by Addison Fox
The nausea that had filled her stomach when Quinn informed her about Laura and Tony rose again, and leaning forward, she took long, deep breaths to try and calm her body.
“It’s okay, sweetie.” Callie was by her side in a flash, a small wastebasket at the ready.
“No. No, I’m fine.” Montana sat back and allowed Callie to take a seat next to her. The small woman wrapped an arm around her, pulled her close.
“Get it out, sweetheart. It’s okay.”
“It’s my fault.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“It is, Callie. I never got the BlackBerry message. I never checked on him. On any of them. I never thought.”
“Your place has top-of-the-line security, Montana. You couldn’t know.”
“But we did know.” The words fell from her lips, half sob, half accusation. “We did know. We knew we were dealing with an immortal and I never thought to secure my home. My family.”
The sobs racked her body, the grief a living thing inside her chest. Without her knowing it, Quinn came in and relieved Callie, wrapping her up in his big embrace.
“Shhhh. It’s okay.”
Through the pain and the self-recrimination, Montana knew one thing. “It’s not okay, Quinn. Whatever else you say to me, don’t say that.”
“All right. I won’t.”
They sat there for what seemed like forever, but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.
“I’m going to show you something. I need you to make an identification and I need you to understand something.”
She nodded and stood. With exquisitely gentle movements, Quinn leaned down and picked up the blanket where it lay near her feet. “Here. Hold this so you don’t trip.”
She followed him down the hall, huddling deeper into the blanket when she caught sight of the open office door. “I can’t go back in there.”
“We’re not. I want you to look at something on the security monitor.”
“The monitor? But I didn’t leave it on.”
“Jackson did.”
“He what?” Montana let the blanket fall to her waist as she followed Quinn into the small security room that operated everything in the house as well as the cameras that surrounded the apartment building. “How could he have?”
“He’s a smart guy and knew we needed information. Even tied up, he managed to get to the security button, turning the recording on. He didn’t get much and I’m sorry to expose you to what he did record, but the faster we can move on this, the better shot we have of catching this asshole.”
Montana took in the racks of cold metal built into the security room. A wall of screens stood sentinel, capturing the daily life inside and outside the apartment. Although she almost always kept the security off inside the house, Quinn must have turned everything on because the screens lit up like a billboard.
“It’s on tape? Jackson’s last minutes?”
“Yes. And while I’m sorry to say that, he was so brave to help us—to give us this to work from.”
Montana nodded. “Of course he was.”
Quinn settled his hand on her lower back, the motion meant to reassure, and pulled her toward the rolling chair that sat before a computer keyboard. “You’ve got four cameras in that room, each recording on a separate deck. We’re going to watch the camera on his attacker. I need to see if you can ID him.”
“Ohh…okay.”
Montana took a seat in the chair and waited as Quinn fiddled with a few dials. Grief tore through her again, great suffocating waves of it, along with cold terror for what she was about to watch. It clawed at her stomach and she was grateful she’d avoided nearly all of her meal at the benefit.
Quinn stopped fiddling with the machines and turned to her, his gaze understanding yet firm. “I’m sorry to ask you to do this, Montana. Are you sure you’re ready?”
She looked up into his face and saw his concern. Saw it in the deep creases around his eyes, in the harsh line of his jaw, in the tense set of his shoulders. And in that moment, she needed only one thing.
“Tell me something.”
“Anything.”
“Tell me you’re not immune to this,” she whispered, the answer to the question more important than any other she’d ever asked. “Tell me this isn’t just a job anymore.”
With exquisite gentleness, Quinn kneeled down in front of her and pulled the swivel on the chair until he was directly beside her. She felt the press of her knees in the hard wall of his stomach muscles and shifted, opening her legs to straddle him.
His touch gentle—so gentle she barely felt the brush of his fingertips—he ran the pads of his fingers down the side of her face before cupping her cheek.
“This isn’t a job, Montana.” He kissed her forehead.
“It’s not a game or simply a vendetta.” He pressed his lips gently against each eyelid as he murmured each word.
“I will find whoever did this. I will hunt him to the ends of the earth and beyond if I have to. I will keep you safe and I will avenge your loved ones.” Quinn pressed his lips to hers and she felt them tremble.
“I believe you,” she murmured against his lips. “I believe you.”
Chapter Sixteen
Quinn’s eyes never left Montana’s face as she watched the tape. He refused to miss one moment of what she was dealing with. Her pain would be a beacon he could wrap his arms around and hang on to.
He had told her the truth.
He wouldn’t rest until he found the one responsible for this. The threats to her, the deaths of her loved ones—he would see this through, no matter who was involved.
“Oh my God.”
Her sky-blue eyes, red-rimmed from crying, opened wide as she leaned forward toward the bank of security monitors.
“You recognize him?”
“Oh my God.” She whispered the words over and over, her features morphing from grief to shock. She reached forward and hit the pause button. “I know him.”
“You do? How?”
“It’s Arturo Veron. He’s one of the members of my new board of directors.”
Shoulders heaving on a loud sob, Montana dragged the blanket back around her body. “I spoke with him this morning. He’s Jackson’s…”
She broke off, a mix of shock and anger coloring her cheeks a bright red.
“He’s Jackson’s what, Montana?”
“He always flirts with Jackson. I thought maybe…” A loud sob pierced her calm. “I just thought about the two of them and thought maybe he might make a nice boyfriend for Jackson. I don’t care for Arturo personally, but I thought he might make a nice partner. Why’d I think that?”
“You didn’t know. You were only thinking of your friend. Why didn’t you like him?”
Montana shrugged against the heavy blanket. “It’s nothing I can explain, exactly. There’s just something false about him. Artful.”
“Has he done anything to you?”
“You mean up until now?”
“Anything to give you pause? Before now?”
“No, that’s the problem.” Tears welled in her eyes as her breath caught on another heartbreaking sob. “Even this morning, the reason I called him was to thank him for an excellent lead he gave me on a small shipping company in Cartagena. He’s always been a gentleman. But he’s not. He’s a murderer. A murderer I invited into my life. Into my home. He’s even been here before.”
The knowledge Arturo had been in this apartment dropped the last clue into place. “You didn’t do this, Montana.”
“How can you say that?” She flung a hand at the screen before her. “Look what he did to Jackson. Arturo played him.” The words dripped from her lips. Quinn could handle the anger—he could even handle the tears—but the underlying sense of self-recrimination killed him.
“We suspect that’s the case, yes.” Quinn offered quietly. “There’s more to the tape. There’s something else I need you to see.”
Montana reached for the security equipmen
t and toggled back through the scene to watch it again. “That son of a bitch. He knows our routine. Our schedule. I talked to him just this morning and all the while he was planning to fuck with us.”
Quinn’s voice was quiet in the darkened viewing room. “I’m sorry, Montana.”
“I want to play the rest.”
“Of course.”
Quinn wasn’t even aware he was holding his breath as the scene he waited for came on screen. Voices echoed from the speakers embedded in the ceiling and walls.
“She’s innocent.”
“She’s innocent of nothing. And I will not rest until she is dead.”
Montana flinched once at the puzzling words that referenced her, then again as Arturo launched a fireball at Jackson, the man crying out in agony.
And then she saw it.
The large bull that rose up from behind Arturo, filling the screen with menace and a dark evil that was visible, even in two dimensions.
“What? How?” Quinn’s gaze returned to Montana, even as her focus never left the screen. “What is it?”
She flattened herself in the chair as she watched the animal leap and scrabble over the desk, destroying it with its weight.
Quinn flipped the switch before she was subjected to Jackson’s final screams, then turned the unit off entirely so she couldn’t even look at a still image of the carnage.
“What was that?”
“It’s the mark of the Taurus.”
“But how? How do you know that?” Montana pressed herself farther into the seat and with her feet flat on the floor began to propel herself away from him.
“I am a Taurus Warrior and I have a matched animal that sits on my shoulder.”
She kept the chair moving a few more feet before hitting the far wall of the room. “But that’s not possible.” She pointed to the screen. “That’s an animal. A full-grown animal. Where was it? Before the attack, where was it?”
“It lives in Arturo’s aura. He’s a Taurus Warrior, too.”
Her words tripped out on a rush, stumbling and fumbling over one another. “But you should know that. Shouldn’t you have known that? He’s like you. Themis made you both. You should have known.”
“It’s been a long time, Montana. We don’t all get together like some annual meeting of salespeople.”
“But—” She tugged the blanket harder around herself, the pink blush riding high on her cheeks suddenly falling from her face as if she’d fallen ill. “Wait a minute. You just said something. You mean you’ve got one of those, too?”
Raw acid churned in his gut at the fear that covered her as clearly as the cashmere she wrapped so closely around her body. “It’s in my aura. It’s a fighting aid.”
“But he killed with it. That means you can kill with yours, too.”
“It helps me defeat Destroyers and any other threat I take on.”
“But you could. You could turn it against someone. You could turn it against me.”
“Montana.” Quinn moved forward, but she curled in on herself. “You need to listen to me. I’m here to help you. I will help you, as I promised you before. I won’t rest until I find him.”
With a fierceness he didn’t expect given her half-catatonic state, she leaped from the chair, the blanket discarded at her feet. “I was fine before you showed up! You brought this on me. You and these…creatures,” she spat. “You’re not even human. You’re some kind of fucking animal!”
Callie and Ava came running in at the commotion and Quinn eyed them, desperate for someone who could get through to Montana.
“Shhhh, sweetie. It’s all right.” Callie moved toward her, but Montana inched away until her back was against the far wall. “Stay away.”
“Montana—” Callie and Ava both said in unison.
“Stay back! Both of you. None of you are human.”
The women lifted their hands in a gesture to imply they weren’t getting any closer, but both of them shot him a puzzled look.
Quinn ran a hand through his hair. Well, didn’t that just fuck all; they had no idea what to do, either.
Quinn moved closer, his steps soft. “Montana. I need you to listen to me. We’re going to get to the bottom of this and we’re going to get Arturo.”
And then Quinn’s heart broke as he saw the tears that ran freely down her cheeks, her arm up and trembling where she slumped against the wall.
“Please. Please stay away from me.”
Indecision ate at him. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave her there, but the overwhelming number of things they’d thrown at her today had clearly pushed her to the breaking point.
And then Jackson’s death broke her.
“Montana. Please.” Quinn kept his gaze level on hers, willing her to understand. “Please let me help you.”
“Montana.” A soft, ethereal voice floated over all of them from the open doorway. “Listen to the man. He is the only one who can help you.”
They all turned in that direction, but Quinn didn’t need Montana’s next word to explain who stood in the doorway.
“Mother,” Montana exhaled on a cry.
The events of the last hour replayed themselves in her mind on a continuous loop as Montana drew circles with her finger in the design on her duvet.
Jackson, Laura and Tony—all senseless deaths.
The eventual realization that Arturo Veron was behind the attacks.
The unbelievable knowledge that a bull—an honest-to-God bull—lived in? on?—as part of Quinn.
And then her mother’s arrival, at the very moment the entire room likely thought she needed to be committed.
“Fuck,” Montana whispered out loud, the expletive the only suitable word to describe the wildly racing emotions whipping though her system.
“Your father used to use that word and I used to yell at him. I don’t like that language.”
“It seemed like the only suitable response.”
Eirene harrumphed as she settled herself at the foot of Montana’s bed. If it were possible, Eirene looked even more frail than a few days before. The skin over her hands was paper-thin and deep, dark circles set off her eyes. Her tone, however, still bore the implacable mark of parenthood.
Those bright liquid-blue eyes, so like the ones that stared back at Montana each and every morning from the bathroom mirror, were clear and lucid.
“Funny.” A small smile ghosted Eirene’s lips. “That’s exactly what Jack used to say.”
Montana wasn’t sure if it even mattered at this point—or why the thought even occurred to her—but she blurted it out anyway. “Did you love him?”
At her mother’s joyful expression, Montana wondered if her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her.
“Oh, aye, I loved him. Loved him like a fool. Even long after I shouldn’t have, I loved him.”
“Did Daddy do the things Quinn thinks he did?”
Eirene’s gaze narrowed from joyful memories to focus more closely on her daughter. “What do you think?”
“I’m afraid that I think yes.”
Her mother nodded. “I’m afraid you think correctly.”
“Is that why you left?” Montana whispered. “Because you couldn’t stand to be with him any longer? Because he didn’t deserve your love?”
“No.” Eirene shifted and Montana noted the pain in her gaze at the movement.
Scootching up, Montana settled herself against the headboard, beckoning her mother to do the same. “Here. Come sit here.” She fluffed the pillows and made a comfortable pallet, pleased to see her mother move slowly to settle herself.
Once comfortably seated against the pillows, Eirene let out a soft sigh. “I left because I didn’t deserve him. Or you.”
“But you just said Daddy did bad things.”
“And I still didn’t deserve him.”
Montana shook her head, desperate to follow the trail of the conversation. “Could you give me something? Anything that helps me understand.”
On another small
sigh, Eirene turned so they faced each other. “Your father was always a bad boy. In life and in business. He’d throw in a couple shipments that weren’t on the manifests to make a few extra bucks under the table. Or he’d run a few things on the side to make a few more bucks. My mother thought I was oblivious to it, but I kn-knew.”
A harsh cough racked Eirene’s frail body as she struggled to clear her throat and catch her breath.
Montana reached for her, but her mother’s hand was surprisingly strong on her forearm, stopping her from coming any closer.
As another round of coughs filled Eirene’s chest, a dispiriting sense of helplessness descended over Montana again, reminding her of the bleak moments when she and Quinn first arrived home. Was anyone in her life whole? Untouched by pain and suffering?
And was it all because of her?
Montana ran to the bathroom for a glass of water, then pressed it on her mother, urging her to drink. When the horrible coughs finally subsided, Eirene finished her story.
“As I was saying, my mother thought I was oblivious to Jack’s baser natures, but I knew. Of course I knew. Not only wasn’t I born yesterday, but I was so in love with the man, I followed him every chance I got when we first met.”
“You followed him?”
“Like a modern-day stalker. Only I had the benefit of invisibility.”
“You what?” That crazy sense of unreality settled over her again and Montana wondered—yet again—if her life could get any weirder.
And then she looked at her mother—really looked at her—and Montana was forced to acknowledge the truth. No matter how hard to believe these tales seemed—how insane, really—it was real.
All of it.
Themis.
The Warriors.
Supernatural abilities.
All of it was real.
Eirene’s voice broke the silence. “What is it, Montana?”
“It’s all true, isn’t it?
Without preamble or explanation, Eirene simply nodded. “Yes.”
“She’s been in there forever,” Quinn grumbled as he filled another trash bag of detritus from the floor of Montana’s office.