Stalking the Others by Jess Haines Page A

and he glanced at Nikki, who smirked as she reached over to flick his chin with a towel, getting rid of the worst of the suds. He then realized what he’d done and grabbed the towel from her to wipe his face. More’s the pity. For a second I had mistaken him for a human being instead of a machine sent back in time to prevent anyone from having a good time or a sense of humor.
    “It’s risky,” he muttered, returning his attention to the sink. “You can go, but not alone. Take Nikki or Bo with you.”
    Nikki scoffed. “Like hell I’m going anywhere at this hour. Not unless we’ve got a hunt.”
    I turned to Bo, knowing my expression must have been pitiful already, hamming it up even more by widening my eyes and letting my lower lip tremble. His laughter boomed through the room, loudly enough that Keith glanced with raised brows from over the top of his novel.
    “With a face like that, how could I resist? Let me polish this off, then we can go.”
    Matching his grin with one of my own, I took a couple more bites of my own ice cream before rising. “I’m going to change into my gear. I’ll meet you at the car.”
    Dashing upstairs, I forwent the body armor, but put on the belt and a very oversized sweater of Bo’s that hung low enough to hide the stakes and had to be rolled up a half-dozen times at the sleeves to leave my hands free. It would make access to the weapons difficult, and made me look like I had the fashion sense of a four-year-old, but I doubted anyone at the gym would care. I wasn’t planning on being there long, and the guys who knew me would probably assume I’d borrowed it from Chaz.
    The belt took some time to examine my thoughts before it said anything, though it reveled in the exercise as I raced out of the room and down the stairs again. Keith dropped his book and flattened himself against the wall as I rushed past, and I barely remembered myself enough to throw a “Sorry!” over my shoulder before I was outside and breathing in the cold night air.
    Bo was already warming up his car, a late model silver BMW. He took off as soon as I slid into the passenger seat, and I gave him directions to Chaz’s gym, thinking hard about where I might search first. He didn’t have an office, but he did have a cabinet with files on his clients near the front desk. Doubtless Kimberly’s information was somewhere in those files. If I could get whoever was manning it to let me check it, I’d be golden. If not, one of the guys might have overheard something, and I could interview whoever was around. It was open twenty-four hours, so depending on who had taken the night shift this time around, there was a good chance one of the employees would know where I could find her.
    If not, Chaz had said her office was “next door” to his gym. There couldn’t be that many massage therapists with offices in that area. Process of elimination would serve just as well as digging up the info from Chaz’s files.
    It didn’t take us long to get there. Traffic had died down for the most part by now, and we found a parking garage half a block from the building housing the Midtown Elite Fitness Center, not far from the Plaza District—or Royce’s main office. The sign for the gym was clearly visible even from halfway down the block. There were some other businesses in the building, too, including some boutiques and a café on the first floor, but that was to be expected in this part of town. Chaz had a nice brownstone in Queens, not terribly far from here. It made me wonder how many times he’d brought his “work” home with him, which must have pissed me off more than I’d realized, because the oh-shit handle above my door cracked under my fingers.
    “Hey, lighten up over there. Did you break something?”
    I let go of the handle and concentrated on the parking structure straight ahead, not meeting Bo’s concerned gaze as he glanced at me. “It’s fine. We’re almost there.”
    Absently picking at the plastic