by Cherry Adair
“Well, you’ll be happy to know that this is the last fucking time we’ll do so.” His body language had changed completely. The languid, sensual lover had vanished, replaced by an angry stranger whose entire body radiated animosity. “Choose,” he told her coldly. “Decide this, once and for all. Him or me.”
She gripped the doorjamb with one hand. “Why do I have to give up the only family I know for you, Jack? Why does it have to be all or nothing? If my parents were alive, would you be irrationally jealous of them too?
“Is it just Grant you don’t want me to have contact with, or is it Carmelita and Pia and William as well? How far do you want me to go to weed out anybody I care for and who cares for me? Everybody? All of them? Why does it have to be you and only you in my life?”
“Baltzer’s a tool.” Jack scrubbed a hand across his mouth, his eyes glittering with anger and frustration. Good. Let the bastard be angry. “Fuck,” he snarled. “He has something—”
“What?” Sara tried to modulate her voice, but she was getting more and more furious, and she knew she was almost shouting. The angrier Jack got, the colder he became. The angrier she got, the more her temper flared. “What, Jackson? A penis? A brain? A shitload of money? What does Grant have that pisses you off so much?”
“You get headaches when he’s around. He—”
This was about her headaches? She wanted to scream. “God, that’s lame, even for you. Look around.” She flung her arm out to encompass the sun-filled office. “Who’s in the freaking room? I get headaches when you’re around, Jack. You’re the one who hurts me. Not Grant.”
Turning on her heel, Sara stalked out of her office. Tears of anger blurred her vision. How in God’s name had everything changed so quickly?
Bastardassholedickshithead.
The line between love and hate was insanely thin. And right now, she hated Jackson Slater, she really did. What was worse, she was starting to hate herself. What was wrong with her? She couldn’t put her finger on why she was almost schizophrenic around Jack. She didn’t know herself anymore. Her damned mood swings were starting to worry her big-time. One minute, she was ready to forgive him anything; the next, she wanted to make him as miserable as she was.
She had to get out of there. Had to think this through logically and calmly. She was so angry with him. The fury pulsed behind her eyes and made her skin feel clammy.
“Don’t walk out on me again. Damn it, Sara!” Jack chased her out into the corridor.
Foolishly, Sara ran.
His fingers closed around her upper arm. “We can’t keep doing this. Get back in there and let’s finish this conversation once and for—” Her phone cheeped. “Do not fucking answer that!”
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UNFORTUNATELY, WHEN THEY ARRIVED at the hospital in San Cristóbal, the girl already had visitors. The police were interrogating her. Jack and Sara headed to the hospital cafeteria to wait.
It was lunchtime, and the place was packed with hospital personnel and visitors. The noise level made conversation difficult; he should probably have taken Sara to one of the waiting areas, but those had people coming and going as well. The large cafeteria smelled like fake cheese, corn arepas fried in old oil, and industrial-strength cleaner. Zero ambience.
But he doubted Sara could be seduced by ambience right now. Every line of her body showed how annoyed she was. “There’s a free table in back, come on.”
He shimmered, leaving her to make her way between the tables, chairs, and people moving through the line to pay for their food. Nobody even noticed him traveling a hundred yards in next to no time. Jack kicked a chair out from the table and sat with his back to the wall, watching Sara.
She wore straight-legged, faded jeans, a white T-shirt, and a form-fitting, short red jacket. Her hair—he was sure she’d swept it up, baring her nape, just to make him insane—was a just-got-out-of-bed fashionable mess on top of her head. Enormous gold hoops swung from her ears, and above the hoops, her sunstones sparkled orange in the fluorescent lighting.
She looked elegant, and sexy as hell as her long legs closed the gap between them.
If only, he thought bitterly.
“We could’ve waited outside,” she said, velvety brown eyes critical as she took stock of the table filled with dirty plastic plates and cutlery. The table magically bussed itself, and all the crap disappeared.
Jack raised a brow as she again used magic to clean the sticky residue off her chair and the table before sitting down. Neither commented on it. Things between them were inflammatory enough.
“The cops are in with her now,” Jack reminded her. “We have a few minutes. Let’s grab a soda or something, and you can tell me what’s going on.” His temper had cooled some since they’d teleported to the hospital.
“I don’t want a drink. Get one if you—”
“I don’t either.”
She lifted her attention from the table surface to his face, her eyes large and dull with pain. “What happened to us?” she asked roughly. “How did we go from who we were last night, back to this?”
He held her gaze. The answer was obvious, to him anyway.
She closed her eyes briefly, then looked at him again, her eyes narrowed. “Do not blame Grant.”
“Fine. I won’t. But you’d better start connecting the dots soon, before he destroys everything.”
“I’m so damned confused, I don’t know what the hell’s going on.” Removing the large gold hoop from one ear, she reinserted the post in an atypically nervous gesture. Five inches of thin gold bracelets jangled on her arm with the movement. “What does ‘Erebus Novem two are one to infinity if not stopped’ mean?”
He presumed that was a rhetorical question.
“Okay. We shelve that puzzle for later.” Sucking in a deep breath, she met his eyes and said baldly, “Can you keep an open mind while I tell you something?”
“Must be about Baltzer. Sure. Go ahead.”
“I have no idea how this whole snake thing ties in with—oh, hell. You’re right, Jack. I think Grant has something to do with all these girls. Am I crazy? He can have any woman he wants. He’s rich, good-looking. … Why would he have to hypnotize them and make them believe he’s a snake, or a snake god, or whatever?”
Jack paused. “He wouldn’t.” He’d resisted touching her since the scene at the hacienda, but she looked pretty calm right now. Despite his misgivings, Jack picked up her hand and laced his fingers through hers.
She didn’t pull away. Heartened, he ran his thumb over the back of her hand. Here was a perfect example of their mercurial change in mood from one location to another. All the anger, mistrust, and animosity he’d felt at the hacienda was lifted, gone as if it had never been.
He knew exactly what Sara had been talking about earlier when she’d claimed she was losing her mind with her mood swings.
“Look,” he said calmly, “I’ll be the first person to say I don’t like the guy. And I don’t. Big-time. But I’m not sure how you jumped from point G to point S.”
She took a deep breath, and her fingers tightened in his. “I did some research when I was at my office in Lima yesterday. Every single place where a woman has been reported missing, every place that the women have shown up after an attack—if they’ve returned—is somewhere that Grant visited on that exact day. Same place. Same location.”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. I’d love to think that Baltzer’s the guy, but even to me it seems far-fetched.” Jack certainly blamed him for a whole shitload of other things, but he doubted Baltzer was the rapist.
Her fingers squeezed his. “There’s more. Jack, I think Sarulu said my name when he had me cornered. No, I don’t think it—he did say my name.” She put up her hand to stop him from speaking. “I know a hiss could sound like Sara. And yeah, I was scared out of my mind and adrenaline was zooming through my system at the speed of light. But the more I’ve replayed that moment in my mind, the more I’m positive that he called me by name.”
; Christ. “It was a hypnotic state. Your mind could’ve interpreted it—”
Her gaze locked with his. “That damned snake called me by name, Jackson.”
“Okay. Okay. I believe you. It makes a sick kind of sense. Everything we’ve seen and heard so far comes back to snakes.”
“Yes, it does.” The color suddenly drained from her face, leaving her eyes huge and very dark. “Oh. My. God.”
Worried, Jack half-rose, reaching out for her. “What’s the matter?”
She shook her head vehemently. “No. Impossible.”
“Tell me.”
Sara bit her lower lip. “We were happy at the Icehotel. We were happy in Tahoe, and in Switzerland. But the second we got back to the hacienda, we were angry, and fighting. …”
Jack shut the hell up, because she was going where he’d gone and come back from. It all circled around Baltzer.
“I thought you were jealous of Grant. But that’s not it, is it?”
He shook his head.
“Harry was always in the room with us when we fought, Jack. Under the table today, in my closet, hiding behind the drapes. We keep going from fabulous to crap in two seconds flat. No wonder I feel like my head has been spinning and I’m spewing pea soup! You were right.” She folded her arms on the table and leaned forward. “We are being manipulated.”
“I think we have been all along.” Jack could practically hear her wheels turning as she reviewed their recent history and calculated how it all added up. He kept his voice level and calm, while inside he was shouting hallelujah that she finally believed him. “I told you there’s a weird pattern to our behavior depending where we are. The farther away we are from Baltzer, the more intensely we care about each other; the closer we get to him, the more we distrust each other and the more we fight.”
“Do you think he’s somehow harnessing whatever connection there is to the leyline to call the giant snake?”
“It’s possible. Hell, it’s probable. Anything else to tie him to the women?”
“I—God, Jack. I feel so disloyal even thinking this, let alone discussing it out loud. Especially with you.”
“Get over it. Fast,” Jack said unsympathetically.
“I adore Grant, and he’s been nothing but kind and loving to me for all these years. …”
Jack tried to compute this rational, calm Sara with the woman who’d practically ripped his balls through his nose less than an hour ago. “But?”
“But he’s been behaving very strangely lately. For one thing, he’s been more insistent on fixing me up with William. And while I like William, I don’t in any way like him romantically.”
“Good to know.”
“Shut up,” she said without heat. “At first, I thought perhaps he was having financial problems—investors pulling out, the strike. … But there have been other things.” She chewed her bottom lip, clearly torn. Her eyes met his, and a slight blush rode her perfectly made-up cheeks.
“He’s—kinky. God knows I’m no prude, but it’s more than the obvious displays of public affection, which he knows embarrass me and gross me out. The girls always have weird welts and bruises on them. Not just Inga and Ida; other women he’s brought to the house. I don’t even want to go into the fact that I’ve seen William going into Grant’s room and staying there for hours, or Grant coming out of William’s room. I don’t care if he’s gay or bi or whatever, but he’s got some—stuff in there that’s really sick and twisted.”
Sick and twisted? As much as Jack wanted Baltzer to be the bad guy in all this, that wasn’t enough proof. “Like?”
“You mean other than all the S and M equipment like chains, harnesses, whips, and metal collars with spikes on them?” She shuddered, then blushed as a young orderly walked right behind her chair, clearly having heard what she’d just said.
“So he’s into BDSM. That doesn’t make him a snake charmer or a rapist.” Lips twitching, Jack shook his head. “Christ, I can’t believe I’m defending the guy.”
She lowered her voice as a couple slid their trays onto the table next to them. “He has a steel cage in there.”
“Anyone in it?” he whispered back, his heart swelling with love for her. God, this mess between them had to be resolved one way or the other before it killed them.
Sara reached over and punched his arm. “Be serious.”
“So the guy plays games. That still doesn’t make him the rapist.” A sick fuck, but not necessarily a rapist.
Sara frowned. “My gut tells me, as much as I hate to say it, that Grant has something to do with this snake stuff.”
“I trust your gut. And while I hate to condemn anyone without solid evidence, I agree with you. Baltzer’s up to his bleached-blond hair in all this.”
“The whole giant snake hallucination, Ophidian, Sarulu—all of it is connected. Right?”
“Yeah. I agree.” Jack frowned, drumming the fingers of his free hand on the table impatiently. “Still, we’re missing a key ingredient.”
With a jangle of bracelets, she covered his hand to stop the drumming. “What?” Jack turned his so he could twine their fingers together. Old times.
“No idea. But we need to join all these maybes into a solid ‘we have it’ before approaching the Council with our suspicions.”
“Is Harry the Omnivatic?” Her lips twitched. “Harry who loves to sleep on my Choos is the all-powerful bogeyman supernatural, Omnivatic? Seems a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?”
“Baltzer, Roe, and the boa are the only constants since we started seeing each other. It makes more sense that either Baltzer or Roe has the ability to turn into a boa.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist. “So the Omnivatic we’ve been looking for is either Grant or William? Maybe Harry?”
“That’s my take.”
“Grant’s taken care of me most of my life. He loves me. William’s been a friend almost as long. Why would either of them want me to be unhappy? That just doesn’t make any sense. Both of them knew how much I loved you. They knew. They also knew how devastated I was that you didn’t believe me about the baby—God, Jack. Did they somehow cause the miscarriage?” Tears of anger filled her eyes. “Was it due to one of them that you didn’t believe me, didn’t care enough to stay?”
Jack scooted his chair around the table right next to hers, close enough so that he could wrap an arm around her. She didn’t pull away, just rested her head on his shoulder for a moment.
He brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I don’t know. But it was hard for me to wrap my brain around what I believed you’d done. I know you, Sara. I know that if that’s what you chose to do, you would have confronted me, told me. And, yeah, I would’ve been upset by your decision. Pissed for sure. Yet, even knowing all that, knowing you, I still believed the worst of you.”
He kissed the top of her hair. He’d lost her once; he damn fucking well wasn’t losing her again. Not because of Baltzer, or Roe, or a snake—any damned snake. “I hate to use Baltzer as a cop-out for my shitty behavior. But I know you. And I know myself. And neither of us behaved in character when you miscarried.”
“I never could figure out why I didn’t confront you and force you to see the truth. Why I allowed you to believe what you did.” Sara materialized two sodas, drank greedily, then set her can back on the table. “And when I thought about that, I got a massive, debilitating headache. We were influenced. When we were at our most vulnerable, someone controlled our emotions. God, who would be so cruel?”
Grant Baltzer was the only answer. Roe fit into this somewhere. But at the heart of it all, Jack was convinced, it was Baltzer pulling Sara’s string. “And why?”
“Yes. Why? What purpose would it serve?”
Jack pulled his handheld out of his back pocket and started punching in the locations of all the missing girls.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting together the pieces of the puzzle. Everything that we’ve seen and heard comes right back to the Om
nivatic. At first, I didn’t think the missing women had anything to do with wizards being infected. I didn’t consider that the leyline had much to do with anything but Baltzer. Let’s see what happens when we enter all the data and layer facts on top of each other.”
“Can you do it with one hand? I need this one.”
He shot her a smile and tightened his fingers around hers. “Yeah. One hand’s good. Let’s see what we have.”
He felt a rise of excitement as he keyed information into his computer with his thumb. “Both the abduction points and the reappearance locations are on the same leyline that runs beneath Baltzer’s home, the hotels, and the village.”
“And the cave I was chased to by Snakus Giganticus.” She released his hand, obviously realizing that she was hindering his access to the small keyboard. “But, just to play devil’s advocate here for a minute, that’s the same house I live in,” she pointed out. “The same hotels I’m a partner in and work in every day. The same earthquake that I experienced. I’m not our Omnivatic.”
The snake was a rapist as well as a killer. “You’re a woman.”
“And Grant isn’t a snake.”
“A matter of opinion,” Jack muttered. “We have to give this info to the council right away.”
“Agreed. But how about if we figure out a way to blow up that cave first, just in case it is the portal?”
God, he loved how her mind worked. That was exactly what he’d been thinking. “We can stop there on our way to see the Council.”
Jack glanced up and smiled; the young nurse who’d informed them the police were interviewing the patient stood beside their table.
“Perdón? You may go in now.”
Sara got to her feet in a musical jangle of bracelets. “Have the policía finished questioning her?”
“Sí. I will escort you to her room. Please to follow me.”
