by Linda Howard
Derek had almost stopped hurting, but he was pretty sure his balls wouldn’t be anywhere near normal for days to come. Sitting behind the wheel of his car, down the street from the garage where Sammy worked, he adjusted his aching equipment. It didn’t help. He was in a very bad mood and looked forward to killing someone today.
He was furious with the blonde for kicking him, but at the same time, he was impressed that she’d managed to take him down. If he had a daughter, he’d want her to do the same, in that situation. Not that he had a daughter … that he knew of. Even though he was impressed with the blonde’s abilities in the self-defense department, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t deliver a little payback when the time came. Still, at the moment he felt a mixture of anger and admiration, as well as a lingering pain.
The auto shop where Sammy worked was north of Atlanta and well out of Lawrenceville and the other major satellite cites. The place was open until two on Saturday afternoon, thank God, otherwise Derek would have had to wait until Monday to take care of the man Markham wanted snuffed out. He’d put off taking care of the kid for now, though he wouldn’t let the job drag on too long, but this could happen today. Derek had no reservations about killing a grown man who had obviously stepped into something he shouldn’t have.
Making Sammy’s death look like a suicide was possible, but it did complicate matters—not that Markham hadn’t paid extra for the trouble. The police force in the small town might be easier to fool than the Atlanta PD. He could hope so, anyway.
Any grown man who let people call him Sammy deserved to die. Okay, that was a little harsh. What about Sammy Davis, Jr.? But show business was different, right?
Derek entertained himself trying to think of other famous people named Sammy while he watched the front entrance. It was possible—likely—that there was a rear entrance, as well, but there were too many people around for him to check it out for himself. So far, everyone seemed to come and go from that front entrance, but he hadn’t yet seen any employees leaving.
Markham had shown Derek a picture on a cell phone—a god-awful selfie—and then he’d taken that phone with the intention of dismantling it and tossing it in the river. Derek was curious about what an auto mechanic might have on his phone that would cause the senator to go to such lengths. He was a bit surprised that Markham hadn’t asked his all-purpose PI to get rid of it, but it didn’t matter. He was just curious.
The phone was likely gone by now, but Derek had seen Sammy’s face and that was all he needed.
It was a good thing he hadn’t decided to wait until closing time to check out the shop. It was just before noon when a man who might be Sammy walked out of the shop. The man had a long, cocky stride, but he was too far away for Derek to be certain this was his target. Grasping the wheel he leaned slightly forward, focusing his attention on the man, waiting for him to turn his head so he could be sure. Soon enough, he did. Bingo!
Sammy walked past two rows of cars, those waiting for service and other employee cars, before stopping and pulling keys from the pocket of his overalls. He slid into the driver’s seat of an old, rusted embarrassment of a car, and pulled out of the parking lot.
Derek followed.
Chapter 9
Strength had not returned to Aeonia, after all. So now what?
After confirming that Lenna hadn’t been returned to her proper place, Esma and Stroud checked every other world she might’ve traveled to, in case she’d possessed the Alexandria Deck and—for some reason Esma could not comprehend—had decided not to return to Aeonia. There were a handful of livable worlds; Strength had been on none of them. While it was possible that Lenna had been moving from world to world herself, and they had simply never been on the same world at the same time, that scenario was highly improbable. Strength was not a skilled traveler. Even if she did possess the deck, she didn’t possess the necessary skills to use it so deftly.
“Where is she?” Esma wondered aloud, her voice soft so no one could overhear. She and Stroud had once again checked on Aeonia—just to be certain—but there was still no sign of Strength. She kept her tone low so no one would report to Veton that two Hunters were searching on Aeonia for the missing Major Arcana.
“We need to go back to Seven,” Stroud replied in the same low tone. They hadn’t wasted a lot of time, not with their teleporting capabilities, but the fact remained that the minutes were passing and they hadn’t completed their mission. With a quick glance between them, the two Hunters returned to Seven to resume the hunt. Neither of them wanted to face Veton empty-handed.
Veton couldn’t hurt them, not in the conventional sense. But he could—and would—touch them with his essence. Worst case, nothing would ever succeed for them again; everything they touched, every relationship, every mission, could be a disaster. If that happened they might as well be dead.
When they returned, darkness had fallen. Time passed quickly on Seven; the days here were short. In the time they’d been gone, the day had passed, and at this time of the year night came especially early. Esma rarely noted the fluid movement of time from one world to another, but here, for this job, time was an important element.
Not much more than four days remained before Strength had to be returned to Aeonia. And if she couldn’t be returned, then killed, in the hopes that there was some kind of cosmic contingency plan.
It seemed an unnecessary risk to Esma.
“The Alexandria Deck is the thing,” she said as she and Stroud studied the dark house from which Lenna and the boy had run, earlier that day. “I don’t know how Strength has hidden herself from us, if she is running from Caine as well as from us or if he’s helping her, but the how doesn’t really matter.” She had her suspicions. While it was possible Lenna possessed the power to shield herself, it was more likely that Caine was protecting her.
That in itself was unlikely; Caine let nothing sway him from the mission. Yet Strength hadn’t been returned, and neither could they sense her—or Caine—on this world. As unlikely as the probability was, Caine had to be shielding her.
The problems with that were so obvious she could only shake her head in disbelief. Caine and Strength would have to remain physically close at all times. If one of them stepped away, even for a moment, she would be outside the protective blanketing and they would immediately sense her. How could they possibly function? What was the purpose of all this?
Nevertheless, Esma would be waiting and watching for Strength to slip, because if there was a mistake of that nature it would be Strength who made it. Caine would not; his focus was too intense.
She would wait, all her senses alert.
Until then, she and Stroud could search for the deck. The logical place to start was this house.
Snow started to fall again, light and icy, the drifting flakes illuminated by lights from the houses on either side of the one they watched. The night would be considered cold, by some, but Hunters felt neither heat nor cold as intensely as humans did. She thought the snow was actually pretty, an unnecessary observation she didn’t share with Stroud.
Instead, she turned to business. “If Lenna has the deck on her, Caine would have returned her to Aeonia. He would’ve insisted. On the other hand, if she managed to escape—for whatever reason—and went to another world, we would have found her. There are two possibilities. Either the deck is damaged and isn’t working properly, or for some reason Lenna isn’t ready to leave Seven.”
“The deck managed to bring her here. It’s unlikely it would’ve been damaged so soon, after surviving for more than two thousand years. As for Strength choosing to stay … Why?” Stroud asked, his own frustration clear.
“Who knows? We don’t need to know why. We just need to do what we were sent here to do.” Which was retrieve the deck and kill or save Lenna. Esma knew what her preference was. “Let’s assume she has chosen to stay. If that’s the case, she must have hidden the deck. If she has it with her, Caine would have teleported her regardless of what she wanted.”
“Maybe.” It was probably too much to hope for that the deck was hidden in the ordinary house, but it wouldn’t hurt to take a look around. From there they would fan out. Lenna hadn’t been here long before Esma and Stroud—and poor Nevan—had arrived. She didn’t have the power to teleport, and she didn’t know how to operate the vehicles—she had come here with no method of speedy travel.
There was only one logical conclusion. The deck had to be nearby.
In spite of his long nap earlier in the day, by nine that night Elijah was soundly asleep on the couch in the parlor. It pulled out into a bed, but Elijah had insisted he could just sleep on the couch with a pillow and blanket. It was a small thing to ask, and Lenna hadn’t seen any reason to deny him.
She wasn’t blind to the circumstances she and Caine were in. She wasn’t happy about it, but the situation was of her own design and she accepted that she’d simply have to make the best of it.
In order for the shield to hold, she and Caine would be forced to sleep close together. The bed was wide, but it wasn’t nearly large enough when she considered that she’d be sharing it with a man like the Hunter.
“Shower,” he said, taking her arm and leading her toward the bathroom. What was it about his touch that made her feel as if a current of energy was running from his hand to her? Was it something peculiar to the Hunters? But when that other Hunter, the one who had tried to kill her, had touched her she’d felt nothing like this. She’d felt fear, and anger, and determination, but not this surge of tingling heat. Hunters were peculiar beings, beyond a doubt. She would assign that as the cause.
She had studied the large walk-in shower more than once during the day, and had even longed to stand beneath the spray—alone, of course. She wanted to let hot water wash away the events of the day, stand there until she had her thoughts sorted and her emotions settled. At the moment, her usually ordered mind was a muddle.
In the bathroom, Caine released her and immediately began to strip out of his clothes. Lenna did the same, but far more slowly. She wasn’t shy; why would she be? But for some reason being naked before Caine disturbed her a little—more than a little. She felt vulnerable. The emotion was so alien to her that she stopped a moment to examine it. Was it the situation, being here on Seven and out of her element, or was it Caine? He hadn’t done anything that she found threatening, but … but he wasn’t an ordinary man. He was adapting to the circumstances she had forced on him, holding himself in check because for the moment she had the upper hand. Every so often, though, she caught a hard gleam in his eyes that told her he was simply waiting—waiting for a split second of opportunity to seize control from her, ready to exploit any weakness he could find. Hunters were notoriously focused on completing the mission, and Caine was notorious among the Hunters, which said more than enough about him.
At the moment he seemed not to even notice her; she had to admit his concentration was superior to hers, at least in this matter. She was acutely aware of the breadth of his bare shoulders as he shrugged out of his shirt, the way his skin gleamed over the stretch and bulge of solid muscle. His arms were thick and sinewy, testifying to a physical strength she could only imagine.
He removed his boots and socks, then shoved his pants down and stepped out of them. Completely naked, he turned on the spray in the shower, then threw her an inscrutable look. “Are you showering with your clothes on?”
Lenna steeled herself to be nude in front of him, and silently finished removing her clothing. She might as well have been a piece of furniture, though, for all the attention he paid her. He stepped under the spray of water and she didn’t allow herself to hesitate again, following him into the enclosure that would have been spacious for just her, but with him in there with her it felt much, much too small. It was, in fact, too small for both of them to bathe at once.
He turned his back to her and began to apply soap to his body. He washed himself briskly and efficiently. Lenna wondered if he was ever … inefficient—in anything. The thought made her a little breathless. She had to stand so close behind him that just a bit of the spray hit her bare body, and as any female would have, she looked. She admired. She very badly wanted to touch, but she disciplined herself to stillness and did not.
Taking her time, pleasure filling her with a warm rush, she looked him up and down. He was so hard and sculpted he could have been a statue come to life. She studied the powerful lines of his back, the furrow of his spine running through pads of muscle, his hard round buttocks, his powerful thighs. Up her gaze went to once more linger on his impressive arms, and it occurred to her that he was as much machine as man, a weapon, more than anything else.
He opened a small bottle of liquid and put a drop in his palm, then lathered his hair with the same quick efficiency with which he’d bathed. Lenna continued to watch, to admire the sheen of his wet muscles and the way he moved. No touching, she reminded herself, though her fingers did twitch a bit as she fought to resist the urge.
When he was finished bathing, he turned and lifted an eyebrow at her stillness. “Why are you just standing there? Bathe, if you’re going to. We don’t have all night.”
“There is room for only one of us beneath the spray,” she pointed out reasonably. “And, actually, we do. Have all night, that is.” He turned to the side and she twisted her back to maneuver past him, the tight confines necessarily meaning her bottom brushed against him, and she felt the bulges of his genitals on her bare skin as she slid past. She ignored him and angled her face up to the spray of warm water. It was as pleasurable as she had dreamed it would be; normally she soaked in deep, jeweled tubs made of valuable stone, in perfumed, silken water, but the spray was invigorating. She resumed what she’d been saying. “Elijah needs rest, and we can’t leave him alone. Morning will be soon enough for us to resume our work, so we do have all night. Do Hunters sleep?”
“On occasion. You?”
Lenna plucked a washcloth from a neat stack sitting just beyond the spray, and also took the soap Caine had used from a dish sticking from the wall. “Now and then. It’s pleasant to relax, to dream.” She began rubbing the lather over her body.
She kept her back to him as she bathed, and couldn’t help but wonder if he admired anything about her, as she had admired him. She wondered if he was tempted to reach out a hand and almost touch her, as she had almost touched him. It was possible he was completely unaffected by her closeness. She was a job to him, nothing more. He was irritated with her, annoyed that she wouldn’t obey his commands.
Weapon. Not man. She would do well to remember that.
She leaned over to wash her legs with the soapy washcloth. For some reason, Caine growled, the sound low and rough in his throat. Startled, Lenna straightened.
“Would you hurry?” he snapped.
Annoyed, she turned to face him, to snap that she hadn’t rushed him and he could allow her the same consideration. The words dried in her throat as the water ran down her back.
It was very clear from this vantage point that he was not as unaffected by her as she had believed him to be. He was a man, after all.
This could get complicated.
Caine dried his body with a towel, as Lenna turned her back to him and did the same. It didn’t matter. Looking at her slim, lithe back and smooth round ass did nothing to ease the heavy strain of his erection. Her skin glowed. A litany of curses rolled through his mind. He cursed her for being so stubborn; he cursed her for being beautiful. He cursed himself for watching her bathe and getting as hard as a young Hunter who had no control over his own body.
Still naked, she combed her wet hair and began blotting the dripping ends with a towel. The action reminded him of the things they needed and didn’t have, and gratefully he seized on that as a means of distracting himself.
“When the boy wakes, we’ll go shopping.”
“Why?” Lenna asked. “Shopping seems a waste of precious time.”
“You need things of this world, and so does he.” The hotel had sent up toothbrushes and combs at his request, but they needed more. “You’ll need a change of clothes, and you and the boy both need pajamas if we are to be here more than a day.”
“Pajamas,” she repeated. “That is nightwear, correct?”
“Yes.”
She shrugged. “I don’t wear them. When I do sleep, I find it preferable to do so naked.”
Impossibly, he got harder. He took a minute to swear some more to himself. “Maybe we can do all that needs to be done tomorrow, and you’ll be home by tomorrow night.” Please. By the One, please let that be so.
She sighed. “I wish I thought that was possible, but I have no idea how to proceed, nor how long it will take to find Uncle Bobby.”
“You could let me—”
“No.” She didn’t even let him finish, but then, she knew what he’d been about to say because they’d already covered this ground. She would not go home until this problem with Elijah was settled.
That was an argument he would never win. Not with her. Not until another four days had passed.
Four days. Four days was nothing, not in the extraordinarily long lives of a Hunter, and certainly not to a Major Arcana. It was the blink of an eye to them, and yet, if he had to spend it in close proximity with her—an eternity.
“I don’t know this world well enough to navigate it without difficulty,” she said.
Caine wrapped his towel around his waist—for all the good it did—and turned to face her. He would be wasting his breath to ask her, again, to let him handle this situation while she waited in Aeonia. At least she admitted she was out of her depth; that was an advantage to him, if he could get her to negotiate.
