time, he won’t survive the next dose. The chemist on my staff truly enjoyed testing the blood we took from Garrett that night at the abandoned house. And now I have a list of different concoctions with the potential power to kill our resident pain in the ass. His kryptonite, if you will.” His smile turned into a frown that frightened her. “I had no idea that stupid girl could heal him, but it’s only a temporary setback. This syringe contains a concoction of every element that can destroy Garrett, and I’ll keep it with me to ensure that you follow the rules. I was hoping to turn him to my side at first, but he forced my hand when he kept beating every single person I sent after him. He’s too pure of heart now for me to have anything to do with him. You on the other hand… I first pursued you and your business, knowing you were close with Garrett. I figured you could give me access to him. But you are so much
more
than I expected. I’ve watched you on all that video footage, and I must say that I want your powers much more than I want his.” He laughed. It wasn’t maniacal or crazy, and somehow that made things worse; it sounded just like the laugh she’d grown used to over hours of negotiations.

She really was going to be sick.

“You actually think I’ll work with you?”

“Oh, I’m positive you will when you see what I have in store.”

She fought the urge to tug away from him again. If he wanted to talk, fine. It would at least buy her some time. For what, she didn’t know, but maybe a plan would come to her.

He used his free hand to yank her hair and expose her neck. She shuddered.

“I can’t begin to tell you how satisfying this relationship is going to be. When Garrett took out the drug boss who controlled this city, he left me with the business opportunity of a lifetime. And once we dispose of him, you can use your incredible talent to make me an army of super soldiers. I’ll own this city.”

She would have thrown up if he hadn’t stretched her neck back to the breaking point.

“Now, let’s see how best to do this. I believe we’ll call Garrett here and tell him you’re in trouble and he has to save you. That will appeal to him, don’t you think?”

He released her hair but kept her wrist in his hand. She drew her first full breath in a minute and dry heaved.

“Don’t go weak on me now, darling. I’m going to need you to give a good performance.”

“I’ll call him, but he won’t come, Cameron.”

“Oh, I think he will. He seems to enjoy playing the hero. And won’t we have fun when he gets here.”

“Scum like you have a different definition of fun,” Jackson said as he blinked into view. “You’ll have to get through me before you take anyone.”

Lissa’s heart raced and her hands grew slick. Her first thought was,
Thank God, he’s here.
Her second was all worry.

Cameron brandished the syringe he’d prepared for Garrett. “If you don’t want to see your little love killed I suggest you walk right out the door. I know all your secrets now.”