Midnight Fever (Men of Midnight #5)(23)

He kneeled next to the body. The man Kay had watched die. To be thorough, Nick put two fingers to the carotid artery and waited for a full minute. Nothing. He swiped the heel of his hand where his fingers had touched. Forensics could pick up fingerprints from skin easily these days.

He was going to call it in, but no need to mess with the Portland PD CSU's collective head.

He pulled out a handkerchief and checked the corpse's pockets. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a document, not an ID, not money. Zero, zip, zilch. Not even fucking pocket litter.

Except a cell in the man's right-hand jacket pocket. Encrypted. Hmmm. He'd probably used it to call Kay. He'd give it to ASI's friend, PPD Captain Bud Morrison, for his in-house tech person to crack and to read calls made and received, and any other info. If the tech was any good, they could geotag Hammer's movements. Felicity could probably trace his movements faster, but he didn't want to keep evidence from the police. Besides, the Portland PD's techies were good. Not Felicity good, but good enough. 

Nick stared down at the body of Mike Hammer. Nick wasn't a big reader of webzines. He wasn't a big reader, period. He got his news from classified sources and scuttlebutt on the SF grapevine, the real news, not the stuff that appeared in newspapers. He read instruction manuals and military memoirs for relaxation.

But still, he knew who Mike Hammer was, and realized right now that he was one of the few people in the country who knew what Mike Hammer looked like. It was a pen name, supposedly because the guy liked his '30s noir books, and because he sometimes wrote incendiary articles accusing the mighty of robbery, corruption, malfeasance, you name it. The "Hammer of Justice".

Nick knew enough to know that Hammer wrote about powerful men and women doing terrible things. Shining sunlight in humanity's darkest corners.

Not Nick's wheelhouse. Any righting of wrongs, Nick did from the end of a barrel. But this Hammer guy had courage and never backed down. They'd had to kill him.

And in death, his identity would become known. Nick didn't know his real name but it didn't matter. What mattered was that the guy had balls.

He studied the man. Tall, lean, mid-forties. It was hard to read the features because the face was ravaged-swollen, blue tongue in mouth open in a last gasp, swollen eyelids. The man had-what? Choked to death? Some kind of anaphylactic shock? From what?

Kay had said there was a spray, and that the spray had killed him. Some kind of instant-acting poison. Somehow, thank God, Kay hadn't been affected. Otherwise right now he'd be looking down at Kay's face too-swollen and blue from oxygen deprivation.

Nick didn't shudder, but he felt a coldness rise in him, an icy determination he recognized from battle. This could have been Kay lying on the filthy pavement, dead. Whoever had done this was a dead man walking.

Nick took several photos of the dead man's face with his cell, then rose to his feet. Kay. He had to get to Kay now. The dead man was dead but Kay was alive-and she was staying that way, no question.

He'd memorized where she was. Ten feet beyond the door to the building, forty feet to the right. Now he could move fast and, in a few seconds, he was where she should be … but wasn't.

Panic hormones flooded his body. Worse, much worse than being caught in a firefight. In a firefight, he could focus like a laser beam, turn himself into a combat bot, an emotionless killer. This? This was pure pain, knives in his chest.

Was he too late? Had the spray that had killed Hammer somehow gotten to her, too, in some kind of delayed reaction?

"Kay?" He kept his voice low with effort as he spun completely around. It was a storage area, boxes neatly stacked along one wall. He gently kicked one box next to him. It shifted. Empty.

"Kay?" A little louder. Where the fuck was she? Had she moved to another location? Had someone come in and she'd been forced to move? If so, she'd have turned her cell on. He pulled his phone from his pocket. He was sweating lightly.

There was a dead guy outside. Had the people who'd killed him killed Kay, too? He couldn't even stay in the same place as that thought, and moved quickly across the big space.

He swallowed the huge lump in his throat. "Kay!"

Something bumped into him, and his arms were open before his brain had a chance to recognize her. He held her close, grip tight and fierce.

"Nick!" Kay's face burrowed into his shoulder. That was okay. He didn't want her to see his face right now. He hid his face in her hair and breathed in deeply. He smelled terror and Kay.

He'd take care of the terror as long as he had Kay.

"It's okay." He tightened his hold. It was. He had her in his arms and whatever it was that she was facing, she was facing it with him by her side. And ASI. "Everything will be okay."