Her companion, a handsome man with sparkling eyes, caught me looking and smiled. I looked away. It was the smile of a person untouched by violence, a look I’d never worn in my adult life. I doubted my dinner partner ever had either.
“I don’t care,” I lied, returning Ajax’s stare.
He laughed as if we were also enjoying a pleasant evening in each other’s company. “Of course you do. See, that’s why you’re the good guy and I’m the bad guy.” The humor dropped from his face, along with his voice. “Now get your ass out of that chair.”
I remained seated.
The smooth white bones beneath his cheeks flashed. Then there was the slight rustle of fabric, the unmistakable chink of a weapon being unsheathed beneath the table, and Ajax’s shoulder rotated in a motion that would end in a killing blow. My stomach clenched but still I didn’t move. He growled, and it was an expectant, warning sound.
“Wait!” I said as his muscles tensed. He stared back at me with those soulless eyes, and I knew he’d have done it. He’d have killed that woman without blinking, and the man across from her would never smile again.
“See?” Ajax said quietly. “I told you you’re one of the good guys.”
I didn’t answer, just pushed away from the table and rose, my eyes never leaving his. But then I did something even I couldn’t have anticipated. I picked up my wineglass, swirled, and put it to my lips.
Perhaps it was the intensity of the moment, or maybe Ajax’s lesson in odorous acuity really had hit home, but the flavors I inhaled from that glass were the most complex, the most vibrant, and the richest I’d ever tasted. I could scent the clay of the plateau vineyard in France where the fruit had been harvested, and somehow I knew the grapes had been picked on a windless, rainy day. The juice had been aged in French oak, and the winemaker had regularly tested the barrel with a steel ladle, his artist’s palate telling him when, exactly, to go to bottle. Inhaling all these things—things I had no right to sense or see—they became a part of me, their knowledge burrowing into my bones.
I drank deeply, almost ecstatically, like the saints you see on the ceilings of cathedrals, martyrs looking expectantly toward heaven in their final, lingering moments on earth. All the while Ajax watched me with those glassy death-eyes, like he could tell exactly what I was doing and feeling and tasting. I lowered the glass, then blew in his direction.
He froze, alarm furrowing his brow. I don’t know what he scented of me just then, but it wasn’t the fear he so clearly expected. Still, he regained his composure quickly and jerked his head toward the exit. Unwilling to let go of the wine that still held so much life and passion and vitality in it, I turned with it still in my hand. Then, fingering the stem like a nun with her favorite rosary beads, I slowly made my way out the door.
The Valhalla Hotel and Casino was like any other jewel in the crown of a corporate gaming giant. It boasted live entertainment, fine dining, and slavish customer service to those wagering amid the garish lights of clanging machines and crowded pits. It clung doggedly to its Viking theme; as long, that was, as it didn’t interfere with the more important one: making it easy for people to give away their money. The fact that my father owned Valhalla changed none of this.
It did, however, mean that I was recognized, deferred to, and often approached by those who worked there, and that’s what I was hoping for as I reached the restaurant’s foyer and stepped out onto the main casino floor. Perhaps somebody would become suspicious at the possessive grip Ajax had on my left arm. Or maybe I could somehow signal security via the Eye in the Sky, an in-house surveillance system so advanced it could catch even the most nimble-fingered gambler switching dice. It wasn’t advanced enough, however, to stop a barbed poker from sawing through my spine, so while I held onto the hope for help, my gut told me I was on my own.
“Parking garage,” Ajax ordered, standing so close I could feel his body heat radiating through his jacket. I followed his instructions, as anxious to get him away from the other guests as I was to ensure that all my vitals remained intact.
We wove around glassy-eyed tourists and dodged cocktail waitresses dressed as Valkyries delivering drinks to both the fallen, and not yet fallen, heroes of the replicate Great Hall. All the while Ajax kept close, his stewed breath a constant reminder of the evil lurking beneath the ill-fitting dinner jacket.
The crowd thinned as we passed the tower elevators, and when we turned into a corridor leading to the convention area, I felt him relax, which was good. I wanted him relaxed. And I wanted him confident. Add a little distraction, which I’d have to improvise, and by God, I might just get out of this alive.
“What did you mean earlier?” I asked, hoping my voice revealed only frightened curiosity. “You told ‘them’ you knew it was me?”
“We’ve been hunting you a long time, Joanna. You wouldn’t believe the manpower or the means we’ve employed in trying to locate and unmask your identity.”
“What identity? And who are ‘we’?” I asked, catching our reflection as we passed a gilded mirror. We looked like any other couple out for a night in Vegas; in a rush, a little strained perhaps, but positively determined to have fun. I was wearing black pants, a matching cowl-necked sweater, and heels. My wrap and bag were slung over my right arm, and I held my half-full wineglass in my left. It wasn’t exactly combat clothing, but I could move well enough if—oh, say—a serrated poker were being held at my back.
Ajax shot a condescending look my way. “Does it matter?”
I didn’t suppose so. I moved on to something that did. “And how did you find me?”
“Let’s put it this way: you bear a striking resemblance to another of our enemies.” And he chuckled, clearly intent on being vague.
As we rounded another corner, my steps only a fraction ahead of his, I noted pockets of people lounging along the perimeter of the wide carpeted hallway, some reading papers and sipping tiny cups of espresso, others conversing quietly in groups of threes and fours. Most, I saw, wore badges, stragglers from whatever that day’s convention was. Unfortunately, none of them looked like they could stop the bus, much less a maniac with a blade.
“Turn here,” Ajax said, indicating the marble alcove housing the garage elevators. He placed his right hand, his killing hand, on my shoulder, ensuring that I did so.
I know it may not have seemed like it, but this was what I wanted. I’d trained in contact combat for so long that such openings were glaring and instinctive. This was my chance, and I’d get only one.
Yanking my shoulder easily from beneath his grasp, I half turned, half stumbled, and pointed my wineglass at him. Slurring my words, I yelled, “Pervert! Don’t ever touch me again!”
Papers were lowered, eyes raised, heads turned. Visitors to Vegas were always ready for a show, and public domestic disputes were a popular spectator sport. I played up my Jerry Springer moment for all it was worth.
“By the way, I lied when I said your brain stick wasn’t that small!” Sloshing what remained of my wine on Ajax’s suit, I met his murderous look with a contemptuous one of my own. Then I reeled away, slammed into the corner of the wall, tripped, and sprawled inelegantly across the marble floor.
Everything happened fast after that. An elevator door chimed. Ajax growled. A woman screamed. And I rose to my knees, the stem of my shattered wineglass clenched firmly in my fist. Grabbing me by the shoulder again, Ajax whirled me around, and as he did, I buried the crystal shard deep into his neck.
His growl scuttled off into a strangled gurgle, and his eyes went round with shock and pain. He still had the wherewithal to lift his blade, the bastard, but my training and fury had taken over, and I slammed the heel of my palm into his nose, driving it with the force of a woman who knew how to put her hips and shoulders into a blow. He’d have a fuck-all time of breathing now.
I took out his left knee with my heel and he cried out again, crumpling to the ground like a marionette’s abandoned toy. Only a top-notch surgeon would help him w
alk again. I wanted to do more, and I had a clear shot at his kidney. Remembering the joyous smile of the woman he’d threatened to kill, I reared back pitilessly and aimed the strongest part of my body into the center of his being. I kicked—
And missed. Something, someone, slammed into me and I backpedaled madly, but couldn’t regain my balance in three-inch heels. I would have crashed into the steel doors behind me except the elevator had opened, and instead I was wheeled into the mouth of the car, along with my new attacker. I grunted as the wall broke my fall, knocking the breath from my body.
Ajax was struggling on the floor against two men in black suits, fighting to reach me, his killing hand stretched toward me. His smell was strong in my nose—sooty hatred and soured defeat—and his pain and his fury were top notes, burning off hot and fast. Then the elevator doors shut. I was free of the abominable Ajax, but trapped inside a steel box with, beneath, and against a new and unfathomable threat.
Very few things are certain in this world, even fewer when the adrenaline and heat of a combat situation are still on the rise. As the elevator ascended, here’s what was certain. The person pinning me against the wall was male. He outweighed me by at least fifty pounds. And as soon as I got an opening, he was going to lose his left nut. The man crowded in close, as if he knew it too.
We jockeyed for position, me trying to gain enough space and distance to land a forceful blow, him defensive, but doing nothing to launch an assault of his own. I didn’t care. I wanted out; out of his grip, out of this box. Out of this whole nightmare. Gradually, though, his voice penetrated the fog of anger and fear that kept me swinging.
“Stop fighting! It’s okay. You’re safe…” He gasped this, struggling to shield his family jewels. “C’mon, Jo-Jo! I’m not going to hurt you!”
Jo-Jo. Only one person on this earth had ever called me that. I looked up, shocked, into a face I hadn’t laid eyes on in almost a decade. And froze.
Is it possible for a heart to plummet and swell at the same time? Because I swear that’s what mine did. I sagged against the wall, and the body I’d trained to be so capable and strong was suddenly shaky and faint.
I spent a moment more cursing my traitorous, overactive, estrogen-ridden, double-X-chromosome-carrying hormones. Then I turned and soaked in the sight of my first lover.
His features were more angular and defined than I remembered, though his expression was one I was intimately familiar with—intent gentleness. He had a scar just below his hairline, which must have required stitches, and I wondered briefly how it’d gotten there. Dark hair curled over the collar of his shirt, not too long to keep him from looking respectable, but long enough that he could be a chameleon if he chose. I’d always loved those wild curls, and my fingertips twitched as I looked at them.
He was taller than the boy I’d last seen; wider too, but the hips locking me in the corner of that elevator car were still slim as daggers beneath tight black jeans, and his scent was the same heady mixture of spice and soap and musky heat that had always held me captive.
Like Pavlov’s dog, I damned near started to salivate.
“Hello, Ben,” I said, resisting the impulse to reach out and smooth an errant lock from his forehead. It was a pretty anticlimactic greeting after so many years. I swallowed self-consciously, aware his eyes had yet to leave my face. He was studying me, I knew, in the same way I’d studied him, and I managed a shaky smile and tried for something with a bit more flash. “That’s a hard…badge you’ve got there.”
He pulled away quickly, shifting so his chest was no longer touching mine, and I was instantly sorry I’d said anything at all. Staring down at the badge like he’d forgotten it was there, Ben shook his head as the elevator dutifully rang the fifth floor. The doors opened to the parking garage, and it was suddenly, oppressively, quiet.
“Christ, Jo,” Ben said, breaking the silence. “Are you okay?”
In the years since he’d last asked me that question, I’d become an expert at taking care of myself…and Ben had become a cop. One didn’t need a psychologist to tell you neither result was surprising. I’d been on my back in the ICU that first time, and he’d been sobbing, his adolescent face contorted with tears and guilt. But I knew Ben better than most, or had at one time, so I also knew regardless of what had happened to me—to him, and to us—a cop was what he was always meant to be.
Opening my arms in a courageous gesture that said “see for yourself,” I discovered I couldn’t stop them from shaking, and crossed them quickly over my chest. Still, I was obviously unharmed.
“God, when I saw that knife…” He lowered his forehead to the wall, shut his eyes, and let out a breath so deep he could have been holding it for years. He recovered himself almost immediately, though, straightening to his full seventy-four-inch height. “If I’d known the guy was armed I would have told my team to move sooner.”
“That would have been helpful,” I said jokingly, but I was suddenly reeling. You have your own team? How old were you when you made sergeant? What the hell are you doing here?
Do you still smile in your sleep?
“We’ve been tracking that guy for months,” Ben was saying. “He’s wanted for assault, battery, attempted rape, and God knows what else. He also cheats at craps—”
“The bastard.”
“—so we had to do this right. It had to go down smooth, but when I saw you in that restaurant—” He broke off and looked at me like it would have killed him to lose me all over again.
Suddenly the eight years, seven months, three weeks, five days, fifteen hours, and fistful of minutes since I’d last seen him dissolved into ether, meaningless dust. I realized the powerful, strong, and capable woman I’d proudly become would give anything to have Ben Traina look at me like that again. Pitiful, isn’t it? But true.
Then the sermon began. “Are you insane? What the hell are you thinking going out with a guy like that? You, of all people, should know better.”
My eyes narrowed. Two years older than me, and he’d always thought he had the right to lecture. “Well, I always could pick ’em.”
He only colored slightly at that, not the bright-cheeked blush I remembered. Good for him, I thought. All grown up, and even more overbearing.
“I see your cutting wit hasn’t dulled any.”
“Sharpened it just this morning,” I said. It used to be what you loved about me most.
He stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head and laughed. The low, rich sound touched me in all the right places.
“Come on,” he said, punching the elevator button that led back to the lower levels. “We have some serious talking to do.”
We returned to a hallway clogged with the shouts of police and medical personnel. Ajax was cuffed in spite of his injuries, and though he was looking the other way, his head immediately swiveled when I exited the elevator. Strange, but I didn’t have to wonder at that.
I could smell him too.
In salute to this shared intimacy, I blew him a victorious kiss. Ignoring the suddenly snarling and furious criminal writhing on the floor, Ben led me away, pushing through the voyeuristic and morbidly curious onlookers. Being of a practical nature, and somewhat of a voyeur myself, I took the opportunity to check out his ass. I sighed. Still fabulous.
And with that the foremost thought in my mind, I followed the first and only man I’d ever loved back into the chaos of Valhalla.
2
I’d never been able to hide anything from Benjamin Traina. We met when I was in fifth grade and he in seventh, when our bodies had held more similarities than not. We had a common passion for kickball and tag, and an equally strong hatred for a bully named Charles Tracy, whom we mercilessly dubbed Upchuck, and made unrelenting gagging noises whenever we passed him in the halls. Though our friendship was instant, born of youthful energy and the childish faith that things and people could be divided into two groups—right or wrong, good or bad, black or white—romance didn’t bloom until four years
later. An accidental meeting at the movie theaters found our hormone-crazed bodies—now very different, thank you—locked in a clinch even the onscreen stars couldn’t match. Only later did Ben admit the meeting hadn’t been exactly accidental.
There’s something about seeing an adult you knew in childhood that makes them marginally vulnerable to you, and vice versa. There’s also something comforting in thinking that if they made it this far, relatively unscathed, then maybe you didn’t turn out half bad either. So I settled across from this man I both knew and didn’t, and felt both vulnerable and comforted…and was surprised to realize I minded neither.
“How’s your father?” Ben began once we’d been left alone in my father’s cavernous conference room, located on the fifteenth floor of the Valhalla hotel. There was a table the size of a small airplane between us, and our coffee cups were reflected back on the deep, polished mahogany.
“Great,” I replied, lifting my cup. “Or so I hear. I never see him.”
“Do you want me to call him? See if he can come down?”
I jerked my head. I’d stopped needing my father long ago, and Ben knew that. “He’s probably at home counting all his money. I’d hate to interrupt.”
My family was nouveau riche, and my father’s story had probably launched a thousand capital ventures in gaming and resort management, the majority of which failed. In the most capitalist city of the most capitalist nation in the world, Xavier Archer remained an icon of unparalleled and, seemingly, unquenchable ambition. His rise had been meteoric: his competitors found him cagey, his investors brilliant, and the rest of the world knew him only as driven.
No offense to my paternal grandmother, whom I’d never met, but he was also a nasty and cruel son of a bitch.
Ben inclined his head, and I could tell he was as proud of my independence as I was of his accomplishments. Both had been hard won. “And what about you? You sit at home counting your millions as well?”
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