Page 30 of Beautiful Madness

Neither of us spoke as he drove—evenafter he’d parked down by the river and turned off the car, we had troublegetting started. After a few minutes, though, and not looking at me, he spoke.

“I remember everything.”

“I’m here to listen, Rick. Ijust want to say one thing first. Nothing you did was your fault. Nothing youdid was even you. Axton and his magic were inside you, working you like apuppet. You weren’t even present—only your body was there. Tell me youunderstand that.”

“I understand I wasmanipulated,” he said, his voice soft but dark. “I understand my mind was takenover. But if I hadn’t done those things, if some part of my mind hadn’t beeninvolved, there’d be nothing for me to remember.” And finally, he turned hishead and caught my stare.

I shivered, my mouth going dry.There were things in his eyes I didn’t want to see. Things I didn’t want to bethere. “You’re the good guy, Rick. You’ve always been the good guy. Don’t letthat sadistic fuck make you bad.”

He smiled, kind of. “He alreadydid that, Kait. Now I just have to figure out how to live with it. Am Idifferent because I know?” He shrugged. “Maybe I am.”

I swallowed past the drynessand wished intensely for a bottle of water. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He opened his mouth, then shutit. Finally, he shook his head. “I can’t say any of it aloud, Kait. Not rightnow.”

I nodded, somewhat relieved, asmuch as I didn’t want to admit it. “When you’re ready, then. I’ll be here.”

“I see myself differently,” hetold me. “I don’t want you to. I want you to always see me as the good guy.” Hegave me a real smile, at last. “I want to always be the hero.”

I didn’t return his smile butstared at him soberly. “You will always be my hero,” I murmured. “No matterwhat. I just…”

“What?”

“I don’t want to see yourpain,” I admitted. “I don’t want you to be hurt. When you tell me what happenedto you, I’m not going to care about what you did or who you did it to. I’mgoing to care about how what you were forced to do hurtyou. What youwent through…” I shuddered. “I should have gotten to you sooner.”

He laced his fingers with mine.“You saved my fucking life. I remember that too. Some of it, anyway. You savedmy life. You came for me, you found me, you fought for me. You didn’t let medie.” He released my hand and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “This,”he said, “is what makes me okay.”

My voice came out of the phone,almost unfamiliar to me. I listened, and I remembered. I remembered how I’dfelt when he’d been in the hands of the former vampire county master.

“Rick. I’m coming for you. Ihope you know that. I hope that no matter what they’re doing to you, you knowI’m coming for you.”

I licked a tear when it slidover my lips, but I smiled. “I will always come for you,” I told him.

“I never doubt that.” He leanedacross the console then and pulled me into a hug, and he told me what I neededto hear. “And I know I am not the bad guy.”

When he pulled away and westared across the little bit of space at each other, we were both smiling. Wewere both lighter. Yeah, shit had happened. Bad shit. And before it was over,there would be more. But we would always have each other, and we would handleit.

“We need to talk about a dozenthings,” he said, and he was back to being the detective. “The daywalkers areturning humans, and when you stake them, they just turn to dust? That’s whywe’re not finding bodies of missing humans.”

I nodded. “I have their scentnow, so I can track them. That was what I was doing when you called me to thestation. I’ll handle the daywalkers. But I have to find their…charger.Somewhere is a ball of magic left behind by Axton, his seer Kaloni, and fuckingAvis Vine. I can take out daywalkers all day long, but I can’t stop themcompletely until I destroy the magic creating them.”

“Keep me updated on thatsituation,” he said, “and let me know if there’s anything at all I can do tohelp with it. Now. About Sam Keller.”

I could feel myself pale just alittle. “I’m looking for him,” was all I could say. I didn’t want Rick to seeme as the bad guy any more than I wanted him to see himself as one. But we wereboth equal parts bad and good, with shades of gray twisting throughout theblack and white. I knew that, but still, I couldn’t tell him I’d deliberatelyreleased Sam to kill that poor abused woman.

And that I wasn’t planning onbringing him down.

Or that I was a fuckingshapeshifter just like Sam.

He must have seen that therewere things I was leaving out, but he let it go. “What else?”

“My alpha is missing,” Iwhispered. “Someone has taken Jared, and maybe he’s dead…” I scrubbed at myface, suddenly angry. “I can’t feel him. I can’t pick up a scent or a trail orany-fucking-thing, and time is running out.ThatI can feel.”

“What do you know?” He was infull-on cop mode now, and that was a relief for both of us. He’d push theawfulness of his past away, much like I did, and we’d concentrate on how tohelp others.

“I think his beta is involved.”

“Eli?” He was a cop, so he wasn’tskeptical. He’d seen the worst of people, and he knew better than most howpeople could hide what they really were.