Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

that.
    Who’s there?
    It struck me that I’d been shielding my friends. Even from Black.
    Maybe especially from Black.
    Angel, I sent reluctantly. Glen, from homicide. I hesitated. ...Nick.
    A hotter anger flared off Black in a thick cloud.
    Black. I tried to head off what I felt forming. Calm down. This is work-related, okay? Work. They already think I’m on drugs or something, so you coming out here yelling and threatening lawsuits is only going to make things worse...
    I could already feel him getting up off the bed. I felt his intent to come our way and realized he was as naked as I’d been.
    Clothes! I shouted in his mind. You need clothes, Black! Or they’re going to arrest both of us for real!
    I felt him hesitate. Then I could see him going through drawers.
    I also heard him muttering, My goddamned home. Can’t come to my home, arrest me for being naked inside my own fucking place...
    Black. I sighed. I’m handling this. I promise... you don’t need to come out here.
    He didn’t answer, but I felt the pulse of immovability on him.
    I refocused my eyes on the corridor and found Nick, Angel and Glen all staring at me again. I saw an additional knowledge in Nick and Angel’s eyes, which told me they’d likely guessed what my staring off into space meant.
    “Black’s coming,” I explained.
    I forgot briefly that my comment would probably confuse Glen. Seeing that confusion rise to his eyes, I shoved that aside too.
    “Look. The place is trashed. He probably won’t want you to come in.”
    “Why is it trashed, doc?” Angel said.
    I looked at her. I fought for a few seconds on how to answer, but my mind was blank.
    Before I could sort through words, the door opened abruptly behind us.
    I turned along with everyone else.
    Black stood there, shirtless, wearing dark pants. His feet were bare. He looked pretty close to how he had the first time I’d seen him up here, meaning outside the police station. His hair had been cut military short when I found him in Paris, but it was a bit longer now. He’d shaved most days since we’d been back, even holed up in here, but he had a good five o’clock shadow going now, and his gold eyes looked inhumanly bright, but maybe only to me.
    The barcode tat stood out on his arm, next to a thick black letter “S.” At some point over the last however-many days, he’d told me that the combination was called a “racial-cat” tattoo in the world where he’d been born.
    The one he wore designated him as seer––meaning, not-human.
    It also designated him as property.
    He had other tattoos too, I’d discovered. It was probably better if I didn’t think about those tattoos right then, however, since most of them wouldn’t be visible with him wearing pants.
    Even so, my eyes drifted down his bare upper torso. His muscular chest was strangely perfect, inhumanly so, I knew now. He still had a light bandage over the stitched up stab wound on his side, something I’d made an effort to keep an eye on given how drugged out we’d both been acting and the nature of some of our more strenuous activities. I’d changed the bandage daily, cleaned it, disinfected it, but truthfully, I’d been amazed at how fast it healed.  
    Black said that had a lot to do with me, and the amount of “light” we’d shared.
    The rest had to do with him being a seer.
    According to him, it wouldn’t even leave a scar. Black told me seers didn’t really scar like humans did. Meaning, they rarely obtained lasting scars at all.
    I caught Angel staring at his bandaged side and then up at the angular lines of muscle and skin and bone to his chest. I watched her study those strangely symmetrical contours, her eyes noting his darker-colored nipples and nearly hairless and unmarked body with a kind of amazed look on her face. Finishing her appraisal, she glanced at me.
    She gave me a slight smile, raising an eyebrow in an unspoken, Wow!
    I stiffened. Then I found myself moving, shifting my body so I