"He licked me." Riggs visibly shuddered. "He fucking licked my ear right when I was carrying him out the window."
I laughed.
Gravy Boat's only response to the threat was to weave around Rigg's legs and let out a dignified yowl.
"How did you do that without getting caught?" I asked.
Riggs started walking back the way we'd come and our whole unlikely group followed after him. I had to jog to catch up to him. I noticed Maisey stuck close by me, as if she was worried Riggs was going to bite. Maybe that wasn't the most ridiculous thing to worry about, actually.
"Crime scenes are chaotic places. People from different departments all doing different jobs. If you act like you know what you're doing, chances are, you get left alone."
"Nobody thought it was weird when you grabbed a cat and a bunch of pill bottles?"
Riggs shrugged. "A woman asked what I was doing. Nobody else cared."
"What'd you tell her?"
"I said he was a suspect,” Riggs shrugged, pointing to Gravy Boat. “Then I fell out the window."
"Right," I said slowly, grinning at the mental image of that.
Riggs kept looking down in disgust at Gravy Boat, who was stalking along beside him like a wrinkly, hairless shadow. "I was kind of hoping he'd run away."
"For some reason, he seems to like you."
"Bad instincts," Riggs guessed.
I studied Riggs. He was easily the most attractive man I'd ever interacted with. Granted, that carried about as much weight as a t-rex's arms, coming from me. But still, I'd seen movies. And I’d creepily stared at people from my window.
Riggs was in a class all of his own. Tall, athletic, rugged with stubble running across his jaw and dusting his upper lip. He had nice lips, too. I didn't know if it was just knowing he was a werewolf, but I thought I could see wolf-like qualities in his features now. There was a kind of angular edge to his eyes and a sharpness to his eyebrows that made me think of a hunter. There was a sharpness to his canines—just subtle, but now that I was looking for it, I saw it. He even moved with a kind of deadly grace.
"Fang said you are a legend. What was he talking about?"
"He's full of shit, is what."
"Fang hears everything," Fang said, raising his voice from a little ways behind us as we walked.
"Fang is an idiot," Riggs said. "And he shouldn't be talking to you about werewolf business. I'm going to keep you alive, and when this is over, I'm going to set you and your sister loose. The less you know about our kind when that happens, the better. And if Fang wants to keep his balls attached to his body, he'll remember that."
"Fang would be honored if Riggs touched his balls."
Riggs made one of his many sounds to signal his annoyance. This one was the heavy exhalation variety, but he followed it up with increasing his pace until I couldn't have kept up unless I wanted to embarrass myself by jogging after him.
Even with all the craziness of the last few hours, I was smiling.
I was smiling because for once, I was the one doing something, even if it was running for my life. Even if it was getting dragged along through a world I barely understood by a man who seemed to hate the world.
It was my adventure, for once, and it was my story.
But my excitement suddenly dropped out of my stomach when I shivered. I'd just been thinking it was a muggy, hot night half an hour ago, hadn't I?
Maisey was always watching me like a hawk, and she noticed. She moved beside me, then put her hand to my forehead. Her face was already paler than usual, but all the remaining color drained from it when she looked at me. "You're burning up."
"What?" Riggs asked. He and Gravy Boat had been leading the way, but he came back toward me then. He put his big hands on my cheeks, then touched my forehead. "She's sick?"
"No shit she's sick," Maisey said. "I told you about her immune system, but you've been dragging her around like you're trying to get her sick."
He was searching my face for some sign, like he thought I might start spouting projectile vomit at any moment. "How did you get sick so fast?" he asked.
I grinned. Now that I paid closer attention, I could feel I was a little woozy. "We all have our talents," I said, trying to force a smile. “To be fair, I did insist we go get Gravy Boat.”
Riggs didn't bother asking permission before he scooped me up and carried me in front of him. It was the classic "fireman rescuing someone from a fire" type of carry. He had one arm under my legs and the other holding my back so I was against his hard, oddly warm chest.