Friend, he decided. A foe wouldn’t make himself at home. He relaxed and pushed open the back door, which was never locked. Compared to his Malibu neighbors, his house was a modest beach shack. Potential thieves could see for themselves through the many doors and windows that there was nothing valuable worth knocking off. Just to drive the point home, he left his doors unlocked. They were welcome to toss the place if they thought he was holding out on them. If they did, they’d still find nothing. If they tried it when he was home, though….
Instead of heading directly to the bathroom off his bedroom, Marcus hooked a towel out of the guest bathroom by the back door and toweled off right there in the passageway. As he worked, he heard a voice rise over the sound of the television. “What do you mean, he’ll be fragile?...I know the fucking release date is three months away. I’m making the damn thing….No, you don’t understand. I have to have Patrick now. There is a mountain of pre-release publicity…Of course he has to do it! I’ve put it off as long as I could…Right…No, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here at the end of this phone. Give me good news, huh? Please?”
Then the sound of a cellphone being tossed onto his coffee table.
Marcus knew who was waiting for him, now. Kate Lindenstream, the golden girl of Hollywood and his assignment. He blew out his breath. After a year of handling her, he still didn’t know her all that well, which was odd. He usually had a basic understanding of the inner drives of his assignees within the first meeting or two.
He pulled his shirt back on and took the towel with him into the main living room. Kate looked up as he entered. “You’re late,” she told him.
“You’re early,” he returned mildly.
“You always leave your house unlocked?”
“Yep.” He dropped the towel onto the seat of the armchair opposite her and sat in it. “In the seven years I’ve been living in Malibu, I haven’t been robbed once.” He pointed over his head. “Caspar has been hit four times.” He pointed over Kate’s head. “Jerry and Jesus have had their house trashed so many times they now use private security.”
“I didn’t realize Jerry Mancini lived out here,” Kate said. Her phone buzzed and she picked it up and turned off, then pushed it into the back pocket of her jeans. She straightened up and tossed her long golden hair back over her shoulder. She was a lovely woman, but Marcus still didn’t understand the media hysteria and hype surrounding her.
“Shall we get this over with? I’ve got a really full day of looping ahead,” she said.
“I heard,” Marcus said mildly. “Why is Patrick Sauvage still fragile? Has he been on another bender?”
She pursed her lips together for a minute, making the fullness thin. “Patrick was turned eight months ago. Normally, a freshly minted vampire is kept away from places where humans congregate until the vampire has learned how to control his impulses and can deal with humans as something other than food. Nial thinks Patrick isn’t ready yet.” She gave another small grimace. “He had addiction issues before he was turned, that he never properly learned how to control. The lack of control could be an issue now.”
Marcus felt his chest tighten.
She shrugged. “You asked the question,” she reminded him. She must have spotted his tension. Observing tiny changes in human expression was part of her day-time profession. She tilted her head. “Why did you accept the assignment as my controller, if you find the idea of vampires so disturbing? They must have warned you I was living with two of them.”
“They mentioned it,” Marcus replied.
Kate studied him a moment longer, then smiled. “You didn’t believe them, did you? You still think vampires are a myth.”
He shifted uncomfortably, then got to his feet. “I’ve never met one,” he said flatly. “But it’s hard to dismiss them as a fairytale when the CIA forms an entire fucking unit to deal with them and with this grand coming-out plan the vampires have.”
“You’re not in that unit,” Kate pointed out.
He shook his head and reached over to flip open the ceramic box sitting on the coffee table and pulled out the half-finished joint from last night and the lighter. He sat back.
“I really wish you wouldn’t,” Kate said, as he flicked the lighter on.
“You don’t strike me as the square type,” Marcus told her.
“This time last year, I might have joined you,” Kate replied. “But I have to be careful, now, what I let into my bloodstream.”
He lowered the lighter, while he struggled to identify how he felt about that. “You let them feed from you?” he asked carefully, and shook his head. “That sounds fucking surreal.”
“Feed, no. I don’t have time to recover my energy the way I would need to after a feeding. But Micheil and Roman bite me often during sex and they taste my blood that way. If I’ve had a drink, they get instantly drunk and usually sick afterwards. I have no idea what weed would do to them.”
Marcus tossed the joint and lighter back into the dish and dropped the lid with a sharp snap. He sat back and blew out his breath.
“Again…” Kate said.
“Yeah, I asked. My big mouth.”
“Perhaps you should meet them,” Kate suggested. “It might help you…relax.”
“I’m plenty relaxed. I don’t need to meet them until I have to. It’s not part of my job description.”
“Your job is to coordinate my work for the CIA,” Kate reminded him. “My work, right now, is almost all about the vampires.”
“Because you had the bad form to sleep with two of them,” Marcus pointed out. “At the same time. Now the world can’t seem to focus on anything else but your domestic arrangements.” He pointed to the TV, which was still running. The early morning entertainment section was running footage of Kate and her two partners leaving some unnamed event, probably from last night. Marcus scowled at the screen as the camera zoomed in on the happy, smiling threesome, lingering on how the two men rested both their hands on her waist. The voice-over was exclaiming in high pitched excitement that Kate was the world’s sexiest woman. But his gaze kept pulling back to the two men. The two vampires. “Calum Garrett,” he said. “I can’t believe he’s one. The world is going to go ballistic when they hear that.”
“Probably not,” Kate said. “There are bigger names than Micheil who plan on stepping out on D-Day.”
Marcus turned off the TV, using the remote. “Who?” he asked flatly.
“Obviously, Patrick is one. But do you really want to know right now?” she asked gently.
He thought about it. Garrett bothered him for reasons he still hadn’t figured out, but he knew it had something to do with the lying and deception the man’s – the vampire’s – entire life had incorporated. Marcus frowned. “Maybe you can tell me later, then.”
Kate smiled. It was a knowing expression. “Very well,” she said easily. “I don’t have much to report this week.”
“The League still notable for its absence?” he asked.
“Four weeks now and we haven’t spotted a hint of a trail for any of their known members. They’ve gone to ground. It’s worrying Nial, although he nearly always looks calm.”
“He knows you’re reporting in to us, doesn’t he?”
“He knew before I knew he knew.” Kate grinned. “There’s not much that gets by him, especially now he’s got that biological computer next to him.”
“You mean the English dude. Cyneric.” Even their names were strange. Cyneric. Micheil. Nial.
Kate’s grin broadened. “You want to be uneasy around vampires, Marcus? He’s one you’d be justified getting the jitters over. He’s freaky. When we were at Nial’s two days ago, he took one look at me. Just one. Then he said I needed to call my tailor about the dress for last night. It was going to need repairs.”
Marcus thought about it. “Thread on your clothes? But that could have been from anywhere.”
“It was thread, but it was a long length of thread that had been creased into the pat
tern that a commercial blind hemmer makes. The end had caught on one of the studs of my jeans and unraveled. It was apricot colored thread, and it was very fine, the sort they use on those machines. I was carrying the shoes that go with it. Apricot shoes. He put it all together and told me to call my tailor.” She smiled again. “Freaky, as I said.”
“There are really people out there that do that Sherlock Holmes shit?” Marcus asked.
“The Sherlock Holmes shit is something he does for fun. Like drinking. What Rick really does is extrapolate the future from events and occurrences that he’s seen, heard about or that someone reports back to him. He’s so good at it you’d think he was divining the future like wizards are supposed to. That’s when it goes from freaky to outright nightmare stuff.” She licked her lips, her smile fading. “When he’s relaxed, he sometimes reveals what he sees coming up…and it’s not fun stuff. It’s not happy times.”
“There’s a big surprise,” Marcus muttered and combed his fingers through his rapidly drying hair, pushing it out of his eyes. “Humanity has been circling the bowl for three generations, already. Something’s gotta give.”
“You’re as bad as he is,” she chided. “Very positive and sunny, both of you.”
He scowled. “Did you know that they moved the hand on the Doomsday Clock up another minute, last week? Those are reasonable, logical and future-oriented scientists pushing that clock around. We’re sitting at four minutes to midnight, now. I have no idea what the revelation about vampires will do to the thing, but I guarantee it won’t sit still and it won’t go backwards, either.” He blew out a breath and watched a sailboard move across the waves and disappear from his view.
“You’re not a very typical CIA operative, are you?” she asked.
“I’ve been told,” he growled. “What, you want a suit and a boy scout haircut?” He ruffled his hair again. It was shaggy and if he wore a collar he’d probably have to untuck the back of his hair out of the way of the collar. It was time to think about getting it cut. Maybe.
“My last coordinator always wore a suit. Even in summer. Tie and all.”
“Yeah, coz that would fit right in here on Surfrider Beach.”
“But you’re not wearing a disguise to assimilate. You’re living the life,” Kate pointed out. “They told me you were…well, different.”
The tension was back in his chest. “You should be fucking grateful, Lindenstream. Your last coordinator asked to have you reassigned because he couldn’t stomach your…friends.”
The faintest blush colored her high cheekbones and her eyes glittered, telling him the blush was anger, not embarrassment. “They’re my lovers, not my friends,” she snapped. “If I could figure out a way to marry both of them I would, so even ‘lover’ doesn’t do it justice. Their names are Calum and Roman and I wish the fuck you’d use their names instead of just calling them ‘them’ all the time. For a long haired, pot-smoking surfer-hippy, you aren’t nearly as laid back as you seem to think you are. You have issues you should deal with and stop venting yourself all over me.”
He leaned forward. “You’re no prize catch either, lady. Do you know how close the CIA came to doing something about you, last year?” He nodded as her eyes widened slightly. “Yeah, figured not,” he added dryly. He held up his thumb and forefinger. “You were this close to being dealt with in some way. Fifteen years were invested in you and for fifteen years you paid out squat in return. Then, you’re suddenly getting cozy with vampires.” He shook his head. “You went AWOL, and don’t give me the same line you gave the section chief about how you couldn’t untangle from the end of production while the world’s entire media corps was on your doorstep, because you grew up with a camera in your face, so you know how to handle the paparazzi just fine.” He shook his head. “You did a bunk. You were going to go native, or whatever the hell you call it when you throw your lot in with the vampires. I know you were. You know you were. McLaren suspects, too, which is why when your handler tried to scoop you off his shoe last year because he didn’t like your smell, McLaren allowed it.”
Kate swallowed. Her eyes were very big.
“You’re lucky you got me,” he told her. “I’m damned good at my job and I happen to think the length of my hair has no fucking bearing on bringing down bad guys. So you should just suck that up along with the stench of my mull, and my wariness around vampires, because I’m all you’ve got. No one else wants you.”
She sat as still as marble for nearly sixty seconds. Her gaze drilled right through him. “If I’m so radioactive, then why would McLaren give me to you, if you’re so good? It’s a waste.”
Hot words pressed against the back of his teeth, but Marcus held them back because she wasn’t looking at him yet and he wanted her undivided attention.
“I think you were good,” she added. “Maybe you still are. I don’t know. But something happened a while ago and now the CIA thinks you’re radical. A loose cannon. You’re under a black cloud. That’s why you got me, because I’m under the same black cloud.” Her gaze sharpened as she focused on him. “I bet you used to wear the suits. I bet you were as AJ squared-away as my last handler. You probably have a row of medals. Hell, you were probably the golden boy, destined to climb the corporate ladder in record speed.”
All his anger evaporated. His heart was trying to hurl itself out of his chest. Damn, she was good. “You’re too used to wrapping everything up inside fairytales,” he told her. “Not everyone has a romantic story driving them along.”
“No?” She got to her feet, her gaze sweeping around the room.
“Looking for something?”
“Medals,” she said flatly. “They’re here somewhere, but they won’t be tucked away nice and safe. You’ll have tossed them into a corner…”
She was close to the kitchen, looking around. Marcus’ throat tried to close down. “Even if there was a story, I can’t tell you. You know the drill,” he said, forcing himself to a casual, I-don’t-give-a-fuck tone.
“There’s a story,” she said as she did a lazy circuit around the living room. She wasn’t opening anything. She was taking it all in. “If I find the medals, you have to tell me the location of your last active posting.”
Just toss her out on her ass. Over and done, he told himself.
She smiled, looking at the kitchenette, then turned on her expensive heels and headed for it.
Something like panic grabbed at his chest. “You should leave,” he told her. “I have another appointment in five minutes.”
“I was early. You wouldn’t have set a time so close to when I would normally leave and risk having us meet. It’s bad security.” She opened the second drawer in the island and pushed the mess of utensils, spoons and spatulas aside. Then she smiled and reached into the back corner. She held up the flat black box. “Gotcha,” she said and opened it. Her smile faltered. “Damn, there are even more of them than I thought.”
Marcus flexed to his feet. “Okay. Show’s over. You’re in movies, you know what happens next. Find the exit and scram.”
She closed the lid on the box gently and placed it on the counter. Her hand rested on it briefly, then she headed toward the open doors on the balcony. There was a set of stairs from the balcony that climbed down to a narrow path that ended up at the public car park behind the beach-front housing. She stopped at the door, holding back the billowing curtain with one hand and brushing her hair out of her eyes as the breeze tossed it about. She was tall, slender, blonde and heart-breakingly beautiful. She was also as sharp as a tack and absolutely no one’s fool, of which Marcus had just been reminded. She was holding the attention of two males whom she had vaguely hinted had lived for centuries, so their boredom quotient would be very high. Kate was more than she appeared, in all ways.
“Where was your last assignment?” she asked. “Come on, you owe me.”
He could tell her to fuck off. He could point out that he hadn’t actually agreed to tell her anything. He could even quote the rulebook
at her again. But it would kill the tiny kernel of a relationship that had just been sowed over the last few minutes.
Kate had been right on just about every point in her ”fairy tale”, but she had passed over the factor that had really got his ass kicked to Schenectady in disgrace; too much interfering empathy for his subject is what his official file said. But his ease with relationships and feelings and slippery human factors in situations where other anal agents overlooked such things had been in part what made him so good. Until it had hit the fan, his superiors had liked that he had such a way with people. It made their jobs a shit-load easier, until they suddenly disliked the results.
So Marcus knew he had to meet Kate half-way right now, or else kill off any hope of building the sort of intimacy that a handler and operative needed to get the job done. He would mutilate the skerrick of confidence in him that she had developed and she would forever keep her guard up and make decisions about what to disclose to him. She would hold back.
It took all the oxygen in his lungs to get it out. “Tangier.”
“Morocco?” She smiled a little. “I’ve only ever had shitty luck when I’m there, too. They shut down my movie, once.” She tilted her head again. It was a gentle, wise look. “You know I can get the rest from that, don’t you?”
He knew. His heart knew. His blood pressure knew. He nodded. “But I didn’t tell you, at least.”
She smiled again, a sunny, happy expression, and pulled out her cellphone. “Next week,” she said, confirming their regular meeting. Then she strode across the balcony, down the stairs and was gone.
After a while, Marcus realized his skin was dry and itching from the sea salt. He stirred and went to take a shower before his next meeting. He stopped to fire up his cellphone on the way past the kitchen counter to check who it was he was meeting with next.
He couldn’t seem to get his mind to move out of the deep track it was in. Old ghosts were circling. How had she analyzed him so accurately? Perhaps she was better at this job than he’d assumed.
Blood Unleashed (Blood Stone) Page 7