“Eli?” I gently shook his shoulder, but got no response. I scooted a little closer, touching his cheek, and his eyelids fluttered. His hands, still cuffed, moved up to encase mine, and I almost cried with relief.
“Hey,” he said wonderingly. “You came back.” Slowly, leaning on the van for support, he sat up.
“Of course I came back. Why wouldn’t I come back?” I cried, a little too loudly. I cleared my throat.
“I was afraid they’d killed you.” He laughed suddenly, with an edge of hysteria, and for a second, I thought the silver had gotten into his brain. “Sorry,” he said, seeing my face, “it just...It hurt so much, and then it was gone so fast, like turning off a switch. Thank you.”
With no warning, he took my face in his hands and pulled me toward him. Without thinking, I let him kiss me, and then suddenly, I wasn’t just letting him, I was participating. And then more than participating. His lips were so warm—it’s true that werewolves run hotter than most people—and his long fingers tangled in my hair where it had fallen out of the elastic band. For just a moment, I let go, and the day’s frustration and terror dimmed to a background hum. There was only the kiss. We broke just long enough for him to put his handcuffed arms over my head and around me, and then he pulled me into his lap, settling me against his solid chest. My fingers went into his hair, and the kiss went on as we tumbled backward onto the pavement. If it hurt his back, he didn’t seem to notice.
This is how it always is between Eli and me—natural and explosive at the same time. When I finally pulled away, we were both breathing hard, and I struggled to put words together in some sort of coherent string. I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, which is more or less how I roll anyway.
“Hey,” I panted, “do I smell?”
He gave me a surprised, bewildered grin. “You’re a space in the smell. Everything smells but you.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said. I ducked under his arms and untangled myself, feeling suddenly awkward. I stood up. “Um, I think I might have something for those handcuffs.” I didn’t look at him as I opened the back door of the van, climbing in and rummaging around until I found my enormous bolt cutters. When I emerged, he was leaning against the bumper, grinning at me. He still looked pale and worn-out, but miles better than a few minutes ago.
“Why, Scarlett, you’re red,” he teased.
“Just shut up,” I said roughly. “Hold out your arms.”
His mouth tightened, but he held out his wrists, and I carefully put the bolt cutters around the chain, leaning into it to snap the heavy silver. Eli pulled his arms apart, flexing his wrists, rubbing at the welts. “Scarlett,” he said, and he was looking closely at me. He gently took my chin and turned my face toward the parking lot’s lone streetlight. “Who was it?”
I winced, and for the first time since it’d happened, I could feel the bruise where Hugo the vampire had backhanded me in the car. I reached up and touched the opposite eye, which was swollen but still functional. Hugo had pulled that first punch, no doubt. “The big guy. It’s fine.”
His face hardened, and he was very careful as he let go of my face. I saw his fists clench in their handcuffs. “It’s not fine.”
“Yeah, well, I may have a bruise, but I broke the asshole’s nose. Probably the first time in a hundred years that he’s felt pain, and I got to be there. It’s good enough for me.”
“What did they want with you? How did you get free?”
I told him about Dashiell’s suspicion that I was involved in the La Brea Park murders.
“Didn’t you tell him you were with me?”
I hesitated. “No.”
“God, Scarlett, of all the times to be ashamed of me—”
“It’s not like that! Eli, if I use you as my alibi, Dashiell is going to think you’re lying for me because we’re a couple, and he’ll hurt you to get to me. Or he’s going to assume you and I killed those vampires together. You’re Will’s beta, so Dashiell will have to assume we were acting on Will’s orders, and there could be a war. Either way, dragging the wolves into this puts more people at risk.”
He studied my face for a full minute, until I was starting to itch with the attention. “Maybe not. Maybe he’d just believe us and leave you alone.”
“Yes, and then we’ll all go adopt newborn puppies and play together in a field of marshmallows and glitter.”
He couldn’t help but grin at the imagery, tilting his head to acknowledge my point. Then he looked down at the handcuff bracelets on his wrists, jingling them a little. “So I guess I’m kind of attached to you at the moment. Can you pick a lock?”
I shook my head. “Tried to learn once, but I didn’t have the feel for it. But...I know someone who has a handcuff key.”
He nodded ruefully. “Hey, am I having a great first day or what?”
“Or what,” I said seriously.
Chapter 12
The trip to the airport had taken most of the day. First Jesse’s identity had to be verified by three different groups; then he had to go around meeting with the individual security teams at all seven of LAX’s terminals. And at each new terminal, his identity had to be verified all over again, which must have been a serious pain in the ass for the dispatcher who had to keep taking the calls. As he had expected, no one had seen or knew anything about the three victims. It was all a colossal waste of time, and frustration had itched at the edges of his attention, shortening his patience for each security check.