I stared at a figure standing on the sidewalk across the street.
Whoever he was, he was maybe thirty yards from where we stood. It was far enough from the car that I don’t know why I noticed him at all. He stood under a broken streetlight, in front of a storefront that was already dark for the night.
He was watching us.
I stared back at him.
As I did, I felt my breath hitch in my chest. Not a single conscious thought rose in my mind, not a single linear understanding. Instead, my reaction was animal, visceral. A pain rose in the center of my solar plexus as I froze, taking in the shape of him, trying to make out his face in the darkness where he stood.
My night vision was different now. It was closer to Black’s. It was close enough to Black’s that I could make out the man’s face, even in the dark.
It was Nick.
It was fucking Nick.
Nick stood there, his face and outline in shadow.
I stared at him, my breath stopping in my chest, my head swimming.
Even so, I never stopped taking him in, trying to confirm or refute what I knew. My eyes scanned over every inch of him, going over every detail of his appearance.
His hair was longer than I remembered. It hung in an expensive shag cut that fell down one side of his forehead, making his face look narrower, his cheekbones higher.
Even in the dark, he somehow looked… younger.
Instead of the early-forties Nick I remembered, he looked like he was in his late twenties. Early thirties at most.
Even apart from the age difference, he looked… different.
He’d always been a good-looking man, and not only because he kept himself in peak physical condition the entire time I’d known him. He’d always had women after him, too, and not all of that was about him being such a nice guy. I’d personally witnessed women approach him just for sex, without knowing him at all.
More than just good-looking, he’d always been attractive, I guess.
Like Black, he just gave off a vibe a lot of women liked.
But not like this.
He looked ethereal now, like he was too beautiful to be quite real.
He looked like something out of an artistic rendering, or a movie poster.
He didn’t smile.
He stared at me, his body and face utterly still, his mouth and eyes unmoving. He wore an expensive leather jacket, black pants, dress shoes. He dressed almost like Black, I realized as I stared at him. He dressed like he had money.
I’d never seen Nick in clothes like that before. I’d never seen him in clothes that expensive, or that fit him so well, like they’d been made for him.
I don’t know how long I stood there, staring at him.
I don’t know how long I went without breathing.
Eventually, I heard my heart and blood throbbing behind my eyes, turning my vision dark red. The rational part of my mind informed me there was a good chance I might pass out.
Then strong hands gripped me, yanking back my mind.
Panic flickered around me in darting pulses, swimming through my light, pulling me inexorably back to my body. I took a breath, a choked gasp, and my vision flooded back, even as I fell into and against a larger, harder body than mine.
Black wrapped his arms around me, hugging me tightly to his chest.
When I could hear past the loud ringing in my ears, he sounded panicked, borderline scared.
“Miri! MIRI! Answer me, goddamn it! What is it? What’s wrong?”
I blinked, fighting to see.
I leaned deeper into Black, gripping his arms in my hands, holding onto him for balance, maybe just to be there at all, to be fully inside my own body.
My eyes looked for the figure that had been standing across the street.
He was gone.
I scanned up and down the sidewalk frantically, trying to see where he went, looking for his face in the other people I saw walking there, looking for the clothes I remembered, the black hair, those high cheekbones, the muscular build.
I looked for him in every face that crossed my vision. I looked with my eyes, and I looked with my living light, desperate to glimpse him in the streetlights that ran up and down the street so I could dismiss what my mind had told me.
I was too late.
Whoever he was, whatever he was, he was gone.
18
Message
I SOMEHOW FOUND myself surrounded by security, being hustled into the lobby of the California Street building.
They seemed to come out of nowhere.
I was standing there, breathing, being half-crushed in the arms of Black, when they surrounded us, bringing us back with them across the stretch of sidewalk to the glass doors. I watched one of them take the keys to the MacLaren from Black, right before they jogged around to the driver’s side and climbed in to start the engine.
The white and black car was pulling away from the curb before we were halfway to the doors leading into the California Street building.
They stayed with us until we entered the elevator.
Then one of them, Javier, I realized when I focused on his face, quirked an eyebrow at Black in a silent question.
“We’re good,” Black said, his voice a growl. “You’ve got the description?”
Javier nodded. “Got it, boss. Don’t worry. They’re already out there.”
“Find whoever the fuck that was. I want you to call me the second you’ve got an ID. Take their picture first and send it to my phone, so Miri can take a look at it… then bring them in. Try to do it legally, if you can, but if you can’t, bring them in anyway. I don’t care if you have to knock the fucker out to do it. If he exists, I want him inside this building within the hour.”
Javier gave him a short salute. “Understood.”
Black nodded, once, his jaw hard.
Leaning down, he crushed me against his side as he jabbed at the “PH” button for the penthouse floor.
I blinked.
Before I’d finished the blink, the elevator doors were closing.
I realized only then that Black hadn’t released me the whole time we were standing there. His arm remained wrapped tightly around me, holding me flush to his chest and side. He was breathing harder than usual, and I could feel adrenaline shooting through his veins, speeding up his heart, tensing his muscles.
For the first handful of floors, we didn’t speak.
“What the hell was that, doc?” he said.
I bit my tongue, hard enough that I winced.
“It wasn’t Nick, Miri,” he growled, his voice hard. “Could it have been someone dressed up to look like him?”
Thinking about that, I shook my head slowly, but not really in a no.
“It wasn’t the clothes,” I said after another beat. I frowned, my voice sounding strangely distant. “No. The clothes were all wrong––”
“I saw,” Black growled. “I went into your head and looked, Miri.”
Maybe feeling something off me––confusion, a flicker of surprise, even tension––Black looked down at my face, scowling. He continued to look at me as his arm tightened around me even more, his light wrapping deeper into mine.
“You weren’t fucking answering me, doc,” he said, gruff. “I’m sorry I went into you like that, but I panicked. I looked at what you thought you saw, got all the details, then fed them to the security detail. I looked for him, too. I looked exactly where I’d seen you staring, but there was nothing there. I don’t know if whoever it was ran off when I grabbed you, or when the security team showed up… or before that. You were starting to pass out by then. Of course, is someone implanted the image, all of that is moot––”
“Implanted the image?” Turning, I stared up at him, bewildered. “What does that mean?”
“A seer,” he growled. “Highly trained infiltrators can do that kind of thing, doc. They can make you see things that aren’t there.” Exhaling, still breathing too hard, he added, “Normally, I would say no
one could penetrate your shield––or mine––not without me feeling it. But we were outside, and your uncle has a whole new team of infiltrators working for him now. Not to mention other advantages.”
At my blank stare, Black’s voice lowered to a deeper, gruffer growl.
“The construct, doc. Remember? Your uncle has that construct over most of the country. There’s a good chance he has people on us all the time now.”
Still frowning, he stared at the elevator doors without seeing them.
“Due to the construct alone, he now has a fair bit of control over the Barrier space all over the country. He also has probably a hundred seers, if not three times that, maintaining the fucking thing. He could conceivably force an image into your mind, make you believe you were really seeing it. Hell, given how many seers walked through those inter-dimensional doors, he’s likely got some real talent on that front now. Someone who specializes in those kinds of Barrier headfucks. He’s also got Raven. Jem says she can do that kind of thing.”
I stared at him, still frowning.
I fought to think about his words.
My brow furrowed as I did.
“Why would Charles show me Nick?” I said.
“I have no idea,” Black growled. “To turn us against the vampires? To try and recruit us to his fucked-up cause? To make us paranoid? I can think of a number of reasons. Why the fuck did someone call Yumi Tanaka? Because someone is screwing with you, doc. Or screwing with me… or with both of us.”
Squeezing me tighter against him, he looked down.
“If there was an actual person standing there, doc, we’re going to find them… and my people are going to bring him back here, and we’re going to have a little chat with him.”
His voice lowered, shifting into a furious mutter,
“If this person really exists, I’m especially going to have a chat with him. I’m going to have a nice, long, leisurely, threat-laden conversation with this piece of shit, whoever he is… and find out exactly what the hell is going on, and who hired him.”
Black’s words trailed as the elevator slowed, reaching the top of the building.
Still holding me around the waist, he steered me out of the elevator car in front of him when the doors opened with a melodic ping.
I found myself glancing around the glass-enclosed lobby of the penthouse floor, weirdly unnerved by the silence.
Everything looked exactly the same as it always did, though.
The tall windows on either side of the elevator’s foyer, and the high ceiling made of glass, showed nothing but cloud-filled night sky. Straight in front of me stood the brushed copper door of the main offices of Black Securities and Investigations. That door, with its long, vertical cylinder for a handle, like a thick copper pipe, was closed. As it had since I’d first seen it, the effect of all that glass with the wedge-like shape made me think of the prow of a ship.
Now, however, the glass walls were dim to each side.
The offices looked closed.
I didn’t sense any movement back there, either.
As we walked past, I glanced at the company’s eagle logo etched into the translucent, plate glass walls that angled back on either side of the door. The glass formed a near pyramid shape with the copper door at one end and diagonal hallways on either side.
Everything looked the same.
Nothing looked different.
Even so, the hairs on my arms were standing up as I stood there, head-cocked, listening.
I realized Black was doing the same next to me.
“You feel something, doc?” he muttered.
After a too-long pause, I shook my head, slow.
“No,” I said, frowning. “I don’t feel anything.” I hesitated. “But I feel like I should feel something. I feel like something should be off.”
Black didn’t bother to interrogate what I meant by that.
Instead he stood there, head cocked, listening.
After another long pause, he nudged me gently with his light.
“Come on,” he said, gruff. “Everyone’s probably in one of the conference rooms.”
I nodded, but still found myself listening to the silence. I had no idea what I was listening for. I didn’t know if it was fear I was feeling exactly, or more some lingering tilt in my light from what I’d seen under that burnt-out streetlight.
It didn’t really feel concrete enough to be fear.
Rather, I felt a kind of underlying hum, like there was a strain of music I couldn’t quite pick out, that was just out of my reach.
“I feel it too, doc,” Black murmured.
When I glanced at him, he only frowned.
Tightening his arm where it had loosened around my waist, he led me past the glass walls of Black Securities and Investigations and towards his penthouse apartment, which lived at the end of the left-hand corridor and took up more than half of the floor.
Unlike the first time I’d ventured up here, I now knew Black’s company offices took up much more than simply part of this floor, even though reception lived on this level.
The bulk of his offices encompassed the entirety of the three floors below this one.
The only thing on this floor really was reception, most of the IT department, and Black’s own office, along with a large conference room and an equipment room directly below the stairs up to the helipad on the roof. My office now lived on this floor as well. Also, part of the IT department had been moved to the floor below.
I’d heard Black muttering recently about expanding it down two more floors, now that we were absorbing the influx of new seers. He’d asked my thoughts on creating what amounted to an “infiltration department” for the company to take up one of those floors, although it obviously wouldn’t be called that.
He’d considered asking Yarli and/or Jem to run it, possibly both of them together.
Unlike most of the other departments, which reported either to Dex or Kiko, the infiltration department would report directly to Black.
I wondered if Black already had some of those same seers coordinating with Javier and his team as they looked for whoever I’d seen down there on the street––assuming I’d seen anyone at all. I still couldn’t really wrap my mind around the possibility that I might not have seen anyone, even now.
At the same time, it struck me as less and less likely that I’d actually seen Nick.
The image felt burned into my brain, though.
I wondered if it really could be a hallucination. If so, I knew my mind wouldn’t view it any differently than if it were real. If Black was right, and Charles was behind this, I would have no idea my mind was being tampered with at all.
I wondered if we were still going to Cal’s restaurant.
“No.” Black glanced at me, muttering, “No North Beach tonight, doc. Sorry. We’ll go tomorrow, okay?”
I bit my lip, but didn’t answer.
Brick would be here tomorrow.
It certainly didn’t take long for our post-Santa Cruz glow to wear off.
We were approaching our front door now, and I could hear something. I could really hear something, unlike that phantom melody that nagged at me before.
Black stiffened as we got closer, clearly hearing it too.
“Did you leave anything on, doc?” he said. “Television? The sound system?”
I frowned, thinking, then shook my head. “No.”
“You’re sure?” Releasing me, he motioned me to the side of the corridor, the opposite side from where the door opened. He reached behind him and under the jacket he wore. “Go through your memories, doc. Be sure.”
I did, and shook my head slowly.
“I’m sure. It wasn’t me.”
Watching him pull a gun out of his jacket, from a holster that must sit at the base of his back, I felt my adrenaline spike, and not only because I hadn’t known he was carrying. I watched as he checked the chamber, then the clip, unmoving.
I wondered if he’d been carrying the whole
time we were in Santa Cruz.
He grunted, glancing at me. “Of course I was fucking carrying, doc. I had a crew watching us while we surfed at the lighthouse, too… and security watching the house all night and the next day until we left, including when we were fucking in that hot tub. Given everything going on right now, I’ll be carrying in the shower pretty soon.”
I only nodded.
There wasn’t a whole lot I could say to that.
We’d reached the penthouse door though, and now I could hear the music even through the thick, metal-plated panel. Whoever left it on, they’d cranked the volume up high. If this was a normal apartment, the sound would have filled the hallway.
“What about Lizbeth?” I said, as we approached the door. “Or the cleaning crew?”
“It would be a first,” Black said, his mouth firming as he gave me a look. “A first in over ten years, doc.”
I didn’t answer.
We were close enough now I recognized the song.
It almost sounded like…
“Monster Mash,” Black muttered.
I frowned. He was right.
It was that Halloween song.
His gold eyes darted to mine.
His expression grew so hard, it almost didn’t look like him.
“Stay here, Miriam.” He motioned for me to stay behind the door. “Don’t come in. Not until I tell you it’s okay. I fucking mean it.”
I frowned at him, shaking my head. “Call someone, Black. Right now.”
His hand was already on the door handle. He paused long enough to reach into his jacket, pulling out and handing me his phone.
“You call,” he said. “Call Kiko. Tell her to send a team.”
I took the phone, wanting to argue with him, but he jerked open the door before I could speak. Sound erupted into the hallway, so loud it was nearly deafening. I’d never heard Black’s speakers that loud before, not even the one time we had a small get-together there and someone, probably Nick or Angel, got drunk enough to crank up the music for dancing.
I watched Black disappear through the opening, his gun up.
Feeling a ripple of pain and fear flood my light, ratcheting up my heartrate as I watched Black disappear from my view, I considered following him, then decided to call his team in first. Swiping the front of his phone, I entered his password, then immediately went into his phone app and hit the number for Kiko.
TO BLACK WITH LOVE: Quentin Black Mystery #10 Page 25
