by J. R. Ward
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 Lay
la’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.”
“Nah. There’s nothing that I’ve—”
“You have done what is right and proper. Always.”
That was a matter of opinion. “Listen, I’ve got my phone with me. I’ll be back in a couple of hours just to look in on you. If you’re asleep, I won’t disturb you.”
“Thank you.”
Qhuinn nodded and sidestepped over to the door. He had heard once that you were not supposed to show your back to a Chosen, and he figured the display of protocol couldn’t hurt.
Closing the door behind him, he leaned back against it. The only person he wanted to see was the one guy in the house who had no interest in—
“What’s going on?”
Blay’s voice was such a shock that he figured he’d imagined it. Except then the male himself stepped into the doorway of the second-floor sitting room. As if he’d been waiting there all along.
Qhuinn rubbed his eyes and then started walking, his body seeking out the very thing he had been praying for.
“She’s losing it,” Qhuinn heard himself say in a dead voice.
Blay murmured something in return, but it didn’t register.
Funny, the miscarriage hadn’t seemed real until this moment. Not until he told Blay.
“I’m sorry?” Qhuinn said, aware that the guy seemed to be waiting for an answer.
“Is there anything I can do?”
So funny. Qhuinn had always felt as though he’d come out of his mother’s womb an adult. Then again, there had never been any cootchie-coo crap for him, no darling-little-boy stuff, no hugs when he hurt himself, no coddling when he was frightened. As a result, whether it was character or the way he’d been brought up, he’d never regressed. Nothing to go back to there.
Yet it was in the voice of a child that he said, “Make it stop?”
As if Blay alone had the power to work a miracle.
And then…the male did.
Blay extended his arms wide, offering the only haven Qhuinn had ever known.
* * *
“Make it stop?”
Blay’s body started to shake as Qhuinn uttered those words: After all these years, he’d seen the guy in a lot of moods and in a lot of circumstances. Never like this, though. Never…so completely and utterly ruined.
Never like a child, lost.
In spite of his need to keep really and truly far away from any emotional anything, his arms opened of their own accord.
As Qhuinn stepped in against him, the fighter’s body seemed smaller and frailer than it actually was. And the arms that wound around Blay’s waist simply lay against him as if there were no strength in the muscles.
Blay held them both up.
And he expected Qhuinn to pull back quickly. Usually, the guy couldn’t handle any kind of intense connection other than a sexual one for longer than a second and a half.
Qhuinn didn’t. He seemed prepared to stand in the doorway to the sitting room forever.
“Come here,” Blay said, drawing the male inside and shutting the door. “Over on the couch.”
Qhuinn followed behind, shitkickers shuffling instead of marching.
When they got to the sofa, they sat down facing each other, their knees touching. As Blay looked over, the resonant sadness touched him so deeply, he couldn’t stop his hand from reaching out and stroking that black hair—
Abruptly, Qhuinn curled in against him, just collapsed, that body folding in half and all but pouring into Blay’s lap.
There was a part of Blay that recognized this was dangerous territory. Sex was one thing—and hard enough to handle, fuck him very much. This quiet space? Was potentially devastating.
Which was precisely why he’d gotten the hell out of that bedroom the day before.
The difference tonight, however, was that he was in control of this. Qhuinn was the one seeking comfort, and Blay could withdraw it or give it depending on how he felt: Being relied on was something altogether different from receiving—or needing.
Blay was good with being relied on. There was a kind of safety in it—a certainty, a control. It was not the same as falling into the abyss. And hell, if anyone would know that, it was him. God knew he’d spent years down there.
“I would do anything to change this,” Blay said while stroking Qhuinn’s back. “I hate that you’re going through…”
Oh, words were so damned useless.
They stayed that way for the longest time, the quiet of the room forming a kind of cocoon. Periodically, the antique clock on the mantel chimed, and then after a long while, the shutters began to descend over the windows.
“I wish there was something I could do,” Blay said as the steel panels locked into place with a chunk.
“You probably have to go.”
Blay let that one stand. The truth was not something he wanted to share: Wild horses, loaded guns, crowbars, fire hoses, trampling elephants…even an order from the king himself could not have pulled him away.
And there was a part of him that got angry over that. Not at
Qhuinn, but at his own heart. The trouble was, you couldn’t argue with your nature—and he was learning that. In the breakup with Saxton. In coming out to his mom. In this moment here.
Qhuinn groaned as he lifted his torso up, and then scrubbed his face. When he dropped his hands, his cheeks were red and so were his eyes, but not because he was crying.
Undoubtedly his decade’s allotment of tears had come out the night before as he’d wept in relief that he’d saved a father’s life.
Had he known that Layla wasn’t doing well then?
“You know what the hardest thing is?” Qhuinn asked, sounding more like himself.
“What?” God knew there was a lot to choose from.
“I’ve seen the young.”
The fine hairs on the back of Blay’s neck tingled. “What are you talking about.”
“The night the Honor Guard came for me, and I almost died—remember?”
Blay coughed a little, the memory as raw and vivid as something that had happened an hour ago. And yet Qhuinn’s voice was even and calm, like he was referencing an evening out at a club or something. “Ah, yeah. I remember.”
I gave you CPR at the side of the goddamn road, he thought.
“I went up to the Fade—” Qhuinn frowned. “Are you okay?”
Oh, sure, doing great. “Sorry. Keep going.”
“I went up there. I mean, it was like…what you hear about. The white.” Qhuinn scrubbed his face again. “So white. Everywhere. There was a door, and I went up to it—I knew if I turned the knob I was going in, and I was never coming out. I reached for the thing…and that’s when I saw her. In the door.”
“Layla,” Blay interjected, feeling like his chest had been stabbed.
“My daughter.”
Blay’s breath caught. “Your…”
Qhuinn looked over. “She was…blond. Like Layla. But her eyes—” He touched next to his own. “—they were mine. I stopped reaching forward when I saw her—and then suddenly, I was back on the ground at the side of the road. Afterward, I had no clue what it was all about. But then, like, so much later, Layla goes into her needing and comes to me, and everything fell into place. I was like…this is supposed to happen. It felt like fate, you know. I never would have lain with Layla otherwise. I did it only because I knew we were going to have a little girl.”
