Allegiance(53)

She leaned in toward some exposed wiring and sniffed. Nothing out of the ordinary, but she’d better warn Nik to be careful in what he Touched in case no one had had the forethought to turn off the electricity.

The biggest pile of ceiling materials lay in the hallway near the middle bedrooms. This must be where Nik had fallen, and where Cage had saved him.

According to his dossier, Cage had also saved curvy old Melissa Calvert from the evil Matthias, at considerable risk to himself. Even took a bullet getting her out.

A man who made a habit of saving other people was a man with problems, at least in the Robin Ashton lexicon of life. He might save others because by focusing on their problems he could ignore his own and look like a hero doing it. Or he might get a rush from being the savior. She suspected Cage Reynolds wasn’t hooked on saving people; he was too damn reserved. Which meant he was avoiding something in his own life.

Something to think about later, or as soon as she got a chance to fly.

The worst damage lay in the center of the house, particularly the middle room on the right. The outside wall had even tumbled. Although Hannah slept in the lieutenants’ daysleep space, she kept her stuff in one of the back bedrooms, if Robin remembered Mirren’s explanation clearly. The other back room and the room on the left—where Hannah and the dog had been found—belonged to the two Rangers, Rob and Max.

Which meant the room on the right, where the fire seemed to have started, was the one in which Cage was staying, with Fen and Shawn in the front bedrooms.

If the fire began in Cage’s room, was he the target?

That genuinely sucked, since he seemed to always be running into danger with his Superman cape swirling behind him anyway. He’d make it easy for them. Create havoc anywhere nearby, and Cage would run right into it, looking for someone to save.

Nik needed to start here.

When Robin got back to the front of the house, Nik had taken a seat on the concrete stoop—now separated slightly from the house it was supposed to anchor. She didn’t have to see his face to know he was getting in touch with that inner psychic he spent most of his time trying to tamp down.

Nik’s father had had the Touch, too. That’s what Nik’s dad had called it, so Nik had picked up the name as well. It seemed to fit. But his father hadn’t learned to control it, and the visions had driven him mad. Nik had found his father’s body hanging from a purple-and-green Mardi Gras flagpole off the courtyard balcony of the family home in New Orleans’s Garden District. He’d been sixteen, and since he’d inherited his father’s Touch, everyone began treating him like a fragile freak who’d probably be hanging from the Crescent City Connection bridge over the Mississippi River at any moment.

Families were so fucking hard.

If her Niko wanted to drink to keep his demons at bay, so be it. Whatever it took.

She sat beside him, quiet and still.

Finally, he took a deep breath, let it out, and opened his eyes. His smile was sweet and sad, and she wrapped her arms around him. Robin didn’t have many friends, and Nik was special. The gentle warrior who didn’t judge what he didn’t understand. She thought she might be willing to die for him. She knew she’d be willing to kill for him.

He hugged her back and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Okay, eaglet. What do I need to know?”

She pulled her arms from around him and twisted to look back into the grimy ruins. “Begin at the center bedroom on the right. I think that’s the origination point.”

Nik frowned and followed her gaze with his own. “Cage’s room? You think he was the target?”

“Dunno. Maybe he was the main target and killing the others would be gravy. I didn’t catch any scents that would make me think there was an electrical problem. I also didn’t scent an accelerant, but anything that was there would be camouflaged by fire scents.” Scent and sight were her gifts; now, it was time for Nik to use his.

He stood up and flipped his sketch pad open to a blank sheet. Two of his drawing pens were clipped to the top.

“You want me to go in with you, hold the pad?”

He shook his head. “Run interference and keep anybody out who happens to come by. And wish me luck.”

“Always,” she said softly, watching him pick his way through the rubble toward the central hallway.

 For fifteen minutes, she entertained herself by considering the issue of Cage Reynolds and Melissa Calvert, and why after watching them as much as she could the night before without being obvious, she didn’t think they were involved. Or at least they weren’t screwing like bunnies at every opportunity.

For one thing, Cage was too damned uptight; he was like a coiled spring in a tight casing. Having a fuckfest with a married woman, especially a married woman who’d been Aidan’s familiar and was married to the city’s business manager? She couldn’t see it.