Emeline stepped closer, into the man’s personal space. She had to see Grand. “Can you do that? I’d really appreciate it.” She touched the guard’s arm.
He threw a nervous glance at Avery and then went to the computer behind his desk. “What’s the patient’s name?”
“Wilbur Gamble.”
He hit a few keys. “Wilbur Gamble left the hospital around two this afternoon.”
“What?” She walked around the desk and swiveled his monitor toward her. “Are you sure he checked out?”
“I’ll call.” He picked up the phone and dialed. Two rings and someone answered up. “This is Johnson, the guard on duty at the main entrance. Is Wilbur Gamble still a patient on your floor?” The guard listened and then thanked the person on the other end. “The nurse said he checked out against medical advice.”
“Why would he do that? It doesn’t make sense.” Emeline stormed to the exit. Makes perfect sense, she thought pushing the revolving door. He left because he was threatened or he knew danger was coming. That’s why he interrogated Avery about protecting her and why he sent them on a wild goose chase. Her grandfather knew she was walking into danger.
***
Avery struggled to quell the rising tide of anger burning its way through his veins. Watching Emeline flirt with the guard, the man’s gaze stroll over her breasts, made him violent. Then there were the lies. How easily they slipped from her tongue. The tally kept growing.
Along with his own set of lies. Khuket. His Ink rippled from the thought of her name. He clamped down on the disturbing sensation and focused on finding Emeline’s grandfather. Maybe then he would finally get some answers. “Where would he go?” Avery walked next to her.
“He’d go home. There’s no other place.”
A police cruiser had parked next to the Range Rover and an officer peered into the tinted windows. Avery grabbed Emeline by her waist and hauled her back around the corner. She stiffened and leaned against him, her breathing fast. Possibly from fright? Maybe from exhaustion.
“We gotta go,” Avery said.
“Why? All we did was park illegally.”
“With loaded guns and bloody clothes in the car. He’ll arrest us and we’ll spend the entire night in jail before they discover the weapons are legal and the blood is mine. I don’t want to assault an officer today.”
“All right, we can catch a cab on the avenue.” She pulled away and walked to the corner. Arm raised, hand doing an impression of a flag in a hurricane, she perched on the curb, while Avery took a second to admire her resilience. Two empty yellow cabs whizzed by. “Damn! Catching a cab in this part of town is hopeless!”
Another cab approached. Avery stepped off the curb and into the path of the car. Tires screeched on the asphalt and it lurched to a halted a foot from him. After bouncing off the hood of the last car that hit him, he wasn’t overly concerned about his life. The driver stuck his head out of the window, looked at Avery, and retreated like a turtle into its shell.
Avery walked around the car and opened the passenger door. “Get in.”
She muttered a curse and slid into the backseat. He sat next to her and gave the address.
“He wouldn’t have stopped if it was just me out there. They never stop for me in this part of town, as if they know I’m going to ask them to take me to the worst section of the city,” she grumbled.
Avery understood what she hinted at. It pissed him off too. “You’re a beautiful woman. Any man would stop for you.”
“Don’t patronize me,” she said. “Just don’t.” Her arms folded under her breasts and she shifted away from him.
There was nothing he could say. This wasn’t a fight he could win. And he wouldn’t give a hollow apology for something he had no part in. So he held out his hand and hoped she would take it.
Eventually, her arms unfurled and her hands dropped into her lap. He waited for her to reach across and thread her fingers between his. Her fingers were cold but strong. His thumb stroked the back of her hand, and he couldn’t help studying her caramel skin against his paleness. Different, yet right. So why did his heart plummet?
Avery opened his hand, ready to let her go. Her fingers tightened around his palm. He gazed at her, but she studied their hands and he wondered at her thoughts. Did she see what he
saw when he looked at them joined together? He saw possibilities, a future he had no right to claim. Tell that to his heart.
He closed his fingers around hers again. Her gaze shot to his and Avery lost himself in her hazel eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Emeline always sucked as a sifter, but she counted the deficiency as a plus. Who wanted to wear gloves the rest of their life to avoid random contact and the transfer of unwanted emotions? Occasionally in the heat of passion, she had caught a few emotional threads: horny, macho guy speak about how great he was.
Yeah, she had lousy taste in men. With Avery, everything was different. He touched a place inside her heart she’d never known existed. Palm to palm, her skin tingled where they touched. The pain in her side faded and his fragmented thoughts filled her head. Worry mixed with desire which warped into lurid images, tantalizing in detail, then dipped into a deep well of hurt all centered on her. She’d done this.
Except for brief splashes from the streetlights, the back of the dim cab kept his features shadowed. Not his desires. Those flowed through him and into her. Her nipples tightened and her body hungered. She caught glimpses of his green and black eyes. Their intensity didn’t startle her. The corresponding heat surfing her blood and the receding pain, did.
Had he leaned closer? Or had common sense completely taken a vacation and she’d leaned in? His free hand touched her cheek. This was the last thing she needed. So why didn’t she pull away when his lips slanted urgently over hers?
Shutting down the heat between them—closing the door on any chance of them being together—that’s what she should be doing, not inching her way closer to disaster. Not dying for another taste of him. Not aching for him to take her in his arms, stripping her down to her marrow and take her any way, every way he wanted.
He kissed her as if this was the last kiss they would ever have, using lips, teeth, and tongue to hammer her resistance into biddable acceptance. He kissed her until all she knew was that she was a woman and he was a hot, hard man. And all hers—if she was woman enough to reach out and take him.
The car stopped. “We’re here.” The driver said.
The spell broke. She yanked her lips and her hand away. Pain flared, bright and awful. Somehow, she managed to open the door and climb out of the car without becoming a part of the pavement while he paid the fare. Getting away, far away from everything she wanted seemed like a brilliant idea. She’d climbed the stairs and had her key in the lock when Avery grabbed her arm.
“Are you okay?” His drawn face spoke of his concern.
He kept asking that question and she kept giving the same lie. “Yeah. I’m fine. I just need to make sure Grand is all right.”
He nodded once, “Get behind me.” And freed a weapon from his shoulder holster.
She wanted to tell him to put the gun away, but who knew what Ridley had waiting for them. The door creaked slowly—she regretted not oiling it—revealing a body at the end of the hallway.
“Grand!” She struggled to push Avery out of the way, but she couldn’t escape the steel arms trapping her. “Let me go!”
“It’s not him, Emeline. It’s the nurse.”
Diane? She sagged, relief taking the fight out of her and would’ve collapsed if he wasn’t holding her. One hand on the small of her back, the other on the back of her head, his breath fanned her temple, stirring her hair. Was it her heartbeat ricocheting around her chest or his reverberating inside him?
Avery released her and went to Diane. He crouched next to the woman and pressed his fingers against her throat. “She’s alive.”
Wheezing. The painful exchange of air through an aged respiratory sy
stem filled the quiet. “He’s here. Grand’s here.” She rushed into the dining room. The empty space mocked her.
“Emeline.” Avery called her from the stairs.
She returned to the hallway, stepped over Diane and looked up. Grand was sprawled at the top of the stairs. Before she could climb, Avery had her grandfather in his arms.
Grand groaned. “Need to go. To the basement.”
“He’s delirious,” Emeline said.
“No.” Air wheezed in his chest. “The basement, please. We don’t have much time.”
“Lay him on my bed.” Stabbing pain shot from her side as she climbed the stairs and lead the way into her bedroom. She propped up the pillows before Avery lay Grand down.
“She called someone,” Grand gasped out.
Ridley!
“Where’s the basement?” Avery said.
“The door behind the stairs,” she said.
“I’m going to move the nurse and get his oxygen tank.” He left the room.
“You need…the Key.” Grand wheezed.
Emeline sat next to him on the bed. “Key? What key?” Grand had drifted off. She leaned over to check his breathing and her head swam. The bathroom seemed a mile away, but she made it as Avery returned with the canister.
She shrugged off her coat, and tossed it onto the lid of the toilet, then stripped off her shirt in front of the mirror. Blood had soaked through the gauze. Gingerly, she pulled at the tape and removed the soaked squares. Some blood trickled out of the five puncture wounds, but it seemed like the worst was over. A wet washcloth to clean away the blood, a small towel to replace the gauze, and discarded masking tape from her bathroom remodeling project and she was able to redress the area.
Patched up, she grabbed a semi-clean burgundy sweater out of her hamper. Dragging it over her head and down her torso left her sweaty, and a bit unsteady, but functional. A knock on the door jerked her around. “I’ll be out in a moment.” She splashed cold water on her face, which brought a bit of color back to her ashy skin.
Grand was awake with his oxygen mask over his mouth and nose when she stepped out of the bathroom. “Are you feeling better?”
He nodded and pointed to the door. “Go help Avery.”
Yep. He was feeling better. Careful of her side, she walked down the two flights of stairs to the basement. Avery hunched over to keep from smacking his head into the low wooden beams as he studied her punching bag hanging in the corner, the speed bag not far from it, the boxing gloves, and free weights.
“You box?” He picked up one of her gloves.
The skepticism in his voice irritated. “Occasionally. For a while, I trained in MMA. Flirted with a career, but bills and Grand took precedent.”
He gave her a speculative look as if he was considering her chances of kicking someone’s ass. God, she’d love to show him what she could do.
Avery turned to Grand’s possessions. “What is all this stuff?” There were clay statues ranging from a few inches to five feet tall. African masks in all stages of decay, headpieces, and wigs—there were a lot of those—tons of trinkets, and a giant Flail and Crook.
“Grand collected this from all over the world during his travels. I think most of this is fake.”
“Collected or stole? This stuff belongs in a museum.”
“I know. Now, what are we doing down here?”
“Your grandfather won’t leave until we find a key and a journal.” Avery moved around the tight space.
The journal? “I have the journal, found it mixed in with the stuff I pawned. Vito didn’t want it.” What did Grand want with his journal after all this time?
They tracked back upstairs. Emeline retrieved the journal from her purse and nudged her grandfather. “Is this it?”
His weary eyelids opened. A weak nod is all he could muster. “Where’s the Key?” The words were muffled in the oxygen mask.
Key? She couldn’t remember seeing anything that looked like a key. “Describe it for me.”
“Obsidian with hieroglyphics etched along the surface. Metal embedded in stone. Looks like a blade, but it’s not.” He drifted off again.
Damn! She sold it to Vito for chump change. “W-we gotta go.” She grabbed the oxygen tank.
Avery blocked her path. “Where’s the Key and what does it unlock?”
She stared into his strange eyes and furious face, and the lie shriveled on her tongue. “I pawned it.”
His chest expanded on a long inhale. “Vito?”
She gave a single nod.
“What does it open?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Only Grand knows.” They both glanced at the bed where Grand snored. “It was broken, just the handle. I didn’t realize it was important.”
But she should have. If only she had paid attention when he tried to explain things to her. Like cataloging all the junk he’d collected. How many times had she brushed him off? Who knows what stuff he actually had?
“Grab what you need ’cause we won’t be coming back here.” He stalked out of the room.
Not coming back? Now wasn’t the time to argue. Emeline packed a bag for herself and Grand as quickly as her throbbing side allowed. Avery returned and without a word, he unhooked the oxygen tank, slung both bags over his shoulder, and lifted Grand off the bed. She trailed behind with the oxygen tank to the sidewalk where an old Nissan Pathfinder waited on the curb.
Avery laid Grand flat on the back seat and covered him with blankets from his bed in the dining room. She hooked back up the oxygen as Avery tossed the bags in the rear of the car. Careful of her side, she climbed into the passenger seat and didn’t comment on the dangling wires under the steering wheel. This wasn’t the first time she rode in a stolen car. Chances were this wouldn’t be her last. Silence stretched between them until he approached the exit she wanted on the highway.
“Get off here.” She pointed.
“Why?” He continued on and passed the off ramp. “Where did you plan on going?”
“Somewhere safe where I can leave Grand and not worry. Where did you plan on taking us?”
“Somewhere safe where we wouldn’t worry about your grandfather.”
We? The word sent a wave of panic through her. “My grandfather is my responsibility. Not we. There is no we. There is me and there is him. We don’t exist.” The hiss of the oxygen tank filled the interior as a muscle jumped in Avery’s temple and his green eyes turned black.
The steering wheel gave an ominous creak in his tight grip. He took the next exit and stopped at the first red light. “Where. To?”
Avery was pissed and she couldn’t give a damn. Not because she didn’t want to, because she did. Yet to get out of this alive, caring about Avery’s feelings wasn’t an option.
“Left.” Two more lights and she directed him into the subdivision. “The next cul-de-sac on the right.”
She pointed to the house.
Avery parked and didn’t wait for her to exit the car. He leaped from the driver’s side and walked up the front door of the bungalow style house. He pulled a gun from inside his coat and rapped on the front door.
Oh, Lord! She’s going to die from a heart attack when she sees him! Emeline rushed from the car. Pain snatched her breath away, but stopping meant seeing her mentor dead.
“One moment. I’m coming.” A voice came from inside the house.
Emeline took the short stairs two at a time and crossed the porch. She pushed Avery, trying to throw him off center. But she was weak, too weak to move him. “Put the gun away.” She reached around him and grabbed his arm.
Her vision swam. A wave of pain flared from her side. Her legs jellied and the porch came rushing toward her face. At the last second, everything went dark.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Avery caught Emeline before she smacked into the decorative stone porch. Her limp body robbed him of thought as the door to the house opened. A little white-haired old lady stood in the doorway. Surprise dropped her jaw, but Ave
ry couldn’t tell if it was from him, the gun in his hand or Emeline collapsed in his arms.
“What’s happened?” she shrieked and stepped aside.
He crossed her tiny foyer to the living room and laid Emeline on the sofa. He unzipped her coat and pressed his ear to her chest. Weak thuds sounded. She’s alive, but for how long?
“What have you done to her, Avery Nicolis!”
He whipped around and studied the old lady again. “How do you know me?”
“Now is not the time for you to question me. What’s happened to Emeline?” She moved closer and gasped. “She’s injured.” Her finger pointed to Emeline’s abdomen.
A wet patch stained Emeline’s sweater. His heart squeezed tight as he lifted the edge. Blood had soaked through a small towel she’d taped to her side. His hand trembled and slipped trying to grab a corner of the masking tape and peel it back. Five deep puncture wounds dotted her flank. Blackish green fluid seeped out of the wounds.
“Dear God. What attacked her?”
Don’t die! “A quimaera,” Avery whispered. “We have to get her to a hospital.” Pain flared under his damaged skin and spread quickly.
The woman gasped. “She needs more than a hospital.” She backed away and began chanting.
Avery pulled Emeline’s phone from his coat pocket. It fell from his bloody, trembling hand, and tumbled to the beige carpet. He scrambled after it.
The air stilled as if they were suddenly shoved into a vacuum. A spatial distortion warped the area in front of the kitchen. Stars appeared in the opening. Next, a blinding light blanketed the room. Avery covered Emeline. He hoped the cavalry had come to the rescue.
A man stepped through the vortex, but it wasn’t Roman. Same height. Same muscular frame. Same face. Different man. Reign. Public enemy number one.
Former Detective Alexis Lever stepped out of the vortex behind him. “You called, Mrs. Kelly?” She stopped short when her gaze met Avery’s. “What have we interrupted?”
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