“Where you going in such a hurry, pretty lady?”
Farrah skidded to a stop while her heart rate accelerated to a gallop. She turned slowly, her mind working as quickly as possible for an explanation and a way out of this. The voice had come from a woman. One of the wives?
She could work with this. The wives erred on the side of friendship, which was careless and sentimental of them. They would not suspect her of anything. “Hello,” Farrah said with a smile. “Dahlia? Abilene?”
A delicate snort. “Never.”
For some reason, the snort and the short, contemptuous word put Farrah on edge. Her smile wavered, but she shoved it back into place through force. “I am sorry, then, I do not think we have met yet. Are you one of the men’s wives?”
“They wish.”
The words were whispered a breath away from Farrah’s face, and the sweet scent of candy overwhelmed her—a scent she remembered. A chill skittered up her spine. Farrah took a step back, something primitive in her mind screaming for her to run.
“I…I should find Oliver,” Farrah said, stuttering over the words and landing on whatever excuse she could. Just mentioning Oliver’s name caused a stab of pain through her chest.
“The man who has abandoned you?”
It felt as though every drop of blood in Farrah’s body drained through her feet. She swayed and barely caught herself before falling. Abandoned. It was true. Oliver had abandoned her, and apparently was so done with her that he had already announced it to this stranger.
The worst things always happened to her when she was abandoned. She struggled to breathe.
The mystery woman tsked. “Nothing to say to that? I must say I’m disappointed. I’ve admired your spirit.”
Warnings continued to blare in her mind, and Farrah was ready to listen to them. The woman in front of her was no ally. Farrah turned and was just stepping forward to sprint away when an iron-clad grip fastened around her upper arm.
“Uh, uh, uh,” the woman said. “Not so fast. We were still talking. Rude.”
“Oh, God,” Farrah muttered, dread filling her. The “worst things” were starting immediately, it appeared. “Please, I am just trying to leave.”
“Oh,” the woman said, suddenly cheerful. “I can help you with that!”
The floor beneath Farrah’s feet vanished.
25
Oliver glared as hard as he could and side-stepped Jericho. When the man dared to put a hand on Oliver’s chest, it took all of his willpower not to rip it off and beat Jericho with it. “Not wise,” Oliver bit out.
“Tell me about it,” Jericho said, nearly earning that beating all over again. “You want to talk about what’s going on?”
“Not even a little.”
Max and Eli came up behind Jericho, flanking him with silent backup, and Oliver finally admitted he had to stop running away from his problems for as long as it took to get rid of his friends. “What?” Oliver asked bitterly. “What do I have to say to get you three to leave me alone? Let’s save everybody some time. Just tell me.”
Max grabbed a set of earbuds from Jericho’s hand and stalked toward Oliver. “If I have to hold you down, you will listen to her phone call, do you understand me?”
Oliver pulled a face that he knew was ugly just from the vicious twitching of his muscles.
Max muttered, “Hard way it is,” and then launched himself at Oliver.
They both went toppling over, Oliver’s head hitting the floor with a crack. “What the hell, man?” he bellowed, dodging Max’s hands as he tried to make it to Oliver’s ears with the headphones.
Max shoved a knee into Oliver’s stomach, momentarily disabling his diaphragm, and he froze as he struggled to breathe. In the mere seconds it took for him to recover, Max shoved the earbuds into each ear. None-too-gently, if Oliver did say so.
“Enough!” Oliver shouted when he got his wind back, scrambling up and pushing his friend.
To his surprise, Max grabbed Oliver by the throat and shoved him back against the ground. It was enough out of character that Oliver blinked up at him through stars.
“I will not let you do this just because you cannot handle change!” Max yelled in Oliver’s face. “Do you have any idea what it feels like to lose your mate because of something selfish that you’ve done?”
Yes, actually, Oliver thought, palming the ache in his chest. He knew exactly how that felt.
Jericho knelt down beside Oliver’s shoulder and gently reached out and removed Max’s hand from Oliver’s neck. Max looked shell-shocked that he had still been throttling the man who was closer to him than a brother.
“Oliver,” Jericho said softly in his unerringly reasonable voice. “Farrah is not the new Star Wars trilogy. Or smart phones. Or any of the other shady shit that happened while you were imprisoned in a vacuum.” He leaned down. “Farrah is not change; she is life—a life you don’t just need but want. Trust us old whipped boys on this one. That life you’ve been struggling to get back? The one you will never reclaim because the world didn’t stand still when we ate the fruit? You’re a fool if you give up what you could have for what you’ll never have again, you feel me?”
“I guess that’s more eloquent that a barroom brawl,” Max grumbled, sliding off Oliver’s torso.
“I mean, damn, Max,” Eli said, reaching down and offering Oliver a hand. “You didn’t even break any of his bones. You must be slipping.”
Oliver hesitated for only a moment before grasping Eli’s hand and getting to his feet. Jericho and Max rose, too, and Jericho held out his phone. A cord traveled from it to the earbuds in Oliver’s ears, and when Jericho raised a brow, Oliver gave a curt nod.
Fine. If they were willing to intervention-beat him, he’d listen to her stupid phone call. Already, he recognized the dangerous hope that was filling him, thinking that they wouldn’t insist on him listening to her call if it were as incriminating as Oliver had suspected it was.
The moment Farrah’s melodious, husky voice filled his ears, Oliver’s heart hurt all over again, and he had to fight himself to keep from running to the apartment and doing anything—even provoking her to anger—to hear it again. He tensed at the sound of another man’s voice—a man she seemed to be familiar with, but at the mention of a her, everything changed.
The phone call cut off, presumably where Oliver had demanded the recording end, and Oliver looked at the three men before him.
“Who is her?” Oliver asked.
“We were hoping you could tell us,” Eli said.
Oliver couldn’t quite meet their eyes. “She didn’t confide anything in me.”
“Maybe because she suspected you weren’t trustworthy. Something you proved as soon as you went nuclear on her,” Max said.
Eli and Jericho looked at Max while Oliver winced. “What?” Max asked unapologetically. “We were all thinking it.”
Oliver sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Where did you put her?” Jericho asked. “We can go clear this up right now.”
At that, Oliver’s head snapped up. “What do you mean where did I put her?”
Eli frowned. “The guards you called for reported that she wasn’t in the apartment when they arrived.”
Oliver swayed.
Jericho reached out and grabbed his arm, steadying him. “All right, just relax,” he said. “We’ll find her.
“She left me,” Oliver whispered.
“Well, yeah,” Max said. “I heard you yell get out all the way in my apartment.”
“Seriously, Max,” Eli hissed.
Max shrugged. “What, we don’t tell the truth now?”
Oliver didn’t have time for this. He started walking toward the apartment, but he only made it a few steps before he realized the other three were still following him. He stopped and looked over his shoulder, raising his eyebrows.
“Tracker,” Jericho said. “Better than you.”
That Oliver conceded with a nod.
�
��Notifier of douche-baggery,” Max said. “Saver of your ass.”
Eli nodded Max’s direction. “What he said.”
Not willing to take the time to talk them out of this, Oliver simply turned around and took off again. With her skill set, Farrah could be long gone by now….
They arrived at Oliver’s apartment, and he stormed inside, calling Farrah’s name as he went. When her name echoed through the empty space, Oliver heard the desperation in it and couldn’t even muster a wince. He was desperate.
“Not here.” Oliver turned toward Jericho.
The man was already surveying the carpet and following an invisible path at the door. Farrah didn’t leave the apartment very often, and for the first time, Oliver realized what a stroke of luck that was. If Jericho was able to find her footsteps out in the hallway, they could at least get an indication of which way she went.
Jericho walked out into the hallway, but immediately stopped. “I’m sorry, man. Her trail goes cold immediately.”
Oliver’s heart sank. No luck. He was sick and tired of it.
Jericho tilted his head to the side. “That’s funny. I don’t remember Farrah smelling like…is that lollipops?” Jericho wrinkled his nose.
Oliver froze. “Oh, shit!” He spun and grabbed Max by his shirt, jerking him forward. “Anahita. Where is she?”
Max’s eyes widened. “Anahita!” he called.
In a second, Anahita appeared a few feet away. “Max?” she said, stumbling forward, her eyes switching to gold, her gaze roving her lover’s body for harm.
Oliver strode toward her. “Please, please tell me you took Farrah back to Afghanistan.” Please. It was something he never thought he’d say, and he’d never prayed harder than he did in the two seconds it took Anahita to realize the situation.
Her eyes switched back to blue, and she walked toward them. “Oh, Oliver,” she said softly. “I did not. She is gone?” When she stood a few inches away, she jerked to a stop. She inhaled deeply through her nose, and the closest thing to panic Oliver had ever seen in her crossed the implacable angel’s face.
“It’s the demon, isn’t it?” Oliver muttered.
Jericho frowned. “Demons smell like lollipops?”
“At least one does,” Oliver said.
“One has definitely been here,” Anahita confirmed. “I can still feel its energy.” Her blue eyes met Oliver’s. “I am so very sorry, Oliver.”
That one statement, filled with such sympathy, sent Oliver crashing to his knees and then careening forward until he was holding himself up with his hands on the tile. His stomach heaved, and he barely kept its contents down. “No,” he moaned. She couldn’t be…
“Is she dead?” Jericho asked somewhere above his head.
“If she is not,” Anahita said, “she may wish she were.”
There was no stopping it this time. Oliver pitched forward further and vomited on the floor. He caught his breath only to vomit again.
A hand landed softly on his head. “Come on, brother,” Jericho said in a rumbling voice. The other man helped Oliver to his feet in a series of stumbles, stops, and starts, and when Oliver was finally upright, black dots swam through his vision.
“Ah, God, Farrah.” His voice broke off, and he felt tears stinging his eyes.
“You heard exactly what I heard,” Jericho whispered for Oliver alone. “She may be alive. So we go get her, you feel me?” Jericho jostled Oliver in a way that made the dizziness worse. “You cannot give up yet, or you won’t be as strong as you need to be for what comes next.”
Oliver gulped air, all his lungs could hold, but it still wasn’t enough. He managed to look at Anahita through bleary eyes.
“The demons have acted,” she said gravely. “The apocalypse is underway, and the angels will fight for her, Oliver. You have my word.”
At this, Oliver straightened. “I will fight for her.” With Jericho’s help, he regained his balance. “I will,” he repeated, his voice a fierce growl.
If someone was going to save Farrah, it was going to be him. It would be his voice she heard, even if that may not be comforting to her at the moment.
At the thought of the things he’d said and done to her such a short time ago, Oliver nearly lost his strength again, but he gritted his teeth. So, he’d been an ass. When he rescued her, she might kick him to the curb. But at least she’d be alive to do so, if she hadn’t already been….
He cut that line of thought off. No. She was still alive. She had to be.
“You’d know it if she was dead,” Jericho said, somehow anticipating what was going through Oliver’s mind. “Trust me on this. Losing your lunch in the hallway is nothing compared to what you would feel.”
Jericho lost his first Impulse Mate shortly after finding her about a decade ago. The man spoke from experience.
Oliver nodded curtly, more than thankful for the man’s support. He looked at Anahita again. “So, we go to war?”
Anahita ducked her chin, meeting his gaze head-on. “We already have.”
26
Farrah swallowed hard. “Has…Oliver…sold me to you?” she asked haltingly and through a voice so thick there was no hiding the tears.
The other woman’s voice was beautiful in the most haunting, bone-chilling manner. Farrah shuddered each time she answered one of Farrah’s questions, but Farrah couldn’t stop asking them. She had no other way to gauge where her enemy was and what was happening. Her body tensed as she waited for an answer.
“In a way.”
Farrah made a noise akin to being punched in the stomach. Oliver had sold her? Just like the others.
What does he want in return just switched to What does she want in return. This mystery woman had motives, and Farrah needed to figure them out, but she was so weary: weary of the question, weary of a life in which she had to constantly ask it, weary of life in general.
“What do you want?” Farrah asked, shocking even herself. Apparently, she was so done that she no longer asked that question internally only.
“Depends,” the stranger said, her voice coming from a different location. She was moving around. Farrah began making a mental map of her location. If this woman was walking around the perimeter of a room, it was fairly large. Plenty of elbow space for a fight.
She’d play along. “Depends on what?”
“Did that human trust you enough to tell you any of his secrets?”
Human? Oh, dear God, her attacker felt the need to differentiate?
Farrah jerked her chin up and forced all the bravado she could into her posture. Never show weakness.
Oliver had revealed secrets to her. Several of them. Secrets that other lives depended on. She bit into her bottom lip. He kept nothing from her; she on the other hand, had kept everything from him.
For the first time, she tried to see that final confrontation in the apartment from Oliver’s perspective. A secretive woman unwilling to divulge any personal information except her name huddled in the corner over a piece of fruit many would kill indiscriminately over who then refused to explain why she had the fruit or what her intentions were?
A shiver coursed through Farrah. Balls, she thought, reverting to a word Oliver often used. She…may have had something to do with that fight.
And now, this woman was trying to pry secrets from her because Oliver had sold her….
Wait. This didn’t add up. He’d sold her; but this woman-thing wanted his secrets. While those two things weren’t necessarily the most incompatible scenarios, they didn’t mesh well, either. She couldn’t picture Oliver selling anything to a probable enemy.
“What did you mean, Oliver sold me in a way?” Farrah asked, tilting her head while trying desperately to stifle the flare of hope warming her chest.
The woman sighed. “My sweet immortal, that’s not how this works. You desire information without giving any of your own?” She clicked her tongue. “Your manners are appalling.”
Farrah made sure to keep her expression emotio
nless as she poured through the possibilities. Self-preservation, a force stronger than any other through sheer cultivation and opportunity for use, urged her to throw all of Oliver’s secrets at her feet. The man had—may have—sold her; his secrets were not hers to guard.
Yet, she did not even contemplate sharing anything with this woman. “I am sorry,” Farrah said. “Oliver did not share anything with me. I was simply his whore.”
The woman smacked her lips. “Mmm, how I do savor lies.”
Somehow, this woman knew Farrah was lying, not just guessing. What was she? Farrah leaned back as she felt the woman close in. She swallowed and tried to keep from trembling as she braced for an attack.
Farrah jumped as something touched her cheek. The woman gently stroked her finger along Farrah’s jaw. “Such a pretty, pretty face,” the woman whispered. “How I will regret maiming it.”
The woman’s threat calmed her instead of driving her into a panicked frenzy. So, that is the way it is to be, she thought. A good man’s secrets—and even now, Farrah knew Oliver was a good man—or a bad woman’s mercy.
That was really no choice at all, was it?
Knowing that the hours ahead—even years thanks to her new immortality—would be more difficult than she wanted to even think about in the moment, Farrah straightened. “We all do what we have to do.”
The woman gasped. “Magnificent,” she breathed. Her finger continued to stroke Farrah’s jaw. “I do believe that man will come to regret you as I send you back to him piece by piece.”
Farrah resisted flinching from the soft touch. It is only fair, she thought. I will come to regret him, too.
***
“The entrance to Hell is where?” They were busily arming themselves, but Oliver paused in the middle of checking a clip to gaze at Anahita. Surely he misheard her.
Of Blind Fate (Operation: Middle of the Garden Book 5) Page 20