by J. R. Ward
This was on a whole different level, however.
Wrath, as sovereign, could do fairly much what he wanted—provided the appropriate precedents were identified, recast, and recorded. After all, the king was the living, breathing law, a physical manifestation of the order necessary for a civilized society. The problem was, tradition didn’t happen by accident; it was the result of generations upon generations living and making choices based on a certain set of rules that was accepted by the public. Progressive thinkers trying to lead entrenched, conservative societies in new directions tended to run into problems.
And this…further alteration of the way things were done? In the current political environment, where Wrath’s leadership was already being challenged—
“You’re deep in thought.”
At the sound of Blay’s voice, Saxton jumped and nearly lost his Montblanc over his shoulder.
Immediately, Blay reached forward as if to calm what had been ruffled. “Oh, I’m sorry—”
“No, it’s all right, I—” Saxton frowned as he regarded the soldier’s wet and bloodied clothing. “Dearest Virgin Scribe…what happened tonight?”
Evidently in lieu of answering, Blay headed over for the bar on the antique bombé chest in the corner. As he took his time choosing between the sherry and a Dubonnet, it was rather clear he was preparing a sequence of words in his head.
Which meant it had to do with Qhuinn.
In fact, Blay cared for neither sherry nor Dubonnet. And sure enough, he helped himself to a port.
Saxton eased back in his chair and looked upward at the chandelier that hung so far above the floor. The fixture was a stunning specimen from Baccarat, made in the middle nineteenth century, with all of the leaded-glass crystals and careful workmanship one would expect.
He recalled it swinging from side to side subtly, the rainbow refractions of light twinkling all around the room.
How many nights ago had that been? How long since Qhuinn had serviced that Chosen directly above this room?
Nothing had been the same since.
“A broken-down car.” Blay took a long swallow. “Just mechanical issues.”
Is that why your leathers are wet, and there is blood down the front of your shirt? Saxton wondered.
And yet he kept the demand to himself.
He had become used to keeping things to himself.
Silence.
Blay finished his port and poured another with the kind of alacrity typically reserved for drunkards. Which he was not. “And…you?” the male said. “How’s your work?”
“I’m finished. Well, nearly so.”
Blay’s blue eyes shot over. “Really? I thought you were going to be at this forever.”
Saxton traced that face he knew so well. That stare he’d looked into for what seemed like a lifetime. Those lips he had spent hours locked onto.
The crushing sense of sadness he felt was as undeniable as the attraction that had brought him to this house, his job, his new life.
“So did I,” he said after a moment. “I, too…thought it would last far longer than it did.”
Blay stared down into his glass. “It’s been how long since you started?”
“I don’t…I can’t remember.” Saxton put a hand up and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It does not matter.”
More silence. In which Saxton was willing to bet the very breath in his lungs that Blaylock’s mind had retreated to the other male, the one he loved like nobody else, his other half.
“So what was it?” Blay asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“Your project. All of this work.” Blay motioned his glass around elegantly. “These books you’ve been poring over. If you’re finished, you can tell me what it was all about now, right?”
Saxton briefly considered telling the truth…that there had been other, equally pressing and important things that he had been quiet on. Things that he had thought he could live with, but which, over time, had proven too heavy a burden to carry.
“You shall find out soon enough.”
Blay nodded, but it was with that vital distraction that he had had since the very beginning. Except then he said, “I’m glad you’re here.”
Saxton’s brows rose. “Indeed…?”
“Wrath should have a really good lawyer at his side.”
Ah.
Saxton pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “Yes. How true.”
It was with a strange feeling of fragility that he gathered his reams of papers. It certainly seemed, in this tense, sad moment, as though they were all that sustained him, these flimsy, yet powerful sheets with their countless words, each handwritten and crafted with care, contained neatly in their lines of text.
He did not know what he would do without them on a night like this.
He cleared his throat. “What plans have you for what little remains of the eve?”
As he waited for the reply, his heart pounded within his rib cage, because he, and he alone, seemed to realize that the assignment from the king wasn’t the only thing that was ending tonight. Indeed, the baseless optimism that had sustained him in the initial stages of this love affair had decayed into a kind of desperation that had had him grasping at straws in an uncharacteristic way…but now, even that was gone.
It was ironic, really. Sex was but a transient physical connection—and there were many times in his life when that had been all he’d been looking for. Even with Blaylock, in the beginning, such had been the case. Over time, however, the heart had gotten involved, and that had left him where he was tonight.
At the end of the road.
“…work out.”
Saxton shook himself. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m going to work out for a while.”
After you’ve had a decanter of port? Saxton thought.
For a moment, he was tempted to push for precise details on the night, the minute whos and whats and wheres—as if they might unlock some sort of relief. But he knew better. Blay was a compassionate, kind soul, and torture was something he did only as part of his job when it was necessary.
There would be no relief coming, not from any combination of sex, conversing, or silence.
Feeling as though he were bracing himself, Saxton buttoned his double-breasted blazer up and checked that his cravat was in place. A passby of his pectoral revealed his pocket square was precisely arranged, but the French cuffs of his shirt need a sharp tug, and he took care of that promptly.
“I must needs take a break before I prepare to speak with the king. My shoulders are killing me from having been at that desk all night.”
“Have a bath. It might loosen things up?”
“Yes. A bath.”
“I’ll see you later, then,” Blay said as he poured himself another and came over.
Their mouths met in a brief kiss, after which Blay turned and strode out into the foyer, disappearing up the stairs to go change.
Saxton watched him depart. Even moved forward a couple of steps so that he could see those shitkickers, as the Brothers called them, ascend the grand staircase one step at a time.
Part of him was screaming to follow the male up into their bedroom and help him out of those clothes. Emotions aside, the physical sizzle between the two of them had always been strong, and he felt like he wanted to exploit that now.
Except even that Band-Aid was fraying.
Going over and pouring himself a sherry, he sipped it and went to sit before the fire. Fritz had refreshed the wood not long ago, and the flames were bright and active over the stack of logs.
This was going to hurt, Saxton thought. But it wasn’t going to break him.
He would eventually get over this. Heal. Move on.
Hearts were broken all the time….
Wasn’t there a song about that?
The question was, of course, when did he talk to Blaylock about it.
NINE
The sound of cross-country skis traveling over snow was a rhy
thmic rush, repeated at a quick clip.
The storm that had drifted down from the north had cleared after dawn, and the rising sun that shone beneath the lip of the departing cloud cover sliced through the forest to the sparkling ground.
To Sola Morte, the shafts of gold looked like blades.
Up ahead, her target presented itself like a Fabergé egg sitting on a stand: The house on the Hudson River was an architectural showpiece, a cage of seemingly fragile girders holding stack upon stack of countless panels of glass. On all sides, reflections of the water and the nascent sun were like photographs captured by a true artist, the images frozen in the very construction of the home itself.
You couldn’t pay me to live like that, Sola thought.
Unless it was all bulletproof? But who had the money for that.
According to the Caldwell public records department, the land had been purchased by a Vincent DiPietro two years before, and developed by the man’s real estate company. No expense had been spared on the construction—at least, given the valuation on the tax rolls, which was north of eight million dollars. Just after building was completed, the property changed hands, but not to a person: to a real estate trust—with only a lawyer in London listed as trustee.
She knew who lived here, however.
He was the reason she’d come.
He was also the reason she had armed herself so thoroughly. Sola had lots of weapons in easy-to-reach places: a knife in a holster at the small of her back, a gun on her right hip, a switch hidden in the collar of her white-on-white camo parka.
Men like her target did not appreciate being spied on—even though she came only in search of information, and not to kill him, she had no doubt that if she were found on the property, things would get tense. Quick.
As she took her binocs out of an inside pocket, she kept still and listened hard. No sounds of anything approaching from the back or the sides, and in front, she had a clear visual shot at the rear of the house.
Ordinarily, when she was hired for one of these kinds of assignments, she operated at night. Not with this target.
Masters of the drug trade conducted their business from nine to five, but that would be p.m. to a.m., not the other way around. Daytime was when they slept and fucked, so that was when you wanted to case their houses, learn their habits, get a read on their staff and how they protected themselves during their downtime.
Bringing the house into close focus, she made her assessment. Garage doors. Back door. Half windows that she guessed looked out of the kitchen. And then the full floor-to-ceiling glass sliders started up, running down the rear flank and around the corner that turned to the river’s shoreline.
Three stories up.
Nothing moving inside that she could see.
Man, that was a lot of glass. And depending on the angle of the light, she could actually see into some of the rooms, especially the big open space that appeared to take up at least half of the first floor. Furniture was sparse and modern, as if the owner didn’t welcome people loitering.
Bet the view was unbelievable. Especially now, with the partial cloud cover and the sun.
Training the binocs on the eaves under the roofline, she looked for security cameras, expecting one every twenty feet.
Yup.
Okay, that made sense. From what she’d been told, the homeowner was cagey as hell—and that kind of relentless mistrust tended to be accessorized with a good dose of security-conscious behavior, including but not limited to personal guards, bulletproof cars, and most certainly, constant monitoring of any environment the individual spent any amount of time in.
The man who’d hired her had all those and more, for example.
“What the…” she whispered, refocusing the binoculars.
She stopped breathing to make sure nothing shifted.
This was…all wrong. There was a wave pattern to what was inside the house: What furniture she could see was subtly undulating.
Dropping the high-powered lenses, she looked around, wondering if maybe her eyes were the problem.
Nope. All the pine trees in the forest were behaving appropriately, standing still, their branches unmoving in the cold air. And when she put the magnifiers up again, she traced the rooftop of the house and the contours of the stone chimneys.
All were utterly inanimate.
Back to the glass.
Inhaling deep, she held the oxygen in her lungs and balanced against the nearest birch trunk to give her body extra stability.
Something continued to be off. The frames of those sliding glass doors and the lines of the porches and everything about the house? Static and solid. The interiors, however, seemed…pixilated somehow, like a composite image had been created to make things appear as if there were furniture…and that image had been superimposed on something like a curtain…that happened to be subjected to a soft current of air.
This was going to be a more interesting project than she’d assumed. Reporting on the activities of this business associate of a “friend” of hers had not exactly lit a fire under her ass. She much preferred greater challenges.
But maybe there was more to this than first appeared.
After all, camouflage meant you were hiding something—and she’d made a career out of taking things from people that they wanted to keep: Secrets. Items of value. Information. Documents.
The vocabulary used to define the nouns was irrelevant to her. The act of penetrating a locked house or car or safe or briefcase and extracting what she was after was what mattered.
She was a hunter.
And the man in that house, whoever he was, was her prey.
TEN
Blay had no business getting near a hand weight, much less the kind of iron that was down in the training center’s gym. Hammering back that port on an empty stomach had made him fuzzy and uncoordinated. But he had to have some kind of a direction…a plan, a destination to drag his sorry ass to. Anything other than going up to his room, sitting on that bed again, and starting the day in the same way he’d started the night—smoking and staring off into space.
Probably with a lot more port added in.
Stepping out of the underground tunnel, he walked through the office and pushed the glass door open.
As he went along, still drinking from a half-full glass, his mind was circling itself, wondering when all this bullcrap between him and Qhuinn was going to end. On his deathbed? God, he didn’t think he could last that long, assuming he had a normal life span ahead of him.
Maybe he needed to move out of the mansion. Before Wellsie had been killed, she and Tohr had been able to live in a house of their own. Hell, if he did that, he wouldn’t have to see Qhuinn except during meetings—and with so many people in and around the Brotherhood, it was easy to get out of eyeshot.
He’d been doing that for a while now, actually.
In fact, under that construct, the pair of them wouldn’t have to cross paths at all—John was always partnered with the guy because of the whole ahstrux nohtrum thing, and between the rotation schedule, and the way territory was divided up, he and Qhuinn never fought together except in an emergency.
Saxton could go back and forth to work—
Blay stopped dead at the entrance to the weight room. Through the glass window he saw a set of weights going up and down on the reclining squat machine, and he knew by the Nikes who it was.
Goddamn it, he couldn’t get a break.
Leaning in, he hit his head once. Twice. Three—
“You’re supposed to do reps on the machines—not on the door.”
Manny Manello’s voice was as welcome as a steel-toed kick in the ass.
Blay straightened up, and the world went wheeeeee a little—to the point that he had to surreptitiously put his free hand on the jamb just so that the balance issue didn’t show. He also tucked his nearly done drink out of sight
The doc probably wouldn’t think working out while under the influence was a good thing.
&nbs
p; “How are you?” Blay asked, even though he didn’t really care—and that wasn’t a commentary on Payne’s hellren. He didn’t give a crap about much at the moment.
Manello’s mouth started to move and Blay passed the time watching the man’s lips form and release syllables. A moment later, a good-bye of some sort was exchanged, and then Blay was alone with the door again.
It seemed like a planker move to just stand there, and he’d told the good doctor he was going in. And besides, there were, what, twenty-five machines in the room? Plus barbells and free weights. Treadmills. StairMasters, ellipticals…plenty to go around.
I’m not in love with Layla.
With a curse, Blay pushed his way in and braced himself for an awkward oh-hey-it’s-you. Except Qhuinn didn’t even notice the arrival. Instead of going with the overhead music, the guy was wearing headphones that went all around his ears, and he’d moved over to the chin-up bar so he was facing away, into the concrete wall.
Blay stayed as far back as possible, hopping on a random machine—pecs. Whatever.
After putting down his glass and adjusting the pin on the stack of weights, he settled onto the padded seat, gripped the double handles, and started pushing out from his chest.
All he had to look at was Qhuinn.
Or maybe that was more because his eyes refused to go anywhere else.
The male was wearing a black wifebeater that put those tremendous shoulders of his on full display…and the muscles along them flexed up hard as he reached the apex of the pull, the ridges and contours those of a fighter…not a lawyer—
Blay stopped himself right there.
It was unfair to the point of nausea to make any comparison like that, ever. After the past year or so, he knew Saxton’s body nearly as well as his own, and the male was beautifully built, so lean and elegant—
Qhuinn ground out another lift, the weight of his heavy lower body straining the strength in those arms and that torso. And, thanks to his exertions, sweat had broken out all over his skin, making him glow under the lights.
The tattoo on the back of his neck shifted as he released and descended to hang from his grip, and then it was up again. And down. And up.
