Realizing I wasn’t going to get any more from him on that line of questioning, I changed direction. “What does the ‘R’ stand for?” I said.
“Rayne.”
“Quentin Rayne Black?” I repeated back to him, still not hiding my disbelief.
“Would you believe me if I said my parents had a sense of whimsy?” he asked me.
“No,” I said.
“Would you believe that I do, then?”
I snorted a laugh, in spite of myself. I heard it echoed through the earpiece, although I heard a few curses coming from that direction, too.
I shook my head at the suspect himself, but less in a “no” that time.
“Yes,” I conceded finally. “So it is a made-up name, then?”
The man calling himself Quentin Black only returned my smile. His eyes once again looked shrewd, less thoughtful and more openly calculating.
Even so, his weird comment about “listening” came back to me.
Truthfully, he was looking at me as if he were listening very hard.
The thought made me slightly nervous.
Especially since I’d been doing the same to him from inside the observation booth.
Seeing the intelligence there, I found myself regrouping mentally as the silence stretched, reminding myself who and what I was dealing with. The fact that he’d nearly made me forget that in our back and forth of the last few moments was unnerving on its own.
I found myself looking him over deliberately, for the second time since I’d left the glass-enclosed booth behind the one-way mirror. I fought to reconcile his physical presence with the words I’d heard come out of that well-formed mouth. The two things, his physicality and his manner of speaking, didn’t really fit at all, at least not from my previous experience in these kinds of interviews.
The all-black clothing, the dense, rock-like muscles I could see under that blood-soaked shirt, the expensive leather shoes, the expensive watch, the ethnically-ambiguous but somehow feral-looking face… nothing about him really fit, from his made-up name to his wryly humorous quipping with me.
I found myself staring at that strange, somehow animal -evoking face with its abnormally high cheekbones and almond eyes, and wondered who in the hell this guy really was.
“Where are you from, Quentin?” I asked, voicing at least part of my puzzlement.
He shook his head though, that smile back to playing with the edges of his lips.
“You don’t want to tell me that?” I said.
“No,” he said. “…Clearly, I don’t.”
“What do you do for a living?” I said, trying again. “Do you have a job of some kind, Quentin? Some area of expertise you’d like to share?”
That time, he rolled his eyes openly.
Before I could respond to his obvious disdain, he let out an audible and impatient sigh.
“You’re not going to resort to shrink games on me now, are you, doc?” he said, giving me another of those more penetrating stares. “…Not so soon in our new friendship? I haven’t intimidated you already, have I?” At my silence, his voice grew bored. “The constant repetition of my given name. The clinical yet polite peppering of questions in an attempt to quietly undermine my sense of autonomy here…”
“Fine.” I held up both of my palms in a gesture of surrender. “What do you want to talk about, Mr. Black? Do you want to tell me what you were doing at the Palace of Fine Arts earlier this morning?”
“Not here,” he said cryptically, smiling at me again.
I frowned, glancing around the gunmetal gray room.
“Somewhere else, then?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “For all of your questions, doc. Including the ones I wouldn’t answer before.”
I gave him another puzzled smile. “I hate to tell you, Mr. Black, but you’re not likely to be anyplace that is significantly different from this room anytime soon. Not in terms of a non-institutional setting… if that’s what you’re driving at.”
“It must certainly appear that way to you, yes,” he said, raising his chained wrists for emphasis and glancing around the room with those gold eyes. “…But perhaps you are mistaken in that, doc. Perhaps you’ll find that we can speak in a much more comfortable setting, just the two of us… and in not too long a time.”
I narrowed my gaze at him.
It didn’t sound like a threat, at least not coming from him. But the words themselves could definitely have been construed as one.
I gave him a wry smile. “You think so, huh?”
I do, a voice said clearly in my mind. I do think so, doc.
I jumped, violently.
Truthfully, I almost lost my balance in the chair.
“Miri?” Nick asked in my ear. “Miri? Are you okay?”
For a long-feeling few seconds I only stared at Black, breathing harder.
I could feel as much as see him watching me react. He smiled, lifting the bare corners of that sculpted mouth. Then he shrugged, his expression smoothing.
“Perhaps you’ll accept a raincheck on that particular discussion, doc?” he said. “…After I’ve finished my business here?”
It unnerved me, hearing him use the nickname yet again. I knew it wasn’t exactly an original thing to call someone in my line of work, but it still struck me as deliberate.
I fought the other thing out of my mind, sure I must have imagined it.
Even so, the smile on my face grew strained.
“Okay,” I said. “You pick the topic, then. For today I mean…pre-raincheck.”
Quentin Black smiled, leaning back deliberately in the bolted, metal chair.
“No,” he said, after assessing me again with those strangely animal eyes. “No, I think we’re done for now, doc. It was my very great pleasure to meet you, however.”
I pursed my lips. “You don’t want to talk to me anymore?” I said.
I want to talk to you so badly I can fucking taste it , that same voice said in my mind, making me jump again, but less violently that time. My breath stopped, locking in my chest as the voice rose even more clearly. But not here, doc. Not here. Patience. And believe me when I say I am speaking to myself in this, even more than I am to you…
I could only sit there, breathing, staring at him.
Those gold eyes never wavered.
When I didn’t move after a few more seconds, or speak, he smiled.
Do they know what you are, doc? Does that handsome cop in the next room have any idea why it is that you are so very, very good at your job? Or how you managed to keep him alive that time in Afghanistan…?
My chest clenched more.
It hurt now, like a fist had reached inside me, squeezing my heart.
The voice fell silent.
The man in front of me looked at me, his expression close to expectant. Then he gazed pointedly down at my engagement ring.
Does anyone know about you, doc? Anyone at all?
My throat closed as he raised his eyes back to mine.
Those gold flecked irises studied my face, watching my reaction.
I can’t hear you, the voice said next, flickering with a tinge of frustration. I cannot hear you at all… but I know from your face that you hear me, doc. That shield of yours is damned strong. I confess, it’s positively turning me on at this point. It also makes me very curious. Were you ever ranked, sister? If so, I would love to know at what level…
Another smile ghosted his lips, even as a curl of heat slid through my lower abdomen, one that didn’t feel like it originated from me, at least not entirely.
It made my face flush hot, even as my thighs clenched together in reflex.
I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours… the voice said, softer.
My throat tightened, choking me with a caught swallow.
Still, he didn’t say anything aloud.
We’ll talk more later, doc, I heard in my mind, softer still. I have so many, many questions. So many things I’d like to discuss. But I really do no
t wish to do any of that here. Not with them watching us. They are wondering at this silence as it is. You must try to speak to me again, doc, before your handsome cop decides there is a problem. Before he and his meat-headed partner make an issue of it…
I blinked again, my heart now slamming against my ribs.
But he wasn’t looking at me now.
As I watched, Quentin Rayne Black lapsed back into the bored, stone-faced man I’d glimpsed through the window before I’d entered the room.
I’d finally managed to clear my throat.
Clenching my hands together in my lap, conscious of how clammy they felt, I kept my voice carefully polite.
“Do you want to tell me about the body in the park, Mr. Black?” I said.
Nothing. Silence.
“Mr. Black?” I said, hearing the slight tremble in my voice. “Did you kill that woman? Did you pose her in that wedding dress?”
He didn’t look up from where he stared down between his cuffed hands.
I tried again, asking the same thing a few different ways.
But nothing I said in those next fifteen or so minutes appeared to reach him. I tried being friendly, annoying, disdainful, mocking. I belittled his intellect… even threw out a few offers to deal, along with some not-so-veiled threats. Nothing.
I got nothing.
In fact, I doubt I penetrated the veneer of that thoughtful, somehow puzzle-solving stare he aimed at the empty surface of the metal table.
Clearly, I’d been dismissed.
WANT TO READ MORE?
Continue the rest of the novel here:
BLACK IN WHITE
(Quentin Black Mystery #1)
Link: http://bit.ly/BlackInWhite
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THE RINGS FIGHTER
JC Andrijeski is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author who urban fantasy, paranormal romance and mysteries, and apocalyptic science fiction, often with a sexy and metaphysical bent.
JC has a background in journalism, history and politics, and has a tendency to traipse around the globe, eat odd foods, and read whatever she can get her hands on. She grew up in the Bay Area of California, but has lived abroad in Europe, Australia and Asia, and from coast to coast in the continental United States.
She currently lives and writes full time in Los Angeles.
Gods on Earth: Complete Series (Books 1-3): Paranormal Romances with Norse Gods, Tricksters, and Fated Mates Page 53