“I’m used to it.” She briefly displayed the steel cuffs on her wrists, rattling the chain between them on the table.
“My problem is that Michael isn’t.” Joe bent his head to catch her line of sight again. “I’m worried about him. This guy was taken to the hospital with broken ribs and a concussion.” He slapped down a picture of Redneck Whiskey.
“What does it have to do with me?” The pose of nonchalance came easily to her after years of practice. Never tell them what you know.
“You were at the club last night. We have surveillance footage. You weren’t there when the officers arrived, but we can see you were still there after the attack. There’s only one reason for you to have hidden from us. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the last two days, I’ve had three guys come through here with major injuries after dealing with you.” Joe paused, fingering Redneck’s picture. “You know what he kept saying in the ambulance? Tell her I kept up my part. Someone scared the crap out of him.”
“I think a general de-crapping was long overdue. Besides, didn’t Michael tell you exactly what happened?” Dani said.
“He lied to me. The same guy who tapes coins to broken parking meters lied to an investigating officer about an assault. So I’m asking you again, what the hell is going on with you two?”
“He’s fine. More than fine—enjoying a weekend he’ll never forget.” She winked at him. She didn’t want Michael dragged into this.
“Don’t play games with me. You want to pretend he’s become infatuated with you, and the two of you are riding each other like ponies? It’s bullshit, and if you knew him, you wouldn’t even try.” Joe crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at her.
“Maybe I’m that good,” she suggested but without her usual conviction. The concern coming from this guy strangled her. He cared about his friend and wanted to help him. He saw her as the bad guy, and despite her own insistence that she deserved the title, it stung.
“Lots of men lose their heads over women, but not him. Here’s what I know: I know he’s a good man who cares about people and wants to help them. I know he’s got himself twisted up about that little girl. I know he’s desperate to help her. And somehow, he thinks you’re going to help him do it.”
“Sounds like you know a lot.” An unusual urge to just tell him the truth threatened to take over.
“I want to know what you have him mixed up in!” Joe bellowed.
Dani opened her mouth to reassure him Michael was safe when she caught the sound of footsteps approaching. This room was at the end of the hall. They could only be coming here. She went silent and waited, her instincts flaring into full alarms.
“This is not the time to play dumb.” Joe couldn’t hear the approaching footsteps but couldn’t ignore the door opening.
“I think that’s quite enough, detective. I’d like to speak to my client now,” the newcomer interrupted.
Dani studied the man carefully as Joe argued with him. She’d never seen him before. Tall, dark hair slicked back, he carried himself like a man used to getting his way. The detective tried blustering at him but the man ignored him, adjusting his suit cuffs carefully. His designer cologne masked his natural scent. A deliberate choice? Does he know what I am?
“My client. Or do you need a refresher in attorney-client privilege?”
Joe reluctantly retreated, leaving Dani alone with a stranger. He wouldn’t be able to come back into the room or hear what was said until summoned.
“I didn’t ask for an attorney,” she simpered, playing the dumb bimbo while all of her senses fired on high alert.
“You should have.”
“Maybe I’m not that smart.” She shifted on her chair, bringing her breasts forward.
“We both know you have brains. So I won’t insult you by lying further.” Although it didn’t stop him from letting his gaze dip briefly down to her cleavage. “My name is André Dalhard, and I’m here to offer you a job.”
Dani froze. Her brothers’ captor, here, in the flesh. She hadn’t expected to come face to face with him. Face to fist, maybe. The Huntress coiled, reinforcing her own instincts. This man was far more dangerous than he seemed. The harsh bite of cologne stung her nose and she became certain the choice was deliberate.
Dalhard settled himself opposite her as if neither of them had a care in the world. “You could be much more than a stripper in a cheap dive.”
“I’m not a stripper. I’m a burlesque performer.” The ice in her voice would have deterred most men. Her arms ached with tension as she held herself back from attacking him.
Dalhard chuckled. “Dress it up however you like, my dear; it is far beneath a woman of your talents.”
“And what would you know about my talents?” Although she kept her voice indifferent, her mind repeated the question in a panic. Was this an attempt at random collection, or did he know she was connected to Vincent and Eric? Could he know about Gwen?
“I’ve been told a great deal about them. Vincent has been very forthcoming.” Dalhard smirked.
Metal clanged and echoed as she slammed her hands onto the table, abandoning the game. “What the hell have you done with him?”
“I’ve offered him a job. Eric, too. The same as I’m doing right now with you. Six figure salary, expense account. Everything you could want, Danielle.”
“You’re keeping them locked up. Prisoners,” she snarled.
“I’m not holding anyone captive. They’re staying with me because they’ve accepted my offer.”
Strangely, she couldn’t smell any trace of deception. Maybe it was being drowned out by the cologne. But the message had been from Eric. “I’ll believe that when I fucking see it.”
“I can arrange for you to talk to them,” Dalhard offered. “Learn the truth for yourself.”
“I intend to.” Her eyes blazed red, reflecting in the mirror. Thoughts of the ritual nagged at her but she shoved them aside to concentrate on her prey.
“Interesting.” Dalhard’s smile revealed genuine delight. “I don’t often pursue people, Danielle. There are more than enough applicants for any position I care to open. But you would be the crown jewel of my portfolio.”
“No one owns me.” The seething anger made controlling the Huntress even harder. Both of them wanted to strike out at their rightful prey, but knew not to try in such a public setting. If she could lure him somewhere isolated…
“A partnership, then. I think you’ll find I can be quite agreeable and open to negotiation.” He took her hand in his.
The Huntress coiled and hissed within. Dani fought the urge to shake her head, to shake off the cloudiness stealing over her mind. It was Dalhard. He was doing this to her. Suddenly, she was a great deal less certain about the outcome of a conflict between them, but she refused to show weakness in front of an enemy.
“I would be a powerful friend to you.” Dalhard licked his lips, his eyes dipping briefly down her body.
Alien warmth tried to steal into her muscles from his touch. Dani’s jaw ached from grinding her teeth, concentrating on the memory of her brother’s blood on the ground. “I’m not for sale,” she jerked away from his touch.
“I don’t give up easily. Take some time to think and come see us.” He pulled a card out of his briefcase and slid it to her. It had an address and four numbers along the bottom. “That’s the access code. The time and date are on the card.”
The tiny rectangle of fancy paper held her salvation. A way to rescue them without having to go through the ritual. Or did it? Surely whatever mental power the man had, it couldn’t withstand the Huntress. Dani stood, the monster inside barely contained beneath her human mask. “If you hurt my family, it won’t matter how rich you are. Nothing is going to save you.”
The steel cuffs bit hard into her wrists before the chain snapped. Blood coated her wrists and hands, splatting against the concrete floor.
“I’ll keep it in mind.” Dalhard may have kept a cool exterior but his scent betraye
d both excitement and fear. He picked up his briefcase and left the room.
Joe waited on the other side of the door, leaving no doubt that he’d watched the entire encounter through the one-way glass. Maybe listened too, although it would have been illegal. He shut the door behind him, staring at Dani’s bloody hands. She breathed in his distress and concern.
“I’m not an idiot,” he said quietly. “I know this is bigger than my pay grade. But Michael isn’t like you. If he gets hurt going toe-to-toe with these people, he’s going to get himself dead.”
“Over my rotting corpse,” Dani swore without thinking. “No one touches him unless I go down first.”
Joe studied her, evaluating her with instincts honed over years of active police work. After a minute, he came forward and unlocked the remnants of the cuffs from her wrists. “I believe you.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Security is tight. They use their own service, patrolling on an irregular schedule,” Vapor said. “Cameras everywhere.”
Dani felt as if the slim card in her back pocket was expanding, as if she were carrying a highly visible and noticeable brick. A way in but also an obvious trap.
“There’s something unusual, though.” Vapor pulled up a complicated multicolored spreadsheet.
“What am I looking at?” Dani frowned.
“Shift schedules. And every single employee is off tomorrow night.” Vapor pointed at various spots on the grid.
Dani decided to take his word for it. Besides, something more important needed to be discussed. “It’s part of a trap.”
“Duh. But how could they know we’d track them down so quickly? I would have seen any flags in the system—” Vapor stopped as she pulled the card out of her pocket.
“This is the other half.” She gave it to him. “He wants me to come see him tomorrow night.”
“Except for the part where you’re too smart to fall for an obvious trap. Right?”
She wished it were that simple. The last four days since Eric’s call dragged on her, sapping her energy. Each of them weighed on her like a massive granite block tethered to her by unbreakable chains.
“Your mom has been rallying the troops,” Vapor began. “She’s getting volunteers.”
“I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.” She closed her eyes, her thoughts muddled. Last night, she’d believed the only way to stop others from being hurt was to do the ritual. Now, the temptation of the card offered hope of a rescue while her worries about Dalhard’s powers warned her away.
“Your Michael isn’t going to stay behind,” Vapor observed.
“He has to. He’s not like us, Vapor. He’ll go charging in, thinking the universe will save him because he’s some kind of godsdamn hero. But one bullet will take him down forever.” Dull pain insisted on her attention, and she realized that she had driven her fingernails into her palms again. It figured—the welts from the handcuffs were nearly gone.
“So you’ll go in by yourself to protect him. It’s the definition of noble: a grand gesture that makes everyone else miserable and accomplishes nothing.” Vapor folded his arms over his chest.
“I don’t want him to die! I’ve already seen it twice when he goes into those damn trances.” Icy memories crushed her heart.
“You go in alone, and you’ll fail. It’s a fucking trap. Dalhard is controlling all the cards, all the ground. You need something he won’t expect.”
“Michael thinks he can beat the Huntress,” Dani looked up at Vapor to see the older man’s eyebrows climb in surprise. “That he won’t end up like the others.”
“Your mother’s been riding you about the legacy again,” Vapor guessed with the uncanny accuracy that made him so irritating to deal with.
“‘Again’ would imply she stopped at some point.” But being flippant hurt too much. An empty ache left her feeling like a fragile wooden sculpture whose insides had been scooped out. Any more and she’d collapse into herself.
“You gotta take someone’s help—Michael, the Goddess, any of us. You can’t do this on your own.” Vapor didn’t have much patience for idiots. Or sympathy. Or emotional complications. Usually these traits were more enjoyable.
“Gwen said I needed him.” The words slipped from her lips before she could snatch them back.
“She’s right.”
Dani closed her eyes, pulling herself back together. Time to end this wallowing. She had work to do, and she would do it without compromising what was necessary. She would protect Michael in spite of himself, even if it meant surrendering to the Huntress. “Thanks for the information,” she said, keeping her face carefully blank. “I’ve got a lot of work to do to prepare.”
Vapor couldn’t let her go without trying to get the last word. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Hey. It’s me.” She shrugged, trying to play her normal nonchalance.
“That’s exactly what I meant.”
Michael spent the morning with Gwen, trying to help her stabilize her grip on reality and trying to distract himself from worrying about why Dani might have left so early in the morning. She’d been gone before he’d had a chance to speak to her. She’d pulled away last night, not quite meeting his eyes when they went back to the house. He’d seen enough of them to know when a secret was in front of his face.
There had to be a way to free Dani from the Huntress without sacrificing the lalassu people as a whole. He was sure of it. He just needed to find it. He’d spent the night trying to think about it and trying not to think about how much he wished he was a few doors further up the hall. But he didn’t want to push Dani before she was ready. This would be a huge step for her.
He sat down in the kitchen, and Virginia immediately slid over a plate with a mammoth chicken sandwich, fresh red grapes, crisp slices of apple, and gently steaming blueberry muffins. She never once took her hand from her braille computer display or tripped over a syllable while talking on the phone pressed to her ear. Michael picked up an apple slice. Not a hint of brown, which meant she timed his meal to the minute, all before he’d known himself that he was coming out.
The world should be grateful Virginia Harris ended up in a life of seclusion. If she’d wanted to, she could have ruled the world with deceptive ease. All morning she’d been organizing, motivating, and cajoling lalassu from around the country.
“It is a marvel. I’ve learned to mostly hand her things and otherwise stay out of her way,” Walter said. “Grab some sodas out of the fridge and come join me on the porch.”
Michael followed Walter out, balancing his plate and the chilled cans. Walter parked himself in a corner of the large porch, closing his eyes and enjoying the cool breeze.
“She’s certainly well organized.” Michael glanced back into the house. “I thought she’d be packing or something. Eric’s message to run was clear.”
“It was,” Walter acknowledged, nodding slowly. “But we can’t just go on the run with Gwen. You caught a glimpse of what she can do. Put her in a trailer or a car and she’d be screaming before we could get out of the driveway. Eric hasn’t spent much time with his sister since we moved here.”
“What are you going to do?” Michael shuddered at the brief glimpse he’d had of Gwen’s life. She was having enough trouble with the breaches in the salt already, and those were minimal. Virginia had mentioned bringing someone in who could repair the damage.
“We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. There have been groups interested in the lalassu and their abilities throughout history. But pressure really stepped up about twenty years ago.” Walter popped open his soda.
Michael got a sturdy emotional sense from Walter, but overlying it was a hunger and anticipation. He was eager to confess his story.
“People in positions of power wanted their own personal action figures.” Walter’s mouth twisted down in disgust. “We’d been living in secret for almost three thousand years, since the fall of Babylon. But powerful people have ways of finding out secrets.”
Michael looked down at his hands but said nothing. Drowning in secrets.
“We’ll never know exactly when someone betrayed us. Perhaps it wasn’t even a betrayal. Maybe someone saw something they shouldn’t have and told the wrong person. I didn’t know we were being systematically hunted until they caught me.”
Michael remembered the flash of Dani seeing her father torn up and bloody. “How did they find you?”
“I worked on the docks, loading and unloading cargo.” Walter took a sip of his drink. “Lots of brute force, not too many personal questions. Perfect for a young father and provider trying to stay hidden. One day, I got called into the boss’s office and the next thing I knew, someone shot me with a tranquilizer dart.”
Walter’s grip dented the thin metal can, his dark eyes considering his audience before deciding to continue. “I woke up in a research facility with more needles in me than a voodoo doll. They had me run all kinds of tests, seeing how much I could lift and throw. I heard them talking when they thought I was still sedated and they were planning to use me to make a bunch of copies, like a fucking Xerox machine. But what really scared the crap out of me was when I figured out my kids could be targets.”
“I’m sorry,” Michael whispered, not wanting to break the flow of the story. He felt Walter’s pain and horror, as vivid as ever despite two decades of distance.
Walter closed his eyes briefly, the lines on his face tight. “You’re not a father. These days the title seems like more of a punchline than a responsibility, but once it’s yours, everything changes. If I’d only been worried about myself, I would have gone down in explosive glory. But I couldn’t afford theatrics. I needed to get back to my family and protect them. Which meant making sure those sons of bitches couldn’t ever hurt anyone else again, but without going down in a suicidal blaze.”
“What did you do?” Michael asked. Maybe they could use the same technique against Dalhard.
Revelations: Book One of the Lalassu Page 19
