Heart of Atlantis Read online

  Rio Jones knew she had maybe an hour, tops, before somebody found her. She had that kind of luck: the kind that trips over cracks in sidewalks, falls off her bike in the middle of rush-hour traffic in Times Square, and sees a major crime boss kidnapping a kid in broad daylight.

  A major nonhuman crime boss. She’d heard a flash of something so wrong—so other—in his thoughts that she’d nearly wrecked her bike when she’d turned to look at who or what was making that horrible noise. The taxi hadn’t even clipped her that hard; she’d had far worse working as a bike messenger for Siren Deliveries.

  Not that any of the fancy companies she delivered to would believe they’d hired a company owned by an actual siren. They just knew they got their packages on time. Ophelia liked to hire humans as messengers. She said they were slower but harder to distract. More reliable. Gave her more time to focus on her budding opera career, instead of dealing with Fae and demon hatreds, feuds, and failures to deliver on time. Punctuality was king in the cutthroat bike messenger wars. In fact, if Rio hadn’t been so focused on making it to her next delivery on time, she wouldn’t have taken that shortcut through the alley, and so she never would have seen the tall, dark-haired man step out of a limousine and snatch a small girl right off the street.

  The girl had screamed, Rio had slammed on the brakes of her bike and nearly gone over the handlebars, and the kidnapping bastard had met her gaze with eyes that seemed to blaze across the distance between them. Black eyes, almost all pupil, had tried to bore into Rio’s soul, until the struggling child had screamed again and the man had thrown the girl into the limo and slammed the door. He’d given Rio one last contemptuous, dismissive glance and then slid into the front seat next to the driver. By the time he’d changed his mind and the brake lights had flashed on the limo, she’d disappeared. She’d used her throwaway cell phone to call in an anonymous report to the human police, complete with license plate number, for all the good it would do. The human authorities had no pull in Bordertown and she knew it, but that little girl had been human. Somebody needed to know. A few minutes later, still shaking, she’d tossed her cell phone to the first homeless man wearing a cardboard sign she saw, with some vague idea that somebody might trace it.

  It was all too little, too late, though. She knew it. She’d heard the dark-haired man’s thoughts—they’d shattered the everyday barrier she wore around her mind like a scarf. The barrier was plenty to keep out human thoughts; if she heard everything that people thought around her all day long, she would have gone insane years ago.

  But this man—the kidnapper—he wasn’t human. Okay, she was used to that, working for a company in Bordertown and living there, too, but he wasn’t a low-level demon or a Fae or an ogre or anything else she’d ever heard of before. His thoughts had been wrong. Dark and terrifying, and yeah, demons were often the same to a degree, but this guy was something . . . more. Icy. Determined. Powerful. She wasn’t even sure how she’d known, but she’d somehow felt it. His thoughts had crawled with power and focus—and once he’d changed his mind about her being beneath his notice—no loose ends had been the exact words running through his jagged mind—that focus was aimed at her.

  That had been eight hours ago, and she had no doubt that he’d been tracking her every minute since.

  “And one little freak of a telepath isn’t going to have a chance against that,” she muttered to her tiny stuffed tiger before tossing it in her backpack. She was already wearing her locket, as always, so there were the only two mementos of her childhood safely retrieved. Other than that, she didn’t know what to bother taking. A couple of changes of clothes, all available cash, and her laptop computer. Packing wasn’t exactly difficult when you lived in a closet disguised as a studio apartment and owned next to nothing.

  She was wasting time. She knew where she had to go. The one person who’d promised he’d help her, any time and for any reason. The one person she’d ever felt safe with—until he’d abandoned her, like everyone always did. But he had power; she’d known it, and everybody in Bordertown, even the riffraff, knew it, too. He could help her figure out a way to find and help that child, and she was smart enough not to let Luke Oliver break her heart all over again. Not that it mattered. She’d seen the terror on the little girl’s face. Nothing was more important than that.

  A knock on the door broke through her temporary paralysis and scared her so badly she stumbled and nearly tripped over her milk-crate coffee table.

  “Rio? Rio, it’s me. Are you okay?”

  Rio’s heart slowly dropped out of warp speed, and she took a deep breath and opened the door. Mrs. Giamatto, her landlady, stood just outside the door in a pale pink robe that had to be older than Rio. The elderly woman gasped when she saw Rio, and the tips of her ever so slightly pointed ears turned a vivid pink where they peeked out of her fluffy white hair.

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry to bother you at this time of night, but I had a very odd phone call just now, and I wanted to warn you—”

  “I know. I’m leaving.” Rio picked up her bike and stepped into the hallway, pulled the door shut behind her, locked it, and handed Mrs. Giamatto the keys. “Thank you so much. I might be in a little bit of trouble, so I’m going to go stay with friends for a while. I don’t want to bring any problems here. Linda down the hall just had her baby, and of course I don’t want anybody to bring you any—”

  “No!” Mrs. Giamatto folded her arms across her frail chest and raised her chin. “I won’t have it. I know you, Rio Green, and you’re no troublemaker. Even if you did do something you shouldn’t have, and the gods know that’s easy enough to do in Bordertown, well, we stick together. Nobody is going to mess with my tenants.”

  For an instant—only a fraction of a moment—Rio saw someone else underneath Mrs. G’s little-old-lady surface. Someone ancient, far older even than the renovated Victorian home in which they stood, and maybe older than New York itself. Her landlady was more powerful than she appeared, it seemed, like so many in Bordertown. But the memory of the kidnapper flashed into Rio’s mind, and she shuddered before shaking her head.

  “I love you for it, too, but it’s not an ordinary bad guy. This is more trouble than we can handle. I have to get help. There was a child. He . . . took her. I think he plans to kill her. Or worse.”

  Neither one of them mentioned the human police. They both knew better. And Bordertown didn’t have any law of its own. That was the draw for most of the creatures who lived, worked, and played there.

  Mrs. G slowly nodded. “You’re going to Luke?”

  “I don’t think I have a choice.” Rio took a deep breath and hugged her landlady and dear friend. “I’ll try to keep in touch. I’ll try to come back.”

  They both knew neither might be possible. When trouble came to somebody in Bordertown, it was often of the permanent kind.

  Mrs. Giamatto fiercely hugged Rio back and then let her go. She put a hand in her pocket and held out an envelope.

  “Take this. It should help.”

  Rio glanced in the envelope, which was stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.

  “I can’t take this. I’m fine. I have money; I just need to get to the bank in the morning—”

  “You’ll take it,” Mrs. G said firmly, closing Rio’s fingers over the envelope. “I never paid you for planting those flowers last week.”

  Rio heard the edge of panic in her own laughter, and knew it was time to go. “The going rate for landscapers is not a thousand dollars an hour, but I’ll take it as a loan for now. I have to go. If they called you, they know where I live.”

  “Go. The back stairs.” Mrs. G hugged her again and then gave her a little push toward the dimly lit stairwell. Rio grabbed her bike, ran lightly down the stairs, and opened the always locked door a couple of inches. What she could see of the garden from her vantage point was empty of anybody and anything other than the marble
statue of a very plump Pan eternally playing his lute in the fountain. She slipped out and made sure the door clicked shut behind her, not that a door would hold out anybody who really wanted to get in, and headed for the garden gate, only to skid to a stop when the gate crashed open and three enormous, oddly misshapen men pushed their way into the yard.

  “Is that her?” one of them said, in a broken, growly voice, like only part of him was human and the other part was something ugly. Nothing unusual for Bordertown, but this guy was big. World Wrestling Federation big. Half a mountain big.

  Rio dropped the bike and backed up, step by slow, cautious step, wishing for the millionth time that if she had to have a superpower it could be something useful. Like flying. Or invisibility. What was the use, really, of reading other people’s thoughts at a time like this?

  “I don’t know, she has a long braid, the boss said she had a long braid,” another one said in an unexpectedly high, squeaky voice that nearly surprised a laugh out of Rio. Things that ugly and that big shouldn’t sound like Mickey Mouse.

  “Look, if you’re Rio Green, the boss just wants to talk to you,” the first one said, his hands out at his sides in what was clearly meant to be a nonthreatening position.

  Ha.

  “I don’t know anybody named Rio Green,” she said evenly, eyeing the distance between her and the fence. “You have the wrong person.”

  “See, that sounds like a lie,” Mountain Man said, taking a step forward.

  The other two moved to flank her, and she pushed her fear aside and dropped her mental barrier, listening frantically for whatever they might be thinking that might help her figure out how to escape.

  Mountain Man’s thoughts were so unsurprising she didn’t have to be a telepath to figure them out. Too bad the boss said not to kill her. Wonder if he’d mind if I play with her a little first?

  Squeaky’s mind wasn’t quite on business. Shouldn’t have had that spaghetti Bolognese. I need some antacids in the worst way.

  And the third guy’s thoughts were so oily and incoherent that Rio nearly gagged just from brushing up against them. Rip, shred, tear, bloody, bloody, Tuesday, lovely pie, yummy candy, rip, shred, tear—

  She slammed her mental barrier back in place and tried something only an idiot would fall for. She whipped her head to the side, stared at the gate behind them, and screamed.

  “Rio! Run! These guys are here for you!”

  All three of them turned around, and she ran the other way for the fence like she’d never run before. She put her hands on the flat surface of the wrought iron between two spikes and vaulted over like some kind of track star, marveling even as she flew through the air at what adrenaline could do for somebody in fear for her life. Her ankle twisted under her as she landed; not enough for a sprain, but enough that she knew she’d need to ice it soon or pay the price the next day. If she lived to see the next day. She hit the ground running and raced through the streets faster than she’d ever moved before.

  Seventeen blocks. Hit Tenth, turn left at the charms and potions shop just past the High Line Park entrance at Fourteenth, and she’d be there. If only he’d be there. Luke practically lived at his office, and three in the morning wasn’t all that late for him. Her mind was racing, babbling at her, as she tried desperately to pretend she didn’t hear the footsteps pounding after her.

  They weren’t all that far behind, and she didn’t think she could outrun them. A quick glance back showed them, if not gaining, at least keeping pace. They were fast for such big guys, again with her sucky luck. Her heart sped up, her feet sped up, even though her ankle was killing her, and she headed straight for the nearest place she could think of that might help. The Roadhouse was only a block away. Three A.M. was still Happy Hour at the Roadhouse, but hopefully the nightly stabbings and bar fights would be over.

  It wasn’t like she had a choice. She wasn’t going to make it fourteen more blocks without getting caught. She put on a burst of speed that made her ankle burn like fire, and she nearly flew under the garish neon sign and through the door of the Roadhouse, slamming into a brick wall that stopped all forward motion. Arms like steel bands wrapped around her to steady her, and she looked up to discover that the brick wall wasn’t a wall at all.

  It was Miro, the ogre head bouncer.

  “It’s a little late for a delivery, isn’t it?” His bushy black brows drew together in a tangled frown as he released her. He was a solid wall of muscle, eight feet tall and a good five feet wide, and the coarsely woven shirt he wore with his jeans made him look like a farmer who’d gotten lost on his way from the barn in the land of giants. His ruddy skin only had the faintest tinge of green—those kids’ movies had gotten ogres all wrong.

  “No delivery, Miro, just picked up some unwanted traffic on my trail,” she said in between sucking in deep breaths. She wasn’t used to running, since she took the bike everywhere. Out of practice, out of shape. She glanced at the door.

  Out of time.

  “Miro, can I duck out the back door, and you stall these guys? They’re big, and I don’t want to cause trouble, but—”

  Miro laughed his big, booming laugh, and the floor underneath Rio’s feet actually shook. “I will snack on their bones like pretzels if they try to cause trouble. You run along, little girl, and bring me some jelly beans the next time you deliver.”

  She rose up on her tiptoes, and he leaned down so she could kiss his cheek. “I promise. No black ones.”

  Miro’s cheeks flushed a deep red. “You’re a good girl. Now go. I hear somebody coming. Time to do my Fee Fie Fo Fum routine.”

  She went.

  By the time she heard Miro’s rumbling growl thunder through the room in a warning, she was already halfway out the back door. Her ankle was throbbing, and the initial burst of adrenaline was wearing off. She didn’t know how she was going to make it all the way to Luke’s office.

  “That was a hell of a lot easier than I expected. I’m good, but even I’m not that good,” a deep, sexy voice said from behind and to the left of the door.

  A voice she’d never forgotten.

  “Hello, Luke. I was actually just coming to visit you,” she said evenly, trying not to look like somebody who needed rescuing. Even if she did.

  “There’s a funny coincidence,” he said slowly, sweeping his gaze from her head to her toes and back up again, assessing, measuring, probably finding her wanting. After all, she hadn’t been good enough for him before.

  Damn him, though, he was as gorgeous as ever. Silky black hair just a little too long, his face unshaven like a pirate’s and chiseled like a woman’s secret fantasy. He was six-feet-plus of hard muscle and lean, dangerous lines, and that frightening brain of his was always calculating his next moves at least ten steps ahead. It was why he was so good at his job—some called him the Dark Wizard of Bordertown, even though he’d always denied having any real magic.

  Some called him Sheriff, and it was rarely a compliment.

  She’d called him hers. She’d been wrong.

  A cacophony of shouting and crashes sounded from the bar and she hurriedly shut the door behind her. Luke glanced from the closed door to her, raising one silken eyebrow.

  “That anything to do with you?”

  She lifted her chin. “Why do you ask?”

  A corner of that dangerously seductive mouth quirked up, and he shook his head. “Still stubborn, I see.”

  She clenched her teeth against the wave of sensation that crashed through her at the sound of his husky voice. It wasn’t fair. He probably hadn’t thought of her once in the year since he’d told her they were over, and she’d thought of him almost every day.

  “Can we go to your office? I need . . . to hire you,” she said, unable to say the other H word. Unable to ask for help like a pitiful supplicant. She had money. She’d get more out of h
er savings account in the morning and mail Mrs. G back her cash. All she needed was to find that little girl, and then maybe get out of town.

  “Let’s go,” he said. Just like that. She remembered that about him, too; he wasn’t a man to waste words. She wondered, in spite of herself, what else about him hadn’t changed. Did he still kiss like a fallen angel? She shivered and shook her head to clear her mind of the memories. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong man.

  He stood waiting, silent and watchful. Luckily, he couldn’t read her mind, and she’d never been able to penetrate his, either. He was a strange anomaly, and she’d always found it restful. Until now, when she wanted to know what he was thinking.

  What he was thinking about her.

  “Let’s go,” she echoed, nodding firmly and taking a step toward him. She landed on her injured ankle and cried out, then tumbled face-forward toward the sidewalk. Strong arms scooped her up and she found herself cradled against Luke’s chest, breathing in his familiar scent of forest and spice as if the year they’d been apart had never happened.

  “This is not how I expected this to go,” he said softly, almost as if he didn’t want her to hear him. “I think I’m in trouble.”

  The door behind them smashed open, and Mountain Man stormed out, carrying an axe.

  “I think we’re both in trouble,” Rio said.

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