Heart of Vengeance (Alice Worth #6) - Lisa Edmonds Page 0,175

over so he didn’t brush against me. “What is it?” he asked quietly. “Your spidey senses telling you something?”

“They’re not spidey senses,” I snapped in an undertone, not for the first time. Magic was real, not some comic book superpower. “Listen.”

He bent his head toward the door and listened to the voice inside the house.

“Doesn’t that sound like him?” I asked.

Grimly, Dominic nodded. “It sure does.”

“Why would Tommy be here?” I wondered. “At a coworker’s house, of all places, and not at home with his family?”

“I don’t know.” Dominic’s frown deepened. “I don’t hear anyone else talking. Who is he talking to?”

I hesitated. Should I knock? Call Tommy’s fiancée and let her know we’d found him? Call his parents? Call my boss? I sure as hell needed to call someone. I reached for my phone.

The door swung open, revealing a young man in jeans and a T-shirt, splattered with blood. In his right hand, he held what appeared to be a bomb detonator. His thumb hovered over the button. His eyes glowed bright amber.

“Come on in,” Tommy Detman said.

Well, shit.

Tommy took us to the living room and pointed. “Stand there against the wall with your hands up. If either of you move one inch, I’ll blow us all to hell.”

Grim and silent, we obeyed.

Beside me, Dominic stood perfectly still, his hands raised. My phone was in my back pocket, but it might as well have been a mile away. My gun I’d left in my glove compartment, because this was just going to be a knock-and-talk.

Tommy had caught us completely flat-footed. If we lived through this, our boss would have both our asses.

Facing us with his back against the opposite wall, Tommy stood over a semi-conscious man who had blood in his hair. Tommy was barely recognizable from the photos and videos his fiancée Hannah had shown us. His blond hair was buzzed close to his scalp, he hadn’t shaved in days, and he was lean and wiry. Hot golden shifter magic sizzled on my skin. That confirmed what we’d suspected had happened to him, but I couldn’t feel anything close to good about being right.

The man on the floor, who I guessed was Joe McIntosh, the homeowner, groaned and spasmed weakly. Tommy had probably hit him hard enough to fracture his skull. It took a lot to knock a werewolf out. Judging by the pool of blood, Tommy had wanted to make sure Joe went down and stayed down. Normally a shifter would heal a fractured skull, given time, even without shifting, but Tommy had planned ahead. A silver knife stuck out of Joe’s upper right arm. The blade prevented him from shifting and allowed the head injury and poisonous silver to kill him slowly.

The head injury and silver weren’t the most immediate threats to Joe’s life, however. That distinction belonged to the pipe bomb secured around his neck with a thick steel cable.

As we took in the grim sight, Tommy showed us the detonator again, his thumb hovering over the button. “I said, get your hands up.”

Dominic and I raised our hands higher. I wasn’t sure what the longtime PI beside me was thinking, but I was running through possible ways to get that detonator away from Tommy before he had a chance to push the button. Unfortunately, I was coming up with nothing. Judging by Dominic’s expression, he’d come to the same conclusion.

“Dead-man sensor.” Tommy raised the detonator and snarled. He’d probably guessed what we were thinking. “If it hits the floor, the bomb goes off.”

In other words, if one of us shot him, we’d be dead a half-second later. There went any chance of using my air magic to knock the detonator from his hand, or my earth magic to split the floor under him.

Dominic moved slightly in front of me. Not that his body would keep me alive if that bomb went off, not at this range. And why he would even consider shielding me, I had no idea. We’d only worked together three months. I barely knew him—which was to say, I knew him exactly as well as I wanted to know anyone.

Then again, cop instincts had probably kicked in, telling him to protect the civilian. That got my hackles up. I was perfectly capable of protecting myself.

Protecting myself, but not Dominic. My gut churned.

“Tommy, talk to me.” Dominic held his hands out from his body to show our captor he had no intention of going for his phone—or the gun tucked into the