Lover At Last: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood

by J. R. Ward

  Immediately, Blay strode across the sitting room, ready to see if maybe the guy had heard anything—but he stopped as he got a gander at John’s expression.

  Deep in thought. Like he’d received personal news of the disturbing variety.

  Blay hung back as his buddy went off in the opposite direction, going down the hall of statues, no doubt to disappear into his room.

  Looked like things were afoot in other people’s lives, too.

  Great.

  With a soft curse, Blay left his friend be and resumed his own useless walking…and waiting.

  Far to the south, in the town of West Point, Sola was prepared to enter Ricardo Benloise’s house on the second floor, through the window at the end of the main hallway. It had been months since she had been inside, but she was banking on the fact that the security contact she had carefully manipulated was still her friend.

  There were two keys to successfully breaking into any house, building, hotel or facility: planning and speed.

  She had both.

  Hanging from the wire she’d thrown onto the roof, she reached into the inside pocket of her parka, pulled out a device, and held it to the right corner of the double-hung window. Initiating the signal, she waited, staring at the tiny red light that glowed on the screen facing her. If for some reason it didn’t change, she was going to have to enter through one of the dormers that faced the side yard—which was going to be a pain in the ass—

  The light went green without a sound, and she smiled as she got out more tools.

  Taking a suction cup, she pushed it into the center of the pane immediately below the latch, and then made a little do-si-do around the thing with her glass cutter. A quick push inward, and the space to fit her arm was created.

  After letting the glass circle fall gently to the Oriental runner inside, she snaked her hand up and around, freed the brass-on-brass contraption that kept the window locked, and slid the sash up.

  Warm air rushed to greet her, as if the house were happy to have her back.

  Before going in, she looked down. Glanced toward the drive. Leaned outward to see what she could of the back gardens.

  It felt like somebody was watching her…not so much when she’d been driving into town, but as soon as she’d parked her car and gotten on her skis. There was no one around, however—not that she’d been able to see, at any rate—and whereas awareness was mission critical in this line of work, paranoia was a dangerous waste of time.

  So she needed to cut this shit.

  Getting back in the game, she reached up with her gloved hands and pulled her ass and legs over and through the window. At the same time, she loosened the tension on the wire so there was slack to let her body transition into the house. She landed without a sound, thanks not only to the rug that ran down the long corridor, but to her soft-soled shoes.

  Silence was another important criterion when it came to doing a job successfully.

  She stopped where she was for a brief moment. No sounds in the house—but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. She was fairly certain that Benloise’s alarm was silent, and very clear that the signal didn’t go to the local or even state police: He liked to handle things privately. And God knew, with the kind of muscle he employed, there was plenty of force to go around.

  Fortunately, however, she was good at her job, and Benloise and his goons wouldn’t be home until just before the sun came up—he lived the life of a vampire, after all.

  For some reason, the v-word made her think of that man who’d shown up by her car and then disappeared like magic.

  Craziness. And the only time in recent memory that someone had given her pause. In fact, after getting confronted like that, she was actually considering not going back to that glass house on the river—although there was a fucked-up rationale for that. It wasn’t that she was worried that she’d get physically hurt. God knew she was perfectly competent at defending herself.

  It was the attraction.

  More dangerous than any gun, knife, or fist, as far as she was concerned.

  With lithe strides, Sola jogged down the carpet, bouncing on the balls of her feet, heading for the master bedroom that looked out over the rear garden. The house smelled exactly as she remembered it, old wood and furniture polish, and she knew enough to stick to the left edge of the runner. No squeaking that way.

  When she got to the master suite, the heavy wooden door was closed, and she took out her lock pick before even trying the handle. Benloise was pathological about two things: cleanliness and security. Her impression, though, was that the latter was more critical at the gallery in downtown Caldwell than here at his home. After all, Benloise didn’t keep anything under this roof other than art that was insured to the penny, and himself during the day—when he had plenty of bodyguards and guns with him.

  In fact, that was probably why he was a night owl downtown. It meant the gallery was never unattended—he was present after-hours, and his legitimate business staff was there during the day.

  As a cat burglar, she certainly preferred to get into places that were empty.

  On that note, she worked the locking mechanism on the door, sprang it free, and slipped inside. As she took a deep breath, the air was tinged with tobacco smoke and Benloise’s spicy cologne.

  The combination made her think of black-and-white Clark Gable movies for some reason.

  With the drapes drawn and no lights on, it was pitch-black, but she’d taken photographs of the room’s layout back when she’d come for that party, and Benloise was not the type of man to move things around. Hell, every time a new exhibit was installed at the gallery, she could practically feel the squirming under his skin.

  Fear of change was a weakness, her grandmother always said.

  Sure made things easier for her.

  Slowing down now, she walked forward ten paces into what was the middle of the room. The bed would be on the left against the long wall, as would the archway into the bath and the doors to the walk-in closet. In front of her were the long windows that overlooked the gardens. Over to the right, there would be a bureau, a desk, some sitting chairs, and the fireplace that was never used because Benloise hated the smell of woodsmoke.

  The security alarm panel was located between the entryway to the bath and the ornate headboard of the bed, beside a lamp that rose about three feet from a side table.

  Sola pivoted in place. Walked forward four steps. Felt for the foot of the bed—found it.

  Sidestep, one, two, three. Forward down the flank of the king-size mattress. Sidestep one to clear the table and the lamp.

  Sola reached out her left hand….

  And there was the security panel, right where it needed to be.

  Flipping the cover off, she used a penlight that she kept between her teeth to illuminate the circuitry. Taking out another device from her backpack, she hooked wires up to wires, intercepted the signals, and with the help of a miniature laptop and a program that a friend of hers had developed, created a closed loop within the alarm system such that, as long as the router was in place, the motion detectors she was about to set off wouldn’t register.

  As far as the motherboard was concerned, nothing was going to be amiss.

  Leaving the laptop hanging by its connection, she walked out of the room, hit the hall, and took the stairwell down to the first floor.

  The place was decorated to within an inch of its life, perpetually ready for a magazine shoot—although, of course, Benloise protected his privacy far too carefully to ever have his digs photographed for public consumption. On fleet feet, she passed through the front receiving hall, the parlor to the left, and went into his study.

  Going around in the semi-darkness, she would have much preferred to strip off her white-on-white camo parka and snow pants—doing this in her black bodysuit was a cliché that was nonetheless practical. No time, though, and she was more worried about being sighted outside in the winter landscape than here in this empty house.

 
Benloise’s private workspace was, like everything else under this roof, more stage set than anything functional. He didn’t actually use the great desk, or sit on the mini-throne, or read any of the leather-bound books on the shelves.

  He did, however, walk through the space. Once a day.

  In a candid moment, he’d once told her that before he left each night, he strolled through his house looking at all his things, reminding himself of the beauty of his collections and his home.

  As a result of that insight, and some other things, Sola had long extrapolated that the man had grown up poor. For one, when they spoke in Spanish or Portugese, his accent belied lower-class pronunciations ever so subtly. For another, rich people didn’t appreciate their things like he did.

  Nothing was rare to the rich, and that meant they took stuff for granted.

  The safe was hidden behind the desk in a section of the bookcases that was released by a switch located in the lower drawer on the right.

  She’d discovered this thanks to a tiny hidden camera she’d placed in the far corner during that party.

  Following her triggering the release, a three-by-four-foot cutout in the shelving rolled forward and slid to the side. And there it was: a squat steel box, the maker of which she recognized.

  Then again, when you’d broken into more than a hundred of the damn things, you got to know the manufacturers intimately. And she approved of his choice. If she had to have a safe, this was the one she’d get—and yes, he’d bolted it to the floor.

  The blowtorch she took out of her backpack was small, but powerful, and as she ignited the tip, the flame blew out with a sustained hiss and a white-and-blue glow.

  This was going to take time.

  The smoke from the burning metal irritated her eyes, nose, and throat, but she kept her hand steady as she made a square about a foot high and two feet across in the front panel. Some safes she was able to blow the doors off of, but the only way in with one of these was the old-fashioned way.

  It took forever.

  She got through, though.

  Placing the heavy door section aside, she bit down on the end of her penlight again and leaned in. Open shelving held jewelry, stock certs, and some gleaming gold watches he’d left within easy reach. There was a handgun that she was willing to bet was loaded. No money.

  Then again, with Benloise, there was so much cash everywhere, it made sense he wouldn’t bother having the stuff take up safe space.

  Damn it. There was nothing in there worth only five thousand dollars.

  After all, on this job, she was merely after what she was fairly owed.

  With a curse, she sat back on her heels. In fact, there wasn’t one damn thing in the safe under twenty-five thousand. And it wasn’t like she could break off half of a watchband—because how in the hell could she monetize that?

  One minute passed.

  A second one.

  Screw this, she thought as she leaned the panel she’d cut out against the side of the safe and slid the shelving back into place. Rising to her feet, she looked around the room with the penlight. The books were all collectors’ editions of first-run antique stuff. Art on the walls and the tables was not just super-expensive, but hard to turn into cash without going underground…to people Benloise was intimately connected to.

  But she was not leaving without her money, goddamn it—

  Abruptly, she smiled to herself, the solution becoming clear.

  For many aeons in the course of human civilization, commerce had existed and thrived on the barter system. Which was to say one individual traded goods or services for those of like value.

  For all the jobs she’d done, she’d never before considered adding up the aftermath ancillary costs to her targets: new safes, new security systems, more safety protocols. She could bet these were expensive—although not nearly as much as whatever she typically took. And she’d entered here taking for granted those additional costs were going to be borne by Benloise—kind of pecuniary damages for what he’d cheated her out of.

  Now, though, they were the point.

  On her way back to the stairs, she looked over the opportunities available to her…and in the end, she went over to a Degas sculpture of a little ballerina that had been placed off to the side in an alcove. The bronze depiction of the young girl was the kind of thing her grandmother would have loved, and maybe that was why, of all the art in the house, she zeroed in on it.

  The light that had been mounted above the statue on the ceiling was off, but the masterpiece still managed to glow. Sola especially loved the skirting of the tutu, the delicate yet stiff explosion of tulle delineated by mesh metalwork that perfectly captured that which was supposed to be malleable.

  Sola cozied up to the statue’s base, wrapped her arms around it, and threw all of her strength into rotating its position by no more than two inches.

  Then she raced up the stairs, unclipped her router and laptop from the alarm panel in the master bedroom, relocked that door, and headed out of the window she’d cut the hole in.

  She was back in her skis and slicing through the snow no more than four minutes later.

  In spite of the fact that there was nothing in her pockets, she was smiling as she left the property.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  When the Mercedes finally pulled up to the front entrance of the Brotherhood’s mansion, Qhuinn got out first and went to Layla’s door. As he opened it, her eyes lifted to meet his.

  He knew he was never going to forget the way her face looked. Her skin was paper white and seemed just as thin, the beautiful bone structure straining against its covering of flesh. Eyes were sunken into her skull. Lips were flat and thin.

  He had an idea in that moment of how she would look just as she died, however many decades or centuries that would happen in the future.

  “I’m going to carry you,” he said, bending down and picking her up.

  The way she didn’t argue told him exactly how little of her there was left.

  As the vestibule doors were opened by Fritz, like the butler had been waiting for their arrival, Qhuinn regretted the whole thing: The dream that he’d briefly entertained during her needing. The hope he’d wasted. The physical pain she was in. The emotional anguish they were both going through.

  You did this to her.

  At the time, when he’d serviced her, he’d been solely focused on the positive outcome he’d been so sure of.

  Now, on the far side, his shitkickers planted on the solid, foul-smelling earth of reality? Not worth it. Even the chance of a healthy young wasn’t worth this.

  The worst was watching her suffer.

  As he brought her into the house, he prayed there wasn’t a big audience. He just wanted to spare her something, anything, even if it was simply being paraded in front of a cast of sad, worried faces.

  No one was around.

  Qhuinn took the stairs two at a time, and as he came up to the second story, the wide-open double doors of Wrath’s study made him curse.

  Then again, the king was blind.

  As George let out a chuff of greeting, Qhuinn just strode by, gunning for Layla’s bedroom. Kicking open the door, he found that the doggen had been in and tidied up, the bed all made, the sheets undoubtedly changed, a fresh bouquet of flowers set on the bureau.

  Looked like he wasn’t the only one who wanted to help in whatever way he could.

  “Do you want to change?” he asked as he kicked the door shut.

  “I want a shower—”

  “Let’s get one started.”

  “—except I’m too afraid. I don’t…want to see it, if you know what I mean.”

  He laid her down and sat on the bed beside her. Putting his hand on her leg, he rubbed her knee with his thumb, back and forth.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said roughly.

  “Fuck—no, don’t do that. You don’t ever think that or say it, clear? This is not your fault.”

  “Who else’s is it?”

  �
��Not the point.”

  Shit, he couldn’t believe the miscarrying thing was going to go on for another week or so. How was that possible—

  The grimace that contorted Layla’s face told him that a cramp had hit her again. Glancing behind, and expecting to find Doc Jane, he discovered they were alone.

  Which told him more than anything else that there was nothing to be done.

  Qhuinn hung his head and held her hand.

  It had started with the pair of them.

  It was ending with the pair of them.

  “I think I’d like to go to sleep,” Layla said as she squeezed his palm. “You look as if you need some, too.”

  He eyed the chaise lounge across the way.

  “You don’t have to stay with me,” Layla murmured.

  “Where else do you think I would be?”

  A quick mental picture of Blay holding his arms wide flashed through his mind. What a fantasy, though.

  Don’t you touch me like that.

  Qhuinn shook the thoughts out of his head. “I’ll sleep over there.”

  “You can’t stay in here for seven nights straight.”

  “I’ll say it again. Where else would I be—”

  “Qhuinn.” Her voice got strident. “You have a job out there. And you heard Havers. This is just going to take as long as it does, and it’s probably going to be a while. I’m not in any danger of bleeding out, and frankly, I feel as though I have to be strong in front of you, and I do not have the energy for that. Please come and check in, yes, do. But I will go mad if you camp out here until I stop with all this.”

  Quiet despair.

  That was all Qhuinn had as he sat there on the edge of that bed, holding Layla’s hand.

  He got up to leave shortly thereafter. She was right, of course. She needed to rest as much as she could, and really, aside from staring at her and making her feel like a freak, there was nothing he could do.

  “I’m never far.”

  “I know that.” She brought his fist to her lips, and he was shocked by how cold they were. “You have been…more than I could have asked for.”