Sam pressed fingers to his forehead, then dropped his hand. “If I can convince you they weren’t, will you go to Boston?”
“I guess…”
“Then come on. Let’s go to the library. You can follow me.”
“The library?” She let him usher her into her car and automatically put on her seatbelt. “Why?”
He leaned into the open door, putting himself closer to her than he’d been since their mutual doctoring session the night before. A wave of awareness swept over her, and she slowly breathed in his warm, mellow scent, now spiced with laundry soap and aftershave. It took a few seconds to tune back in to his words.
“They have free WiFi. I can use my laptop to look up these numbers and the company Vern works for. Then we’ll drive up to Boston.”
He closed the door before Riley registered what he’d said. He wasn’t sending her up there by herself. He was going with her.
…
Sam was glad they had to drive to the library in separate cars. Once he’d tuned into Riley as a woman rather than someone who needed his help, he couldn’t shut it off. He wouldn’t have advised confronting Sharla and Vern like that, but her fierce determination had been pretty hot.
He needed a distraction.
The drive would be long enough for him to call the Society again. He knew Riley didn’t want him talking to them behind her back, but he could speak more freely if she wasn’t listening. He stuck the earbud in his ear, connected it to the phone, and speed-dialed the main number. While it rang, he checked the rearview mirror. Riley was directly behind him.
A familiar voice came on the line. “S-G-E-P.”
“Alana. I thought you got a new receptionist?”
“Hi, Sam!” The Society’s executive director went from professional to pleased in two words. “Haven’t heard from you in a while. The receptionist is out this morning. What can I do for you?”
If she hadn’t sounded so welcoming when she’d heard his voice, the lack of small talk would have felt like punishment. He heard voices in the background and assumed she was busy.
“I need to talk to Kirsten, if she’s available.” She was the new head of the education department and would help register Riley and set her up for programs and training.
“Oh, didn’t you hear? Kirsten is on maternity leave!”
“No. I didn’t even know she was pregnant.” He felt bad for not sending a gift. It was weird to be so out of touch, but he had no one to blame but himself for his sense of detachment.
“Marley took over again—temporary duty,” Alana said. “I’ll put you through.”
Sam tapped his fingers impatiently while he waited for the call to transfer.
“Sam!”
Marley’s greeting was several notches more enthused than Alana’s. “Hi, Marley. How are you?”
“Excellent. It feels really good to be back here. How about you? I’d love to have you help out with a few classes.”
He liked teaching, but that was the opposite of not getting sucked in. Saying no wouldn’t be easy, though, if he went up to Boston with Riley. “We’ll see. What do you have going on right now for newly empowered goddesses?”
“Why? Do you have one?” He heard shuffling papers followed by mouse clicks. “I didn’t think anyone was turning twenty-one right now, and we haven’t had anyone off the radar since we got the new database up and running.”
Over time, the Society had gotten complacent about tracking births and empowerment, only recording them once reported by members. But when they’d set up the database, they’d found more pending goddesses than they’d known about through existing membership.
“I met a young woman, Riley Kordek, whose mother might have been dormant. She died right before Riley’s powers manifested a couple of years ago. Can you check to see if she was ever registered?” He gave her the name Riley had provided earlier, both her maiden and married names.
Marley tapped on her keyboard, then said, “Nope. No record. No one by the name of Kordek at all, but there wouldn’t be if that’s her father’s name.”
“What about ancestors? They may have gone dormant a couple of generations back.”
“I’ll look. I might have to dig. A lot of the older stuff isn’t in the database.”
“I appreciate it.” Sam changed lanes, making sure there was enough space for Riley to follow. “There was apparently some kind of rift between the family and the Society. Riley was raised not to trust you guys but doesn’t really know why.”
“I’ll see what I can find. In the meantime, I can start her registration. What’s her age and source?”
“She’s almost twenty-four, and it’s metal.”
Marley whistled. “Wow. We’ve only had a couple other metal sources in the last century.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“How does it manifest?”
“Channeling. She blew a couple of muggers about ten feet last night.” He kept the explanation simple for now. Riley could tell her entire story to John when they got to Boston so he could assign her a protector.
“Muggers, huh?” Marley sounded skeptical, and Sam frowned.
“Why? Have other people been having problems?” It hadn’t occurred to him that Riley might not be the only target.
“Not that I’m aware of,” she said. “That’s just too simple, given your track record.”
“True enough,” he said with a laugh.
“Anyway, we’ve got nothing going on right now. I have literature for her and she can go through the short-term mentorship program, but I don’t have any other newbies to register for six months, so I can’t set up a full class.”
“All right. I’ll talk to her about it, and we’ll decide when we get up there.”
He could hear her frowning when she spoke. “Up here? You’re coming up to register her in person?”
“I’ll explain when we get there.”
“Okay, cool. It’ll be good to see you.”
“You, too. Hey,” he hurried on. “Is John there? I tried to call him earlier and got voice mail.”
“He and Jeannine had an offsite meeting this morning. He’s here now, though. Hang on.”
Sam pulled up to a red light and checked that Riley was still following. She was, but so was the car that had been behind her when they left the impound lot. It had a discreet rental agency sticker on the windshield.
“Hey, Sam! Just the man I wanted to talk to.”
Surprised, Sam refocused on his call and the traffic in front of him. “I am?” He hadn’t talked to John in months.
“Yeah, I want to get your take on something. Marley says you’re coming up here?”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know yet. What’s going on?”
“I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.”
“Well, listen, I met a kind-of-new goddess down here in Connecticut, Riley Kordek. She’s had some people following her and needs a protector. You have anyone nearby who can meet her and take her up to Boston to get registered with the Society?”
John chuckled. “Yeah. You.”
“Ha ha. I mean a real protector.”
“You are a real protector. I don’t care if you haven’t done it in a while. I wouldn’t trust anyone more. ’Specially since I’m stretched thin right now. My closest guy is in D.C.”
That wouldn’t work. Sam checked the cars again. The same one was behind Riley. He took a right turn off the main route. Riley followed, and a few seconds later, so did the rental. Sam’s heart rate picked up. No, they couldn’t wait for someone to get up here from D.C.
“All right, I’ve got it covered. Hey, by the way, you ever hear of a company called Millinger?” The silence made his brow furrow. “John?”
“Where did you hear that name?”
“The people who attacked Riley.”
Another delay before John responded, his tone so carefully dismissive Sam knew he was lying. “Never heard of ’em. So, get your ass up here tout de suite,
yeah? Jeannine’s dying to cook you dinner.”
“Uh, yeah, probably be a few hours. Thanks, John.” Sam hung up quickly and yanked the earbud out of his ear. Dammit. Jeannine didn’t cook for him—they didn’t even like each other. So get your ass up here was about Riley, but about more than that, too, because his code meant he thought the phones were compromised. What the hell was going on?
Sam sped up, watching carefully for kids and cars in the residential neighborhood, and took the corner too fast. Riley didn’t follow as quickly. She probably thought he was crazy, but add Vern and Sharla to the rental car and his cryptic conversation with John, and every protective instinct Sam had was on high alert.
Information was power, so Sam wasn’t willing to cancel their trip to the library. He wanted to know what Millinger was before they got on the road. But what had been important was now urgent.
The rental didn’t show up again for the rest of the ride. Either the driver knew he’d been made, or he hadn’t been following them. No way Riley had lost him with the way she was driving. Sam took the last few turns toward the library and pulled into the parking lot with a screech.
Riley parked next to him and threw herself out of her car with a scowl. “What was that all about?” she demanded, but apparently noticed Sam scanning the lot and the street around them. She shifted closer to him and looked around too. “Were we followed?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. But I talked to—” Crap. He wasn’t going to admit that, but she turned betrayed eyes on him. Not angry ones. That would have been easier. “I’m sorry. I called the Society and the Protectorate to let them know we were coming. I don’t know what’s going on, but something is, and it sounds like it’s bigger than only you.”
Riley bit her lip and didn’t move away when he instinctively smoothed his hand down her back. She glanced at the library, then back to the street. “I don’t like not knowing anything.”
“Neither do I. That’s why we’re here. Let’s go inside.” He pulled his laptop bag out of the back seat, and they went in. Sam picked a large, empty table near the back and set up the computer with his back against the wall, giving him as clear a view as possible of the main entrance and putting space—and the table—between them should anyone come their way.
A few minutes later, Sam wished he’d considered more practically what huddling over a laptop in a quiet corner of the library meant. Or at least taken the surge of attraction he’d felt at the impound lot more seriously.
The wide wooden chairs at the library table should have provided a comfortable distance. But Riley had dragged her chair up against his, and as he struggled to remember the simple task of logging on to the free WiFi and connecting to the Internet, she positioned herself to see everything he did. Which meant thighs touching and her arm draped across the back of his chair. He sat up straight to maintain a buffer space, but every time she leaned to read something on the screen, her breasts brushed his upper arm. Despite the thickly woven cotton of his jacket sleeve, he could tell exactly how perfect they were, just the right level of firm softness.
He cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly, staring unseeing at the Millinger website. Lust had never been his driving force. When attraction wasn’t fleeting, it heralded a connection beyond the superficial. So even though he’d just met Riley, he doubted this awareness of her would just disappear. Which put a new spin on his reluctance to take her to Boston.
Was he really afraid of falling into a role he didn’t want anymore? Or was he actually afraid of getting romantically involved with another goddess when it had gone so wrong the first time?
It didn’t help that Riley’s voice turned husky when she tried to whisper, or that her long, wavy blond hair smelled like honeysuckle.
Honeysuckle. He didn’t even know what the fuck honeysuckle smelled like.
Riley snorted derisively, snapping Sam out of his self-disgusted trance. “‘We’ll bring you to your brightest world’? What kind of vague crap is that? What are they supposed to do there?”
Sam shrugged to cover a subtle shift away from her. The half inch let him focus on the corporate website in front of him. “Consulting, I guess.” He clicked a couple of links, but Millinger was very cagy about their business. The recruitment page sounded like a pyramid marketing scam, without making any real promises. That page linked to a word association quiz and a questionnaire inquiring about special skills.
“It sounds like they’re looking for something, not offering something. Look at this.” He waved a finger at the contact page. “Lots of pretty stock photography, but no photo of their building—or buildings, since they claim offices in twenty states.” He opened a new tab and did a search for the state website for Georgia. “They list headquarters in Atlanta, so let’s look for their registered business information.”
He found it after a few minutes of clicking and typing—and getting drunk on Riley’s faint sweetness.
“There it is.” Millinger’s tax certification status showed the business registration date…less than a year ago.
“How can a company be that big but only a year old?” Riley asked.
“Good question. Makes the whole thing suspicious.”
Riley laughed, and the sound slid over Sam’s nerve endings. “I don’t know. I think the whole chasing-me-down thing is pretty suspicious already.”
Sam managed a crooked smile. “This is a different kind of suspicious. Assuming Millinger is even connected. The company might not have anything to do with them following you.” John had recognized the name, though, and it niggled at the back of Sam’s brain, too. But he couldn’t figure out why. Their public front was innocuous, but the face of evil often was.
He checked the data in a few other states where Millinger had locations and got the same registration date. He dug in his pocket for his phone and handed it to Riley. “Read those numbers to me, will you?”
She did, and Sam typed each one into a search engine. One was listed as belonging to Millinger, but the rest were either hotels or pizza delivery places, or came up unlisted.
“Those were all in towns I’ve stayed over the last few weeks,” Riley murmured when he was done. She handed the phone back and leaned away, her elbow on the table, hand supporting her head. The distance didn’t decrease their intimacy, though. If anything, now that she was looking straight at him, it had increased.
Sam concentrated on dialing the Millinger number. His big fingers hit the wrong tiny buttons, and he had to start over.
Riley gave a little sigh, her brow tightening. “I never saw anyone,” she murmured. “They could be watching us right now.”
Sam rubbed her knee in reassurance. Riley laid her free hand on top of his, and he regretted his impulsiveness. She was going to think he was making a move. He switched his phone to the other ear so he had an excuse for pulling his hand away, but the phantom imprint of her soft fingers remained.
After a few rings there was a faint click, and his phone beeped the disconnection. Sam looked at the screen. “Nothing. I think that’s as far as we’re going to get today.” He shut down the laptop and stood to pack it up.
Riley sighed. “I’m going to the restroom. I’ll meet you outside.”
Sam watched her go, making sure none of the few people in sight followed her, then quickly finished packing and strode outside to wait. He sat on the low brick wall in front of the entrance and took a much-needed deep breath.
He hadn’t been this attracted to a woman in years, and he didn’t like how much it unsettled him. The last woman he’d been involved with was Quinn, and there’d been no uncertainty in that relationship, no sense of don’t go there. Not until the end. Plus, he’d wallowed in his feelings for her for so long, he had no idea how to handle this now.
It’s past time to move on. Just go for it, dude! Sam shook his head hard, trying to dislodge Nick’s voice, but it wasn’t wrong. He did have to move on. He was even ready to, at least to put the past behind him and stop letting it fester. But with
Riley? She was six years younger than he was—except he was a big fat hypocrite using that as an excuse since Quinn was ten years older than him. But Riley was also vulnerable, and he was struggling with his aimless, flat existence. Not a good foundation for a new relationship. And what the hell did he know, maybe this growing attraction was just gratitude for giving him a purpose again, however much he tried to tell himself he didn’t want it.
Maybe he needed to accept that helping people might be his thing, and he was never going to get away from it. But it was something else to turn it into another sexual relationship. There’d been too much damage from the last one, and he wasn’t up for more. Not for him, and not for Riley. So he had to shut down this attraction.
What if you can’t? They would drive to Boston in separate cars. Not ideal, especially if someone was following them, but he didn’t want to strand her up there with no transportation. Once Marley took over education and John took over protection, Sam could remove himself from the picture.
He’d investigate this Millinger thing on his own. Something about it dug into him, hard. He was good at research and investigation, too. He rose and walked to his butt-ugly Saturn to toss the laptop case on the front seat, feeling lighter than when he’d come outside. Purpose didn’t have to mean taking care of people.
He looked around the parking lot out of renewed habit, not expecting to see anything, but his eyes locked onto a familiar orange sticker on the windshield of a red sedan. The car that had been following them.
Sam knew it was pointless, but he stalked across the curved lot toward the vehicle backed up to the wall. Sure enough, he was only halfway there when the engine started and the driver pulled away. Sam froze, so surprised at what he saw that he failed to get the license plate number before the car bounced into the street and sped off down the road.
No fucking way. Anson?
Sam hadn’t seen his old college roommate in three years, not since he’d been jailed for assault after leeching several goddesses of their powers—including Marley and almost Quinn, who’d taken it all away from him. Anson had been released a year ago, but they’d kept tabs on him during his probation, and he hadn’t made any moves toward anyone. He’d stayed in…Georgia. Where Millinger’s headquarters were.
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