His sudden squint caught my eye and I instantly knew what I’d said. But he’d been talking about his family, so I talked about mine, and that included a werewolf currently eating my friends out of house and home and the man standing beside me.
“It’s beautiful there,” he commented and that was all.
“Yes,” I agreed. “We hope to be home before it starts snowing.”
He grinned at me. “You like the snow, marshal?”
“I didn’t use to, but a month here has me rethinking my entire opinion on snow, sir.”
“Really?”
I threw up my hands. “It’s 85 degrees right now. Are you kidding?”
“It’s hot,” Ian chimed in irritably.
Mr. Guzman laughed at us, and that was good, better than standing there slowly coming apart because he had not been there when his kids had been assaulted by monsters.
“Spell your name and your partner’s,” he instructed.
I exchanged glances with Ian, but he just shrugged. There was only so much we could do.
“It’s Miro, sir,” I said, and I spelled both my first and last, giving him Jones and Doyle instead of the fake ones, because for starters, he deserved the truth, and secondly, Segundo and Hewitt were too far away to overhear.
“And what is your supervisor’s name in Chicago?”
I cleared my throat. “His name is Chief Deputy Sam Kage, sir.”
“With a K,” Ian chimed in.
“Excellent,” Mr. Guzman said.
“How did your son get away, sir?” I asked, because from the bits and pieces I could decipher, I knew Oscar had told him the whole story.
He took a breath. “His sister shoved him out of the car as soon as it stopped and she ordered him to run.”
“Smart.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “She was brilliant for keeping him safe, he was good for listening to her. For once.”
“It’s fortunate they didn’t go after him.”
“They would have never caught him unless….”
No one wanted to consider what unless could have meant.
“I need to make sure that every cell phone is accounted for,” Ian said into the sudden silence. “We can’t have any pictures of your daughter leaked.”
Mr. Guzman nodded.
“I’m going to follow up on that now, make sure the FBI is made aware.”
“Please,” he murmured.
Ian gave Sofia a last hug, turned her over to her father, made quick eye contact with me, and then jogged back to the gathered suits, all the FBI and police still talking.
“We’re ready to go to the hospital,” Bryson announced.
Sofia and Oscar did not want to leave me, and when it became apparent that it really would not happen without tears, I agreed to go with them and their mother to the hospital, Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center, which was not far away.
I went to find Ian first. I took hold of his bicep as I excused us both for a moment from the discussion with the LEOs.
“What?” he asked, his gorgeous blue eyes softening the moment his gaze met mine.
“Listen. I have to go to the hospital with the kids, but I’ll be—”
“No,” he directed in his I know everything and it’s all decided voice that he pulled out upon occasion. “Just stay there, and I’ll meet you as soon as I can.”
“So stay put until you come get me?”
“Yeah.”
I was exhausted, my adrenaline had bottomed out, I was responsible for killing people, and I had to turn over my gun to the Phoenix PD for processing, so now I was without a weapon until I got back to the apartment. Ian was not because he hadn’t shot anyone with his Glock, but I felt vulnerable and that was not helping.
“Because I’m what, five?”
He stepped into me, close, crowding me, in my space, and while it could be mistaken for him trying to impart privileged information, it was also, very clearly, a display of dominance and possessiveness. “Just fuckin’ wait for me,” he growled.
My hands itched to touch him, to slide up under his shirt and caress his skin. I breathed out slowly in an effort to calm my racing heart as I watched his pulse beat in his throat. I wanted to lean in and kiss that spot, the need nearly overwhelming.
“Don’t stand here and make me beg, simply do what I ask.”
“Okay,” I agreed, voice weak, realizing that being the entire focus of his attention was making it hard for me to breathe.
“I’ll see you,” Ian said before gently squeezing my elbow.
Watching him leave me was harder than I thought it would be. The only upside was that I got to ride in the back of the ambulance going to a hospital and for once I wouldn’t be on the verge of death on the way. It was really sort of novel.
GRUELING WAS the word of the night, very early morning, and then late morning. Ian never got away to collect me because he was stuck there, recounting what had occurred to the FBI and Phoenix PD, and I was at the hospital with Greg Hollister from the State Department and Efrem Lahm from Homeland Security.