by Linda Howard
“Not likely, but the only way we can be certain is to ask Elijah.”
“No,” she said again. “We can find Robert Markham, and ask him. If I can touch him, I’ll know.”
“You’d read him without his consent?”
“Under these circumstances—yes. If there’s a price I have to pay for breaking the rules, I’ll pay it, and gladly, for Elijah.”
He stood and framed her face with his big hands, intently studying her features. “You are Strength—can he not draw from you?”
She sighed. “Perhaps, but he’s so young. He deserves every moment of happiness he can have for the rest of his life, to balance this. If I can take some of the burden from him, I will.”
After another moment he drew her close to him, his big hands hot on her back, wrapping her in his scent and strength and giving her a sense of being protected. With wonder, she realized that no one ever before had protected her; she hadn’t needed it, living her pampered and secure life on Aeonia. She hadn’t truly known adversity of any kind until Elijah had pulled her here to Seven. He was just a little kid, and in his short life he’d already known more horror and pain than she’d known in her own unending years. She felt … humbled.
“We can’t give him more pain than what he’s already endured,” she said into Caine’s broad shoulder.
“No,” he said gently. “We can’t.”
It was well after dark before Derek could safely manage a face-to-face with the senator. The meeting hadn’t been easy, not to plan or to execute. Derek had watched a while, before making his move. He had to be sure the senator wasn’t being followed. Yet.
A friendly contact with the Lawrenceville police, a uniformed cop who was happy to take on the occasional legitimate security job Derek threw his way, had spilled the beans that the senator was a “person of interest.” It was juicy gossip, exciting stuff, and the cop had no idea what significance it had for Derek. That tidbit hadn’t hit the news yet, but it would. Once it did, there was no way in hell Derek would be able to get close to the man even if he wanted to; the best plan was to make his move now.
Markham had—probably unknowingly—helped his case by dumping the body in a different county from the one in which he’d committed the murder. There was always red tape in those cases, the police department from a town in one county and the sheriff in another comparing penis sizes and blustering over whose case it was. If they managed to connect the senator to the victim, as it looked like they would, the GBI—the good ole Georgia Bureau of Investigation—would be called in, too. One more big penis to throw into the mix. If nothing else, all the measuring would slow the process.
The abandoned building near an industrial park south of Atlanta was perfect for their meeting. Once upon a time something had been made here—textiles of some kind, if his memory didn’t fail him. Socks? Flags? T-shirts? Like it mattered. The jobs that had once made this a thriving mill had gone away years ago.
Even on a Monday night, the place was deserted. There wasn’t another car, other than Derek’s and the senator’s, for a mile or more.
He was glad the cold weather gave him an opportunity to wear his gloves without arousing suspicion. Details were important. Details could mean the difference between life and death.
Derek arrived five minutes late. The asshat had turned on a light in what had once been an administrative office near the main door. Might as well hang out a Come and Get Me sign.
Even though he was sure they were alone, Derek surveyed the area—the hallway, the nearby offices, the dark hole at the end of the hallway where old rusty machines sat unused—before opening the door to the small office and joining the pale, pacing senator.
Markham spun on Derek. “The police contacted my office! I’m supposed to call some detective in the morning to arrange a meeting! What the hell?” He acted as if this was Derek’s fault, instead of his own. “Tell me the kid is dead. Tell me you found the little shit.”
Derek remained calm. “It’s not the little shit who’s been talking to the police.”
Markham’s hands fisted. “Who, then? How did this happen?”
The truth, at least for now. “A neighbor saw you.”
Markham stumbled back a step or two. “I was seen Friday night?”
“I don’t know if it was Friday or earlier. All I know is that you’re a person of interest in this case.”
The single, harsh light the senator had turned on made him look pasty green and sickly. “What does that mean? Am I a suspect?”
Probably. Almost surely. But Derek didn’t want to be the one to share that news. “I don’t know. They connected you to the dead woman, though. Stay calm. Act innocent. Play dumb.” Not a stretch, he thought. Playing smart would be an Oscar-worthy performance.
He wondered what kind of evidence the senator might’ve left for the crime scene investigators. It was unlikely he’d made a clean getaway. “You never did say … how did you kill her?”
Again, those clenched fists. “I choked her with my bare hands.”
Well, shit. It was an imperfect science, dependent on the environment and the condition of the body, but fingerprints could be taken from skin. “No gloves?”
“No. This isn’t some television show where the cops can find a hair or a skin cell or a … a …”
“Fingerprint?” Derek supplied.
“Yeah,” Markham muttered. He turned away, paced some more, then spun around to face Derek again. “There’s no other choice. You’ll have to kill this neighbor.”
Derek sighed, tired of this already. “I don’t know which one saw you.” That was the truth. While he had contacts in Atlanta, and Lawrenceville, and Marietta, and in towns and cities all around who would spill a bit of news now and then, they weren’t going to hand over all the details.
“Then kill them all,” Markham breathed. “All of them. Dead people can’t testify.”
The direction was so coolly delivered and so irrational, Derek realized the senator was a lost cause.
“I can’t do that,” he answered.
“You will,” Markham said, and then he foolishly added, “If I go down, I’m taking you with me. I assume Sammy is good and dead?”
Derek nodded. “He is.”
“Don’t think I won’t make a deal with the cops, if that’s what it takes.”
Derek plunged his gloved hands into the pockets of his overcoat. He shrugged his shoulders and pulled out the length of thin nylon rope he’d stuffed in there. “I was afraid you’d say something like that.” Actually, he’d kind of been expecting it, hence the rope. Never underestimate stupid.
Markham reeled back, his pasty complexion turning white. Clumsily, panic making him stumble, he turned to run, to try to run. He’d have been better off lunging toward Derek, instead of conveniently turning his back.
Derek crossed his wrists, looped the cord around Markham’s neck, then straightened his arms to close the loop. The force yanked the senator back, but Derek was careful not to yank so hard the senator fell. Markham gagged and clawed at the rope, then at Derek’s gloved hands. Derek pulled harder, tightening the loop, cutting off the senator’s air. Markham flailed, completely panic-stricken, which made him even more ineffective.
Now that Derek knew how Elijah’s mother had been killed, this method of execution seemed appropriate. He pulled the cord tight. Tighter. Markham was a small man, and had no chance to escape. He attempted to fight, to work himself free. He dropped, which only made the rope pull tighter. He pulled away, but couldn’t go far. Derek held on, jerking tighter and tighter, until Markham hung limply by the loop around his neck. Still Derek held him, calmly counting off seconds, because it wouldn’t do to let the bastard somehow revive. The brain started dying in four minutes. Derek held him for seven, which didn’t seem like a long time unless you were holding someone’s dead weight with your arms, in which case seven minutes was a hell of a long time.
When the senator was good and dead, face dusky, not breathing, heart
not beating—good enough dead—Derek let his body drop to the floor. He was sweating. The rope was still around that scrawny neck, and that’s where it would stay. With the senator’s car parked out front, he’d be found soon enough, even here.
Lucky for Derek, Markham had been diligent in his efforts to make certain no one could connect him to the private detective who did his dirty work for him, which meant there was no way to link Derek to the dead senator, no canceled checks, no paperwork that could come back on him. All payment had been in cash, which had actually created a small problem for Derek here and there, because the IRS frowned on large cash deposits. He’d been forced to spread it out, to attribute it to other clients, pay cash when he filled up his car—little things like that eventually added up.
With Markham out of the picture, there was no need at all to try to find Elijah. Once he’d decided that he wasn’t going to kill a kid, the path to killing Markham instead had been clear. There was no way the senator would allow his henchman to walk away without doing the job, so the answer to that problem was to take the senator out of the equation.
Derek considered this a life lesson, one the senator would never learn now because he’d died as stupid as he’d lived. The life lesson was to never threaten the person who held the gun. Or the rope.
Elijah was safe. He was a cute little kid; he’d lost his mom—there was no reason to hurt him. But the blonde … the blonde who had kicked Derek in the nuts could identify him. He’d been in the house where the Tilley woman had been killed. The cops would at the very least want to question him, if they knew he’d been there. Pretending to be a cop—though that would come down to her word against his.
The problem was, how to find her? She could be anywhere in the world by now. She could also be around the next corner. Since she hadn’t turned up with the kid yet, it was possible they were both out of the picture. Possible, but not likely. She had to know the kid’s mother had been murdered; she might be staying hidden now, until she could maybe figure out Derek wasn’t a cop, after all, but eventually she’d come forward with the kid.
He wanted to catch her before she could do that.
In his experience people always returned to what was familiar; that was what got so many criminals caught, because they couldn’t stay away from home, or Mama, or their old buddies.
It wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on the kid’s house for a couple of days, just to see what happened.
At last the street was quiet. The search for Elijah would continue in the morning, after sunrise. Those who slept in the houses along this street were restless tonight, made uneasy by the murder of a neighbor, worried about their own children after the disappearance of that neighbor’s son. Others didn’t sleep at all, their hearts too burdened.
She surveyed the house where Elijah had called her in, where the majority of the Alexandria Deck waited to be reclaimed, but she kept her gaze moving, not allowing herself to linger in the survey for even a split second. She gave the house no more and no less time or attention than she gave to each of them, but she saw some of the windows were bright with light. She wanted to look more closely, see if she could detect for certain whether or not the owners had returned, but Caine was standing right beside her and she didn’t dare. She didn’t discount a Hunter’s acute alertness. He noticed everything she did, everything around him, every movement and every sound. If he hadn’t he wouldn’t be who he was, wouldn’t have lived as long as he had.
She sighed; she couldn’t help feeling guilty that she knew Elijah was safe, but was keeping that knowledge from all the searchers and neighbors who cared about him. She had known him such a short while, but she’d be devastated now if he went missing and she didn’t know where he was. Ah, well; she wasn’t close to feeling guilty enough to tell anyone where he was, at least not yet. When she was certain he was safe, when they found a place for him to live and be loved, that would be the time to let everyone know.
“Ready?” Caine asked, but he might as well have not said a word because his arm was already around her. By the time she grabbed his shoulder, they were there, in Elijah’s bedroom where she’d hidden the Moon card. The sensation was still alarming, still electric, and at least half the effect was being in Caine’s arms. The sensation was almost as intense as their sexual connection—no, she had to be honest with herself. Their physical chemistry was both explosive and strangely comfortable, as if they simply fit together. As surprising as that was, even more surprising was their emotional connection. She didn’t know what to think about that. The sex was wonderful—she didn’t regret a single moment of their time together—but there was more, a more she didn’t dare ponder too deeply.
What good could ever come of it? He was a Hunter. She was Strength. They were what they were, with duties and lives that normally would never bisect.
“Where?” he asked, releasing her and focusing immediately to the reason for them being there. He looked around the dark room, lit only by the moonlight coming through the window. They didn’t dare turn on a light, or even use Lenna’s magic light, because a lot of troubled gazes would be looking at this house tonight; people disturbed by the violence that had happened here would keep searching for a reason why, as if that reason were in the house itself, imbued in the brick and masonry. How sad; the why of anything outside natural occurrences was always in people, in the decisions they made that piled on top of each other until they eventually culminated in the end of life.
Fortunately, Hunters had excellent night vision and he didn’t need artificial light any more than she did. She turned toward the corner shelf where she’d put the Moon; she’d keep it with her own card, then she and Caine would continue in their search for Uncle Bobby until the last possible moment, though now that they had a name she hoped they could quickly take care of that part. Only then, and only when Elijah was safely settled, would she reunite the cards and allow him to return her to Aeonia.
As soon as she turned toward the corner she sensed something wrong, though she didn’t know what. The shadows in the corner were darker, but that was to be expected. Caine tensed a half second before Lenna heard a woman’s voice from the corner of the dark room.
“About time.”
He immediately thrust Lenna behind him and drew his knife, his steely muscles coiling as he prepared to launch himself toward the threat, but Lenna’s hand on his back and a softly spoken, “Wait,” stilled him. The woman moved out of the corner, darkness detaching itself and approaching until she was revealed. Ah. She was another Hunter, probably one of the party sent to kill Lenna and take the cards to Veton.
But she didn’t attack, though she held a knife much like Caine’s in one hand. Instead, she lifted her other hand, and in it was a faintly glowing card. Lenna’s heart sank. She’d worried that the card might be found by the police; it had indeed been found, by someone much more difficult to retrieve the card from than the police would have been.
“Looking for this?” the woman asked, waving the card in front of her before tucking it securely away in a pocket.
Both Hunters were braced for combat, their gazes never leaving each other. It was clear in their stances, was indeed a part of their very makeup. Hunters weren’t negotiators; they didn’t bargain—they fought. That was who and what they were.
Lenna’s own instincts hummed in alarm. Deep in her bones, she knew that these two shouldn’t face one another in battle. It wasn’t just that she didn’t want Caine hurt, or even possibly be killed—a big dilemma considering what he was—but there was something about Esma that was so familiar …
She had to trust her instincts, because there was no time to do otherwise. Swiftly she moved away from the shelter of Caine’s body, stepping around him to get closer to the woman. Caine snarled, the sound feral in the night, and immediately closed the difference so he was so close behind her his chest brushed her back when he breathed. She ignored the almost physical blast of his fury and alarm, and focused on the female Hunter. “I know you,” she said so
ftly, opening that part of herself that had absorbed so much knowledge, and feeling memories flood her. She knew exactly who the Hunter was.
The woman didn’t look away from Caine’s face. “We have never met.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t know you,” Lenna replied. “Your name is Esma.”
The Hunter’s startled gaze jerked to Lenna’s face. Lenna lifted her brows. She had to admit, she was impressed to meet this woman face-to-face, because she did indeed know her, or know about her. “I’ve been isolated for millennia, true, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t watched and studied all the worlds and the beings upon them. I’ve seen you, I know you. You’re a warrior, a rare female Hunter who possesses all the qualities I represent. We aren’t acquainted, but I’m well aware of your existence, who you are.”
Esma was motionless, staring at Lenna. She appeared stricken. Her lips barely moved as she murmured, “As I am aware of yours.”
Lenna started to step even closer but Caine grabbed her arm and jerked her to a halt. Knowing he would protect her from harm—real or imagined—at all costs, she stopped. One wrong word, one wrong move, and the Hunters would be at one another. She didn’t want that.
“Did Veton send you to kill her?” he asked tersely.
Esma was silent for a moment, not even the sound of her breathing drifting on the night air. Finally she said, “Yes and no. My job is to kill her if she doesn’t give me the Alexandria Deck, but I would prefer not to take this assignment so far.”
Caine’s body was as tense as if he were pulling with all his might against an invisible tether. His voice ground out from the depths of his chest. “If you think I will allow—”
“I’m not afraid of death,” Lenna calmly interjected. “I’ve seen this world in all its glory and heartache, such as there isn’t on Aeonia. There is true life here, life as I have never known it before, life that I wouldn’t have seen without all of this happening. I’ve learned that life isn’t truly precious without death.”
Esma looked incredulous. “You wish to die?”