Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (45 page)

“How do you know they were wrong, Dakota?” he said. “Did you ever hear their side of things? Or only Nik’s? How do you know they didn’t enslave them for a good damned reason?”

I stared up at him, seeing the anger there and the depth of that emotion.

I fought to think about Gantry’s words, unable to avoid the truth of some of them, at least on one level, but also furious at the last few things he said.

I knew he was right that I’d probably never fully understand Nik.

But then, there were a lot of people on Earth I’d never fully understand, either. Like people who only wanted to have sex with people who dressed up like Japanese anime characters...and people who collected creepy dolls, or people who thought t.v. dinners were the bomb.

So yeah, Gantry had some points, but most of what he said frustrated me beyond reason because it was just flat wrong.

Like Nik.
 

Nik might not be human-human, sure, but when he was in a human form, he had a human brain, and human emotions, and human thoughts.

When Nik was in human form, he was as human as me.

Or Gantry himself, for that matter.

But I didn’t know how to say that to Gantry in a way he would hear it. I knew his arguments were fear-based and maybe some of that fear was even for me. Truthfully, I didn’t think he’d believe me, whatever arguments I used. He’d just accuse me again of engaging in magical thinking, or being brainwashed, or whatever else. I could see the thoughts forming behind his eyes even now, the arguments already lined up...and I knew Gantry. When he got his mind stuck on something, he was as hard to move as a boulder stuck in the dirt.
 

I honestly wasn’t sure if it was even worth trying. Not now. Not when he was expecting me to come at him, guns blazing. Not when he wanted to fight about this.

Anyway, I knew he’d never be convinced until he learned to trust Nik on his own.

So I just didn’t say anything.

I could tell that irritated Gantry even more, although that wasn’t really my intention.

“Fine,” he snapped, throwing up his muscular hands. “But I can’t promise you I’ll always be on board with this, Dakota. Or that I’ll always be willing to keep quiet about who...and what...he really is.”

I stared at him in disbelief.

“Are you
threatening
me, G-Man?”

“No,” he said vehemently. He shook his head, just as vehemently, a second later. Glaring back at me, he clenched his jaw. “No, chica, I’m not
threatening
you. I’m telling you. Hell, I’m
promising
you...I will always have your back. Right now, that means I have Nik’s back, too. But if it ever seems to me that those two things might be in conflict, make no mistake. I won’t hesitate for a second to blow that fucker away, Dakota. Not one second.
Comprénde?”

I stared at him, weirdly shocked by his words.

I mean, I knew what Gantry was.

I knew what he’d done.

Maybe not all the details, but I knew he’d been in Marine Recon, which was some form of elite Special Forces unit, and that he’d been in some other black ops groups, too, being recruited out of Marine Recon into something that was off the books entirely, and maybe even reported through a whole different command structure than what came directly out of the Pentagon, or even Langley, maybe. Gantry couldn’t tell me much of anything about any of that, of course, but I got the gist.

He’d killed people. Probably a lot of people. He’d also done it in ways that would probably never be known or reported on by anyone, from any government.

I knew Gantry had a code of his own, that didn’t exactly mirror society’s code.

But Gantry was also my friend.

It never occurred to me before that moment that Gantry might kill someone I cared about, just because he perceived them as a threat to me...or to the country...or to whatever.

As I stood there, staring at him, Gantry sighed.

That time, his big shoulders seemed to deflate.

Some of the heat also leached out of his blue eyes.

“Dakota...look,” he said. “I’m worried about you, all right?”

I gave a bitter laugh. “Worried.”

“Yeah, worried,” Gantry said, his voice a growl once more. “But that’s not all of it, and you damned well know it.”

I shook my head, though, folding my arms where I stood.
 

“No, G. I really don’t,” I confessed. “What the hell are you talking about? Do you mean you still see Nik as some kind of national security risk? Is that it? Because I got the message on that one. Loud and clear.”

“Of course I see Nik as a goddamned national security risk!” Gantry snapped. “Are you going to tell me you don’t?” Before I could answer that, he cut me off again. “...But I’m not talking about that, either.”

I sighed. “Then what are you talking about, Gantry? Want to enlighten me? Or is it just way more fun to make me guess?”

Gantry stared at me, his blue eyes showing disbelief.

When I only stared back at him, making it clear that his staring wasn’t making his vague-talk-innuendo crap any clearer to me, he frowned in another near-scowl.
 

Without speaking that time, he walked right up to me, purpose in his steps.
 

When he reached the side of my desk where I stood, I stepped back, caught off guard, but he closed the gap between us with another step and caught hold of my arms.

Before I could speak, even to ask him what the hell he was doing, he kissed me, hard, on the mouth. I raised my hands in a half-assed protest, but I let him kiss me, truthfully, and even kissed him back a little, maybe.

Old habits die hard, I guess.

When we parted, a few seconds later, he stared down at me, his blue eyes full.

I saw anger there, frustration, but I saw other things, too.

Things that made it hard to hold his gaze.

“I missed you, Tonto,” he said, his voice gruff, lower than normal. “I missed you a hell of a lot during those eight damned months where I thought you were dead. Enough that I made certain promises to myself about what I’d do if I ever saw you again...what I’d say to you.” His jaw clenched, even as that anger ignited back in his eyes. “...Promises that alien, shape-shifting
fucker
blew out of the water, showing up here with you.”

I stared up at Gantry, stunned.

I opened my mouth, about to ask him again what the hell he was talking about, but before I could, he averted his gaze.
 

He released my arms in the same instant. Stepping back, Gantry shook his head again, as if frustrated, or maybe regretting what he’d just said, or maybe just angry. Whatever he was thinking, I still saw that deeper emotion in his expression, too.

Truthfully, I think I’d turned over his words enough times by then to be in shock.

I couldn’t quite believe he was serious.

I didn’t get a chance to ask him.

Watching me for a few seconds longer from where he stood, a few feet back from the giant, old-fashioned desk, Gantry finally shook his head, letting out a humorless laugh. He turned his back on me as he finished, still frowning around at the dingy walls.

Then, without looking at me again, he walked purposefully away from me, and towards the door leading out of my cramped and cluttered new office with the smoke-stained walls.
 

He slammed that same door behind him as he left.

He did it hard enough to rattle the glass pane...and to make me jump.

I didn’t try to follow him, though.

20

New Digs

I fell asleep on the couch not long after Gantry left.

I’d spent most of that morning cleaning the new place, which pretty much wiped me out, although in looking around, it seemed like I’d barely made a dent. I focused on the small kitchen, first...and then tackled the bathroom. Everything still looked pretty dingy, but I didn’t mind. The bed was new, a gift from Jake with his new modeling cash, and probably a bribe to get me to let him stay with us when he was in town...and the refrigerator was new, too, having just been installed by the landlord. Or new-used, anyway.

We also got a fluffy, lime-green carpet from Irene, and even P.J. and Ravi pitched in for the traditional housewarming houseplant when we first moved into the new place.

The shower had great water pressure, too, which made Nik happy.

These old buildings didn’t seem to have as much in the way of water conservation shower heads, for one thing, but I suspected the last tenant had messed with the water limits, too.

I hadn’t opened doors for real on the new P.I. front yet.

For one thing, Jo reminded me pointedly that my license needed renewing.

For another, yeah, who’d had time?

Although Jo had warmed to me somewhat, after finding the girls alive and that whole fiasco with Evers, she still had a number of questions swimming around behind her eyes whenever I spoke to her. Most of her big ones seemed answered. Since the young politician, Lars Falk, had withdrawn his candidacy following the scandal with his “campaign manager,” Jo seemed less inclined to buy into his testimony fingering me, especially once a solid link was found between those guys who owned Misty’s Boom-Boom room and Evers, too.

No one had found a similar link with Lars Falk, a.k.a. Razmun, but the relationship with Evers tainted him in Jo’s eyes, definitely.

So yeah, there was no question of hauling me in on murder for Evers.
 

The two girls, Nik and Gantry all testified to self-defense, and given the mess at the farmhouse, they were convinced we’d all been caught in the middle of some drug deal / trafficking / mob war gone wrong kind of thing, and therefore pretty much treated us as witnesses and victims and didn’t book us with anything.

Jo seemed to be good with that, too.

As for the guys at Misty’s, most of them packed up and left town.

I didn’t have anything solid on them anyway, nothing that would have stuck, but it was still annoying, and kind of horrible since no one ever found Marla, Hilary’s sister, either. Jo promised she’d keep looking for her, but her and the rest of the Seattle P.D. seemed pretty sure that Marla had been taken out of the country before that whole mess went down.
 

Jo told me privately that, once sold, the chances of finding missing girls who disappeared into trafficking dropped down to almost nil.
 

She’d informed Interpol and the F.B.I., so I had to hope.

The club itself was put up for sale, and while I had zero illusions that the actual organization had shut its doors in the Northwest, they would have to be dug out of the next sewage drain into which they’d crawled before anyone could do anything about it.

I told Jo she could handle the next round with those jokers anyway, now that I’d softened them up for her a bit.

Of course, everyone was worried those guys would come after me next, including me, but somehow I doubted it. Nik made a few cryptic comments that made me think he’d already dealt with the guys who had known who I was...including the six who met with Evers and Razmun in that mirror-paneled room that afternoon.

I didn’t ask a lot of questions, truthfully.