by Jayne Castle
“Look, I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about but I’d feel more comfortable if I escort you to and from the reception,” Rafe said. “I won’t be a problem for you. I’ll just wait out in the car.”
Okay, that sounded awkward. Ella considered her options.
Rafe Coppersmith was definitely a problem, but problems sometimes presented opportunities. Wilson Parsons would no doubt be at the event.
She cleared her throat. “The reception is in honor of the new head of the Dreamlight Research Department. I was told I could bring a companion. I’m sure no one will mind if I drag you along.”
“Try to contain your enthusiasm.”
“But you might feel somewhat out of place. I’m afraid this event is black tie.” She studied his denim and leather attire. “I suppose I could have Darren rent a tux for you.”
“Forget it. I’ll take care of the clothes. That’s why they invented hotel concierges. What time shall I pick you up tonight?”
This was all happening way too fast, Ella thought. She did not want Rafe to get the notion that he was in charge. He was a client, not her boss. It was time to apply the brakes.
“I’ve arranged for my regular car service to pick me up and take me home.” She paused. “I suppose I could collect you at your hotel.”
“That works. What time should I be available for, uh, collection?”
He was deliberately trying to provoke her, she concluded. Okay, so she had made the offer in a rather grudging fashion. It wasn’t her fault. He was the one who had insisted that she rearrange her schedule for him.
“The reception starts at seven,” she said. “I’ll pick you up at six thirty.”
Rafe’s eyes tightened a little at the corners. There was a whisper of hot psi in the atmosphere. She braced herself for an argument.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He gave her a polite smile. “Just wondered if you always take care of the logistics on a date.”
She went cold. The chill was followed immediately by the uncomfortably warm flush that she could feel rising in her cheeks. She searched Rafe’s face but as far as she could tell he was not being sarcastic. Instead, he sounded genuinely curious.
There was no way he could have known that her history with men consisted of a series of painfully short-lived relationships that had all foundered on the rocks of her desire for deeper intimacy. Several months back she had finally sought refuge in celibacy.
She had learned the hard way that men were often initially attracted to a confident woman who did not hesitate to take the reins. But sooner or later they started to find her threatening. The fact that men who felt threatened by her appeared weak to her inner Siren did not help matters.
“Just to clarify, this is not a date,” she said crisply. “If you insist on attending the reception with me, be ready at six thirty.”
“Can we go to dinner afterward?”
“You can go to dinner anytime you like. I’ll have to go straight home and pack.”
“Right.” Rafe smiled. “You’re the take-charge type. Not a problem. I’ll be ready at six thirty.” He opened the door and paused one more time. “Your voice.”
“What about it?” she asked, tensing a little.
“You sound exactly how I remembered.”
He moved into the outer room and closed the door.
Chapter 7
He was pretty sure Ella had sensed the fever in his aura but it was clear she wasn’t afraid of him. Then again, there probably wasn’t much that could scare a Siren. My kind of woman.
He was still mulling that over when he got to Joe Harding’s office. He hadn’t planned to stop by but now that the trip to Rainshadow had been delayed he had some time to kill. He and Joe had worked several cases in the past couple of years. Chasing bad guys in the tunnels built a bond.
“I can’t tell you how to do your job, but in my opinion, you’re taking a hell of a risk hiring Ella Morgan.” Joe Harding leaned back in his government-issue desk chair. The chair squeaked as if to prove that it was, indeed, government-issue and had been purchased from the lowest bidder. “I’ve been keeping an eye on her ever since she miraculously escaped from the two-time wife killer who took her hostage at that wedding a few months ago. I can’t prove it but I’m pretty sure she’s a Siren or damn close.”
Rafe got a cold sensation in his gut. This was not good. Joe Harding had figured out that Ella was more than she seemed. That should not have come as a shock. The man known throughout the Bureau as Hard Joe was a very smart cop and a strong hunter talent.
Harding was a career FBPI agent with some fifteen years of experience. He had the physique and constitution that went with his paranormal nature. His lightning-fast reflexes, superb night vision, and his ability to think like the bad guys had served him well in his career.
He had climbed rapidly through the Bureau ranks and was considered a front-runner for the director’s job, although, as he was the first to point out, given the political nature of the position at the top, nothing was certain.
“All I care about is that she’s strong,” Rafe said. He walked to the window and looked out. “I need some serious talent on the Rainshadow project.”
“Those stories about dinosaurs are for real?”
“Yep.”
Joe whistled. “Hard to believe.”
“Trust me, the monsters are real and they hunt with some kind of music energy.”
Joe’s office was on the fifteenth floor of a government office building. From where he stood Rafe could see the rooftops of the low, Colonial-era structures around the massive green quartz Wall. Some of the Old Quarter neighborhoods had been gentrified in recent years. They boasted upscale condos, apartments, and trendy restaurants and clubs. But vast swaths of blight remained.
Many of the narrow lanes and alleys near the Wall were empty during the day. At night they became the hunting grounds of the most dangerous predators on the planet—the kind that walked on two feet. When the First Generation colonists had come through the Curtain they had brought their very human crime problems with them.
“It’s your call, of course,” Joe said. “But watch your back. I wasn’t joking when I said she might be a Siren.”
“I understand. Got anything else to go on besides the fact that the guy who held her hostage at the wedding had a stroke?”
“A very convenient stroke. And, yeah, there are a couple of other things. Like I said, I’ve kept an eye on her. She used to work at the Wilson Parsons Agency. It supplies midrange consulting talents in a variety of fields. She was a dream analyst.”
“So?”
“A few weeks before she went into business for herself she was assigned a Wilson Parsons client named Gillingham. Rich old guy with a thing for antiques. She had a session with him. Afterward the housekeeper found her employer unconscious on the floor of the library. Miss Morgan was gone. Took Gillingham a couple of days to come out of the coma. When he did he reported that a valuable First Generation antique was missing from his collection.”
“He thought that Ella Morgan had stolen it?”
“That was his theory but the antique later turned up somewhere in the house and everyone involved agreed that it had been misplaced. Gillingham withdrew his complaint. I don’t have all the details. The Crystal City police handled the case.”
Disdain dripped in Joe’s voice. He considered the Crystal City PD to be incompetent and he didn’t seem to care who knew it. The fact that the police lacked the high-tech resources that the Bureau took for granted was no excuse in his book.
On the other side of the equation, the chief of the Crystal City PD wasn’t exactly a fan of Joe and the Bureau. It seemed that every time there was a high-profile case in the city, Joe was the one who wound up standing in front of the cameras, taking credit for the bust. Chief Truett, grim-faced, could generally be seen standing in the background and off to the side.
It was ever thus, Rafe thought. The various branches of law
enforcement had always fought turf wars. It was one of the many reasons why he preferred to remain a part-time consultant.
“A missing antique wasn’t exactly a case for the FBPI,” he pointed out mildly.
“I don’t give a damn about the antique. It was Gillingham’s mysterious collapse that interests me. Looked a lot like Bellamy’s collapse at the wedding except that the results were not as severe. Gillingham recovered. But immediately after the incident, Ella Morgan handed in her resignation to Wilson Parsons. A month later she opened up a small shop in the Quarter. Less than a week after that, she changed the name of her business to Knightsbridge Dream Institute and signed a lease in the Crystal Center business tower.”
“You’re wondering how she financed the move to the Crystal Center.”
“It does raise some interesting questions. So does the name change.”
“Well, you know she didn’t use Gillingham’s antique to underwrite her new office space. You said it turned up at Gillingham’s house.”
“Maybe because Gillingham went to the cops and Ella Morgan got nervous and arranged to have the antique reappear. She was going into business for herself, after all. The last thing she needed was a charge of theft from an old client. But Gillingham was just one of a number of clients that she worked with at Wilson Parsons. Some of the others may not have had such good memories after they woke up.”
Rafe wondered if Ella had any idea that Joe was watching her so closely. The FBPI liked to keep track of very strong talents, especially those that fell into the dangerous category.
At least Joe didn’t seem to know that Ella had been present in Adam Vickary’s underground black-market salesroom the day that the task force had picked up Vickary, Trent, and the enforcers. Luckily, none of the perps had remembered exactly what had happened that day. They had all assumed that one of the Alien weapons had exploded. Which was not that far off the mark, Rafe thought.
He could still remember the flash fire that had swept through him when he put his hand on Ella and activated the artifact. Rezzing Alien tech had always jacked up his senses. But making physical contact with Ella while they were both running hot had taken the concept of rush to a whole new level.
The disaster three months ago had destroyed his ability to resonate with Alien technology. But this afternoon when he walked into Ella’s office he had been hit with the same electrifying thrill that he’d gotten the day he’d found her in Vickary’s lair. She had greeted him in the same beautiful voice that he had heard in his dreams, the voice that had pulled him out of the worst of the nightmares. Evidently, not even the fever could change the effect she had on his senses.
Focus, Coppersmith.
He pushed his personal issues aside—noting with some surprise that he was getting better at doing just that—and contemplated what Joe had told him about the Gillingham incident. It certainly raised some questions. How the hell had Ella financed the move into the Crystal Center?
Joe sat forward. His chair squeaked again. “Look, I’m the first to admit that I don’t have anything solid on Ella Morgan. I just wanted to give you a heads-up.”
“Thanks. But I’m out of options. I need a strong music talent.”
“I understand. Just be careful.”
“Sure.”
Rafe started to turn away from the window but he stopped cold when a familiar chill iced his senses. The fever was spiking again. Anger flashed through him.
Not now. I’m a little busy at the moment. Things to do. People to see. Not now, damn it.
But the interior of the office was already blurring at the edges of his vision. He gripped the windowsill and braced himself against the vision, fighting it with all his will. He focused on the view of the Dead City ruins and tried to maintain an outward calm. He was getting better at the acting job. Hell, he’d had three months of practice. If he was careful Joe would never know what was happening.
He did not lose his sense of orientation completely this time but the vision whispered through all of his senses. He experienced the hallucination the way he did a dream—a waking nightmare.
. . . The monster emerged from the cave in which it had been hiding. It looked a lot like a serpent but it propelled itself on six legs. A forked tongue darted out of its mouth. The fangs dripped venom. It started toward him.
“You’re not real,” Rafe said in the silent language of dreams. “I know you’re not real and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you try to convince me.”
“Whatever,” the monster said. “It’s kind of funny, though.”
“What is?”
“This is exactly what makes us monsters so dangerous. No one believes we’re real.”
“Rafe?” Joe’s voice shattered the small trance. “Are you okay?”
Rafe willed away the last of the hallucination. He inhaled cautiously and did a quick internal check. All systems were normal again, at least as normal as they got these days. He released his death grip on the windowsill and rubbed the back of his neck.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Been busy lately. Haven’t been getting much sleep.” That much was certainly true. “My dad dumped the Wonderland job on me a few days ago and I’ve been working around the clock to get up to speed.”
“Mind if I ask where you’ve been for the past three months? Maybe it’s none of my business but you and I go back a ways. Figure I’ve got some rights. There were rumors going around that you’d been burned on a Coppersmith job.”
“There was some trouble at one of the exploration sites. I did get burned. Had to take it easy for a while. No big deal.” Now that was a flat-out lie. “I spent most of the time hanging out at my family’s compound on Copper Beach Island.”
“Huh.” Joe nodded but he didn’t look entirely satisfied. “You’re okay now, though, right? Can’t see the company assigning you the troubleshooting job on Rainshadow if they thought you still had problems.”
“No,” Rafe said. “They wouldn’t have sent me to Rainshadow if they had any doubts. There’s too much riding on the project. Wonderland is the most important site Coppersmith has opened up in twenty years.”
But it wasn’t the board of directors or a high-ranking executive who had assigned him to the Rainshadow job. His father was the one who had sent him to the island. There had been some grumbling within the management hierarchy—rumors about the disaster that had left him psi-burned were rampant within the company. But Orson Coppersmith was the president and CEO of the family empire. His decisions were law.
“Good to know.” Joe relaxed a little. “In that case, can I count on you for more consulting work in the future? When it comes to the illegal Alien-tech trade, I’ve never had anyone else as good as you on my team.”
“I’ll think about it,” Rafe said. He was not in the mood to explain that he had lost his talent. “But I’ve got to clean up the problems on Rainshadow first. It’s a family job. You know how it is.”
“Family first.” Joe glanced at his watch. “It’s almost five. Want to grab a beer and some dinner?”
“I’d like that but I’ve got a date.”
“Didn’t know you knew anyone that well here in Crystal.”
“I’m Ella Morgan’s plus one for a business reception at a local college tonight. We’re not leaving for Rainshadow until tomorrow.”
Joe raised his brows. “You two must have hit it off well today. Congratulations on the fast work.”
An unfamiliar tension gripped Rafe. For some reason he was suddenly consumed with the need to protect Ella’s reputation.
“Strictly business,” Rafe said. “If the DND crowd figures out that I’m in town and that I’ve hired Ella, they’ll try to convince her to rethink our contract. I don’t want to take the risk of losing her. Not a lot of strong music talents around.”
“Got it. But remember what I said, pal. She may be more than just a high-end singer. If she’s a for-real Siren, she’s dangerous.”
Chapter 8
She had seen the fever in his
aura but she wasn’t afraid of him.
Rafe thought about that again as he walked toward the sleek black limo waiting in front of the hotel. Actually, he’d been thinking about it almost constantly since the meeting in her office.
He knew that she was harboring a lot of mixed emotions about seeing him again; knew that she was more than a little pissed. She had a right to be mad given the way he had gone off the grid for the past three months. Still, she was not afraid of him.
If only she knew how often he had thought about her; how often he had relived that moment of intimate connection when they had weathered the storm of Alien energy unleashed by the crystal weapon.
When the nightmares struck—and they were always there, lying in wait for him if he allowed himself to sleep deeply—it was Ella who sang him through the storm. He woke up feeling battered and exhausted after foundering on the jagged rocks of his dreams, but at least he woke up. He knew that there had been nights when his family had feared that he might not.
I’ve dreamed about you, Siren. You don’t know it but you saved my sanity and probably my life.
The hotel doorman opened the passenger door of the limo. Rafe slid into the darkly cushioned depths and opened his senses a little, anticipating the rush. It hit him the same way it had earlier when he had been ushered into Ella’s office. The only difference then was that he had not been ready for it.
But this time he was ready; more than ready—he was hungry for the intoxicating frisson of sensual awareness. And the rush hit hard.
This afternoon he had been oddly surprised to discover that she was just as he had remembered her; just as he had seen her in his dreams. She was on the small side with an interesting, intelligent face and mysterious green eyes. There was a feline edge to her that aroused all his senses. He reminded himself that his sex life had been nonexistent since the diagnosis. What with one thing and another, he had to allow for the possibility that it probably wouldn’t take much to get him hard. Still, Ella Morgan was different and the sensations he got when he was near her were different, too.
