She staggered into a vacant restroom down the hallway, her head pounding ferociously, stomach rebelling with each step.
She hit the first stall and retched into the toilet.
As she slumped against the cold metal wall, her mind spun with even more questions than when she’d first arrived at the morgue.
What were Doyle and the other men up to at that dock?
Why had he turned on his own?
And most troubling of all, how could Nova answer any of her questions without risking herself and everyone she cared for?
~ ~ ~
Fresh out of the shower, Mathias pivoted his head over his shoulder to get another look in the mirror at Nova’s handiwork on his back.
A sword, for f**k’s sake.
A gleaming, perfectly rendered, realistic-looking blade that extended tip-down along the length of his spine.
The kind of sword a knight would carry.
Mathias chuckled wryly to himself. She’d called him Galahad, after all. Apparently the joke was on him--literally.
Whatever her intent, he actually liked the tattoo.
He like her too, and that was a fact that had been eating him up ever since he’d returned to Order headquarters the night before.
His interest in her was a problem he didn’t want to acknowledge, but it was rather hard to deny the way she’d stirred his interest last night. Feeling her warmth leaning over him for two hours while she worked on him had been torture.
Her gloved hands all over his naked back, sure and steady, as she’d created a work of art on his skin had made him long to feel her touch in other places.
The subtle, fleeting graze of her lovely little br**sts, so precariously contained within the zippered black leather vest she seemed to think passed for clothing, had given him a hard-on he had barely managed to rein in.
He’d wanted to kiss her, and no doubt would have, if she’d been anything but prickly and evasive with him. He might have done more than kiss her, had she not been the wiser of them and all but tossed him out on his ass and slammed the door behind him.
So, instead, he’d gone back to base with an uncharacteristically bad attitude and a need to be left alone to lick his damaged male pride and reassure himself that fiery, enigmatic Nova was a problem he damned well didn’t need.
He was still trying to convince himself of that today. Not a good potential, considering it was going on sundown and just the thought of her had his c**k rising to attention all over again.
What would his old friends back in Boston tell him to do about Nova?
He had half a mind to call and find out.
Then again, he could predict most of their reactions without consultation.
Leave the female alone.
Mind on duty, not your dick.
Find another distraction--one that wasn’t a person of interest in a homicide.
Of course, there were no less than ten of the most seasoned Order members who wouldn’t have been able to follow their own sage advice. Mated warriors, each with their own blood-bonded Breedmate that they loved more than life itself. Some of the Order had even fathered children in the twenty years Mathias had known them.
All things he’d never aspired to, never paused long enough to consider he might want.
Not that he wanted any of that now.
And certainly not with a difficult, secretive woman like Nova.
What kind of name was that, anyway?
Who was her family?
She’d been living with Ozzy at least since she was seventeen, according to what little she’d divulged. Mathias guessed she’d been under the old man’s wing for longer than that. He just didn’t know the how or why of it.
Just as he didn’t know who had been responsible for the hurt she’d shown him--however briefly--when she’d admitted to him that nothing could be done to her that she hadn’t already endured.
Who the f**k had wounded her so deeply?
Christ, every time he thought about her, it raised new questions. Stirred more curiosity in him to peel back the endless layers of secrets and camouflage she seemed to hide behind.
Mathias didn’t want to think about what he would need to do if peeling back any of those layers proved her guilt in the killing of the man who confronted her in Ozzy’s shop.
He would be duty-bound to surrender her to JUSTIS and let the system decide her fate.
Somehow, he didn’t think she’d stand by and wait for that to happen.
Nova’s headstrong, defiant gaze in the shop last night had told him that much. No, she would run before she’d let herself be shackled. But would she do anything more desperate?
Mathias dreaded being the one to find out.
His head was still churning on that troubling scenario when his comm unit buzzed with an incoming call. He grabbed it off the counter, recognizing his friend Gavin Sloane’s number.
“Don’t tell me you fished another scarab out of the Thames,” he murmured by way of greeting.
“No,” Sloane said. “But we may have a lead on the seven on ice down at the morgue.”
Mathias’s senses went taut with attention. “How so?”
“They had a visitor early this morning. Coroner’s got surveillance video of a woman being admitted into the morgue by one of the graveyard shift employees. She seemed to know at least a few of the victims, held their hands for a couple of minutes before rushing out of the room like she was going to lose her shit.”
The blood in Mathias’s veins started hammering hard with warning. He’d told Nova about the bodies in the morgue. She had seemed shocked, even troubled. But could she have known those men? Could she be mixed up in not just one slaying, but all seven of them?
Ah, f**k. Everything Mathias stood for demanded that he voice his suspicions to his friend, here and now. Yet there was a part of him that wanted to shield Nova from that kind of trouble.