PLAY OF PASSION

“Did Nikita have anything else to say about this?” Andrew asked.

Max took a sip of his beer, making an appreciative noise at the back of his throat. “She paid attention when I told her, but something else is keeping her distracted.”

“Want to share?” He drank some of his own beer.

Max leaned back against the maroon leather of the booth. “I didn’t want to work for a Councilor, but now I do—and as long as she doesn’t break the deal we’ve got going, I’m loyal.”

Andrew didn’t ask what the deal was. He could guess. “Fair enough.” It would make his task harder, but at the same time, it solidified his wolf’s respect for the cop. “But does it have anything to do with dead Psy in the city?”

Max tilted his beer bottle at Drew. “I wondered how long it would take for you lot to twig to that.” Putting down the bottle, he braced his forearms on the table. “Four suspicious deaths, all psychic hits.”

“Nothing in the media. You covering up for Nikita?”

Max’s skin pulled tight over his jaw. “I’ll allow that only because I would’ve come to the same conclusion six months ago.” His anger was a cool flame in his eyes. “It’s no cover-up. Enforcement’s fully aware of the situation, just keeping its mouth shut for once.”

Andrew heard the ring of truth in that. “Sorry, man. I had to ask.”

“Yeah, well, don’t do it again.” The cop blew out a breath. “Look, we’ve warned the targeted group—low-Gradient Psy—but we’ve done so quietly because there’s a good chance the kills are politically motivated, meant to cause unrest in the civilian population.”

“We’ve heard rumors of trouble in the Council ranks.”

Max nodded. “Probability the murders are part of that is very high.”

“Interesting.” Andrew shared the e-mail Pure Psy had sent to SnowDancer wolves. “Connected, you think?”

“I’d bet on it.” Max handed back the ugly e-mail. “I have to keep an open mind about the murders in case some other crazies were ‘inspired’ by Pure Psy, but my gut says Henry Scott and his fanatics are knee-deep in it.”

“Gloria,” Andrew said, watching the cop’s face, “she was erased.”

Lines flared out at the corners of the cop’s slightly uptilted eyes. “You have very good intel. That was done without my knowledge; the other sites are being processed as they should be.”

Andrew knew without asking that whoever had given the order for erasure wouldn’t be doing so again. It made him very curious as to exactly what kind of a deal Nikita had struck with the cop that allowed him that much power, but he knew that wasn’t a question Max would answer. So he asked another. “What’s it like, working for a Councilor?”

“Half the time I’m rubbing my hands in insane glee at the information I have access to.”

“And the other half?”

“I’m trying not to fucking murder someone myself—usually Nikita.” Max’s phone beeped on the heels of that comment. The cop glanced at the readout with a smile. “My wife wants me home for dinner.”

Andrew didn’t have to be psychic to sense the other man’s unadulterated pleasure. Feeling bad tempered for no other reason than that Indigo was mad at him, he said, “Have you ever made her angry?” If the cop said that he and his wife lived in a state of constant connubial bliss, Andrew decided he’d have full cause to throw a punch.

Max raised an eyebrow. “Sure, I’m human.” He slid the phone into the pocket of his suit pants and rose to his feet with a distinctly amused glint in his eye. “Making up is the fun part, in case you haven’t figured that out yet.”

Indigo sank into what she thought was a well-deserved bath late that night, having only now finished updating the other lieutenants as to the situation with the Psy incursions. Tomás had had further disturbing news to share—more dead Psy, this time on the edges of the state and left in public areas where they couldn’t be missed.

Judd, having taken charge of keeping track of that situation earlier, had volunteered to continue to handle it, and Indigo was so grateful, she could’ve kissed him. She was tired from the search, her muscles tense, but mostly she had an itch and no one to scratch it. Hissing out a breath, she sank deeper into the hot water, damn glad she’d chosen one of the rooms with a bath rather than a shower. She’d just picked up the loofah to run it down her leg when she heard someone enter her apartment.

Very, very few people would’ve felt they had the right to waltz on in.

Then she caught the scent of wild, wicked male and the liquid heat between her legs had nothing to do with the bath. “How did the meeting go?” she asked as Drew appeared in the doorway, his eyes skating over the bubbles that covered her from neck to toe.