True Colors (2 page)

Though the woman’s torso was hidden in a thigh-length black woolen coat, it was clear she had a slender, elegant frame. An abundance of gold-tipped, dark brown corkscrew curls sprang out from her head. She wore straight-cut jeans, boots, and wire-rim glasses, and her complexion was the rich, warm color of cocoa and cream. She carried herself with the tense fragility of someone suffering from deep shock. Even from across the street, her thin intelligent face looked strained. She reached the sidewalk and paused, one narrow, fine-boned hand holding the high collar of her coat together in a defensive gesture as she scanned the street.

It was her, the woman from the apartment. He knew it. He didn’t have to catch her scent. Horror and tragedy still lingered in her eyes.

Another kind of knowing settled into his bones, a strange, deep pool of certainty that he had undergone an undefined, irrevocable shift that he didn’t understand or have the time to explore. The woman turned and began to walk in the direction of the nearby subway station. Riehl pushed through the delicatessen door and moved to cross the street, the whole of his attention laser-locked on her retreating figure.

Alice’s feet started carrying her automatically on her normal route home after visiting Haley, toward the Bedford Avenue subway station. First Peter was killed. Then yesterday they found out David had gone missing, and now Haley was dead.

David was dead as well. She knew he was, even though the police had not yet released any official word. Three of her friends, gone in as many days.

The street looked innocuous but a hint of the monster’s scent still lingered, warm and sensual in the cold wet air. Alice couldn’t stop shaking. The image of Haley’s poor mutilated body was frozen in her mind. What was she supposed to do next? Oh yes, call 9-1-1.

She dug in her pocket for her cell phone as her gaze darted around her surroundings. She glanced over her shoulder.

A man in black jeans and a battered leather jacket was crossing the street. He was immense, as tall as a tree, built like a linebacker, and he moved like a killer. His white-blond hair was cut military short, and the sharp, ruthless lines of his face were weathered and harsh. His piercing eyes were some kind of pale color, either gray or blue, and they reflected the light as he looked straight at her.

The bottom dropped out of Alice’s world as recognition slammed into her. Too many nightmarish epiphanies happened at once. They nearly knocked her to the ground.

It was the monster. He was no longer caught in a Wyr’s partial shapeshift, but she knew him. She
knew
him.

He’d found her, just as she’d been afraid he would. He had caught her scent, and now he had seen her face.

And she had seen his. He might be the one who had killed her friends. He was the most terrifying male she had ever seen.

And he was her mate.

Oh gods. Oh gods.

A hot wash of horror licked invisible flames along her skin. She had heard of such a thing before, two Wyr recognizing each other as mates at first sight. She had thought it was an urban legend. Deeper than love, more dangerous than lust, Wyr mated for life. This couldn’t be happening. It wouldn’t happen, not if she had anything to say about it.

She whirled. Terror whited out her thinking and lent wings to her feet.

Riehl lunged into a sprint after the woman.

Holy hell, that chick could move. Riehl was fast but he was big. She darted lickety-split between cars and people like nothing he’d ever seen, her slight, slender body able to take sharp turns and squeeze through tight spaces in a way he couldn’t hope to match.

Then in a hopscotch skip straight into the land of weird, as she ran she faded into her surroundings. She didn’t quite disappear, not totally. Her clothing was too solid for that, but somehow it was harder to track her just by vision alone.

Huh. That was fascinating as shit.

Good thing he could track her with more than just his vision. He could catch her if he changed. If they had been anywhere but the city, he would have. He was faster in his wolf form, and he could run literally for days. But if he changed into the wolf, he couldn’t speak unless they were close enough for telepathy, and he could already taste her panic on the wind. Besides, NYC might be the seat of the Wyr demesne, but it was also home to millions of others as well. He didn’t trust how people might react to the sight of a two-hundred-pound wolf hurtling down a city street.

He took a deep breath and bellowed, “NYPD! Stop!”

Of course she didn’t stop. He wouldn’t have stopped either just because some dumbass stranger yelled at him. Damn it, was she headed for the subway?

She was. In a move that was so suicidal it took his breath away, she plunged almost directly under the wheels of an oncoming truck as she raced across the street. Riehl didn’t think the driver even saw her because the truck never slowed.

Riehl had no choice but to pull up for a few vital moments, which gave her an even greater lead. After the truck he kicked it in gear, kicked it as hard as he could. He blazed down the sidewalk like a heat-seeking missile, scattering pedestrians in his wake like so many squawking chickens. He listened to the sounds of his breathing, the sharp wind whistling in his ears. At the subway station, he didn’t bother with taking the stairs at a run. Instead he gathered himself and spanned the flight in one massive leap, but it wasn’t enough.

Several yards ahead, the woman darted across the station platform and on to a train just as the doors closed. It was like something out of a goddamn made-for-TV movie. Unbelievable. Riehl spat out a curse as he came up to the closed doors.

They stared at each other through the barrier. The woman was panting and her eyes were dilated black in a face that was chalky white except for two hectic flags of color in her cheeks. As she took in his expression, she stepped back from the door, only stopping when she bumped into people behind her.

The train lurched. He raised his eyebrows, pulled out his badge and showed it to her. She stared at it and her eyes widened. As the train pulled away, she stepped forward again and put her hand to the glass, her gaze rising to his.

He pointed to her. “Nearest police station,” he mouthed. “Go there.”

The last sight he had of her was her peering at him as the train rattled away. He wondered if showing her the badge would get a better result than yelling at her in the street had.

He had better go locate the nearest police station and find out.

Chapter Two

Law

Alice got off the subway at the next stop and ran up the stairs to street level. She was a total wreck, spooking at the slightest thing while she tried to think past the incredulous shout still echoing in her head.

Had he experienced the same epiphany when he looked at her?

Mate. Killer.

Police?

Be smart, be safe now. Could the badge have been fake? Rattled though she was, that seemed like an awfully unlikely stretch—unless impersonating a police officer was how he had gotten inside Haley’s apartment in the first place. Haley’s door had been open, not broken. Many crimes had been committed by people posing as police officers, including one of the most famous in the twentieth century, the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in the 1920s.

But he’d told her to go to the nearest police station. That sounded authentic—unless he hoped to grab her before she actually got inside. Why would he do that? Now she was sounding paranoid and irrational—except she had left the normal boundaries of reality behind two days ago when she heard that Peter had been killed.

Their group was small and tight-knit for a reason. The shock waves of Peter’s death had barely begun to reverberate through the circle when Alex Schaffer, the group’s leader, had emailed everyone yesterday to tell them he couldn’t get in touch with David and had anybody else heard from him?

Nobody had. Alice and Haley had planned that very evening to huddle together and grieve for Peter and fret over David’s disappearance. Alice had been ready to coax Haley into packing a bag and coming to stay with her for at least the weekend, and not fifteen minutes ago she had realized that the dark red hollow at the midsection of Haley’s sprawled body was in fact the inside of Haley’s body.

If that man was the killer and he had come back to Haley’s apartment to clean up something, if he thought she could identify him and tie him to the crime, he would want to do anything he could, even risk proximity to the police station, in order to get rid of her.

She ran into a small piece of luck as a taxi drove down the street with its light on. She waved at it and when it stopped, she jumped in and locked the doors. “Drive around,” she told the cabby.

“Okay,” said the cabby. He was an intelligent, anemic-looking Wyr in his mid-forties, with a dry, dusty scent and fingernails bitten to the quick. He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Anywhere in particular you want to go?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” she said. “Just get moving.”

“Fabulous,” the cabby said with a shrug. “It’s your dime.”

Alice pulled out her cell phone and finally dialed 9-1-1. For a wonder, an operator picked up after only a few rings. “I need to report a murder,” Alice said.

The cab slowed, and her driver gave her a sudden sharp look in the rearview mirror. She glared at him and he ducked his head. The cab picked up speed again.

The snowfall had thickened. Alice watched the passing streets through the windshield wipers while she gave the operator Haley’s address, and what details she knew. “When I left the building, a man chased me,” she said. “He had been in the apartment. I managed to get on to a subway train as the doors closed so I got away from him, but he had time to show me a badge through the window. He said he was a police officer and he ordered me to go to the nearest station. I need to verify his identity if I can.”

“Ma’am, I can’t do that for you over the phone,” said the operator. “You need to go to the nearest police station.”

“Look, I’m a teacher,” Alice said. Her voice unraveled along with her composure. “I’m not some tough soldier or cop-type that deals with crime scenes and death every day—I teach first-grade kids, okay? Usually the worst part of my day is trying to get the glue and glitter off my jeans after craft-time and preparing for parent-teacher conferences. Now I’ve had three friends killed in the last three days. Today it was one of my best friends, and her body is in pieces. I’m shaken and I’m really scared. What if this man’s waiting for me outside the station and he’s not actually the police?”

“All right,” said the operator, her voice gentling. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You said you’re in a cab, correct?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Have your driver pull over and give me your location. I’m going to get a unit dispatched to you. Make sure you wait in the cab with the driver until they arrive. Then you’ll have a police escort to the station. Okay?”

Alice’s world stopped spinning just a little. She whispered, “Yes, okay.”

Less than ten minutes later, a cruiser pulled up behind the cab, lights flashing, but siren off. Alice paid the cab driver as one of the officers, a policewoman, walked up to them. Alice climbed out of the cab.

The policewoman said, “Alice Clark?”

“Yes,” Alice said.

“I’m Sergeant Rizzo. My partner is Officer Garcia. We’re here to escort you to the 94th Precinct.”

“Thank you,” Alice said. She had cooled down after her headlong run through the streets, but her clothes were still clammy with sweat and the temperature was plummeting fast. The winter storm had definitely arrived. She wrapped her coat tight around her as she started to shiver.

“You’re welcome.” The policewoman walked with her to the cruiser.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” Alice said. “I don’t even know if this was necessary.”

“Not at all,” said Rizzo. The Sergeant opened the back door and gestured for her to climb in. “From what I understand, you might have been facing a smart, violent killer. You can’t be too careful.”

As Alice settled gingerly into the backseat, Garcia twisted around to smile at her through the protective grille. “We’ve got a message for you that might set your mind at ease. We just heard from the WDVC—the Wyr Division of Violent Crime. Detective Gideon Riehl has arrived at the 94th and is waiting for you there. He says to tell you he’s big and blond, and he’s sorry he scared you.”

Alice sagged as Garcia’s words sank in. “Oh gods, thank you.”

Reaction set in as Garcia drove through the thickening storm. Alice huddled in her coat and shook so hard she felt like she might fly apart at the joints. A succession of images from the past hour flashed through her mind with silent urgency.

Haley’s expression had been blank, as if she had died overcome with surprise. Or perhaps her expression was blank only because she was dead, and she had suffered unimaginable fear and pain in her last moments. Had she looked into her killer’s face and known she was going to die?

Had she looked into her killer’s face and known him?

Alice wiped her face with the end of her scarf. Haley worked—had worked—at the same elementary school as she did. Someone was going to have to call Alex, who was not only the leader of their group but the principal of Broadway Elementary. Someone was going to have to contact Haley’s parents. She supposed the police had an established protocol for such things, but Haley was—had been—an only child. The news of her loss was going to be a crippling blow. Maybe the police would let Alice help.

And Peter. They hadn’t released the details of his death, only that he had been attacked and killed. They might not have found David yet. But as early as two days ago, when Alice and Haley had talked of Peter in hushed voices in the teacher’s lounge, Alice had known.

The nightmare had returned.

Though the Friday evening was still young, traffic had thinned to a trickle as visibility was reduced to yards. A winter storm advisory urged emergency travel only and even the most determined holiday shoppers abandoned their pursuits.