by Jade Kerrion
Too many eyes watched him.
Before Rio reached the door, an African-American man, almost twice as wide as he, and all muscle, placed himself in front of Rio. “Yer not from around ‘ere.”
“No.”
“What your business?”
“I’m here to see the doctor.”
The man looked Rio over from head to foot and then back up again. Their eyes locked in a stare. Rio refused to look away even though movement shuffled in his peripheral vision. The man’s companions, each one as powerfully built, sauntered into Rio’s line of sight.
A muscle ticked in Rio’s jaw. “I am here to see the doctor,” he repeated. “Move out of the way.”
The clinic door swung open, and a frizzy haired woman looked out. “What are you boys doing? You want me to tell the doc that you’re harassing his patients again?”
“We’re his-assing him.” The black man tossed a suddenly beaming smile over his shoulder. “We don’t her-ass anybody, ‘less she be as cute as you.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t be a smart-ass; now let him through.”
The human wall in front of Rio stepped aside, but the warning stares remained locked on his back as he walked into the clinic. “Thank you,” he said to the woman as she stepped behind the counter. The waiting room was tiny and flanked by three doors—one of which bore a scribbled restroom sign.
She shrugged. “The doc told me to keep an eye on those boys out there. Make sure they minded their manners.
Rio nodded to conceal his confusion. Why would a doctor have all that muscle outside the clinic? Was he a mob boss using the clinic as a front for his operations? What the hell was wrong with the world? Rio glanced around the waiting room filled with patients. “Any chance I can get in to ask him a question? I don’t need treatment; I just need a five-minute conversation.”
The woman scowled at him. “The line ain’t short.”
No, it wasn’t, and a single glance told Rio that the people waiting to see the doctor had legitimate health issues, from the hoarse coughs and glazed exhaustion of pneumonia to the grimace of fractured limbs.
If the clinic was a front, it was the best damned front he had ever seen.
“Please.” He looked back at the woman. “Just five minutes. That’s all I—”
One of the unmarked doors open, and a woman carrying an infant stepped out. Her eyes were teary but her smile was wide. A man on a crutch appeared behind her. Together, they headed toward the exit, but only the woman and child left the building. The man stopped in front of the reception desk.
Up close, Rio could see the exhaustion on the man’s face. Although he appeared no older than Rio, his skin was ashen and his hand trembled visibly on his crutch. “I need five minutes.”
The receptionist nodded. “You let me know when you want me to send them back in.”
Danyael Sabre? This was the doctor? The mob boss?
Danyael turned away but Rio caught his arm. “I’m Rio Loren. I need to talk to you. Just five minutes.”
Danyael shook his head. “I need a break.”
“Please. Lucien Winter sent me.”
At Lucien’s name, Danyael’s expression shuttered as if he were pulling in upon himself.
Damn it. There was history between Lucien and Danyael, and it was clearly not good.
The doctor sighed. “All right. Five minutes. We’ll talk in my office.”
His office was a cramped room with a desk and three chairs shoved against the wall, along with a computer several generations past its prime. The rest of the room was taken up by cabinets stocked with medical supplies.
Danyael slowly lowered himself in a chair and stretched his left leg out in front of him. “Is Lucien all right?”
Rio’s jaw dropped. After Danyael’s involuntary reaction to the mere mention of Lucien’s name, it was the last question he had expected. “He’s fine. I saw him last night at a charity event in New York.” Damn, had it been last night? How had his life unraveled utterly in the span of twenty-four hours?
“What does he want from me?”
“Nothing, at least nothing that I know of. I needed to talk to someone who knew Zara. Your name came up. He said you were dating her.”
Danyael’s eyebrows drew together in a faint frown. “Zara and I are not dating.”
Rio had absolutely no doubt it was the truth. He could not imagine Zara—dazzling, bold, and alpha female to her core—having any interest at all in this quiet man who moved unobtrusively through a fog of bone-deep weariness.
Rio slumped in the chair across from Danyael. “I have reason to suspect that…someone I know…has gotten tangled up with Zara, and she’s probably in trouble.”
Danyael chuckled, a surprisingly warm and amused sound. “Now, that I do believe. Zara has a talent for finding the hot spots and stirring them up into a boil. I still don’t understand why you’re here.”
“I need to find Zara. I need to find out what’s going on.”
“Why not just ask your friend?”
“It’s not that simple.” Rio waded through the half-truths and partial lies flying through his mind and wondered how much he could tell the doctor. He met Danyael’s dark eyes, a stark contrast to his pale blond hair. In them, he saw compassion, and far more compelling, empathy, as if Danyael also knew what it was like loving someone completely inappropriate.
Zara. They may not be dating, but he’s in love with her.
Rio had a potential ally, and he couldn’t screw it up. God knew, he was burning bridges with the DEA with every second that passed. “I can’t just blunder into the situation. I could screw it up, for me and for her. That’s why I have to talk to Zara.”
Danyael sighed, but he tugged a cell phone out of his pocket and tapped a number on speed dial. He hung up after a few moments. “She’s not picking up her personal phone.”
“Lucien tried to call her. He said the same thing. What does that mean?”
“She’s working.”
“Working?” Rio frowned. “Like…working working?”
“You know what she does.”
“Vaguely.”
“Yeah, me too.” Danyael’s lips tugged into a faint curve. “I try not to ask for too many details.”
“Is there another way to reach her?”
Danyael nodded. “Is this an emergency?”
Rio drew a deep breath. “Yes, it is.”
Danyael tapped another number into his phone and waited for several moments. The tiny smile flickering across his face was the only sign that someone had picked up on the other end. “Yes, I’m all right,” was his immediate response to Zara’s first question. “I have someone in my office looking for you. Says his name is Rio Loren.” After several more seconds, Danyael handed the phone over to Rio. “She wants to talk to you.”
Rio brought the phone to his ear. “This is Rio.”
Zara’s voice was a soft purr. It might have been seductive but for all the alarms screaming in his head. “What are you doing in Washington, D.C.?”
“Came for personal reasons, staying for work. Cixi…Mei Li…met with you this afternoon. What did she hire you to do?”
“Oh, really, Rio. I wouldn’t be much of a mercenary if I spilled the truth to anyone who asked.”
“What’s happening tonight?’
“Nothing that involves you,” Zara said coolly. “Stay out of it.”
“Do you have any idea who she is?”
“Do you?”
Zara’s question, quietly asked, jolted through him. Did he really know who Cixi was? How could he when he wasn’t even sure what her real name was anymore? Rio grimaced. “I can’t just sit idly by—”
“Of course you can. You have for the past eighteen months.”
His eyes narrowed. “Eighteen months…You—how did you—?”
“Stay away.” The phone clicked. The line went silent.
Rio’s grip tightened on the phone, but Danyael held his hand out. “Don’t break
it. Give it back to me. What did Zara say?”
“Stay away.”
“I’d take her advice.”
“I can’t. I love—” Rio bit back the words. “I don’t know exactly what I feel, but I need answers and I won’t get them by sitting around.”
“If Zara said to stay out of it—”
“She doesn’t know what’s at stake, or maybe she does. She knew that, eighteen months ago, Cixi left me without any explanations. Could Zara be behind it?”
“If it caused trouble for someone, then, more than likely, yes.”
Rio stared at Danyael. “Would Zara get involved with drugs?”
“Personally, no.”
“Financially?”
“She has a rather relaxed view on some recreational drugs, even if she would never consume them herself.”
“X-2? X-treme?”
Danyael frowned. “Those are not harmless recreational drugs. Zara wouldn’t deal with them. Despite how she comes across, she has some moral standards.”
“Well, she’s dealing in them now, because she’s dealing with Cixi, and Cixi is buried, up to her pretty little neck, in the X-treme market.”
Danyael’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not like Zara.”
“Doesn’t she have ties to South American terrorists?”
“Yes, she does.”
“Couldn’t she be facilitating some kind of deal between the triads and the cartels?”
“Possibly, but not likely.”
Rio scowled at the doctor. “Where does your unprecedented faith in Zara come from?”
Danyael shrugged off Rio’s sarcasm. “From knowing her.”
“If there’s some kind of drug trade going on, I’m getting Cixi out of there.”
“If Zara told you to stay out, I don’t recommend barging in.”
“I’m already in.”
“Zara’s not picky about collateral damage.”
The casualness of Danyael’s tone elevated the intensity of his warning. Rio had no doubt of Zara’s offhanded dismissal of peripheral casualties. He shot to his feet and paced the short breadth of the room. Death suddenly seemed like a near thing, a chill clawing at his chest. “All the more reason to get Cixi out before the bullets start flying. Where can I find Zara?”
“If you’re convinced it has something to do with Cixi, then you need to find Cixi. Zara will find you.”
Chapter 8
Cixi hummed tunelessly as she gently tugged a brush through her hair before gathering it up into a ponytail. She smacked her lips at her reflection in the mirror. Not too bad. The dusty rose matte lipstick from Chanel did wonders for her skin tone, drawing attention away from the fact that she was, makeup notwithstanding, paler than usual.
Her gaze fell on the small velvet pouch on her dressing table. She tugged at its strings and tumbled its contents out into the palm of her hand.
The blue diamonds shattered the light, splintering it into a million pieces. They’re so beautiful. Might as well.
She removed her earrings and replaced them with the cascade of tiny blue diamonds. The ring went on next, a perfectly cut 5-carat solitaire with no other adornments. The prize of the collection, however, remained the 49-carat pear-cut pendant. It hung around her neck like a blue teardrop, its facets reflecting the light until it practically glittered. It was so large—really, Rio couldn’t fault her for thinking it wasn’t real.
Cixi tugged a light waist-high jacket over her skin-tight leather bodysuit. It softened the look enough to make the overall effect stylish rather than severe. Those who saw her would chalk it up to the eccentricities of supermodels instead of practicality of purpose. Black combat books and a chain link steel belt completed the look.
She smiled at her reflection. Almost avant-garde enough for the catwalk.
Schooling her expression into calm indifference, she headed downstairs to the lobby where the limousine sent by her father was already waiting for her.
My last chance to back out.
She gritted her teeth. No, her chance to back out had slipped through her fingers eighteen months earlier when she walked out on Rio, taking the diamond pendant with her.
Everything after that had been her choice.
Tonight, however, would be karma.
Head held high, she strode out of her building with a sassy swish of her hip, and slid into the backseat of the waiting limousine.
What the hell.
Rio stared in disbelief at the bright glitter of diamonds at Cixi’s earlobes, neck, and finger.
He had arrived a moment earlier at Ashford Towers, located off Dupont Circle. Its two-floor penthouse was registered to Shen Mei Li. Still straddling his Harley Davidson, he cut the engine. A glance at the light in her penthouse confirmed that she was in. However, the light went out almost immediately. Was she leaving?
His decision to wait paid off when she walked out of the building and toward a limousine.
With his diamonds.
Damn it!
He called his parents back in New York City; they confirmed within minutes that the safe in his room was empty, although there was no sign it had been tampered with. Was something supposed to be there? Had something been stolen?
He ground his teeth. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” he told them before disconnecting the call. He had personally put the diamonds away last night, although he had not confirmed before leaving his home earlier that day. It had not even occurred to him to check it. Why would he? He had believed Cixi when she claimed ignorance of the diamond’s true value.
He had trusted her.
More fool him. How many times would she get a jump on him before he stopped being a love-stricken idiot?
He tugged his motorcycle helmet over his head and followed the limousine to North Arlington. It stopped in front of a high-rise building on Wilson Avenue. Rio frowned. It was a co-op, and one of the most expensive in the area. His parents had been considering a second home near Washington, D.C., but even they had balked at the price when a unit spanning the 7th and 8th floors had hit the real estate market five years earlier for $120 million. It had been snatched up quickly, however, by…
Rio frowned. His interest in the Washington, D.C., real estate market had been peripheral, at best, but hadn’t that unit been purchased by a Chinese buyer?
Shen Long?
It was the ideal pad for the real estate mogul, and the perfect cover for the leader of the most feared triad in the northeastern United States.
Shrouded by the shadows between street lamps, Rio watched Cixi walk into the building. Now, all he had to do was break in—
A hand gripped his arm and swung him around. Instinctively, he struck out at the form in front of him, but it sidestepped with a hairsbreadth to spare. “Can’t keep your nose out of it, can you?” a sultry female voice spoke.
He blinked against the darkness. “Zara? How did you—?”
She stepped into the dim pools of light on the periphery of the building. “Danyael called me again. He said you were a smitten, love-sick calf.” Zara’s lips curled into a sneer. “Those people get killed.”
“Who the hell—why did Danyael call you anyway?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he thinks it’ll keep me from accidentally killing you. He’s idealistic that way.” Her gaze hardened. “You’re in the way.”
“I’m just trying to keep Cixi safe.”
Zara shook her head. “You’re out of your league.”
“I doubt it, but I don’t care.” I love her. “She stole my diamonds again.”
“She’s just wearing pretty stones. They’re not remotely worth whatever value you’ve ascribed to them.”
“You’re a mercenary. What’s your stake in this? Who paid you?”
“No one. Even mercenaries need a hobby or two.”
“Like X-treme?” Rio snarled. “Danyael swore you would never get involved in the drug trade. He said it wasn’t your style; said you had standards.”
“I do.” Zara shru
gged elegantly. “They’re not high, though. No one’s going to trip over them, least of all me.”
“So you are involved in the drug trade? What is it? High-grade heroin for X-treme?”
Her smile was amused. “Nothing so mundane. I deal with far more addictive substances.”
“Like what?”
“Knowledge.”
Rio’s mind blanked for an instant. “What?”
“Information. It’s the only thing I want from Shen Long.”
“Information about what?”
“Nothing that concerns you. Curiosity is the second fastest way to get killed,” Zara said.
“After being a love-sick calf?” Rio asked. He paused for a beat. “Danyael didn’t really say that, did he?”
“Not in quite those words. He’s kinder than I am.”
“And yet he loves you.”
Zara froze.
She did not, however, look shocked—Rio didn’t think he was telling her something she didn’t know—but for a moment, she looked almost…happy, as if someone else had noticed something she had been wondering about privately. A second later, her indifferent façade was back in place. She shrugged. “There’s no accounting for Danyael’s taste.”
“I’m coming with you,” Rio said.
“No.”
“Cixi needs me.”
“She really doesn’t.”
“The only way you’ll be able to keep me out of this is to shoot me,” he said.
Zara looked thoughtful.
Wait—she wasn’t seriously contemplating it, was she? “Whatever you’ve planned, I’ll be your backup.”
“I don’t need backup.”
“You’ve accused me of sitting back and doing nothing for eighteen months. I’m doing something now, and you’re in my way.”
She arched an eyebrow, and actually chuckled. “I suppose Danyael would be disappointed if I killed you. Fine. Come along if you choose. It’s probably best if I can keep an eye on you.”
To his surprise, she walked into the building and smiled at the concierge as if he were an old friend. “Hello, George, how are you?”