“I don’t understand,” she heard herself say. Which was what was going through her mind over and over again.
Luke knelt down. “I can make it go away.”
“What?”
“I can make you forget everything. You won’t remember any part of this. It will be as if it never occurred.”
That explains it, she thought.
“The guard. And then what you did in the . . . back at the . . .” She winced as her head hurt. “You do that to people, don’t you. Manipulate their memories.”
“It’ll be easier on you.”
“No,” she said weakly. “I don’t want that. My . . . mind . . . is not yours to take.”
When he didn’t respond, she started to relive everything—just to check and see what might have been taken: “My cover was blown and Mozart sent someone to kidnap me from my apartment. I woke up in his actual house. He didn’t show me his face—he drugged me—” She paused and looked at the front of the Monte Carlo. “What’s that growling? I thought he was dead—”
“Sorry.” Luke slapped a palm over his mouth. “I get a little . . . aggressive sometimes.”
Rio turned herself to him and looked at him properly for the first time. “You attacked that guy with the knife. That was you. It wasn’t a stray dog.”
“Well, technically, it was the wolven in me. But yeah, I sent him forward to save you.”
“You sent . . .”
“It’s like having two people in one skin. I’m mostly in control. But in certain circumstances, he comes out, and he does what he does. He’s very dangerous.”
“Why didn’t he hurt me?” Was she really talking like this? “Because you told him not to?”
“No, he knows you. He knows . . . you. That’s the only way I can explain it.”
“You look so . . . normal.”
“No, I just resemble a human on the outside.” He frowned. “Tell me about Mozart. He was the one who hurt you?”
“I’d never actually met him in person until he kidnapped me. The communications with him are all done through screens and VPNs. I was getting close, so fucking close. But he found me out because . . .” She took a deep breath. “I think someone in my own department tipped him off about me. Another officer, who was undercover like me, was killed—and right before he was, he tried to warn me. That was the night I met you.”
“Jesus.”
“Which was why I can’t go back to Caldwell. I don’t know who to trust—but I can’t let Mozart win. I just can’t.” She closed her eyes. “Even if it’s the last thing I do, I just want—”
“To kill him?”
Rio shook her head. “I want to jail that bastard. He’s everything I’ve ever worked against. He’s murdered so many people, and I just . . . I’ve spent eighteen months closing in on him. I want him to go to prison for the rest of his natural life.” She lifted her palms. “After that, I can retire. I’m finished in this racket anyway. My cover blown, my life a mess.”
They stayed there long enough for a shooting star to pierce the blue velvet of the night sky . . . and travel all the way across the visible plane of the universe.
“You know, you’re still as easy to talk to as ever.” She smiled a little. “I mean, this is remarkably unweird for being totally bizarre.”
“That’s because it has always been, and still is . . . me.”
Rio looked down at her hands and remembered running them over his body. And the way it had been to make love with him. And the connection she felt—and still did.
“You know,” he said, “I could help you.”
She lifted her head up. “How?”
“I can help you get to Mozart.”
“But . . . how?”
Luke tapped the side of his head. “We have tricks, remember. If you want to find Mozart, I can help you.”
“But why . . . why would you do that? If the drug deal supports the . . . the prison . . . if that money is needed to feed and clothe and—”
“You don’t have to worry about all that. You just have to ask yourself if you want to get Mozart bad enough . . . to work with a wolvenvampire cross to get the job done.”
Rio shifted her eyes to him—and focused on his face. All of the features were achingly familiar, exactly the same as they had always been.
“We’re survivors, remember,” he said in a low voice. “We stay in the present because it’s all we have. But survivors also settle scores. In the right way.”