The Thief

by J. R. Ward

  Contemporary sculpture and painting, from what she understood, and she could guess why the exception to his preference for the aged. It was so much easier to launder money with the sale of modern offerings, as their value was more subjective than that of Old Masters and Impressionists, which had more provable prices.

  The drive into Ricardo's property was a left-hand turn off this road by the big river, and she traveled up the gradual, plowed lane, taking note of the snow-covered lawn, the short stone wall holding back the tree line, the looming grand house. The mansion was larger than it appeared from down below, and as she closed in and parked by its front entry's walkway, she felt the modernist sculptures around the manse sit in judgment and disapproval of her.

  It was her brother in her head. Her family, in her conscience. Her traditions, in her soul.

  This was quite unseemly of her, after all. This whole thing. An unmarried woman out in the world, seeking vengeance.

  Yes, it was true, the Benloise family had never been well off. Not until Ricardo had come along, at any rate. But that did not mean that there were not rules. Standards. Expectations. All of which were for the women, of course. The men were allowed to be who they were, do what they wished, carry on as they would.

  Not so for a sister, a daughter.

  But at least their parents were dead, and she did not care what anyone else in her family thought. More to the point, this was her chance.

  She had waited all of her life for this. Thirty-five miserable years of fighting for her right to get an education, to not take a husband, to be what she wanted to be, not what others decreed for her.

  She turned off the engine and got out. Cold, so very cold. She was going to hate being here, the loss of her native Colombia's warmth and humidity a thing to mourn.

  Looking around, she noted that the snow had been shoveled up to the grand and glossy door, and also around to the back, all the way to the detached garage-like structure. One might be tempted to see such as a sign her brother remained alive, but she knew better.

  She had not heard from him in nearly a year--and clearly, this property was held in a trust whereby its upkeep was managed as if its owner were still alive.

  Money, however, was running short, and that was why she had come. For the first few months after Ricardo and Eduardo had not been in touch, she had wondered, worried, gotten concerned about her brothers. But as more and more time passed, and disgruntled suppliers had come to her with their inquiries about the business, she started to develop a plan.

  If Ricardo could run a drug trade back and forth across the ocean, why could not she? And then the reality of expenses had come home to roost. Her brother had expected her to look after his various real estate holdings in South America, given that she had failed at her true calling of becoming a wife and a mother--and all that upkeep was costly. The accounts were dwindling.

  No, both of her brothers were dead, and she had to do what was necessary to survive--no matter the risks.

  Taking a key out of her Chanel bag, she approached the ornate, old door and slid the slender, notched length into its home. A turn, a tumble, and she was...

  An alarm began to sound the moment the seal was breached, and she left the portal wide as she followed the noise through rooms that were dark and stuffy, navigating by virtue of the exterior lights. She found the security panel in the professional-grade kitchen, by a hardy door that she guessed opened to the outside.

  The code she entered was going to work.

  And it did.

  Their mother's birth date, month, day, and year. Eight numbers, unknown to anybody but the three siblings. That strict, hard-driving, fervently Catholic woman had had no patience for sentiment, but Ricardo had brought her a flower on the same day each year, and uncharacteristically, she had never thrown it out.

  That this was the code to his mansion was a clear tie to his hardscrabble youth. A measure of how far he had come. A defiance against the disapproval they had all grown up under.

  Childhood had been a struggle, a test of endurance, for the three siblings. Then again, their mother had had to raise them all on her own, without the benefit of a husband, a steady job, a roof over their heads. Not a lot of room for extravagances or indulgence in that reality--and then there had been all the rosaries, Hail Mary's, and confessions.

  But that was over now.

  With the alarm silent, Vitoria's return to the front entrance was more leisurely, and she took time to measure and add up the value of the antique chairs and Persian rugs, the ornate tables and the paintings of the ancestors of others. It was impossible not to draw comparisons with how Ricardo had always seen her. As with this art and these antiques, her role in his life had been to stick where she was put, without question or objection. Her virtue was part of his illusion, a saintly sister to add another layer of curtain to hide the truth of his origin.

  Her footfalls slowed and she stopped before a bronze statue that had to be a Degas. There was only one artist who could have composed and completed such a winsome, light-though-it-was-heavy object of beauty.

  Perhaps Ricardo had thought of it as the daughter he had never had, Vitoria mused. Certainly a far better bet than a living breathing offspring.

  Onward, onward, to the open front door.

  For a moment, she just stood there--and it was then that she realized she was waiting for a butler to appear and take her bags from the boot of the rental.

  As much as she derided Ricardo for his airs, she, too, had succumbed to the habits of luxury. It was, indeed, far better to be of means than not.

  She was going to need people. She could not do this alone.

  Fortunately, money talked, did it not.

  Planting her hands on her hips, she regarded the undisturbed snow cover of the vast, descending lawn. It was as if Ricardo had permanently disallowed all manner of deer and rodent from marring the pristine winter landscape. She would not have put it past him. Image had been so important.

  With a lift of her chin, she regarded the sky, measuring the bright, full moon.

  "I will avenge you, brothers," she said to the heavens. "I will find out who killed you and take care of things as you would have wished."

  Her smile was slow and did not last.

  In fact, Ricardo would not have wished this at all. He would have hated this whole thing. But that was his problem, not hers--and given that he was dead, he had no more problems, did he.

  Yes, she would find out exactly what had happened to her siblings, and when she was done addressing the wrongs, she was going to step into Ricardo's handmade shoes.

  Her future was bright as the moonlight. She was finally free.

  FOUR

  THE COMMODORE

  DOWNTOWN CALDWELL

  As Vishous took form on the terrace of his penthouse, the cold wind howling at the high altitude was to his back, pushing him, pushing him toward the glass doors. And yet he hesitated, his purpose for coming one that made him feel as though his marrow had turned toxic and was melting through his bones and flesh.

  Liar.

  Like the hateful secret he was embarking on, the interior of his sex den was dark. Like the haunting of his conscience, his moonlit reflection was a ghost of himself in all that glass: leather on his legs, leather on his shoulders, dark hair and a goatee, gloved right hand.

  Cheat.

  The last thing he wanted to do was look at himself, so he willed the black candles inside to light up, not one by one, but all at once. The insta-llumination was soft; what was revealed was not. His rough-honed sex rack, the one he had used for years, was a stained and studded piece of hardware sitting smack-center in the open living area, supplanting all manner of table and chair arrangements that would have been far more appropriate, far more vanilla. On the black walls, there was not art, but straps and chains. On the section of shelving, there were instruments. On the black floors, there was nothing on the bare wood.

  Cleanup. You know.

  W
hore.

  This was not a home. This was a factory for sexual satisfaction and expression. He'd even gotten rid of the bed he'd had for a while.

  The place was also a relic. He had not visited it for how long now? Back when he and Jane had first gotten together they had sometimes come here for a little play, but compared to what he had been like before her, that had been lightweight stuff.

  Turned out when he cared about the person, he wanted different things from them.

  They hadn't been back for...Jesus, a while. Then again, they hadn't been together, sexually or otherwise, in...Jesus, a while.

  As he went to the closest sliding door, his head hurt, but not from the concussion he'd gotten during the great warehouse battle. No, that brain damage had cleared itself up nicely, along with the bruising and other minor injuries he'd sustained as the Brotherhood and the Band of Bastards had fought the Lessening Society side by side.

  Turned out those fuckers with the harelipped leader were handy.

  They were also now roommates at the BDB mansion--

  Am I really going to do this?

  Pressing his thumbprint onto his new, discreetly mounted reader, he heard the metallic shift of the lock turning free and then he willed the door to slide open. Stepping inside, he left things wide, the winter gust barging in and ruffling the flames on all those wicks. No longer at peace, now the illumination trembled, sure as if his anxiety and unhappiness had become manifest and taken on properties outside of his heart and soul.

  The walls crawled now. The shadows thrown by his table spasmed. There were things moving across the floor.

  Shit, maybe that was just his conscience talking. But he had a remedy for that.

  The kitchen was a stretch of never-used and never-gonna-be, nothing in the sink, the drawers, the cupboards. Which was not to say he wasn't prepared to be a good host. Four Grey Goose bottles were lined up on the counter, each of them facing label-out like bills put to right in a wallet.

  They were not for his guest to drink. They were for him so he could get through this.

  As he regarded these labels, he focused on the flying birds, soaring high above their little snowy, two-dimensional mountain scenes.

  For a male who spoke as many languages as he did, and knew more obscure facts about the world than a Jeopardy! champion, you'd figure he would be less surprised by this turn of events. Then again, he hadn't expected to ever be mated. So how could he have foreseen this...resumption of his old life, his old ways...his former coping mechanism...rearing up to address an itch he could no longer stand and couldn't seem to scratch any other way.

  Liar. Cheat. Whore.

  From out of nowhere, he saw himself up in the Sanctuary, walking through his mahmen's private quarters, proceeding out to the resting place of the Chosen who had had the Arrest and passed unto the Fade. He recalled reading the Scribe Virgin's departing missive, the symbols in the Old Language floating in the air as if they were mounted on an invisible flag, disappearing as soon as he had read them.

  He had hated that sacred female for so long that it had become a habit, and now that she was gone, there was the strangest void in him. He couldn't say he mourned her, however--really, the only time they had gotten along had been right after she had turned Jane into an immortal. And even after that gift, their relationship hadn't stayed improved.

  There was something missing from his life, nonetheless.

  Two somethings missing, actually. Jane was also gone, and not just when she chose to be in ghost form, as opposed to corporeal.

  It was hard to recall the last time he had felt truly connected to his shellan. When they had spent a day sleeping together, for example, or had truly talked, or had--

  The image of the stone corridor of the Black Dagger Brotherhood's Tomb came to his mind, and he remembered Jane coming to check Xcor's vitals when the Bastard had been in their custody. Yes...it was then, when the pair of them had spoken about how neither of them wanted young. He'd felt such relief that they were both on the same page, that there was going to be no conflict on that subject. Now, it seemed ironic that they had bonded over a shared decision not to do what so many mated pairs built their entire lives around.

  Young required a shared, common commitment, a joint connection, a partnership.

  Yet he and Jane had dropped the prospect of all that entanglement like a hot potato and promptly resumed their separate, parallel, no-overlap existences: He was out in the field, fighting the war and engaging in the King's business. While she treated a boatload of patients with astonishing competence and compassion.

  And never the twain shall meet.

  Freedom and autonomy were something he had valued in his mating and his mate--to the point where he had assumed those interrelated aspects were mission critical for him to find any future with any one person. But all of that non-constraint, which had seemed so important, had proven to be a double-edged sword.

  The flip side of the independence coin was neglect, distance...disintegration.

  No young to worry about, yay! had turned into Where are you? Where are we?

  At least in his mind.

  Somehow, with his mahmen "dying," and the great massacre at that warehouse, and the addition of the Band of Bastards into the household...and almost every single brother he had suddenly having young...in the midst of that thick swill of change and confusion, he had lost the thread that had tied him to Jane, and on her side, she was too busy to notice.

  Neither of them was bad or wrong.

  Well, at least not until tonight. At least not until right now.

  He had agonized about whether or not to check his old email account, to sift through what had turned out to be hundreds of missives and pleadings for his attention, to choose one and reach out.

  And meet here.

  This evening.

  Liarcheatwhore.

  The reality was, though, that his brain was clamoring under his skull, his demons were screaming at him, and there seemed like no end in sight to the torture. Fuck, if he didn't purge the chaos, he was going to end up in Assail's lunatic shoes.

  Psychosis was an old friend, after all.

  In fact, for him, madness was like a next-door neighbor who disregarded property lines now and again, not just trespassing on the land, but moving into the house.

  And wrecking the place.

  He had to do something or the pressure inside was going to consume him--and the fact that he didn't even think to talk to Jane about what was going on with him? It was hard to know if that was a symptom or the disease itself. Hell, maybe it was more practical than that. Her priorities were many, her time was few, and in the grand scheme of things, as this hateful war ground to its bloody conclusion, whatever that looked like, everyone was better off with her treating her patients rather than trying to save him from himself.

  Division of labor and all that shit.

  So yes, he would do what he knew he could to bring himself back to earth. And then when his feet were not just touching the ground, but firmly on it, he could resume life next to her.

  What was his other option?

  As he waited for the hundredth time for a different course of action to come to him, he was dimly aware that he was seeking an answer out of the very thing that was broken: He was looking for his fucked-up brain to provide a path out of this infidelity, even though his mind was the very thing that was unreliable.

  Nothing like trying to survey a landscape with a broken compass, a flashlight with no batteries in it, and night goggles with busted lenses--

  The scent of a sexually aroused female bloomed in the penthouse and he did not turn around. He knew who had arrived and was standing in that doorway that he had left open. Knew precisely what she was wearing because he had informed her what he was going to see on her body. Knew that she would be, at this very moment, getting onto her hands and knees and entering on all fours.

  Knew she would wait until he gave her an order.

  Vishous reac
hed out and took the first of the vodka bottles. He opened it like a pro, but then he had had plenty of experience.

  LIARCHEATWHORELIARCHEATWHORELIARCHEATWHORE--

  He drank from the neck until his stomach burned as much as the center of his chest did. And then he turned around.

  FIVE

  Wait, what are we doing here? Doc Jane thought as Assail's cousins turned away from her and walked off down the training center's corridor. What was the decision?

  John Matthew and Rhage were right on the pair's exit, decamping from their leans by the office's glass door and falling into a long stride that brought them past her.

  Rhage paused as the other fighter continued on. "What did they say?"

  Before she could weigh the privacy issues, she replied, "That they were going to do what was necessary."

  "So they're...ending things?"

  "They were really not clear." She put a hand through her short blond hair. "I'll follow up with them later."

  It hadn't felt right to press them, and besides, she was uneasy with this whole thing anyway. Tomorrow at nightfall, she'd call them and see if she could get some clarity. It wasn't like they had access to Assail without her--so she didn't need to worry about them going homegrown with a lights-out solution.

  Rhage frowned and put his hands on his black-leather-clad hips. "Well, if you need them escorted in here again, just let us know."

  "I will, and thanks." As the Brother went to stride off, she caught his arm. "Hey, Rhage? Wasn't Vishous supposed to be with you?"

  "Yeah, he was. But he called in and John Matthew took his shift."

  "Is he--well, that's fine. He's probably at the Pit."

  "You know, you guys should take some time off." Hollywood smiled, his Bahama blue eyes glowing. "All you do is work. Both of you."

  "That's not true--"

  "I can't remember the last meal I saw you guys at." He shrugged and took out a Tootsie Pop. When he looked at it, he cursed. "Orange. I don't like orange. Then again, I got it out in the dark. Thatswhathesaid."

  Doc Jane laughed. "Really."

  "Michael Scott is my hero, what can I say."

  Rhage gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze and then he caught up quick to the twins and John Matthew.