Above him, that same door crashed open, hitting the other side of the wall and shaking the steps like a sonic boom. Carrigan leaned over the rail, his jowls corpulent with rage. “What’d you just say to me? What the fuck did you just call me, asshole?”
“You heard me. Now leave me alone, Carrigan. I have better things to do.”
The Minion took out his cell phone, intending to contact the only one who truly commanded him. But before he could press the speed-dial button that would connect him to his Master, the burly cop was launching himself down the stairwell. A hamlike hand cuffed the side of the Minion’s head. His ears rang, vision swimming with the impact, as the cell phone jettisoned out of his grasp and clattered onto the floor, several steps below.
“Thanks for giving me something to smile about my last day on the job,” Carrigan taunted. He ran a fat finger around the front of his too-tight collar, then casually reached up to pat the sole remaining wisps of hair on his brow back down where they’d been pasted before. “Now, get your scrawny ass back up those stairs before I hand it to you on a platter. Ya get me?”
There was a time, before he’d met the one he called Master, that a challenge like that—particularly from a blowhard like Carrigan—would not have gone unmet.
But the sweating, sputtering cop glaring down on him now was insignificant in light of the duties entrusted to chosen ones like himself. The Minion simply blinked a few times, then turned to retrieve his cell phone and continue with his task at hand.
He only made it down two stairs before Carrigan was on him again, heavy fingers clamping down hard on his shoulder and forcibly wheeling him around. The Minion’s eyes lit on a fancy ballpoint pen stuck into the shirt pocket of Carrigan’s uniform. He recognized the commemorative service emblem on the clip as he took another hard knock to the skull.
“What are you, deaf and dumb? Get the hell outta my sight, or I’ll—”
The abrupt choke and wheeze of Carrigan’s voice snapped the Minion back to his senses. He saw his own hand clutching the officer’s pen as it came down for a second brutal plunge, the point of it burrowing deep into the fleshy skin of Carrigan’s neck.
The Minion struck again and again with the makeshift weapon, until the cop sank down to the floor in a savaged, lifeless heap.
He loosened his fist and the pen dropped into a pool of blood on the stairs, all but forgotten in the instant it took him to dash down and grab up his cell phone once more. He meant to place his crucial call immediately, but his eyes kept drifting to this new mess he’d made, something that wasn’t going to get swept away as easily as the pizza in the lobby.
This had been a mistake, and any approval won from informing his Master of the Maxwell woman’s whereabouts could be lost once it was discovered that he’d acted so impulsively here. Killing without sanction might negate everything.
But perhaps there was an even more certain path into his Master’s good graces—a path that could be paved by apprehending and delivering the woman to his Master in person.
Yes, thought the Minion, that was a prize bound to impress.
Pocketing the cell phone, he turned back to extract Carrigan’s weapon from its holster. Then he stepped over the corpse and hurried out a back entrance to the station parking lot.
CHAPTER
Sixteen
He should let her go.
He’d screwed things up so badly, he didn’t think there would be any reasoning with Gabrielle tonight. Maybe not ever.
From the opposite curb, he watched her taking long strides down the other side of the street, heading God knew where. She looked ashen and stunned, like she’d just taken a sucker punch to the chest.
Which she had, he admitted darkly.
Maybe it was for the best that he let her run off thinking he was a liar and a dangerous lunatic. The assumption was not all that far from fact, after all. But her opinion of him wasn’t key here, anyway. Getting a Breedmate to safety was.
He could let her go home, give her a few days to cool off, take some time to come to terms with his deception. Then he could send Gideon to smooth things over and bring her calmly under Breed protection where she belonged. Gabrielle could choose a new life in any one of the Darkhavens secreted around the world. She could be happy, secure, and find a mate who would be a true partner for her.
She wouldn’t even have to see him again.
Yeah, he thought, that was the best course of action at this point.
But regardless, he found himself stepping off the curb and into the street after her, unable to just walk away from Gabrielle now, even if that’s what she needed most.
As he crossed the lanes of light evening traffic, his attention was wrenched to the squeal of car tires up ahead of him. A late model American rust bucket tore out of a side alley near the police station and careened into the middle of the street. The accelerator roared, laying rubber as the driver stomped on the gas and aimed the nose of the rumbling beast toward his target up the road.