Obsession Untamed (Feral Warriors #2)(30)

“We do. My men are watching the back of the apartment. I need you to cover the front while I flush him out.”

She wasn’t ready to leave, yet. SWAT or no SWAT, this was her investigation, dammit, but she was coughing badly. And Tighe was barely coughing at all. The smoke hardly seemed to be getting to him. Maybe she should leave him to root out his twin while she sought out fresh air. She’d heard and felt his reactions during this latest attack. There was no doubt in her mind he’d been as horrified by his twin’s savageness as she was. God knew, he should be, but the certainty that he had been only confirmed those instincts of hers that kept insisting he was a good man. A good man who would almost certainly get caught and hauled in for questioning once SWAT arrived. Unless she warned him.

She coughed harder, her eyes and throat burning from the smoke. But warning him went against everything she believed in as an FBI agent.

Tighe gave her a gentle push toward the stairs. “Go watch the front, Delaney. Get out of here before I have to carry you out.”

Coughing too hard even to answer him, she nodded and turned away. He needed to be taken in for questioning. Whatever else Tighe was, he was dangerous. And involved up to his well-muscled shoulders in this case, her case. At the very least, he’d kidnapped and drugged a federal agent. Honest, everyday citizens didn’t do things like that. They didn’t have access to weapons like mind-control drugs.

He had to be apprehended. She knew that. Yet there was a part of her that felt like she’d betrayed him.

Thank God she wasn’t weak enough to listen.

Tighe systematically broke down one door after another on the floor where the fire started, searching for the clone and finding nothing. Not even any people. At least the humans were smart enough to flee. He was all too afraid his clone was way too smart now to wait for Tighe. Why fight when he could slip away unnoticed?

Frustration ate at Tighe’s nerves, and he pushed it back. He couldn’t afford to shift again. Not when the firefighters would be here any moment and he still hadn’t found his quarry.

When he’d gone through every apartment on the third floor, he started down the stairs to search the second. A heavyset woman with a cane was struggling to climb up. Under her breath, she was crying, “My baby, my baby.”

The smoke was already thick on the third floor. She had no business going up there. He told himself it wasn’t his business. He told himself he didn’t care.

“Ma’am, you need to go downstairs. The fire’s spreading and the firefighters are going to need to get through.”

She turned a tear-streaked face to him, desperation in her eyes. “My baby’s up there. I left her alone for just a few minutes. She can’t get out the door. She’s only three.”

Three. He remembered Amalie at that age. So demanding and bossy for such a tiny thing, yet he’d gladly been her slave and lackey. He’d have done anything for the daughter he’d loved more than his own life. Anything.

The woman pushed herself onto the next highest step. “She’s crying for her mama. I know she’s crying. I’ve got to get her.”

He told himself they were humans. He didn’t care.

“Which apartment?”

“Four thirty-one.”

Hell. She was directly above the fire. It might already be too late. “Go down. Hurry. I’ll get her.”

“Wait! The key.”

She handed him her apartment key and Tighe palmed it, then turned and ran. Three years old.

Amalie. Her face swam in his mind’s eye as he’d last seen her. Crying, her face streaked with tears as her small arms reached for him, clawing the arms that bound her in her desperation to get back to him.

And he’d turned away.

Ah, goddess. Amalie.

They were so tiny at that age. So fragile. How long could small, mortal lungs breathe such smoke? How long before the fire burned through the floor and sent this child tumbling into the flames?

She needed him.

How many times had Amalie needed him? How many times had she cried out for him, and he wasn’t there to hear her?

How many times?

Delaney watched the chaos in helpless frustration. What if Tighe doesn’t give himself up when the FBI arrives? What if they shoot him?

A bloodcurdling scream went up to her left, and she feared her worries were coming all too true as she quickly sought its source. Her gaze found the one screaming, a woman holding badly misshapen arms against her body. Delaney followed the woman’s line of sight and froze.

The woman was staring at Tighe. Except…he wasn’t Tighe. He was dressed in the same navy blue shirt and too-short khakis she’d seen him in when he attacked her in the laundry room. And he wasn’t wearing shades. Even from this distance she could feel the coldness in him that brought back nightmarish memories of the attack. A cold that was not Tighe’s.

Goose bumps lifted on her flesh. There were two of them. Just as Tighe had said. And she was staring at the murderer. Hatred curled in her gut as she pulled her weapon and started running. The killer looked up as she came toward him. He was near the corner of the apartment building, standing among more than a dozen agitated residents waiting for the fire trucks.

“FBI!” she choked out, coughing. “Freeze!”

He ducked behind the other residents, and she lost sight of him. Blast it.

The guy was not getting away this time. If she had to empty the chamber in his head to stop him, she’d do it.