Except Rick couldn’t dispute that she had set this up in the first place by priming Dominic. That left the all-inclusive ‘Why?’ to be answered.
She gave him a small smile. “You’re the one person in this entire country that I can talk to,” she said.
“Why is that?” he asked.
“You don’t discount the truth when it stares you in the face, no matter how much you dislike it.”
“I’m going to dislike your answers?” he asked, then realized he had virtually committed himself to giving her the audience she had requested.
“They’re not the answers you want,” she said.
“How do you know what I want?” he asked cautiously, although her assurance that he wouldn’t like her answers made him relax just a little. If she was playing out an agenda, then she would have given him exactly the answers he did want in order to keep him cooperative. He studied her. “Truth is a dangerous tool to use,” he warned her. “It can slip and cut you to the bone.”
“I’ll heal,” she replied lightly. “Just as you will.” She glanced around the garage. “We should leave here soon.” Again, the urgent tone was back.
He was about to ask “why?” again, but stopped himself. She would undoubtedly tell him she would explain why once they were back in his apartment, using his need to know as leverage to get what she wanted.
But then she did the unexpected again. She picked up his hand. “Come. The longer we stay here, the more dangerous it becomes.”
Everything she said, everything she did, generated more and more questions. She was a riddle in size five shoes. Still puzzling over her vast array of baffling inconsistencies, it took Rick a moment to realize that she was leading him toward the elevator.
He picked up his pace and stepped ahead of her. On the outside chance that she did intend grievous bodily harm, he refused to meekly follow her to his doom.
* * * * *
Stone Canyon Road in Bel Air was an ode to stratosphere level spending. The opulence seemed to scream at Marcus as he drove around the gentle curves, trying to spot house numbers and not run into any pedestrians or cars. His attention kept being snagged by yet another spectacular residence, or limited edition car, or simply the view down the hill that he could glimpse between houses.
Finally, he saw a plain brick fence on the right, with big brass numbers telling him he’d found the address. The fence was high and so were the gates blocking the drive. He could barely see the house beyond the fence, except for a brown tiled roof. It was very low key and private.
He locked the car, although his old BMW looked less than enticing sitting on this street of all streets, and walked over to the gates. There was an intercom, which he had guessed would be there. He pressed the button and waited.
“Yo,” came the short response, thirty seconds later. A male voice, but there hadn’t been enough syllables in the response to identify the speaker.
“Hi. Um. Is Kate home? I need to talk to her. This is Marcus Anderson.”
“Marcus?” There was a pause. “Kate’s coordinator? Don’t you meet at your place?”
It had to be Garrett he was talking to, for the speaker clearly didn’t recognize him.
“It’s complicated,” Marcus said, suppressing the need to sigh.
“Is it anything to do with what you spoke to Roman about last week?” That proved it was Garrett.
“Indirectly.”
Again, the silence. Then, “You’d better come in.”
The gate gave a low buzz and there was the sound of something metallic and heavy sliding. The left side of the gate swung open a few inches. Marcus opened it up enough to step through, then swung it closed behind him. There was a solid thud of metal that told him it had relocked itself.
The drive swept past the side of the house, but a secondary drive branched off from it and curved in front of the house. Marcus followed that curve to the steps that climbed to the porch.
The front door opened as he stepped up to it. Kate stood there in slender trousers and a fine sweater than clung to every curve. She was barefoot and her hair was caught up in a rough ponytail, like she had pulled it up and away from her face absent-mindedly. “This is unexpected,” she observed, with a small smile. “It couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”
Tomorrow, he realized, was Thursday. Kate had been one of those he had rescheduled for later in the week. She thought this was about normal business.
He pushed his hand through his hair, reaching for a sane way to tell her why he was here. Then he blew out his breath as no words came to him. “It’s…this is….” He shook his head. “I’m breaking about a dozen different codes and laws just standing here, and I’m probably about to break a few more in the next while, but that doesn’t add up to half of what I’ve already done the last week.”
Her eyes narrowed, the green glittering. “Come in,” she said, standing aside. “It sounds like you need to talk.”
He stepped past her, into the house. Warmth fanned his face, telling him how cool the late afternoon had grown. Kate shut the door and led him across the elegant foyer, past carpeted stairs, and into a kitchen/family/casual dining area. The roof soared twenty feet, and was vaulted with dark heavy beams. Black marble covered the counters and the big island in the kitchen area, while the same dark wood made up the cabinetry. Lights shone pools of light onto the marble counters, from under the overhead cabinets.
There were a pair of sofas pulled up in front of a Craftsman style fireplace made of stone. A large flat screen TV was mounted over the top of it. The dining area had no lights turned on, but there was a large table and Windsor chairs surrounding it.
It was a cozy and welcoming place, despite the tall ceiling and big glass windows.
Calum Garrett sat at one end of the big island, paperwork spread out in front of him, a cellphone weighing down one pile, and a tablet computer sitting near his left hand. Marcus recognized Garrett from television and magazine coverage. He seemed taller than Marcus had taken him for, although he was sitting on a high stool, so the height might be deceiving. The man’s hair glowed a burnished red under the lights, glinting gold as he lifted his head.
Kate held out her hand toward Garrett. “This is Calum Garrett, Marcus. Micheil, meet Marcus Anderson.”
Garrett raised a brow. He didn’t put out his hand in the normal knee-jerk reaction to being introduced to someone. Kate had told him, then, of Marcus’ uneasiness around vampires.
Marcus drew in a hard breath, walked over to the man and stuck out his hand. “It’s good to meet you,” he said, sincerely.
Garrett gripped his hand. Not too hard, not lightly. He shook it briefly while he studied Marcus. “Is that right?” he asked, then glanced at Kate. From the corner of his eye, Marcus caught Kate’s tiny shrug.
“You have no idea,” Marcus replied to Garrett. “I’ve had a very interesting week.”
“Speaking of which,” Kate said. “Marcus, why don’t we step into my study? It’s private there.”
Marcus pressed his hand against the counter. He was tired. He hadn’t slept much since Ilaria had left, and it was catching up with him. “Do you mind if we talk here?” he asked.
Garrett glanced at Kate again. Then he started collecting his paperwork together. “No problems—”
“Please, stay,” Marcus told him. “I think you’d better hear this, too.”
Garrett lowered himself back onto the stool, studying him, while Kate pulled up another stool and settled on it. She patted the stool that sat between her and Garrett, who sat around the corner. “Talk,” she said.
Marcus sat on the stool, which was just the right height to put his feet on the ground if he wanted to, or he could bend his knees and rest his feet on the bronze foot rail running around the front of the island.
Kate had her toes on the cross bar of the stool itself, which was a little higher than the foot rail. She reached for a half full coffee cup that sat in front of Marcus.
Marcus pressed his hand
s flat on the cool marble. “I don’t know where to start,” he confessed.
“You were fine when I saw you last Tuesday,” Kate said. “What happened since then?”
He shook his head. “It started before then. It started Tuesday morning.”
“What happened Tuesday morning?” Garrett asked.
“One of the best snipers in the world took a shot at me.”
Garrett grew very still. It was a highly controlled reaction that Marcus recognized. “They missed?” he asked after a distinct pause.
That punched his buttons for some reason. Marcus drew in a breath, marshalling his thoughts. “Your reaction says you’re the right people to tell this to.”
Kate pressed her lips together. There was a tiny furrow between her brows. “So tell us,” she said.
Marcus told them. He held nothing back. Handing over information that belonged to the state was a small transgression, compared to the various misdeeds he had already committed. He felt no shame about what had happened, or embarrassment. Both of those emotions had been wiped away by stronger emotions, which he still wasn’t sure he could name. His compound and puzzling reaction to Ilaria had kept him awake these past two nights.
There was another thought-filled silence when Marcus ran out of things to say. Kate was looking at Garrett. “You know something about this, Micheil?”
“I might,” Garrett said. His gaze was on Marcus. “What do you want to do about it?” he asked.
“Honestly, I have no fucking clue,” Marcus confessed. “Because she is a vampire, it puts this into a realm I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. I need options.”
Kate shrugged. “That’s easy. Hand her over to your boss and walk away.”
“That’s what I should do,” Marcus agreed.
“You could bring her in to us,” Garrett suggested. “She’s either League or Libertatus, and Nial will want to speak to her.”
“If I could find her again. If she comes back.” That thought added stress to his already laboring heart. He swallowed, trying to damn all the uneasiness and guilt back where he didn’t have to deal with it. “She cut me out of the pack. She made sure I was independent before she told me anything important. Why would she do that? It can only be because she doesn’t trust the CIA. That means I can’t trust them, either.” He looked directly at Garrett. “Do you have people on the inside there?”
Garrett’s face didn’t move so much as a millimeter. He stared back. “We don’t have people in there, that I know about. I can’t speak for the League, but the Libertatus seems to be made up of power holders – politicians, senior government officials in all the departments, in all countries. It seems reasonable to assume that they probably have someone in the CIA. Several someones, most likely.”
“Why do you care about who is who in the CIA, anyway?” Kate asked with a reasonable tone. “It isn’t your business and you want no part of it. You owe Ilaria no loyalty at all. If she comes back, then hand her over to the vampire unit and your part is done.”
Marcus pushed his hands through his hair, as his skin prickled painfully hot and his gut cramped. “Would it be possible…could I have some coffee?” he asked her.
There was another small silence while Kate’s brow lifted in surprise.
Then Garrett blew out his breath heavily and loudly. “Jesus and all his merry saints preserve us.” His accent was pure Scots.
“What is it?” Kate asked sharply.
Garrett stood up. “I’ll put coffee together.” He really was as tall as he had first appeared. He probably stood three inches higher than Marcus, which put him well over six feet.
“Micheil?” Kate queried, her tone still sharp.
Garrett turned back to the counter. “Remember the Fettercairn, Kate? Remember why I drank it?”
Kate’s eyes grew large and she glanced at Marcus. Marcus was completely lost. It was an intimate reference to their shared past that he didn’t know.
Garrett shocked Marcus by resting his hand on his shoulder. The long fingers squeezed. “Marcus is here for the same reason I drank the scotch.”
Marcus stared down at the glittering facets in the marble, his heart thundering as he put it together and recognized how accurately Garrett had nailed the thing that had been haunting him for two days.
Ilaria. He wanted her. He wanted her back.
Unexpectedly, his mind flashed upon a moment – her body pressed up against his in the bed. It wasn’t just the sensation of her soft flesh against his that he recalled. He could almost taste her scent, the subtle aroma of her shampoo, the silky glide of her hair over his arm as she shifted her head to a more comfortable position. The touch of her fingers on his face.
Marcus gripped the edges of the counter, trying to disguise his reaction to the memory. His body was throbbing with need.
Kate’s fingers circled his wrist and squeezed. “Relax, Marcus,” she said softly. “We understand.”
“You do?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“More than you know.” She gave him a small smile. “We’ve both been where you are right now.” Her gaze flickered toward Garrett and her expression softened and became warmer, just for a moment. It gave Marcus a glimpse into a possible reason why Kate Lindenstream had captured the hearts and minds of two of the most powerful vampires in the country.
He sheered away from that line of reasoning. He wasn’t falling in love with Ilaria. That was ridiculous. He’d known her three days and besides, she was a vampire… He tried hard to recall why he had found the idea of vampires so distasteful. Ilaria was a delight. Roman had impressed him and Garrett’s quiet air of authority and experience was strangely reassuring.
Marcus looked at Kate, as Garrett set about making two cups of espresso with a competent air. Kate wore a small smile.
“I’m being sucked into this, aren’t I?” Marcus said.
“Sucked into what?”
“This. Your world. Vampires. Your little civil war.”
“There’s nothing little about it,” Garrett said, speaking with his back turned.
“There’s not much that is civil about it, either,” Kate added. “But why does that idea bother you? It’s not vampires, exactly, unless you are a hypocrite enough to bed one and still hate the rest?”
Marcus shook his head. “I’m full of flaws, Kate. But hypocrisy is one I hope I don’t have. It’s not that.”
Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Is it what happened in Tangier?” she asked.
Marcus glanced away, down at the marble again. Her question tripped off a cascade of the old memories. Tangier and the smell of spices and dirty harbor water. France, and a barn roasting in a hot August sun. Karelia and the cold. Above all, the cold, and the high whistling note of the wind among the tree tops in the darkest hour of the night. He shivered, his arms breaking out in goose bumps, as the smell of the snow, the crisp sharp air bathing his face and the horrible, death-filled silence….
“Marcus?”
He blinked and looked at Kate. “I’m sorry. You were saying?”
Her head tilted to one side as she watched him. “You just answered my question, anyway. How long have you been fighting the memories?”
“Excuse me?” His heart was thudding. Hurting. It was always like this after the memories swamped him, but there was an added dollop of ache in there because of her question.
“Your mind went somewhere else for nearly thirty seconds. I watched you. I’m assuming it was Tangier and whatever happened there. I could have picked your wallet and you wouldn’t have noticed.”
“I would have noticed that,” he assured her.
“When were you in Tangiers?” she asked.
He drew in a breath, trying to corral his runaway pulse. “I can’t,” he told her. “Even if it wasn’t classified, I couldn’t tell you, anyway.”
“Leave it, Kate,” Garrett said, sitting back on his stool. “Marcus… Can I call you that?”
“Everyone does except my supervisor.”
<
br /> “Thank you.” He threaded his fingers together in a loose knot, resting his hands on the pile of paperwork in front of him. “Ilaria is known to us.”
Marcus nodded slowly, considering it. “That makes sense,” he said. “She’s known to intelligence groups around the world, she has a global reputation. But no one knows she is a woman. They don’t have any pictures of her. They don’t have anything but her alias and a growing list of achievements.”
“The Whisper,” Garrett added. “We have reason to believe she’s targeting Nial Aquila, who leads the revolutionaries. Us.” He flexed his fingers and closed the fists again. “That technically makes her an enemy.”
Marcus’ chest tightened. He knew what Garrett was leading up to. “No,” he said flatly.
“You’re already a part of this,” Garrett pointed out. “All that is left is for you to pick the right side. Help us neutralize her.”
“No,” he said again. The mass in his chest was expanding. His stomach stirred and sweat prickled under his arms and at his temples.
“You really don’t want us to consider you a problem, do you?” Garrett asked. His tone was reasonable and quiet. Polite, even.
Marcus stared at him, formless noise battering his ears, stealing his hearing. But in his head, he heard the midnight wind…and Carlson’s drawl. “Time to choose, Anderson. Choose well. I don’t want to have to clean up what is left of you if you don’t….” His stomach cramped hard and he lurched to his feet, stumbling. “Bathroom,” he whispered.
Kate pointed.
Marcus hurried across the room to the door next to the fireplace and let himself into the half-bath and locked the door. That was all he had time for. He staggered to the toilet and fell to his knees in front of it, and vomited until his eyes ached.
Ilaria. He had sent her back to the wolves. Was he creating Karelia all over again?
Chapter Fifteen
Rick dropped his keys onto the sideboard and shut the door, while Ilaria circled the room, examining it.
“You’ve been here before,” Rick reminded her. “You didn’t take the opportunity to pry into every corner while you were unobserved?”
Blood Unleashed (Blood Stone) Page 16