Benson laughed, throwing his head back, while Clarke walked away, disgusted. Marcus took the moment of distraction to slide the bullet off the desktop and casually drop it into his pocket. He turned to Margo. “It’s been fabulous, my dear, sweet lady. You were inspiring assistance.”
Her eyes danced and glowed with warmth. “You’re more than welcome, Marcus. Stay warm now, you hear?” Margo had been one of the few people that had spoken to him voluntarily after Tangiers. He remembered it and always would. She had a mind of her own. He smiled back. “I’m getting out before McLaren boots me out. See you in a few weeks.”
“I’ll be here as always,” she assured him.
It was the sole note of positivity in the whole wretched day and it buoyed him almost all the way home. So did the weight of the bullet in his pocket, reminding him it was there. Margo had slipped it to him so he could investigate on his own. She hadn’t liked McLaren’s lack of action, either. Allies turned up in the most unexpected places.
He stared into the sun that was low over the western horizon, finally emerging from its bank of clouds now the day was winding down, thinking heavily as he drove back to Malibu.
So where would the bullet take him? What did The Whisper want with him? The sensation of events moving around him, shaping themselves for the future, gave him a warm sense of anticipation.
Come and get me, Marcus mentally encouraged him. Bring it on.
Chapter Four
Browne & Browne Investigations took up a small suite on the third and top floor of a long, low office complex for small businesses on the north end of Bismarck, North Dakota. The single security guard had done his rounds at ten and wouldn’t get up from his chair in his warm office until just after one in the morning, relying instead on the bank of monitors to check the premises.
Shortly after midnight, the fire escape door gave out a heavy clunk as the lock was turned from the inside. Gradually the door eased open and a figure wearing a black balaclava eased head and shoulders around the doorframe, showing as little as possible of their body outside the door. The intruder lifted their arm and pointed the gun they held at the dark dome protecting the security camera attached to the ceiling of the corridor. They took careful aim and fired.
The paintball gun gave a soft chuffing sound and the black paintball splattered against the dome. The figure studied the paint for a few seconds, then aimed and shot a second paintball.
They watched the paint spread over the dome for a few more seconds, then opened the door fully, stepped out into the corridor and removed the balaclava.
Sebastian emerged from the stairwell, pushing his fingers through his hair, stuffing his own balaclava into his pants pocket. “I’ve always hated these things. It’s like breathing through cotton wool.”
Winter pushed her ponytail back over her shoulder. “I needed two shots to cover the whole camera, but it worked well.”
“You’ve forgotten your own injunction against talking on the job,” Sebastian chided her.
She grinned. “Busted,” she said. “Let’s get this done.”
“Yes, boss.”
“I like the sound of that,” she said and walked quickly up to one of the office doors lining the corridor. There was nothing identifying the door except for a number.
Plucking two probes from her thigh pocket, she dropped to one knee and inserted them in the lock, concentrating with her eyes half closed as she moved them along the tumblers.
Sebastian held out his wrist and tapped face of the big diving watch on his wrist.
She waved him away and got back to work. Five seconds later, she felt the tumblers react and stroked them into cooperating with a crank of her wrist. The door unlocked with a soft sound.
Sebastian turned the handle and slipped inside. After twenty seconds, he opened the door again and let her in. “Nothing,” he said, his mouth next to her ear. “Not so much as a single motion tracker.”
“A very professional outfit,” Winter murmured back. “Finka Zupan obviously went all out to find me.” She nodded toward the only computer on the single desk. There were no connecting rooms.
Sebastian shut the shades over the windows carefully, then turned on the computer. His fingers began to dance across the keys. This was his part of the job.
Winter looked around. The carpet was a dirty, stained muddy green and there were bare spots where feet had worn a trail around the corner of the desk and through the door.
There were two steel filing cabinets against the wall next to the door. Winter tried one of the drawers and had to tug on it to get it to open. It opened with a screech of metal on metal, making her wince.
Sorry, she mouthed to Sebastian.
She lifted the drawer up and eased it out as far as it would go, then read the tabs. She didn’t need a flashlight. Neither did Sebastian. Their symbiosis meant she could see as well in the dark as any vampire.
The files had a general sort of order to them, although beyond the first letter of the name, the filer’s grasp of the alphabet seemed to have evaporated.
“Last name is Baker,” Sebastian murmured from the desk.
Winter shut the drawer and moved to the top left hand drawer and opened that instead. She rifled through the tabs quickly and withdrew a thick folder with a hand-written tab, “Baker, Zoe.”
She flipped through the file, then snapped it shut and turned to check on Sebastian. He got to his feet as she looked, still typing. Then with a small nod of satisfaction, he shut down the desktop and looked up at her.
Winter moved to the outer door and rested her gloved hand on the handle. Sebastian pressed up behind her. She eased the door open a bare inch and monitored the corridor directly in front of the door and a foot or so to either side, then opened it a little wider and checked the length of the corridor in both directions. Satisfied, she stepped out and strode toward the fire escape.
She heard Sebastian lock and shut the door behind him and follow her.
Winter had her hand on the bar of the emergency door when an office door five yards from where she stood opened. The guard stepped out, hitching the trousers of his ill-fitting uniform higher. He was clutching a handful of magazines in his right hand. The door carried a company name formed of stick-on lettering. Beef Fest Publications.
The guard dropped the magazines, his mouth opening, as he spotted Winter and Sebastian.
Winter immediately walked toward him. “Shh… It’s alright.”
“What the fuck?” The guard reached for something on the back of his belt.
“Hey!” Sebastian called softly. Winter glanced over her shoulder and suppressed a big gale of laughter. Sebastian was undoing his black jeans, his face formed into an effeminate pouty expression.
The guard hesitated, his eyes widening even more. It was all the time Winter needed. She curled her fingers around the guard’s arm, just above the elbow, for he had frozen with his arm still cocked to reach behind him.
“I told you everything would be fine,” she told him softly. “You’re going to go to sleep now and when you wake up you won’t remember a thing. Close your eyes. Mmm… There we go.” She caught at him as he slumped. Sebastian stepped up and took the guy’s weight and lowered him to the floor for her.
“Thanks.” She smiled at him mischievously. “Having you around makes it a lot easier. I used to have a hell of a time stopping them from hitting the floor with a thump and alerting someone.”
“Including me.” He stepped back and waved her forward. “Brain wipe?” he asked.
“Memory redaction. Don’t be melodramatic. And fasten your jeans.” She bent over and rested her fingertips against the guard’s temple for a few seconds, then straightened.
“That’s it?” Sebastian asked. “You’re getting faster.”
“All that training from the Curandero is paying off.”
“Probably not in the way they thought it would be used.”
She laughed. “On the other hand, they could be robbing banks every day
and no one would remember.”
Sebastian toed the pile of magazines scattered around and under the guard. “Take these?” he asked.
Winter glanced at the lurid covers, showing male couples in highly suggestive but not quite explicit poses. Most of the men were nude, but the images were cropped to hide genitalia. Winter grinned. “That’s why he hesitated when you came on to him. I was concentrating on the gun he was trying to pull.” She pursed her lips, thinking it through. “Leave them there. If someone finds him like this, he’ll be in deep shit for stealing a company’s products out of their office. If he wakes up on his own, he’ll know he’s been busted, even though he can’t remember a thing. This won’t have been the first time he’s helped himself to the gay porn. He was way too casual coming out the door.”
Sebastian laughed and glanced at his watch. “Let’s go before Sweetheart wakes up again. There was a diner we passed on the way here. I could murder a hamburger.”
“Glutton. You ate on the plane.” She walked over to the emergency door once more and pushed on the handle. “A waffle and bacon for me. I’m starving all of a sudden.”
* * * * *
It was nearly two in the morning. In a corner booth of the diner, Sebastian and Winter were lingering over a last cup of coffee with the remains of their meals in front of them.
Sebastian stretched mightily, then settled back into the corner of the booth, his arm stretched along the back of it. “Damn, that was fun. Old times, yes?”
“Sort of old times,” Winter replied with a small smile. “When we were doing it for real, after a job, you would take off for some night club or another and invariably have some guy or woman latch onto you, which you took advantage of to the hilt.”
“Literally,” Sebastian agreed, with a lusty expression. Then his smile warmed and he reached for her arm and tugged her around the cornered bench. “Come here.”
Winter allowed herself to be coaxed along the bench until she was sitting with her back against his chest. She was wearing a short skirt and silky sleeveless tee-shirt that draped gracefully at the front, revealing the tops of her breasts, and long warm boots that stopped just above her knees. Her legs were bare, but the long overcoat on the back of the bench covered her to mid-calf, when they were out in the cool North Dakota air.
They had both changed in their rented car, as soon as they had left the scene of their break-in. Sebastian wore the jeans and soft cotton collarless shirt he favored, under a navy coat. Despite his wedding ring, he was still drawing admiring glances from the staff. There was only one other customer, a teenager who looked like he was trying to drown his night of indulgence with coffee before he went home.
Sebastian tucked his arm around her waist, his fingers coming to rest on her thigh. He brushed back her loose hair from her face and kissed her temple. “So,” he said. “You’ve just successfully destroyed the last evidence linking you to Serbia. You’re Winter Manon Kennedy now and no one will ever dispute it. How do you feel?”
“I’d rather be Winter Aquila-Worthington, but as you two keep changing your identities, I’m stuck with being me. But it’s better by miles than being Morena.” She picked up his hand and kissed the back of it. “Thank you for your help on this.”
“You couldn’t have kept me out of it. It was good to be able to do something simple and with a positive outcome. We’ve been spinning our wheels for way too long now.”
“Let’s not talk about vampire stuff for right now. I want to stay mellow and happy for a bit longer.”
Sebastian’s fingers stroked her thigh, alerting her nerves and sending sizzling signals through her. Winter shivered.
“You know,” he murmured, his lips by her ear. “I might have run off to night clubs after every job, but it wasn’t the way I really wanted to celebrate another success.” His fingers pushed underneath the hem of her skirt, sliding over the curve of her thigh to caress high at the top, over the delicate inner flesh of her thighs. Winter locked her jaw tight against the moan that tried to emerge.
Sebastian’s lips trailed down the side of her neck, until he was nuzzling at the edge of her tee-shirt, his lips and tongue dipping into the hollow of her clavicle and sending a shudder through her.
Winter looked around for observers, but their booth was in a dark corner and her back and Sebastian’s was turned so that someone would have to come right up to the booth and peer over the table to see what they were doing.
She relaxed and reached for Sebastian’s other hand. She pushed it under her tee-shirt and up until his fingers curled over her breast. She sighed. “You weren’t the only one who wanted a different ending to jobs, back then.”
“I know that now. So let’s finish it properly this time. We may never get another opportunity to put things right.” He gripped the edge of her bra and curled the cup down, until her breast was resting on top of folded lace. Then he let his fingers drift gently over her breast, avoiding the nipple and making her squirm. “Keep still.” His voice was low and commanding.
“You’re kidding me!” she murmured back.
“Keep still, or I will stop.”
She drew in a breath and made herself stay perfectly still, even though she was trembling and her clit was blooming and throbbing with need.
“That’s better,” Sebastian told her. His finger and thumb tightened on her nipple and at the same time, he pushed her panties aside and thrust his fingers deep into her pussy.
Winter held back her cry, her throat tightening with the effort. As Sebastian slid his fingers in and out of her with soft, slick sounds, he rolled her nipple and tugged on it gently.
She gripped the edge of the table with iron fingers. “Pay the bill!” she whispered.
“I’m having too much fun here.” He withdrew his fingers and grabbed at her panties and tore them from her with a low ripping sound. He gave a wordless sound of satisfaction and stuffed the silky fabric into his pocket and returned his hand to between her thighs.
Winter let her head fall back and her eyes drift closed as his long fingers began to thrust into her in a steady, powerfully arousing motion. Then his thumb brushed against her clit and began to stroke in time with his thrusting.
Winter clutched at the tabletop and swallowed dryly. She was breathing in short little pants, her lips open. Her climax leapt and swept her along.
“Bastian,” she moaned, her head rolling.
He abruptly let go of her. Winter drew in a deep, unsteady breath.
“Time to pay the bill,” he said, pushing her away from him. He stood up carefully, adjusting his jeans to accommodate his hard cock, then picked up the bill and strode to the cash register, leaving Winter to pull together her scrambled senses, straighten up her clothes and grab her bag and coat. She caught up with Sebastian as he finished up at the cash register.
He held the door open for her and plucked her coat away from her just as she was shrugging into it. “You won’t need that,” he told her. “I’ll keep you more than warm enough for a while.”
She shivered, but made no protest. Sebastian’s improvisations were always worth playing along with him for a while, even if she only had a vague idea what it was he had dreamed up.
Their rented car was sitting nose-in to the restaurant, at the far end of the car park. There were no windows there to spill light upon the low-slung Thunderbird, and rain drops beaded the hood and windscreen.
“Why don’t you phone the jet and let them know we’ll be there in forty minutes? They can prep for take-off.”
“Now?” she asked.
“Now,” he confirmed, his voice low.
She shivered again and it had nothing to do with the cold. She knew that low, gravelly voice of his well. So she fished out her cellphone and dialed the number the two pilots had given her when they had left the plane around three p.m., carrying their heavy duffel bags that now sat in the trunk.
“Hi,” she said. “This is Winter K—“
“Yes, ma’am.” The pilot cut her off
. “Are you calling to say you’re ready to head back?”
She reached the passenger door of the car and lifted her hand to open it, but Sebastian grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the hood. He tossed her shoulder bag on the ground at her feet.
She widened her eyes at him and he raised a finger to his lips. She was to continue the call as if nothing extraordinary was happened. Then she remembered the question she had been asked. “Um, yes, in about forty minutes,” she said into the phone. “Does that suit you?”
Sebastian bent her over the low hood, making her draw in a sharp breath.
“I’m sorry, ma’am?” the pilot asked.
“Nothing,” she said hastily as she propped herself up on the slippery, wet hood with her other hand.
Sebastian yanked her skirt up around her hips, exposing her naked ass and genitals to his view, then spread her legs wide.
Oh Lordy! Winter thought, clutching the cellphone with desperate fingers.
“We can get permission to take off inside ten minutes. It’s pretty quiet here.” She heard the pilot chuckle. “This isn’t L.A.X.”
Sebastian slid her tee-shirt up her torso and picked up the edge of her bra with it, until her breasts were exposed, with the tee-shirt and her bra tangled up together and rucked up under her arms. If anyone was to step out of the restaurant, or drive up…
“Ma’am?”
“I’m sorry. Yes, that’s fine. We’ll see you in forty minutes.”
Sebastian battered his way into her pussy, his cock hot and hard and shocking. Winter caught her breath, her hand slipping up the hood with the force of his entry.
“Thanks, ma’am. In forty.”
She managed to thumb the disconnect icon, although she was unable to keep the phone steady because of Sebastian’s hard thrusting and because her brain and muscle coordination seem to have shut down. She gripped the cellphone in her fingers and rested the knuckles against the hood for support.
“You did very well,” Sebastian said approvingly, his voice hoarse. He curled his hand over her shoulder, the other took possession of her hip. It steadied her – just a little.
Blood Unleashed (Blood Stone) Page 5
