by Lynsay Sands
The only males she'd seen daily since then were Allan, Eric, and Zander, who all worked at her store and had done so since she'd opened three years ago.
Sherry paced back to the bathroom, walked inside, checked that her curling iron was cool and bent to tuck it back in her bag where it sat on the floor. It was as she was straightening, everything finally clicked into place.
"Son of a bitch," she muttered, and stared at her reflection briefly, then whirled and hurried out and across the bedroom to the hall. She was moving quickly, eager to get to the others to tell them that she knew who the immortal must be, but slowed and then stopped as she heard what they were saying in the living room.
"Well . . ." Basil said, glancing over the notes he held. "According to the dates Sherry listed here, her university friend Luther and this Uncle Al are the people who have been in her life the longest, and as far as she can recall, her uncle was only in her life from seven to eighteen, and the roomie was around from eighteen to twenty-nine."
"So both of them were in her life for eleven years," Harper said thoughtfully.
"I suspect this Uncle Al is the father, and that he was around probably from the day she was born," Basha said thoughtfully.
"Yes, but it's doubtful he was in her life on a daily basis before her brother Danny died and the man she knew as her father left Lynne," Drina said with a frown. "Richard Carne would have hardly welcomed him."
"True," Marcus commented. "No man wants his wife's old lover hanging around."
"Even if he's the girl's birth father?" Basha asked.
"Especially if he fathered her," Marcus assured her. "There's a reason lions eat the offspring of previous mates of the lioness when they take over a den. Mortals may not kill the woman's offspring, but many resent a child that isn't theirs. It's a constant reminder that she had a previous mate."
"Is there a male she sees daily now?" Lucian asked.
Drina glanced through the list. "Eric, Zander, and Allan. They're all employees at the store."
"Seems easy enough," Bricker said now. "Uncle Al is now Allan."
"Wasn't the roommate's real name Lex?" Stephanie asked suddenly, and Basil glanced to where the girl sat, feet up on the couch and arms wrapped around her knees, eyeing them all with eyebrows raised. She looked pale and her eyebrows were drawn together as if she were in pain. Katricia had told him that Stephanie not only could hear the thoughts of mortals, young immortals, and even older immortals, but she couldn't shut their voices out, that it seemed to her as if they were shouting their thoughts in her ears. He suspected that having so many of them there, their minds all screaming at her at once, was causing her a great deal of distress.
"Yes, Lex Brown," Drina answered when no one else spoke. "What about it?"
Stephanie raised her eyebrows, uncrossed her arms and sat up. "Seriously? You don't see it?"
Basil glanced around. The others were peering at each other, looking as blank-faced as he probably did . . . all except Lucian, who was almost smiling. If Basil were to guess, he'd say Lucian had seen whatever Stephanie was talking about. And probably long ago. The bastard had just been sitting around waiting to see who would sort it out first.
"And it was the child rather than one of the adults who sorted it out first," Lucian said dryly, obviously having heard his thoughts.
"I am not a child," Stephanie said with annoyance.
"Can we skip to whatever it is the rest of us aren't seeing?" Basil asked impatiently.
Stephanie glared at Lucian for a moment longer and then turned to Basil and shrugged. "Think about it . . . Uncle Al? Lex? Zander?"
Basil frowned at her briefly and then his expression cleared and he breathed, "Alexander," with sudden understanding.
"So . . . he's been around since she was seven at least. That's twenty-five years. Definitely long enough for her to have built up a strong resistance," Basha realized.
"I suspect he's been there since she was born," Lucian said quietly.
"Then you don't think he's another life mate?" Basil asked, feeling relief slide through him. That possibility had bothered him.
Rather than answer directly, Lucian asked, "Could you have refrained from claiming her all this time if you'd met her at seven or younger?"
"I'd have had to. I'd have hardly tried to claim her as a child," Basil pointed out dryly.
"True, but once she was sixteen or so it would become very difficult to not claim her. You might want to do the honorable thing and allow her to mature without interference," he said solemnly. "But your mind would remind you she was mortal and an accident could steal her from you. You'd want to watch her, keep her safe, and doing that would make it very difficult to refrain from bedding and claiming her." He shook his head. "This Alexander is her father."
"Great!" Stephanie said brightly. "Now that I've solved that for you, does anyone else have a hankering for a shake? I could really use one of your famous chocolate shakes about now, Harper . . . and I'm sure the milk is good for my growing bones," she added in wheedling tones.
"One chocolate shake it is," Harper said with amusement, standing to lead her to the kitchen.
"Does anyone else want one?" Drina asked, getting up.
"Oh, yeah. I'll take a chocolate one too, please," Bricker said at once, but everyone else merely shook their heads.
"So . . ." Basha said as Drina headed for the kitchen to tell Harper that Bricker wanted one too. "Now that you know or think you know who the immortal in her life is . . ." She raised her eyebrows. "What next? Go question him and find out why he wanted her to think she ran into Leo in London?"
"We already know the answer to that," Lucian said, and then pointed out, "It was because he wanted her back in Toronto."
"Yes, but why?" Basil asked, and then tilted his head and eyed him suspiciously. "You know the answer to that as well, don't you?"
"Sherry gave us the answer when she said she was born a year after her parents married," he said mildly.
"I don't see what the one has to do with the other," Basil admitted.
"That's because you're old," Bricker put in, understanding clear on his face.
Basil scowled at the younger man. "What has that to do with anything?"
"It means you haven't had the least interest in sex or dating in forever until now," Bricker said dryly.
"What has that to do with--"
"When you're without a mate and still young enough to be interested in sex and dating . . ." Bricker paused as if to consider his words, and then shrugged and said, "Well, frankly, the world is a smorgasbord. Pretty women are everywhere, and with our ability to read their minds and know exactly what they're thinking and what they want to hear, etcetera . . ." He shrugged again. "Every single one is yours for the taking if you want her." He paused and then added solemnly, "Unless they are married."
"Ah." Basil nodded slowly. Life mates were a serious business with immortals, and while mortals were not blessed or cursed with them, as the case might be, marriage was the closest thing they had. Marriage was a binding contract to spend their lives with each other. It was as close as a mortal could get to a life mate. It was considered more than shameful for an immortal male to use their unfair advantage to get a married female mortal to sleep with them. They had even made a lesser law to prevent it from occurring. Lesser laws were not punishable by death, but by various lesser penalties. For instance, fines, sanctions, shunning or incarceration for a stated term. Basil couldn't recall what the penalty was for dallying with a married mortal, but he was quite sure it was unpleasant. There had been a time when a wife could be murdered for getting caught in an adulteress relationship. In some countries that was still allowed. The penalty had to be a strict one to prevent it from happening.
"I'm afraid I don't understand," Basha admitted quietly, and Basil recalled that she was newly returned to the fold and probably didn't yet know all their laws.
"It is against one of our lesser laws to interfere in a mortal marriage," he explained
now, and Bricker snorted.
"Lesser, my ass," Bricker muttered. "Most men would prefer to be staked and baked than having their ding-dong shredded once for every year of their life when they made the indiscretion."
Basha blinked. "So if you were a century old when you did it . . ."
"They'd shred it one hundred times, letting it heal between each," Bricker said dryly.
"How do they shred it?" she asked curiously.
"I don't know," he admitted grimly. "Never wanted to know either, so I stay well clear of married women."
"Well then, it seems to be effective," Lucian said dryly.
Bricker snorted. "It's barbaric."
"What about women?" Basha asked. "What if an immortal woman interfered in a mortal marriage?"
Obviously not knowing the answer to that, Bricker blinked and glanced to Lucian questioningly, but it was Basil who said, "Actually, at the time the law was made, mortal men were the power brokers in the world. They were free to have mistresses without fear of it interfering in their marriages, so there was no sanction for a female immortal who dallied with a male mortal."
"Ah, man!" Bricker cried. "That is so unfair."
Basha just grinned and brought them back to the subject at hand. "So, it would have been against the law for an immortal to have dallied in Sherry's parents' marriage?" she said. "But we think he fathered Sherry, who was born a year after her parents got married."
"Which means the immortal had a relationship with a married woman and is subject to the punishment," Basil said, pointing out the obvious.
"What if he didn't use his immortal abilities to have the affair?" Marcus asked. "What if he didn't use influence, or mind reading, or mind control? Is the punishment the same?"
"It doesn't matter," Basha said before anyone could answer to that. "If she was born a year after her parents married, then she was conceived during the third or fourth month of their marriage. They would have been in the honeymoon stage still, and probably still madly in love. He had to have used influence and mind control."
"Unless Sherry's mother was a ho," Bricker pointed out.
"I didn't get that impression from Sherry's memories of her mother," Basha said dryly.
Bricker shrugged. "Well, she'd hardly be a ho when she was older. That doesn't mean she wasn't when she was younger."
"It's doubtful she was willing," Lucian said quietly. "I suspect he used undue influence."
"You think he raped her?" Stephanie asked with shock, drawing their attention to the fact that she'd reentered the room and stood several feet away, listening, with Harper and Drina behind her.
"He wouldn't have had to rape her," Bricker said quietly. "We are oddly attractive to mortals. Bastien once told me it was thanks to special pheromones the nanos produce in us. He thinks they were originally meant to assist us when we needed to feed off the hoof."
"That wouldn't have been enough," Basha said with certainty. "Especially when they were so newly married. He must have used some mind control to overcome her conscience and any reluctance she felt."
"Which is rape," Stephanie said grimly, and scowled around at them as if they were each responsible as she added, "I know he probably made her enjoy it, and I know you guys are so used to controlling mere mortals and making them do what you want that you probably don't think it's rape, but it is."
Silence filled the room briefly, and then Harper cleared his throat and placed a soothing hand on her shoulder before saying, "But that doesn't really explain why he'd want her away from Port Henry. If we're even right about all of this--it is all guesswork after all," he pointed out. "And we wouldn't have guessed any of it if he hadn't scared her back here."
"I guess we'll find that out when we talk to him," Lucian said grimly, and glanced to Basil. "Sherry will know Zander's address."
"Doesn't he work at the store?" Drina pointed out. "It's daytime. He should be there if he's assistant manager. Especially with Sherry away."
Lucian shook his head. "We've got hunters in the store and sent the workers home in case Leo and his boys returned. He should be at home, or at least not at the store."
"Right." Basil stood and moved silently out of the room to head up the hall to the room he shared with Sherry. All it took was a quick glance inside for his heart to drop through his body and hit the floor with a resounding thud. The room was empty and the bathroom door was open, showing that it was empty too.
Whirling, Basil hurried back the way he'd come, only to pause at the last door before the archway to the living room. The door was cracked open. He pushed on it, revealing a small closet-sized area with a big yellow steel door in the opposite wall.
An emergency exit, he realized.
Fourteen
"Here you are, lady."
Sherry glanced around to see that they were stopped in front of her store. As it turned out, it hadn't been far from Harper's apartment after all. She could have walked, but she hadn't recognized where she was when she'd left the building, so she'd flagged down the cab . . . and then spent the entire short ride trying to grasp the fact that she might be the daughter of an immortal rather than the man she'd grown up calling Dad, and if that was the case, that she was a child of rape.
"Lady?" the driver prompted.
"Oh, sorry. What do I owe you?" Sherry muttered, and reached for her purse when the driver told her how much. That was when she realized that she didn't have her purse. She was pretty sure she didn't have any money in her pockets either, but desperately began to check them anyway as she searched her mind for a solution to her problem. She then glanced sharply to the front passenger door when it opened and Basil asked, "How much?"
Sighing with relief, Sherry slid out of the backseat as Basil paid the driver.
"Thank you," she murmured when he closed the door and turned to her. "I wasn't thinking straight I guess. I forgot I left my purse behind."
"You left me behind too," he said quietly, taking her arms and peering solemnly into her face. "Why?"
"I . . ." Sherry shook her head helplessly. "Like I said, I wasn't thinking. I just ran." She grimaced and then added, "I heard what you guys said about his raping my mom. I didn't want to face anyone . . . and then I didn't want someone else to talk to him. I want him to tell me himself. I need him to explain, Basil."
"I know," he murmured, and pressed her head to his chest with one hand while with the other he rubbed her back soothingly. "I understand, but I'd like to go with you."
Sherry didn't respond for a moment, and then she suddenly pulled back and peered up at him with a frown. "How did you know I'd come here?"
"I didn't. I came out of Harper's building just as your taxi pulled away and followed."
"In another taxi?" she asked, looking around for one.
"No. I ran," he admitted dryly. "Fortunately, it was only five blocks and your driver managed to hit every red light."
She stared at him wide-eyed for a moment and then shook her head. "I'm sorry. I should have--"
"It's okay," he said firmly, squeezing her arms.
Sherry gave up her apologies and lowered her head.
"Are you okay?" Basil asked, and she could hear the frown in his voice, though she couldn't see it. She was staring down at the ground, and supposed that was why he was worried. She supposed she looked as lost and scared as she felt.
"Yes." She forced her head up and managed a smile. "Of course."
"Okay." Looking somewhat relieved, but still a little concerned, he slid his arm around her shoulders and then turned toward the building. "So, I take it this is his--It's your store," he realized. "Honey, he won't be at work. The Enforcers sent all of your employees home in case Leo and his boys return."
"I know. I came here to get his address off my Rolodex," she explained.
"Oh." He glanced around warily now, and then abruptly urged her forward. "Let's get inside, then. If Leo does return, I do not want him to find you out here."
Nodding, Sherry moved quickly, glancing aroun
d as she did. She expected people in black to be in every corner, instead her gaze found and stopped on one of her own employees behind the cash register.
"Joan?" she said, approaching her slowly. "What are you doing here? I thought you and the others had been sent home until it was safe to come back?"
"We were," Joan Campbell said with a bright smile. "But they called last night and said the gas leak had been repaired and we could come back today."
"Gas leak?" Sherry echoed with confusion, turning to Basil.
"A cover story they would have used. They probably removed your employees' memories of what really happened, if they had any, and replaced them with that too," he assured her.
Sherry nodded, recalling the blank expressions on everyone's faces that day. She glanced toward Joan again when Basil asked the girl, "Who called you?"
"Zander," she answered.
"Zander did?" Sherry asked, glancing around now in search of the man.
"Yeah. I gather some inspector guy called Allan last night with the news because he couldn't get a hold of Zander. But Allan was able to get ahold of him, so Zander called everyone with their shift schedules for today. He said you were out of town, though," she added.
"I was," Sherry admitted. "Is Zander here now?"
"In your office," Joan said. "He was going to call in some orders that got put off while we were shut down."
Nodding, Sherry turned sharply and headed toward the back of the store, but paused when the front door opened. For one second she feared it would be Leo and his boys stalking into her store as they had the other day. Instead of him and his blue-jean-clad compatriots, there were two men in black jeans and leather jackets.
"Enforcers?" she asked Basil, quite sure she was right. They were dressed like Bricker, Basha, and Marcus.
Basil nodded. "Anders and my nephew Decker. Wait here, I'll just have a word with them."
Sherry nodded, her gaze shifting over the two men again as Basil approached them. Both were tall, but one had dark hair and silver-blue eyes, while the other had skin the color of dark mocha, and brown eyes with gold shot through them. Sherry was guessing the first man was Basil's nephew. Not only did he have the same eye color, but the shape of their faces were similar.