“No one ever was. I don’t know what her connection was to Doyle or his associates outside London, and I don’t care.” He shrugged. “Far as I’m concerned, she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Mathias was relieved to hear it, but still cognizant of the fact that Nova’s past would need to be dealt with at some point. When she was ready. And he meant to be at her side when that day came.
“I have to take you in, Gavin.”
He stared, expressionless. “We both know that’s not gonna happen.”
Slowly, he turned around as if he meant to stroll out of the shop.
Mathias pulled his gun from its holster on his weapons belt. He cocked the 9mm pistol. “Sloane, stop.”
He paused, but didn’t turn around. His arms hung loosely at his sides. “You gonna put a bullet in my back?”
Mathias cursed through gritted teeth. “I’d rather not. But you’re not walking out that door.”
“Okay,” Sloane said after a moment. “I’ll make it easy on you.”
He pivoted suddenly, and Mathias saw that he was holding his own gun. It exploded an instant later, and a fireball of pain opened up in Mathias’s gut.
He fired back.
His bullet hit his old friend between the eyes.
Sloane hit the floor.
Mathias staggered down to one knee, blood pouring out of him.
CHAPTER 10
Mathias walked into the war room of the Order’s London command center that next morning, a bandage wrapped around his bare midsection. His pain was mild, but the gunshot wound that perforated several internal organs was going to take a few more hours to heal.
He hadn’t been happy to be dragged to headquarters by Thane and his other men after he called them back to Ozzy’s shop. He’d wanted to go looking for Nova last night. Turn the city inside-out in order to find her and tell her that Ozzy’s killer was dead and she had no reason to be afraid.
But dawn had been coming fast, and the bullet Gavin Sloane had fired through him had grounded Mathias on base for the rest of the night instead.
The Order’s report overnight of Gavin Sloane’s death in the line of duty had been met with shock by his colleagues at JUSTIS. The fact that the long-time law enforcement officer had been corrupt, on the take from a troubling underworld organization with ties and motives not yet determined, had been a detail Lucan Thorne had decided to omit from any official filings.
Documents had been pulled, photographs and video destroyed, data obliterated. And, where necessary, human minds had been scrubbed of any and all recollection to the contrary of what Mathias’s official statement read.
For all anyone knew outside the Order, Sloane had stumbled upon the scene of a homicide at a Southwark tattoo shop, apparently surprising a pair of perpetrators--one who had a knife, the other a gun. Unfortunately for Sloane, Mathias and his patrol team from the Order discovered the crime too late to save the respected Breed officer, who had been killed with a lucky shot to the head, the criminals having fled the scene.
Never to be seen or heard from again, of course.
As for Mathias and his team, they were already looking into another unusual string of killings.
It seemed someone had begun quietly targeting London’s banking community. Three high-ranking finance executives had been found dead in their homes in the past handful of days--one victim human, the other two Breed. JUSTIS was under immediate and great pressure to make the murders stop before the public found out and began to panic.
Mathias understood the urgency, but his mind was on another unresolved matter of great concern.
He had to see Nova again.
He had to let her know she was safe.
And that she would always be safe, so long as he had breath in his body and blood running through his eternal veins.
He just needed to find her first.
“Nice ink,” Callahan said, strolling into the room to where Mathias sat with a computer tablet, reviewing the intel from the recent murders. The young warrior sat down next to Mathias at the workstation, studying the sword tattoo on his back. “Think your lady will do one for me?”
“I don’t know,” Mathias answered. “What would you want?”
The warrior shrugged. “Something badass, like the one you have.”
“No way,” he said. “That one belongs all to me.”
And so does the woman who created it.
“What about the one you’re drawing on that report, then?”
“Hmm?” Mathias glanced down to where he’d been idly toying with the stylus on the tablet. He didn’t have a fraction of Nova’s talent, but he recognized the symbol immediately.
The rose window from the ruins of Winchester Palace.
One of Nova’s many tattoos.
One that meant something very important to her.
And that was where he would start looking for her as soon as night fell.
~ ~ ~
Nova tucked Eddie into the thin cot in the basement of the cathedral. The poor kid was exhausted. She was too. She sat on the edge of the mattress and smoothed his hair off his drowsy face.
“How long do we have to stay here?” he asked her, his words slurred from the sleep that was already pulling him under.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “For a while. Until I find us someplace better.”
He nodded sleepily. “Okay. Just don’t leave me.”
“Never,” she whispered, realizing only now that she had just stepped into Ozzy’s shoes. They wouldn’t be easy to fill. But she would do her best. She would find a way to give Eddie the same security and support that Oz had given her all those years ago.