Under Attack (34 page)

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Authors: Hannah Jayne

BOOK: Under Attack
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Nina cocked her head, her long, ink-black hair swishing to her elbow. “Deal.”
I shooed her out the door and shook the mouse, making my computer screen whiz back to life.
I typed in Mrs. Henderson's name, and up popped her list of appointments—the one she missed flashed an alarming red—and her address. I scrawled it down on a Post-it note and tucked it in my folder, heading out to find Dixon.
Though it's been over a year, walking into Dixon Andrade's office still pricked a little pang of sadness in my heart and gave me a small shudder of fear. I don't think I'll ever be able to walk into this part of the UDA again and not think of Pete Sampson, not think of the day I walked in to find my desk smashed to smithereens and his office—including the steel wrist and ankle cuffs used to hold him through full-moon nights—destroyed. The worst thing about that night was that Sampson was missing, blood was spilling in the streets, and Sampson—my Sampson, who had given me my first job, took me under his wing, and brought me more morning donuts than my pants could stand—was the chief suspect.
“Hey, Eldridge, I need to see Dixon.”
Eldridge was chic with a white-blond ponytail that hung halfway down his back, high over-arched eyebrows and a slight sweep of make-up on his pale face. I could tell he was wearing a hint of shimmer on his pursed lips and when he clasped his hands together I realized that his manicure—French, of course, with squared-off fakes—was better than mine. I mashed my free hand into my pocket.
“Do you have an appointment?”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course not. It's important.”
Eldridge sighed. “Mr. Andrade is a very busy man.”
“I understand that.”
“And so am I.”
“Right,” I put a single finger on Eldridge's desk and slid the
Cosmo
out from under his stack of official-looking documents. “And what exactly is your sexual style, Eldridge?”
If Eldridge had any blood in his body, his cheeks would have darkened. Instead, he just pursed those glossy, passion pink lips and pointed a well-manicured finger toward Dixon's office.
I knocked on the door frame. “Dixon, can I have a moment?”
Dixon looked up and grinned. “Ah, Ms. Lawson! Come on in.”
He stood up when I walked in and stayed standing until I made myself comfortable. One great thing about older men—and I mean centuries older—is that they tend to retain that old-fashioned sense of politeness and chivalry. I might be stuck in a room with a blood-sucking demon but I felt every inch the lady.
“Thank you,” I said.
Dixon sat and steepled his hands. “Now, what is it I can do for you?”
It was hard not to like Dixon Andrade. He was tall—imposing at six feet four inches, especially to my meager five foot two—and looked an awful lot like he just sauntered out of a Calvin Klein ad. He wore impeccably tailored suits in muted colors—charcoals, navy blues—that offset his pale features incredibly. When he fixed you with his sharp, glass-cutting eyes, it was nearly impossible to take a steady breath.
While Nina swooned the moment Dixon took over the UDA, I had my doubts. And I continued to have them once he fired me and I burned down my second place of employment. I felt a little better after he rehired me and dubbed me head of the Underworld Detection Agency's Fallen Angel Division. While it's true that I am the one thing that fallen angels spent their low life lusting after, Dixon saw my newly found, life-endangering knowledge of them and the Vessel of Souls a business bonus. And, happy to have medical insurance and unlimited access to office supplies again, I agreed.
“I suppose it's not really a big deal yet, but in the last two weeks I've had three missed appointments.”
Dixon's thin lips broke into a patronizing smile. “And?”
“And I think that's a bit odd.”
Dixon opened his arms as if to remind me that working in an office thirty-five floors
underneath
the San Francisco Police Department was odd on its own.
“I know,” I continued, “it's just that these are demons who never miss appointments. And none of them have called to reschedule and when I called them to check in—nothing. No return calls, no rescheduled appointments. I even checked with Kale to see if there were any messages or I just missed something. Don't you think it's fishy that three demons in two weeks would miss appointments? Especially Mrs. Henderson.”
“Miss Lawson, while I truly appreciate the concern you have with our clientele, you must remember that demons are a volatile bunch. And often nomadic.”
I gritted my teeth. “That's what the
Detection
part of our agency does, sir. We detect demons, even when they are volatile and nomadic.”
Dixon sucked on his teeth and held out his hand, palm up. “Why don't you leave the files here with me and I'll take a look at them. If there is anything that raises any red flags for me, I'll have Eldridge and Stella look into it.” He grinned a pacifying, annoying grin that showed off his long fangs. “Okay?”
“Brilliant. I feel much more confident knowing that the Wonder Twins are on the case,” is what I wanted to say. Instead, I shot back my own pacifying, annoyed grin and said, “thank you.”
 
 
It was just after 5 pm and the demon clientele had faded to a trickle. I stamped my last Fallen Angel registry form and plodded into the elevator with a couple of pixies and a zombie who kept staring me up and down.
“Did you need something?” I finally asked.
The zombie's face broke into what passed as a smile for the undead, his greying skin crinkling at the corners of his toothless mouth. “Sorry. I've never seen one of you up close before.”
I was rolling my eyes when I bumped—smack dab, chest to chest—into Alex Grace in the police station vestibule.
“Hey, Lawson.” Alex grabbed my arms to steady me and I wanted to crawl back against him and sink into those arms.
“Oh, hey, Alex. Sorry, I guess I'm just a little bit distracted.”
I blinked, then looked up into those cobalt blue eyes of his. Oh, yes. I was definitely distracted.
Alex Grace was heaven. His milk-chocolate dark hair curled in run-your-fingers-through waves that licked the tops of his completely kissable ears. Those searing eyes were framed by to-die-for lashes; his cheeks were tinged pink and his lips were pressed into his trademark half-smile that was all at once genuine and cocky, with just a hint of sex appeal. A man like this was otherworldly.
And Alex had the two tiny scars just below his shoulder blades to prove it.
Alex was an earthbound angel. Fallen, if you want to be technical. But he lacked the certain technicality that made other fallen angels so annoying—
he
didn't want to kill me. Most of the time.
I tried to tear my eyes away from his beautiful, full lips—lips that I distinctly remembered kissing—and focus hard on my rogue clients, but even though we had decided to be “just friends” almost six months ago, there was still a sizzling something between us. Call it forbidden love or my addiction to Harlequin novels, but Alex Grace was not an easy man to get over.
After all, he was an angel.
“What's going on?” Alex asked me.
I popped out of my revelry and shrugged, feeling my bottom lip droop. “Nothing. Just a long day at the office.”
Alex sighed. “Me, too.”
Since fallen angel-ing didn't come with a paycheck or a 401(k), Alex spent a good chunk of his mortal life working as an FBI field detective, generally stationed in a back office at the San Francisco Police Department. The vagueness of his actual job title or description allowed him to come and go as he pleased, attending to official police—or angel—business whenever necessary. And also, he really liked donuts.
“Want to grab a drink?” Alex asked.
“Herbal tea?”
Alex raised a questioning eyebrow and before he felt my forehead for a fever, I rolled my eyes and explained. “I'm on a cleanse.”
“A cleanse?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. After spending a year running from baddies I figured I should probably go on some sort of training regime. You know, cardio and ... stuff.”
Alex wasn't convinced.
“Fine! I'm holding together my fat jeans with a rubber band, okay?”
“Enough said. How about Java Script?”
“Sounds good.”
Ten minutes later we were sitting at a slick, back table at the back of Java Script, the whirl of cappuccino frothers drowning out the canned jazz music. I was frowning into my bar-code mug when Alex said, “All right, out with it.”
“Out with what?”
“With whatever it is that's making you look like someone kicked your puppy. You can't hide it. I
am
an angel, you know.”
“Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't your only angelic powers wolfing down a pizza in one bite?”
“And the occasional mind reading.” Alex's grin was sinful and I wanted to crawl under the table. He never said it outright but I had the overwhelming suspicion that Alex had done the occasional mind dip when my mind was ... indisposed. Generally indisposed with images of Alex Grace greased up with coconut oil and reclining on a beach.
Why couldn't I fall in love with an inmate like a normal woman?
I worked to avoid the blush that I knew was creeping over my cheeks. And here's the thing about blushing: on those chestnut brunettes a bashful crimson makes a pretty glow; ditto on those sun-kissed blondes. But when you're red-headed and have the kind of skin that people politely refer to as “porcelain” (meaning glow-in-the-dark white), a “hint of blush” equates to looking exactly like an overcooked lobster in a Gap sweater.
I clapped my hands over my cheeks and balanced my chin in my palms. “I think there's something going on in the Underworld.”
Alex broke a hunk off his mammoth chocolate chip cookie and chewed thoughtfully. “Something like a vampire with an overbite or something like Armageddon?”
I frowned and picked at my own cookie (I was having herbal tea with Splenda; which cancelled out the cookie). “Something in between.”
“Spill.”
“Okay, so, over the last two weeks, I've had three clients not show up for appointments.” I held up my palm, stop-sign style. “And before you make some comment like ‘it's not them, it's you' or ‘maybe it's just a coincidence, ' one of those demons who didn't show for an appointment was Mrs. Henderson.”
Alex chuckled. “Not them, it's you. That's good.”
I crossed my arms and pursed my lips. “I don't even know why I bother talking to you.”
“Chiseled pecs, coconut oil ...”
“We're done here.”
I stood up and Alex grabbed my wrist, sending a delicious shiver up my entire arm. “Hey, I'm just kidding. Tell me again why you're concerned.”
“Demons don't miss appointments. Well, zombies do, but everyone knows they are completely disorganized. It's weird that our clients would suddenly stop appearing.”
Alex knitted his fingers across his abdomen and leaned his chair back. “How do you know she hasn't gone on vacation?”
“The other two—a witch and a minotaur—sure. But Mrs. Henderson? She doesn't do anything without a publicity statement and a check from her ex-husband.”
“Has anyone else had missed appointments?”
I shrugged. “I haven't really checked.”
“I'm sure it's nothing. Maybe Mrs. Henderson met someone. Wasn't she talking about going on Match-dot-com?”
I gave Alex a half nod and worked a chocolate chip free from my cookie.
“I think it's too soon to consider anything sinister. Besides,” he added with a snide grin, “don't you know that all that Underworld malarkey is made up?”
I glanced up, lips pressed into an annoyed line and Alex flashed me his million-dollar grin. He was holding a thick, hard-backed book wrapped in a glossy black jacket, the title
Angels, Demons and Other Things that Don't Exist
in three-inch raised lettering across the cover. He opened the book, thumbed through a few pages and snorted while I snaked the last of his cookie from the plate.
“
Angels are the mythological heavenly messengers and stories of their assistance and comfort have been reported across all Western religions, and often by those who have experienced near-death situations
.” Alex grunted, shaking his head. He continued reading in a pompous orator voice. “
The so-called white-winged angel is nothing but our humanistic need to find a sense of comfort in the face of unexplainable tragedy and death. The angel myth is a direct result of humanity's unwillingness to grasp the finality of death
.” Alex snapped the book shut and tossed it on our table, the huge tome making our tea slosh. “This guy really knows his stuff.”

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