"You know how we news people are once we get hold of a story. Dogs on a bone."
He hadn't yet asked her about what she'd said in the interviews. She assumed he wanted to know.
"I didn't tell anyone about the Ancients or Cadamus, in case you're worried."
"To be honest, I was a little."
"I thought about saying something. I really did. But I decided it wouldn't serve my best interests."
"Hmm. You don't say?" One corner of his mouth curved up in a teasing grin.
She would have liked to tease him back but she was too tired and too confused and, because of Linda Perez's last question, too aggravated.
Collecting the stack of toppled term papers, she put them in order before laying them in her briefcase and said, "I think we should attempt to keep our working relationship separate from our personal relationship."
Nick chuckled. "Too late for that."
"Seriously. I'm less convinced today than I was last week that the public has a right to know about the creatures. But the jury's still out."
"And you don't want to hurt my feelings should you decide to blow my Superman-Clark Kent cover by giving Linda Perez an exclusive. Is that it?" He stood and leaned over her desk, bringing his face close to hers.
She countered the flood of sensation his nearness evoked by saying brusquely, "Whatever I decide to do will be because it facilitates my father's release from prison. I care about you, but he's my father, and I love him."
His gaze met hers and she was instantly reminded of the previous night in her bedroom when they'd stared at each other in her mirror while his talented fingers brought her to a shattering climax.
"At least you admit you care."
"I do," she breathed. More than she should. More than was wise. More than she ever thought possible.
Gillian, and not Nick, closed the last little distance between their lips. Holding the sides of his face with both her hands, she kissed him hotly and hungrily, her tongue delving deep into his mouth. She rose from her chair as if floating on air, her mouth still locked with his, intending to climb across her desk if necessary to get to him.
The depth of her need for him might have scared her if she stopped long enough to ponder it.
She wasn't expecting him to break off the kiss, but he did.
"Why don't you ask your father what he wants you to do." Nick placed his hands on her shoulders and eased her back into her chair. "His answer might surprise you."
She sat back, mildly affronted at his apparent rejection. "How would you know what my father wants?"
"Because I'm a regular visitor to Florence Prison." He stood and started toward the door. She was too stunned to do more than blink. "Ask him, Gillian," Nick said, his hand on the doorknob. "And when he's told you, come see me, and we'll talk again."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gillian sat in the cramped booth and, through the bulletproof Plexiglas, watched her father approach. His gait was a little slower than the last time she'd seen him, his face a little more drawn, and the orange jumpsuit he wore fit a little looser around the shoulders.
Had it only been a month since her last visit? He looked like he'd aged five years.
Cancer would do that to a person.
The tumors, four in all, had been removed from his neck and back. Radiation and chemo followed. The doctors advocated a change in lifestyle. Right, like that was going to happen. They'd given him a fiftyfifty chance of the cancer not returning. But the ordeal, just two months prior, had left its mark on William Sayers. He wasn't the same man he'd once been, physically or emotionally.
Dropping into the chair opposite her, he picked up the phone and waited for her to do the same.
Gillian placed the receiver to her ear. It was cold. Like the visitor center. Like her. She wished somebody would turn down the blasted air-conditioning.
"Hello, Gillian."
"Dad."
"You okay? You look beat."
She was beat. Through and through. A ten-ounce cup of rotgut convenience store coffee purchased when she stopped for gas on the trip from Phoenix was the only thing keeping her eyelids open. That and Nick's words resounding in her ears.
Because I'm a regular visitor to Florence Prison.
Why in heaven's name would he visit her father?
Something told her she wasn't going to like the answer.
Her mind had been in a whirl since Nick had walked out of her office, and though she was dead on her feet, she couldn't sleep a wink until she learned the reason behind his acquaintance with her father.
Skipping out on her afternoon office hours, she'd jumped in her car and sped the forty miles to Florence, praying she made it there in one piece and before visiting hours were over for the day.
She succeeded on both accounts, but with only a half hour to spare. The guard who'd checked her in had frowned his disapproval at her late arrival.
"We don't have a lot of time, Dad," she said without preamble, "and I have some questions to ask you. Important questions."
He didn't appeared unnerved by her no-nonsense tone. Could it be he'd been expecting her, or was he just keeping his cards close to his chest?
"Okay. Fire away." He propped an elbow on the counter. They could have been discussing the weather for all the interest he showed.
"Tell me about Nicholaus Blackwater."
A barely perceptible pause in the rise and fall of his chest was his only reaction.
"Nicholaus Blackwater? Don't think I know the name."
"Are you sure? He told me today he visits you regularly."
"He did, huh?"
"Please don't patronize me. I've had a really rough twenty-four hours." She toyed with the phone cord, wrapping it around her fingers.
"Answer me this first. How well do you know him?" Well enough to have spent the night with him enjoying the most incredible sex o f my life.
"We met last week," she said. "TV-7 interviewed me, and he was the camera operator."
"An interview? About your next book?" "About the creatures."
Her father frowned. "I wish you'd forget about them once and for all and concentrate on something else."
"They're back," she said in a voice more controlled than she felt. "The next cycle has begun."
"They're not real." His voice was equally controlled, but a thin film of sweat glistened on his forehead.
"One of the female creatures attacked me last night in a parking garage and tried to kill me. The same parking garage where Carl Salvador was found dead." Gillian winced, feeling the creature's fingers around her neck, squeezing and squeezing until her windpipe closed and her lungs collapsed. She swallowed, surprised she could. "It would have succeeded if not for Nick."
Finally. Something she said got a reaction from her father.
He leaned forward. "Are you all right?" "Yes, but-"
"Stay the hell away from Nick Blackwater." "Why?"
"Just do it, dammit. He's crazy. He'll get you killed." Her father's face flushed a deep crimson. Gillian refused to be put off. "Why does he visit you?"
"He's a cameraman. The news stations come down here sometimes."
She drew back and gaped at her father. "You're lying."
"Don't be ridiculous." His short burst of laughter rang false.
"What are you hiding from me?" she demanded. "Nothing."
They stared at each other through the Plexiglas for innumerable seconds. Gillian broke the silence first. "The creatures are real. One of them killed Mom.
And I'm beginning to think you know they're real, too." She gripped the phone with such force her fingers cramped. "Tell me I'm wrong."
Her father unexpectedly hung his head and for the first time since her mother's funeral, she thought she might see him cry. Not even the cancer had done that. Gillian wanted to cry, too, but not for the same reason. Like the rest of them, her father had pleaded with her after her mother's death to stop making up stories. Stories, she now realized, he'd known were true.
>
A stab of betrayal cut through her so sharp and so deep, she nearly doubled over.
"I kept hoping your fixation with the creatures would die out," he murmured. "Or at least end with your book. You always were too obsessed with them for your own good." He lifted his head and cleared his throat. "How much do you know about Nick?"
"Everything. He told me last night."
"I wish he hadn't."
"He didn't want to. Not at first. I .Insisted."
"You're like your mother that way." William's smile was faint and melancholy. "Once she set her mind to something, there was no stopping her."
Any other visit, Gillian would have treasured a walk down memory lane. Not today. "Nick says I'm his Synsar."
"No!" Her father lunged out of his chair. When a guard came up behind him, he sat back down and waited until they were alone again to continue. "You don't have to be a part of this. Just walk away. Nick will find someone else to be his Synsar."
Gillian noticed her father had no trouble pronouncing the word. She'd always assumed her father's role in her mother's death had been that of an innocent bystander. And while she wasn't so sure anymore, neither was she ready to consider the alternative.
"I don't know if I can walk away, even if I wanted to." In retrospect, she'd probably sealed her fate the night she decided to tail Nick to the cemetery.
Her father scrubbed his jaw, and Gillian was reminded of when she was a little girl.
Every day when he'd come home from work, he'd pick her up, swing her around in the living room of their small, rundown apartment, and rub her cheek with his five o'clock shadow while she squealed with delight. He'd worked at a gas station. She could still see the grime on his hands and smell the oil and grease that forever permeated his uniform.
"Isn't it past time you told me what really happened the night Mom died?" she asked.
"I couldn't live with myself if you wound up hating me. You're the only thing that keeps me going in here." He looked at her with such love and such desperation, Gillian's anger at his betrayal melted.
She raised her hand and pressed her fingers to the Plexiglas. "I could never hate you."
"You might. When you learn what I've done." With a resigned sigh,,-he asked, "Do you know who Jonathan is?"
"Yes. Nick's predecessor."
He met her gaze, and she read a mix of emotion in his expression. Love, sorrow, regret. But also something else. Resolution. She remembered as a little girl seeing the same unwavering look in his eyes. It was one of the reasons her belief in his innocence had never faltered.
Then all at once she knew, even before her father spoke. The alternative she hadn't wanted to consider.
"I was Jonathan's Synsar," he said.
"Oh, my God." The ramifications sank in one by one, boggling her mind and piercing her heart like tiny knives. "Oh, my God." She pressed her trembling fingers to her mouth only to remove them. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"You were too young to understand."
Gillian heard footsteps behind her and turned around to see a guard strolling past. He tapped his watch, signaling to her that visiting hours were almost over. She waited for him to move on before asking, "And then later?"
"I was afraid. I didn't think you'd forgive me for your mother's death if you knew the truth." "You didn't kill her."
"Not with my own hands. But I was the reason Radium was in our apartment that night." He lowered his voice to a gravelly whisper. "Jonathan and I had killed two females and Radium was out for revenge. The bastard got it, too. In spades. He murdered your mother, destroyed our lives, and ensured the continuation of his kind all in one fell swoop."
Loathing radiated from her father in waves. Gillian repressed a sob when she realized her own loathing, carefully contained for years, was as fierce as his.
"Jeez, honey, don't cry. I won't talk about this anymore."
"No, go on. Please." She pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed her eyes. "I really want to hear the whole story. How could Mom's death ensure the continuation of his kind?"
He hesitated briefly before continuing. "We were closing in on the location of the third female. Might have gotten to it ahead of Radium if not for what he did to your mother. Jonathan stayed with me most of the night. By the time he went out to hunt, Radium had tracked down his mate."
"Were you and Jonathan friends before ..." "Yeah, we were friends. Not at first. He busted me
twice when I was a juvie, and I hated his guts." "Jonathan was a cop?"
"A good one. He tried his best to straighten me out. Came close once or twice but I kept getting sucked back in, or I guess you could say, down. When I wasn't snorting coke, I was pushing it to support my habit. Sometimes, usually when I ran out of cash, I'd go straight for a few weeks. But I always went right back to the dope. I'd have wound up dead in some gutter or shot in the back by someone I doublecrossed if not for your mother. She saved me in more ways than one."
Gillian had heard the story of how her parents met and married many times before. And though the end of visiting hours was quickly approaching, she didn't interrupt her father.
"She was from the same streets as me, but, by some miracle I'll never understand, stayed clear of the drugs and violence. I still can't figure out what she saw in a loser like me. A druggie, punk loser at that."
"Maybe she saw the same qualities Jonathan did. Someone who could make a difference. Someone who could help save the world."
"God knows I tried to do rightt by her. And by you when you came along. Crawling out of that hellhole in south Phoenix was the hardest thing I did next to leaving you to be raised by strangers."
"Harder than taking the blame for a crime you didn't commit?"
"That part was easy. I deserve to be in here. For what I did to your mother and you."
Something that had always eluded Gillian suddenly made sense. "You took the blame for Mom's death so that the secret of the creatures and the Ancients would remain safe. Didn't you?"
"You're wrong. I wouldn't have gone to prison if I could help it."
Right or wrong, it didn't matter. The sense of abandonment Gillian had suffered since her mother's death diminished a little.
"I think Mom forgives you. She would have understood you were trying to do the right thing and save people's lives."
"I'm not convinced my motives were that honorable."
"No? Then what were they?"
"Just once in my life, I wanted to be a hero instead of a loser. The kind of man who deserved to be married to your mother and a father to you."
Gillian touched her neck where the collar of her shirt covered her bruises. The dull stab of pain reminded her of her conversation with Nick the previous night. "Did Jonathan recruit you?"
"Yeah. One of Radlum's first meals was a kid from my old gang. Everyone assumed he'd been slain by a rival gang, including the police, and that his mutilated body was left as a warning. Members of my old gang retaliated by murdering two members from the rival gang. Threats were made and carried out. Jonathan approached me and asked me to talk to my old gang in the hopes of stopping what promised to be an all-out street war. Even though I'd been off the streets for a number of years, he thought they might listen to me. So I went to their hangout at the chop shop off Lincoln."
"And did they listen?"
"Hell, no. They were too riled up. One of them didn't like what I said, accused me of being a narc and selling out to the police. The son of a bitch jumped me. Jonathan intervened but not before the kid nearly choked me to death with an air compressor hose. I had welts on my neck for weeks."
Gillian felt the blood drain from her face. Lights danced in front of her eyes. Were all Synsars survivors of a brutal attack that left them marked, only to be rescued by the Huntsman they later served? "What's wrong?" Her father's voice sounded distant, almost as if he were talking to her from the next room. "Gillian? Gillian!"
Silently, she tipped her head sideways and pulled the collar of her shirt away
enough to show her father the bruises on her neck.
"Who did that?" he demanded.
"The female creature. Last night when it attacked me." She let go of her collar.
"Jesus, no!" Her father's face crumpled.
"Nick has scars on his neck from where Radium bit him. He says it's my destiny to help him."
"You can refuse. You have to refuse. Don't let him feed you that bullshit about destiny."
"It's not like that. He'd really rather I not get involved."
"Then don't." "You did."
It hit her in that moment the incredible sacrifices her father had made for the good of a world that had given him nothing in return.
"That was different. I had no clue what I was getting into or the danger I would put your mother and you in. Nick can handle himself. There's a reason he was chosen."
Then wasn't there a reason she'd been chosen, too? The buzzer rang, and a guard announced the end of visiting hours.
Gillian had only a minute left and a hundred things she wanted to say to her father to help him understand what she herself was just beginning to.
"Please, honey," he said. "I'm begging you. Don't make the same mistake I did."
She thought of how the creatures had killed countless people and destroyed countless lives. She wanted nothing more than to see the monsters wiped off the face of the earth forever.
"I have to." The sense that she was part of something greater than herself filled her. "I love you, Daddy, and I promise I'll be careful."
"Why?" he croaked.
She stood and pushed her chair in under the counter. "Maybe I want to be a hero, too. The kind of woman who deserves to be your daughter."
Unable to say more because of the lump in her throat, she hung up the phone and turned to leave.
With Nick staring over his shoulder, Charlie laid a map of the Phoenix downtown area on the desk in front of him. Using a red pen, he drew a circle around a spot halfway between the cemetery where the old woman's remains were found and the HansonBuilding. "Here." He marked another spot seven blocks north of the first one, this one in the neighborhood of Gillian's condo. "And here."
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