by Mary Calmes
The slow, sensuous stroking made my eyes flutter shut even as I felt him shift over me for a second before he placed a tube in my hand.
“You don’t mess around,” I said, my eyes drifting open so I could look up at him.
“I know what I want,” he told me, and I watched the flush travel in large red blotches up his throat to his face.
“So do I,” I said, smiling.
His answering smile and sigh were enough to stop my heart.
“Darius,” Efrem breathed, his voice easing me from the past to the present as he leaned forward over the table and my cuffed wrists. “I want to see you.”
But it wasn’t safe, would never be safe, and I would not start putting him in danger now after so very long. I had thought, maybe, that once I was out from under the company’s thumb that I could take back the life I wanted, but in reality, that door had opened and closed years earlier. “You can’t.”
“Why can’t I?”
I shook my head. “You don’t understand.”
“Then help me to understand.”
The way he was looking at me, head tipped slightly down, left eyebrow lifted, waiting, was so achingly familiar that I nearly swallowed my tongue. I desperately wanted to reach for him.
“Tell me where you’ve been and who you’ve been with.”
Been with?
That was oddly phrased.
Been with was something your lover asked. Who have you been with? It was an accusation, or a courtesy when they already knew. It was not the question Efrem should have been asking.
What I heard when he said been with was worked with—which put our conversation in a different arena altogether. It moved us from reunion to interrogation.
What did he really want to know?
And then something terrible, something ugly, occurred to me, something almost sickening, truly disheartening and altogether awful. I leaned back, squinting.
“Darius?”
“Who’s asking these questions?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I mean, who wants these answers?”
“What are you asking me?”
“Do you want to know where I’ve been or does Homeland want to know?”
His mouth dropped open.
“Well?”
“You did not just say that to me.”
He hadn’t denied it. He deflected instead. “Evasion. Nice.”
“No, that’s not—”
“You didn’t flat-out refute it.”
“Because this is me!”
But really? I had no idea who he truly was, not anymore. How could I? And he didn’t know me, but he knew what he wanted. He wanted answers, and more than just those about what happened to me that night so long ago. He wanted to know all about me… and Trevan.
It was his job. He’d gone there in pursuit of my friend, not me, and the only reason he wasn’t in the room with Trevan was because I was possibly the bigger fish. It would have been nice to think that it was our shared ancient history, that he’d missed me as much as I’d missed him, but was that it? Because there I was, delivered to him on a platter, and what a coup it would be for him to penetrate my defenses, to break down who I was and what I’d done. His Christmas bonus would be really good this year if I would roll over and play ball with him.
It occurred to me that I was possibly being ridiculous. If the roles were reversed, I would have beaten the truth out of him. But on the other hand, I would have never let him disappear to begin with. How hard had he looked? That night in the brig with Dante Cerreto I had boasted that nothing would stop Efrem from finding me, and yet… he never had. And now here he was, with the opportunity to not only ask questions about Trevan but about me as well—and was I positive that he didn’t know who I was, who I’d been? He was a Homeland Security agent. Maybe he had all my files and all I was seeing was what he wanted me to. Perhaps, I was being expertly played.
The only part I knew was completely hidden was me being the vault, but I was the vault for these exact reasons. Being paranoid, asking questions—these were things I needed to do to prevent damage, prevent exposure… prevent abandonment.
“Darius, you can’t for a moment believe that—”
“Wait,” I whispered, lost for a moment like I never was now and had not been since I was very young. Since my parents—
“Darius!”
I put my hand up to make him stop because I needed a second to think.
Never could I be accused of being stupid. I knew who I was, had only my own thoughts to examine in many situations I’d found myself in over the years, and so the idea that I didn’t know what was going on in my own head was ludicrous.
Twice in my life people had been taken from me: once, when I lost my parents as a child, once when I made the decision to save Efrem. I finally, just recently, had begun to trust other people, and “friends” was now a warm word, not merely a euphemism for people who wouldn’t shoot me on sight. When I had told Trevan years ago that I had ten friends in the world, the list consisted not of people I would spend an evening eating with, but of those whom would be my spotter or hide a gun for me. Not counting Duncan Stiel, a childhood friend I couldn’t shake.
Becoming the vault changed my thinking about what I could have, who I could be. I never thought I’d live past thirty, and then when forty came and went, that had been another surprise. I was finally ready to have people in my life, hence the sharing of my real name, and what had been even crazier was thinking, just for a moment, that the door I thought was closed on Efrem could be opened again.
It was sad to realize I would never be able to trust him enough to try.
“Darius!” he yelled.
“Sorry,” I said automatically.
“The only thing I care about is finding out where you’ve been.”
Not the truth.
“Look at me.”
I hadn’t realized I’d glanced away until he brought my attention to the fact.
“Listen to me.”
“What?” I asked coolly.
He scowled at me, and I turned away from him again.
“You’re like a wall.”
We were done talking.
“You know me!” he shouted. I heard the crack in his voice, and I met his gaze. “Darius. You know me.”
I’d thought I had. Or always would. I’d run through this reunion a million times in my head. What it would look like, sound like, but me unsure of his motives had never once crossed my mind. Him playing me was a brand-new scenario.
“Do I?”
He was stunned, mouth open, eyes wide, pale, looking lost, floundering. “The hell are you saying right now?”
I nodded. “I think I’ll just sit here, thanks.”
“Darius, you can’t think that—”
“Oh, I do think.”
“How dare you question me!” He was incredulous. “You can’t actually believe that I would—this is me!”
“You’re good. I almost bought it,” I baited him. “That you missed me.”
“Darius!” he roared, and the door opened at the same time.
“Agent Lahm.”
“Get out!”
“Agent Lahm.” His name was repeated more firmly by the large man in an ill-fitting suit now standing in the doorway. Had Efrem turned from me, he would have seen how stressed out the guy looked.
“Agent Tagge, I don’t want to be—”
“Lahm,” the guy insisted.
He slowly turned from looking at me, finally giving his attention to the other agent. “What the fuck is so crucial that you’re interrupting an interrogation?”
“You’ve got a call from the assistant to the deputy secretary of the DOD holding on line one for you.”
It was unexpected, and Efrem took a moment to recover. “I’m sorry.”
The agent tipped his head at me. “Apparently we cannot legally hold Mr. Harris.”
“Says who?”
“The CIA.”
“T
he CIA has no jurisdiction in the United States.”
“No, but apparently he’s their guy, and the DOD wants him—and his cohort—out of here right fucking now.”
“I—”
“Shit,” the agent muttered under his breath as he was shoved sideways as more men in suits and ties filed into the room, finally followed by possibly the prettiest man I’d ever seen in my life, Lee Tae San.
I stood up as Lee swaggered over to the table. There was no other word to describe that walk of his, the kind that ticked you off just seeing it, a strut, imperious, pretentious, smug, all the things that made other men want to take a swing at him. His face didn’t help matters, all that perfection, from his delicate bone structure to the knowing grin, to the flawless, poreless skin. When he tossed his head sideways, his thick, glossy black hair moved with him and then settled—like he was animated instead of real—across his forehead.
“Who the hell are you?” Efrem barked.
“Conrad Harris has been released into my custody,” Lee informed him, holding out his business card for Efrem to take between two fingers like he was dealing cards at a blackjack table. It was horribly unprofessional, and the smirk was not helping matters. Even the beige suit he was wearing with a white cashmere crew neck sweater underneath was somehow irritating. He looked so much more polished, more pristine, crisper, cleaner than the rest of us.
He was dressed to walk a runway, not spring me from federal custody.
I couldn’t help scowling.
“Oh, what now?” he asked, voice swimming in condescension.
I gestured at all of him.
He took hold of the lapels of his suit jacket and checked himself out before lifting his head to scoff at me. “I look great.”
I opened my mouth to snap at him, but he tsked to get me to shut up. It was rude and brusque, and I was going to murder him when we got out of the room, but at the moment, I let him hush me as he turned his head to look at Efrem.
My ex was seething as he glared at the just slightly smaller man now regarding him with big innocent eyes. “He’s not going anywhere.”
“Perhaps you need to talk to the man holding on line one for you,” he suggested before glancing around the room. “This is not what I imagined this would look like. How banal.”
Efrem growled before charging from the room.
“You,” Lee snapped at Tagge, who was still hovering at the door. “Come unlock him before I ruin your career as well.”
“Pardon me.”
“And that suit is atrocious,” Lee said, grimacing like he was in pain. “Really, how bourgeois.”
“Jesus,” I muttered as Tagge, even dealing with the insults, scrambled to do what Lee ordered, neither his tone or facial expressions giving the man pause.
Ten minutes later, after collecting my things—including Trevan—I was standing outside the building with Lee, him there with his hands shoved down into the pockets of his white wool topcoat, and me, arms crossed, glowering at him.
“Are you mad?” Trevan asked me, shifting from foot to foot, clearly freezing in the frigid March air.
“Yes, I’m mad,” I said, gesturing at Lee. “He made that so much more difficult than it needed to be!”
“Are you kidding?” Trevan said, clearly in awe. “He was awesome.”
Lee crossed his arms too, rocking back on his heels and waggling his perfectly straight eyebrows at me. “You see? I’m awesome.”
I shook my head. “Where’s the car?”
As we walked, I realized how old I felt. Not just because sometimes old injuries—far too many to count—ached, especially in the cold, but mainly because with Trevan at twenty-six and Lee at twenty-five, I really was positively ancient at forty-five.
Lee had brought a tricked-out Chevy Suburban, and when the three of us got in, the two bodyguards in front were cut off from us by a partition that slid shut.
I stared out the window as I heard Lee and Trevan introducing themselves and talking, Lee telling him how much he was going to love the club scene in Boston.
“So Dari—”
I cleared my throat.
“Conrad,” Trevan corrected himself. Lee didn’t know the name, and would not, “told you that me and my husband were moving to Boston with him?”
“He did,” Lee said quickly, his husky, resonant voice a nice counterpoint to Trevan’s deep honeyed tone. Just listening to them chat was like salve on an open wound. “I’m the one who found the building down on Newbury Street that you and your husband will be living out of and that he’ll have his shop in.”
“Oh, thank you.”
I was sure that Lee had noticed the stop and start in conversation—the man missed nothing—but he didn’t ask. He probably didn’t care enough to inquire. Things that didn’t affect him directly were seldom of any interest.
“When I spoke to Landry yesterday, he told me that the space was exquisite.”
“You saw him?”
“I did. He can’t wait for you to get there.”
I turned my chin to look at Trevan.
He was studying Lee. “Did he look all right? He’s been there for a week already, and we Facetime every night, but—he normally shows me the street and how the work on the gallery’s coming along but not, you know, him.”
Lee thought for a moment. “He looks tired, and he must have said your name a hundred times in our ten-minute conversation, but he looked fine to me.”
Trevan exhaled deeply. “Okay, good.”
“We’re going from here to the airport,” Lee announced with a grin, turning to me in that way he had that was overly done, like a bobblehead, so I couldn’t miss it. “Both of your bags are in the back.”
Trevan had said his goodbyes to his mother and sisters the night before, and they promised to visit the following weekend to see his and Landry’s new place. It was an hour and twenty or so minute flight between cities, and the airfare was cheap. They would have no trouble staying in touch. And with Trevan gone, out of the picture and out of Detroit, they were no longer on anyone’s radar. Not that I’d found the mob to ever be particularly bloodthirsty when it came to revenge on family members. Held for leverage, yes; killed outright, no. And since there was nothing anyone needed from Trevan, his family was off-limits as per the unwritten laws of mob honor. He himself, that was another story, hence my inclusion of him on my master list when I became the vault.
“Hello.”
I realized Lee had asked me a question that I’d totally blown off, lost as I was in thought. “What?”
“Are you going to tell me who that man was?”
“What man?”
“The one looking at you like a lover and not as a suspect?”
“Who was this?” Trevan wanted to know.
I groaned and turned back to the window. “Someone I used to know that clearly, I don’t anymore.”
“Ah, so, what then, if I see him skulking around should I shoot him?” Lee asked.
“You don’t shoot anyone anymore,” I said snidely, “you have people to do that.”
“Don’t kid yourself. I still kill lots of people.”
That was probably true, but I baited him anyway because I could. “No,” I taunted, “you don’t want to get dirty.”
Something in Korean then that I knew was not complimentary, and he shut up.
“Are you not friends?” Trevan asked.
Lee scoffed, I snorted out a laugh, and then we went back to being silent.
Chapter Four
AS SOON as I became the vault, the first thing I did was go to Boston—and from there out to Nahant—to speak with Ceaton Mercer and convince him to become my knight. The second thing on my list was to go to New Orleans, where I knew Lee Tae San was visiting, to deliver the good news to him in person.
He was eating at one of my favorite places, Mr. B’s Bistro down on Royal Street, having the barbecue shrimp I loved, when I took a seat across from him.
“This is brave of you,” he said
cheerfully, always with the smirk, on the whole patronizing me as he let out a long, bored sigh.
I leaned back and grinned. “So guess who just became the vault?”
His eyes, deep chestnut brown framed with long thick lashes, flicked up from his food to my face.
“Care to venture a guess?”
He grunted as he squared his shoulders before putting down his fork and knife. “Why do I care about this?”
“I dunno. Why do you think?”
He laced his fingers together and leaned forward, resting his chin on the bridge he’d made as he stared at me. “It’s the perfect job for you, Harris. Sedentary, quiet, anonymous but for a few people… makes perfect sense to me. This way you won’t throw out a hip or something running around and jumping off buildings.”
He was such an ass.
“You’re not as young as you used to be; you should leave the killing to me.”
Lee Tae San was, at the moment, without a doubt, the best assassin in the world. Born to middle-class working parents in Seoul, he looked like the kind of guy who should have been singing K-pop or acting in film or TV, but instead, after graduating from Myongji University at twenty-one, he went into the Army to fulfill his mandatory federal service and found out something interesting about himself. He really enjoyed shooting a gun. After almost two years, he was out and went to work with a friend who was having some trouble with a criminal element. After Lee took care of that trouble, permanently and with prejudice, no one bothered his friend again. The word was out: don’t try to blackmail or extort money from anyone Lee knew because, gun or knife, no one wanted to cross him.
Slowly, steadily, Lee built a reputation for being methodical, dangerous, and difficult. If someone who lived at Fort Knox needed killing, Lee was the guy called. He was brilliant and frightening and, between what he looked like and how peacefully and without pain most of his victims were dispatched, he was christened with the name Angel. Not Angel of Death, nothing ominous, simply that, simply Angel.
As he sat across from me, I could certainly vouch for him having the looks of a heavenly creature.
His skin was silky, flawless ivory perfection with warm cream undertones, and his features, while not feminine in the least, were still delicately carved, with a short, straight nose and soft pink lips. What made him different from the other stunningly beautiful Korean men I’d met in my life were his eyebrows. He had the most expressive eyebrows that he used dramatically to show off surprise, irritation, and disapproval. That was the one I got the most. He was forever looking at me as though he’d just bitten into a lemon or was judging me for some stupid thing I’d said or done. It was that part that drove me nuts.