by Karin Harlow
He ran his big hands slowly down her bare arms. They were warm and strong, but they left gooseflesh in their wake. He turned her around and pressed her into the column behind her and held her gaze.
“Then, my lovely, my mark is your mark tonight.”
Jax stiffened. “Who?”
“Grace Rowland.”
Shit! “I don’t kill children.”
“Then I guess all bets are off.”
“Bullshit! You told me you don’t kill children either! How can you demand from me what you yourself are not willing to do?”
He smiled cryptically. “There are many things I demand that I refuse to do myself.”
Jax considered his order. She could pull it off, make it look like Grace was dead, but that could get messy for the senator. Cross would find out soon enough that the girl was alive. But maybe by then Jax could have taken care of him and Lazarus.
A sudden thought occurred to her. If he knew who Grace Rowland was to him, would he kill his own sister?
Jax took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Have you met the Rowlands?”
“Only the senator.”
Jax nodded and extended her hand. “You’ ve got yourself a deal, Mr. Cross. I take out Grace Rowland tonight, then you immediately set up a meeting with the colonel, and introduce me as the acquisition of the century.”
Cross took her hand into his, and slowly wrapped his long fingers around hers. The frisson of the contact, just like every other time she had touched him, sizzled and snapped. He pulled her toward him, knocking her off balance. “I want proof of death. Tonight. Then you’ re coming with me.”
Jax let go of his hand and pushed him off. “No can do. I have plans after work.”
“Break them.” He turned and stalked away from her, slipping between the thick foliage that had shielded them from the gathered guests.
SIXTEEN
Jax resecured her earpiece. “Report,” she said as she walked slowly back to the Green Room.
“Go ahead,” Shane said.
“Cross and I made a deal. I take out his mark for the night and he makes an introduction to Lazarus.” She didn’t tell them what else Cross wanted. She’d find a way out.
“The mark?” Dante asked.
“Grace Rowland, and he wants proof of death.”
“Jesus!” Shane hissed.
“I can’t believe it!” Dante said. “Do you still believe he didn’t 86 that girl in Blalock’s apartment?”
Her answer was irrelevant. “For the record, I do.”
“Let’s meet in five,” Shane said.
“Let’s make it fifteen. Cross is back in the Green Room. As soon as the senator and his family make their appearance and he sees Sophia Rowland, if he knows who his mother is, he’ ll know it’s her and put two and two together. I’m betting he isn’t monster enough to eliminate his sister.”
“That’s a big gamble, Cassidy,” Dante said. “I’m going to go ahead and formulate Plan B. We make it look like she’s been hit, and go from there.”
“Roger that,” Jax said as she picked up her pace toward the Green Room.
Marcus was coming apart at the seams.
He needed succor.
Now.
Her blood was like heroin. An immediate high. He was instantly addicted. He wanted more. He wanted to sink his fangs into her femoral artery and fuck her at the same time.
His body ached. His bones, his muscles, his heart, his groin pulsed with a need so violent that he teetered on the edge of sanity. He wanted to mate, to spend countless hours, days, weeks and months between her thighs as he drank his fill of her.
A thousand times would not be enough.
The ache in his body exploded into fury. Since his change, he had become a creature of instant gratification. If he wanted it, he took it.
Now, with this enigma of a woman, he could not. Because as much as he wanted inside of her body, he needed inside of her head more. He was no fool. He didn’t buy for one minute she was doing background on Rowland and his family. His instincts screamed she was the product of a very specialized organization, and one that would not give up easily. One that could potentially harm The Solution’s purpose.
Yeah, she was tied to Rowland all right. He needed to find out how tightly. It would be damn convenient if he could read her thoughts, but he could not, not unless he changed her. A thrill wracked through him at the thought. As her maker, he would own her. What they could do together boggled the mind. The thought quickly evaporated.
Her demand to become a Solution operative was laughable. The only way she could compete at his level was to be turned. Lazarus would destroy her. As coven leader, Lazarus decided who was made, who was destroyed and they all played by his rules. They had no choice. If any of them killed their maker, they would die for the effort.
Taking a deep breath, Marcus smiled grimly as he strode into the congested Green Room. He’d find out just how far she’d go to get an audience with Lazarus, an audience that no matter what she did she would never get. Because once she did Marcus’s bidding, and once he extracted the information he wanted, he would have her his way, on his time, and for as long as he wanted. He wouldn’t stop until his addiction had been sated and any drop of desire he felt for her had been obliterated.
His certainty calmed his savage mood.
Some.
His sharp gaze ran across the females in the room, processing each and every one of them for their desirability. There were several who had made their availability known. He could smell their want before they were even conscious of it. He might just grab one or two to take the edge off. That way he could concentrate with a more level head on the elusive brunette.
Why her, why now? What was so different about her? She had tits and ass just like any other woman.
He grunted in self-deprecation.
It wasn’t her, he told himself. As personal as his desire for her seemed, it was just the growing effects of his change. He was nothing more than a dead man fucking. His isolation and the emptiness inside him drove him to the extremes. Before his change, his libido had been healthy. Since then, it had heightened. Now, it raged.
He slowed his angry stride into the room when he realized he was knocking people over and drawing undue attention. He caught several harsh glares among the men, but none of them was man enough to confront him. No mortal was. Except that conniving little minx he’d just left.
She was smart. He’d sent her hair samples to a private lab, paid a fortune to find out she was a Jane Doe. The prints he’d lifted off the hotel room next to her, same damn thing. They all turned up unknown. The people she worked for had gone to a lot of trouble to bury her. But even a corpse held secrets, and it was just a matter of time before those secrets were revealed.
His blood thrummed as he imagined what he was going to do to her when he got his hands on her. He would turn her inside out and upside down, and then he would fuck her until she screamed her throat raw with pleasure. He fought the animal urge to throw his head back and howl. He would mark her through and through, so thoroughly that no man would be able to touch her again. And then she would know what it felt like to live his flawed, empty existence.
Marcus swore vigorously. His thoughts had gone dangerously off course. Mentally, he shook himself and pushed her as far away from his mind as he could. His personal mission aside, he had work to do for The Solution. And that didn’t involve sex.
Grace Rowland, he reminded himself. That was why he was here.
The thought of eliminating an innocent girl put the kibosh on his raging libido. The thought of the brunette doing it turned his stomach.
“Our guest of honor,” a high-pitched male voice said from the small podium on the north end of the room. “Senator William Rowland, his wife Sophia, and his daughter Grace.”
Marcus moved to the edge of the room while keeping his eyes focused on the podium. Senator Rowland emerged, his politician’s smile frozen on his face. At his side stood a platinum
blonde who—every part of him went still.
He raised his nose. His nostrils flared. That scent. Buried deep in his past. But never forgotten. His eyes narrowed. He took several more steps toward the podium. The scent was stronger now, floral feminine. Marcus’s world tilted, then righted as realization dawned. What was left of his heart thudded to his feet. Movement slowed. Air evaporated. Marcus could not take his eyes off the woman who had the same unusually colored eyes as his. It was the only thing good she ever gave him.
His mother.
He’d seen Sophia Rowland several times in the news, even pictures of her beside the senator. He hadn’t seen the resemblance. Maybe because he wasn’t looking for it. Until now. The last time he saw her he was twelve. She was a brunette then. Younger. Angry. She’d threatened to shoot him on the spot if he didn’t leave. When he refused, she called the cops. That was the day he turned on the world.
Rage so consuming he could barely contain it infused every cell in his body. He hissed in a breath. Next to the smiling woman was her miniature. Grace. His mark. Now the brunette’s mark. He shook his head. His—
sister.
He had a sister? Something moved deep inside him. Emotion he’d rejected even as a human clenched his gut and twisted with such ferocity that he nearly screamed out from the pain of it.
He pushed away from the column he’d ducked behind. In the blink of an eye, he was out on the deserted loggia. Grateful for the privacy, Marcus began to pace the worn tile. How ironic was that? His next mark was his own flesh and blood. He could snap his mother’s neck without batting an eyelash. His sister? An innocent? She’d had no hand in the shitty cards dealt her.
Out of nowhere, a feeling of betrayal flared within him, focused exclusively on the woman who’d given him human life. Why Grace and not him? some part of him shouted. But even as he asked, he knew the answer.
Sophia was the daughter of American royalty. To her he was a half-breed. As such, he was nothing to her but a dirty little secret. But for how long? He could, with a simple declaration, take everything she held dear away from her.
Abruptly, Marcus threw his head back and laughed. He relished a renewed sense of power. What would the senator do if he knew his wife had screwed a drunk-ass Indian and kicked the child she’d had with him to the curb?
In a moment of clarity, he sobered. Lazarus! Did he know? Such a rhetorical question. Lazarus knew everything. Why else would he have sent Marcus to kill the girl? It was the ultimate test. He wanted to know whether Marcus, for the greater good of The Solution, would kill his own flesh and blood. If he would give up every last vestige of humanity that had once existed within him.
He turned on his heel and stalked back into the Green Room, where he took up his post beside a column no more than thirty feet from the cozy little family. There, among the paying guests, he watched his mother and sister stand beside the man who was the lifeblood of The Solution.
A part of him snapped. Setting his jaw, Marcus stalked closer to the podium, not hearing a word the senator said. Marcus’s focus was solely on the bitch beside him. When he was no more than ten feet away from her, he stopped, and stared hard. He willed her to look at him. The beaming teenager beside her looked at him instead. Her face glowed with youth and exuberance, with the hope of all possibilities her idyllic future would provide.
Marcus narrowed his eyes. She had everything he’d never had. She was alive and he was dead. Privileged instead of just existing. Loved rather than scorned. But she wasn’t stupid. She caught Marcus’s venomous gaze and shrank into her mother’s side for protection. Sophia barely paid attention, but she finally tilted her head in his direction. Her gaze slowly swept the room, not in obvious observation but casually, as if wanting to make eye contact with all of her husband’s supporters. When her gaze drifted past him, he stiffened. So, she didn’t recognize him? Why should she? The last time she’d seen him, his hair had been down to his waist, he’d been dirty and tired, and he could have used a few meals to fatten him up. The only thing they’d had in common had been their blue eyes. That and their utter hatred for each other.
Marcus caught the girl’s gaze again. He nodded so subtly that he wasn’t sure if he really had. Then he moved back into the shadows of the columns and waited.
“He just figured it out,” Jax said.
“Roger that, keep him in your sights, Cassidy,” Dante said.
“He’s not moving, just watching and listening to the speech from the fifth column down from the podium on the right,” Shane said as he easily maneuvered around the throng of guests.
Jax had been too mesmerized by the cacophony of emotions playing out across Marcus Cross’s face to hear a word of the senator’ s. His realization of who Sophia Rowland was had torn her apart. And with that realization had come the next one. Gracie. He had a sister. Each time a different emotion had flashed across his features, Jax had felt his anguish. His anger. His frustration. The depth of his emotion surprised her. He was a cold-blooded killer. Why the confusion? He didn’t know Gracie. He was not the type to care. It didn’t matter, she told herself. He’d carry out his mission if she didn’ t. It was what he did.
And if he could read her thoughts, he’d know she’d do everything in her power to stop him. Grace Rowland was not going to die tonight or anytime soon. Jax was, at her core, still a cop. But deeper than that, she was a woman with a deep-seated instinct to protect. In the end, it was what had driven her to ultimately kill Montes. Not revenge, not anger, not retribution. Just simply destroy him before he destroyed more innocent lives.
The senator’s short speech ended. With his wife and daughter on either side of him, he made his rounds to each table, thanking each and every person for their support. Jax kept her eyes alert and debated on engaging Cross again, in effect giving him the opportunity to call her off. Ultimately, she decided against it. It would show indecision, and indecision equaled weakness. So she backed off.
The room had warmed to uncomfortable with the surge of movement among the bodies and the clash of copious scents. “I’m heading out to the loggia for some air, then we’ ll meet,” Jax quietly said.
“Roger that,” both Shane and Dante said.
As she stepped out into the cool air, her hair stood straight up on her neck.
“Eighty-six the hit—I have other plans for you,” Cross said from behind her.
An immediate sense of relief hit her but was followed quickly with trepidation. What exactly were his “other plans”? She turned to ask him, but he was gone.
“Get in here, Cassidy,” Shane said in her earpiece. “Something’s going down.”
“Copy.” Jax sprinted into the Green Room to see the senator moving toward the anteroom fast, while his immovable circle of security and staffers surrounded him. Shane weaved his way around from the south end behind her.
“What’s going on?” Jax questioned.
“Not sure,” Dante said. “Stick with them, Cassidy. I’m staying close to Goldielocks. Not taking any chances this is a ruse to draw us out.”
“Roger that,” she softly said and hurried across the crowded space to catch up to the men. Just before the door was about to close, Jax called out, “Senator Rowland?”
Rowland jerked and turned to look at her. He was pale. Sweating. Abruptly, he motioned her inside the sanctum of the anteroom, then held up a manila envelope that was clearly marked Family Values? in big black bold letters.
She looked at the senator. “Where—”
“It was at one of the tables. On an empty seat. Right next to the governor’s wife!”
Jax clenched her fists and thought of Cross. Damn bastard. “We didn’t see—”
“Obviously you didn’t see. With you and your team’s sloppiness, I’m surprised he didn’t step up to the podium and join me.” Hands shaking, Rowland ripped open the envelope and removed a color eight-by-ten photo. As Jax watched, his face turned to ash. “Oh . . . God,” he whispered.
Jax looked over his sho
ulder and saw what he held in his hands. Damn. Gracie Rowland was not so innocent after all. Even as she cringed, instinct drew her to the open window behind him. Sure enough, a rope was tied to the balustrade. Just hitting the ground two stories below was a man clad from head to toe in black. Her first thought was Cross, but she quickly nixed it. He wouldn’t run; he’d stay and watch. Besides, this guy was half Cross’s size. He took off without looking back.
“Stay here!” she ordered, then grabbed onto the rope and swung herself over the balustrade. Despite the hindrance of her dress and heels, she rappelled down the two stories and was on the ground in seconds. As she did so, she spoke into her mic. “Need backup at the anteroom. I’m in pursuit of a male who went out the back window. Secure the senator and the envelope he has.”
Jax kicked off her Jimmy Choos and took off barefoot after the bad guy. She continued to call out her location, but as she ran down Van Ness, she lost sight of the guy. His scent lingered in the air, and amazingly, she was able to follow it. As she did, she was quite aware that with the exception of the knife strapped to her thigh and her deadly jewelry, she was unarmed and that with each step the neighborhood was getting less and less affluent. And darker.
Still, her vision was surprisingly keen. Scents swirled around her. Some good, most nasty. Garbage, sewage, unwashed bodies. The bad guy’s scent began to fade. She wrinkled her nose and slowed her gait to a jog.
Her vision was sharp, her senses on overload. It felt like more than adrenaline. It felt like she was on some kind of supersensory drug. What the hell was going on?
“Cassidy?” Shane shouted in her ear, “where the hell are you?”
She looked up. She’d been so focused on the chase that she had not given out her location for some time. Bad cop. “I’m headed west. Alley off of Van Ness.”
As she followed the fading scent of the bad guy down the quiet alley, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She was not alone. She could feel eyes, everywhere, watching her. If she turned around, she’d be at their mercy; she could only go forward.
