January in Atlantis - Alyssa Day (red white royal blue .txt) 📗

It was good sense, and he nodded. “I’m following you on my bike for the same reason. I’m not interested in having local law enforcement start to wonder who I am and check my plates.” Although there shouldn’t be any problem with the plates or the bike. Denal had set up the rental of the bikes and a small house outside town, or at least somebody efficient had done it. He didn’t really see Denal as the details type.

Plus, if Eva changed her mind and decided to speed out of the coffee shop and never come back to Early, he could follow her on the bike. He had twice the reasons to want to get to know her now, and one of them was even legit. Her reaction to that Dark Angel had told him that she knew more than she wanted to about the gang. Any scrap of information he could get would be helpful.

Even if you have to steamroll over this woman, who’s obviously in trouble?

He told the tiny shard of conscience that was still left in his soul to shut up. While he was at it, he told his overly interested cock to calm the fuck down too. Mission goals, after all. One woman’s emotional pain—or his almost-violent attraction to her—couldn’t matter to him when there was a chance he could save even one of the nearly twenty teen girls who’d been kidnapped.

Eva led the way to a small employee parking lot and climbed into a very dilapidated car. From the looks of it, he was surprised it ran at all. He’d never been the type to care anything about human modes of transportation, but even to him this one looked like it was nearly dead. She turned the key. It stuttered and shook but started, amazingly enough. When Eva put the car in gear and pulled out of the back lot, the police were just arriving in the front. Perfect timing.

Flynn swung a leg over his bike, started it up, and followed Eva down the street.

The diner smelled familiar. He’d been in a lot of diners, in a lot of countries around the world, and they all shared that same scent of hot grill and hot grease and the feel of warm, comfortable conversation. Diners were not where you went to celebrate important events. Diners were where you went to talk about the weather, the news of the day, or your kids; or in order not to have to talk all. He’d sat alone in dozens of diners all over the planet, drinking coffee, eating pancakes, or beans and toast, or goat cheese and dates. Sometimes watching people, sometimes simply reading the paper and thinking whatever thoughts floated through his brain.

This one was much the same as all the others. The newspaper rack was in the corner, and you could buy a new one for a dollar or just read one of the papers that had been read and then neatly folded and stacked on a corner of the counter for the next customer to enjoy.

A middle-aged, dark-haired woman in comfortable shoes was pouring coffee for two tired-looking guys at a corner table, and an old guy near the front was shoveling in eggs and bacon as if he hadn’t eaten for days. He didn’t even glance up at them as they passed his table. The guys in the back gave them a quick glance and then returned to their conversation.

Threat assessment: very low.

The dark-haired waitress finished pouring the coffee, looked over at them, and smiled. “Hey, Eva. Figured you’d be at work tonight.”

Eva returned her smile and shrugged and then slid into a booth about halfway down the row. Flynn was glad to see she chose the seat that put her back to the door because he needed to watch the entrance. He never liked the itchy-shoulder-blades feeling of having his back to any entrance or exit. There was always a back door, something about humans and fire safety, but trouble was less likely to come in that way tonight. Neither Dark Angels nor law enforcement would ever consider stealthy entrances.

Both were more blow-your-door-down types.

“Coffee?” The waitress, Linda according to her name tag, was already flipping over their cups.

Eva nodded, offering a grateful smile. “And some fresh cream, please.”

“Cream for you, handsome?” Linda took a moment to study him, and a slow smile spread over her tired face. “You’ve been holding out on me, Eva. This is the best-looking man to walk through our door in months.”

After years Topside, Flynn was familiar with meaningless banter. He grinned at the waitress. “And I only have eyes for you, lovely Linda.”

She giggled and swatted at him with her order pad. “Aren’t you the smooth one? Okay, you two. Want food?”

Eva shook her head, but Flynn was having none of that. She was too pale and too thin. Anyway, interrogation went better over a meal. “Two of the specials, please, Linda. I think we need to get some food in our Eva here, don’t you?”

Resentment flared in Eva’s eyes at the “our Eva” bit, but she didn’t disagree. She just picked up her coffee and took a sip, grimacing at the taste.

“Yeah, it’s been on the burner for a while. I’ll get a new pot started and bring you that fresh cream.”

Eva thanked Linda, waited until the waitress had moved out of earshot, and then turned a measuring gaze on Flynn. “Okay. Your turn. You didn’t just randomly walk into that bar and then rescue me out of the goodness of your heart. You’re up to something. And that guy—Zach—what was he talking about? Are you a cop?”

Flynn started laughing, but he kept it quiet. Of all the suspicions she might’ve had about him, cop was the last thing he would’ve expected. “No. Not a cop.” He glanced around the diner, but nobody was paying them the slightest bit of attention. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I am working with some cops. There’s… a situation.”

Eva also took a moment to look around herself before she leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Is it about the Dark Angels? Somebody needs to do something about them. Everywhere I go though, the cops are too afraid of them. Or worse, they have somebody inside the gang and are getting payoffs. I guess with all the smuggling, drugs, and the rest of it, the Angels have so much money they can just roll over and crush the good guys.”

Linda brought the coffee, poured it, left the pot, and bustled off. Flynn watched in a kind of bemused horror as Eva proceeded to pour so much cream into her coffee that he could barely tell it was coffee.

She glanced up, caught him staring at her, and made a face at him. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t even like the taste of coffee, but sometimes in self-defense I need to drink it. Once I add a few spoons of sugar to this, it’ll be fine.”

Flynn grinned at her. “Sounds like dessert more than coffee. Probably tastes better that way, but in a lot of the places I’ve been, there was no guarantee of fancy things like cream or sugar. Half the time there was no coffee to be found either.”

His mood grew darker at the memory of the months in that cave with the people he’d thought were his friends. Flynn didn’t do well with imprisonment or restraint of any kind, and the fact that Kian—his friend—had disappeared from sight and let the clan hold him captive only made him more resentful.

“Did a goose walk over your grave?” She tilted her head to watch him. Strands of her long, richly red hair had fallen out of her braid and framed her face. In the diner light, the green and gold of her huge, beautiful eyes sparkled at him, enticing him into dreams of sunlit forest pools and Eva, nude in the long grass.

He shifted in his seat and pushed the tantalizing image out of his mind. When she bent her head to sip her coffee, he watched her, entranced. The curve of her cheek was so heartbreakingly lovely…

He was either losing it or his overactive protective instincts had gone amok. Probably both. Whatever it was, he didn’t have time for it. He didn’t have time for much, knowing the Dark Angels and what they probably planned for those girls. It wasn’t human trafficking he was worried about, not with this particular gang.

It was human sacrifice.

Linda brought their food, and they made small talk with her for a few moments while she unloaded plates from her tray. When she was gone again, off to serve the table of chattering teenagers that had just arrived, Flynn took a deep breath, inhaling all that buttery goodness.

“Man, I love diner food. Fills a man up for a while.”

Eva’s lips quirked up at the corners. “Not a salad guy?”

Flynn laughed. “I eat plenty of salads. The vegetables back home—”

He stopped abruptly. He, Jake, and Griffin were undercover, but Denal had never said anything specifically about whether or not to admit they were from Atlantis. If they used any of their powers over water, however, it would be easy enough for people to tell. Especially in light of all the media coverage Atlantis’s rising had gotten from the human press.

Besides, he needed something from this woman, and he’d found out over the course of his life that the easiest way to help someone trust you was to trust them first. Give something to get something.

“Okay. I’m gonna tell you something that I shouldn’t be telling you, because I need help. And I think you could use our help too. I’m actually from Atlantis.”

She stared at him for a long moment and then abruptly started laughing. “Oh, wow. That was awesome. I really needed a laugh after this week. Do you know you are the tenth man this month to tell me that he’s from Atlantis? It’s the new ‘what’s your sign?’ around bars. I’m to the point where I want to put a sign up: No, you are not from Atlantis. It’s not going to work. No, you’re not going to get laid.”

Hearing get laid from Eva’s sensual lips shredded the edges of Flynn’s tightly leashed control. She seemed to realize