His front door led to a small outside balcony that served as a doorstep for his apartment and the one next door. Open stairs ran from it down to the parking lot. At the bottom of the staircase, a shadow flitted into view and then almost instantly vanished.
Diego moved noiselessly across the living room, set the two beer bottles down on the counter, went back into the bedroom, and picked up his gun from the dresser.
Cassidy propped herself on one elbow. “What is it?” she asked sleepily.
Diego’s heart beat swiftly, both with adrenaline and at seeing the beautiful woman he’d just had sex with rising from his sheets.
“Someone outside.”
“Oh.” Cassidy lay back down. “It’s just Kyle, one of Eric’s trackers. He’s here to protect me. He and Brody.”
Of course. Eric, rightly so, wouldn’t have let her leave Shiftertown without them, not with Reid running around loose.
Diego put the gun back into its holster on the dresser. “How did you get in here, anyway?”
He hadn’t cared when she’d suddenly appeared in his bathroom—it was enough that she was there—but he was calm enough now to be curious. The front door had been firmly locked when he’d entered the apartment.
Cassidy smiled, a wicked, tempting smile that made him want to crawl right back into bed with her.
“Kyle, the Lupine, is very good at picking locks. But he won’t be coming in. I took his lock picks away from him.”
“Devil.” Diego turned off the light in the bathroom, shut the bedroom door, and came to the bed. It was warm under the covers with her. “Tell me something. Why is Brody one of Eric’s trackers but Shane isn’t? Or is he?”
Cassidy pulled Diego into the comfortable nest with her. “Shane is Nell’s second. There’d be a conflict of loyalty if Shane worked directly for Eric.”
“But not if Brody does?”
“Brody’s lower in the bear hierarchy. And Eric has one male from each Shifter family working for him in some way. It’s another way he keeps the peace between species.”
“Your brother is too damn clever for his own good.”
Cassidy shrugged. “He’s a good leader, and he makes use of all his resources.”
Of which, Diego realized, he himself now was likely one. But he didn’t want to talk about Eric and his trackers. “Come here,” he said.
Cassidy put her arms around him, and Diego held her close. He drew a long breath and let it out. “I killed a man tonight,” he said.
Cassidy started, then she stroked his back, soothing. “Oh, Diego. What happened?”
He told her. Diego hadn’t told the dispatcher the truth, or the paramedics, or the uniforms, or his captain, not even Xav, who’d come to the scene when he’d heard. But the story poured out to Cassidy, from what Enrique had been like at fifteen to the thirty-five-year-old pathetic wreck Diego had shot tonight.Diego found his eyes wet with tears. “Enrique didn’t think I would do it. He was going to shoot me for real. He smiled at me as he died, as though I’d finally measured up in his eyes.” He rubbed his forehead. “Like I ever wanted that son of a bitch to approve of me.”
Cassidy touched Diego’s cheek. “He was an alpha who’d lost his power. Sometimes dying pride leaders do that, when their power has passed on. They hole up somewhere and ask a young alpha to fight them, so they can go with dignity.”
Diego shook his head. “Enrique deserved to die ten times over for what he did to my family and to so many others. He doesn’t deserve dignity. But tonight, I felt sorry for him.”
“Because you have compassion. The best leader does. Strength without compassion isn’t true strength.”
Diego managed a smile. “Listen to you. Like I haven’t dreamed about shooting him in the ass all these years. Like I don’t want to find the men who killed Jobe and rip them apart with my bare hands.”
“Of course you do. Just like I want to rip apart the men who killed Donovan.”
Diego pressed a finger to her lips. “Which you are going to let me take care of,” he said. “Humans won’t tolerate Shifters killing humans.”
“Shifters do a lot of things without bothering about humans,” Cassidy said.
“Don’t tell me things like that. I’m a human cop, and if I know things, I’m obligated to act on them.”
Cassidy licked his finger. “All right. This is a no-telling zone.”
His blood heated. “Dios, you’re sexy, Cassidy. Especially when you smile at me like that.”
Cassidy widened her smile. “You’re sexy too.”
“Stop looking at me like that,” Diego growled.
“What are you going to do if I don’t. Restrain me?”
Diego shivered. “And don’t make my mind go there.”
“Go where?” Cassidy gave him an innocent look.
He leaned into her. “Dirty, naughty places. Like it did in that skyscraper when I slapped cuffs on you. Sexiest ass I ever saw in my life.”
“And yet, you still took me in.”
“Just doing my job, ma’am.”
“I wanted to jump your bones in the interrogation room,” Cassidy said.
Diego’s mind conjured up about five good scenarios, all of them highly satisfying. “I wanted to jump yours. Let’s just say that if the video had been running, we could have made a fortune selling it on the Internet.”