He got back to the ops center and watched as the helicopter landed about 35 yards away. John and Scott were the first two off, then Bethany Anne and finally Eric and Darryl. They seemed to be providing a security cordon around her. For what reason, he had no idea until they got closer.
She looked tired. Exhausted actually. She also was covered in blood and filth. He could just hear her voice over the helicopter as they got closer, “… and if you ever touch my tit again John, I will kick your nads from here to Miami. Are we clear?”
Dan raised his eyes, Johns vest looked horrible and he had blood all over his chest, but he looked like the freshest out of all of them. Like he had just had a full night’s sleep and a great breakfast. Yup, there was a story here.
“Yes ma’am.”
John and the guys let their rifles hang on their quick-slings. John came up to his boss and reported in. “Team Queen Bitch reporting in.” John suddenly grabbed his ear, yelped in pain and turned around to look at Bethany Anne, she just pointed to Scott who rolled his eyes.
Somehow, and he would finally figure out how, this little woman had not only saved his command, helped kill at least 14 forsaken and also brought back her first team alive. Regardless of the blood and damage to John’s chest, everyone seemed in good health and laughing. Dan just shook his head.
Some other time, he wasn’t going to ruin anything with this woman tonight.
New York City, NY USA
Nathan let Ecaterina sleep in. She was a little jet lagged. He left some bananas and apple juice on the counter for her.
He had left two messages so far for both Frank and Gerry. He didn’t get as messed up due to time changes when traveling. Having done it a significant amount in his life, it wasn’t a big deal.
He picked up some more food from the corner store and carried the two bags of groceries home. He went a little heavy on the fruits and nuts. He figured he could call in delivery for the major meals until they figured something out. However; he knew Ecaterina liked to snack on ‘real food’, so he got plenty.
He dropped off the food in the kitchen and went up to the second floor to catch up with his backlog of work for his Security Agency, and the other miscellaneous businesses he was involved in. He went through all of the local companies first. They never gave him issues and that was true this time as well. He made sure nothing in the finances for the real estate concern looked fishy and then closed that bank account window. He had scheduled a 10:30 meeting with his two main leads at his security agency and that was in just a few minutes.
He took the time to get a fresh t-shirt and dress shirt on and kept on his shorts. It had been brisk outside, but with a jacket he got away with not getting too dressed up. New York City had a few days of snow a week ago, but it had apparently melted almost as fast as it snowed.
He had requested a Skype call with his leads, but they couldn’t see lower than his shirt, anyway.
At 10:30, he called the first one and once he had him, conferenced in the second.
He asked about the Guardian project and both commented that they were thankful for the help getting it implemented across all of their clients so fast. That was probably the main reason they didn’t have as bad a time as it could have been. Nathan was happy with that comment. Frank had bribed him with forty prime network guys if he would go find Michael and Bethany Annes whereabouts. He had jumped at the offer. While Nathan was a world class hacker, he couldn’t do the same job as forty incredibly competent network admins working simultaneously. It was a pretty easy decision to take Frank up on the bribe.
Now, due to his going to Europe he had met, and almost died for Ecaterina. The lady who right now was sleeping downstairs. He sighed. He knew she would go with Bethany Anne when she got back, but he hoped that she might be gone for a few more days. Maybe a couple of weeks? Or, if he was devious he could hack her airline reservations and keep changing them.
He grinned. To keep Ecaterina around he would do that to anybody in an instant. Except Bethany Anne. One, she almost surely would find out. How she knew one of his hacker personas he never did get out of her. The second was when she found out, life would become incredibly painful. He didn’t exactly know how, but he did know that she could be really creative when she dished out the pain.
He actually had a really good working relationship with her. He was surprised that he had any relationship with a vampire. His perspective on them was to mind his p’s and q’s and then get out of the room.
Either way. Ecaterina was bound with her and he for sure was bound up with Ecaterina.
His ears picked up that Ecaterina had just got out of bed. A couple of minutes later he heard the shower start. He decided he would go upstairs and take another quick shower himself. While he hadn’t sweated much this morning, he wasn’t going to take a chance.
Ten minutes later, he came down dressed in jeans, a t-shirt and sweater and carrying a black leather jacket for his trip to see Gerry.
He caught Ecaterina digging through the fresh fruits and had just bitten into an apple. She smiled at him and covered her mouth with her hand as she chewed.
“Good morning, Nathan.”
“A good morning to you too, sleepy-head.”
She pursed her lips, “What is this sleepy-head? Is my hair messed up? I brushed it after my shower.” She was patting her hair and then turned around to see if she could see anything in the reflection of the double oven.
“No Ecaterina, it means someone who was sleepy, who slept a long time.”
“Oh, so you think to already start on criticizing me on my first day here in America?” Her face became a picture of righteous indignation.
Oh shit, he thought, how does a woman turn the tables in a second language so quickly?
He was continuing down this path of figuring out what he could say when she suddenly smiled and said, “Gotcha Mr. Lowell” and bit into the apple again.
He grinned again. Man, it felt so good to be off the hook! He had forgotten the downsides to the relationship. The reality was that the woman had so many cards they could play it was maddening.
Then, he drank in her smile and knew it didn’t matter to him. He would take it all.
“Before you get too far into that apple, would you like to have lunch? I have a meeting with Gerry you can choose to come to, or not. Whatever you want to do.”
She looked down at the mostly eaten apple. Took the last two bites and gave him a thumbs up. Walking past him she put up one finger and went to her bedroom and shut the door. Since she was wearing shorts he was not complaining.
Almost one minute later, she came back out dressed for cool weather in a white jacket, blue shirt, jeans and tennis shoes from a brand he didn’t recognize. He figured that they were a European brand. He would see if she liked Puma, one of his favorite shoe brands.
“Ready!” A lady who took just one minute to change? Priceless.
He didn’t want to drive around today, so he had called a taxi while she was changing.
They sat and talked about different foods she might like to try, waiting on the taxi to show up. By the time they had decided on New York Pizza the cab was there. He had to explain to her that New York pizza was NOT going to be like anything in Italy or anything similar to the pizza true Italians made.
She was game. If it was pizza, she could get excited about it.
He decided to start with Joe’s pizza in the West Village, they had the foundational New York pizza. It was pretty universally agreed that if someone was new in town, you took them to Joe’s. It took a while in traffic to finally get to Joe’s and the apple from breakfast hadn’t lasted very long for her. She was hungry again.
They finally got to Joe’s and he paid the taxi fair. The pizza joint is just a hole in the wall in a brown brick building with a lot of outside fire escapes running up the building and a big white sign with “Joe’s Pizza” on it. The ‘Joe’s’ was in script. Underneath was a red overhang with a walk up white marble bar on the right side
of the door. It had a ’24 hour ATM’ sign on the left hand side of the overhang. Inside the room was pretty narrow and long with the pizza in the back past a few stand-up tables. The drinks in a stand up cooler you just opened and grabbed one out of. They were very proud of the fact that the pizza place was shown in the movie ‘Spiderman’ and had it plastered on their hanging sign on the wall. On the other side were the customary pictures of famous and not-so-famous people enjoying themselves at Joe’s.
While New York was significantly dirtier than Brasov, Ecaterina didn’t seem to mind. A couple of times he noticed that she wrinkled her nose. He could understand that. He just appreciated that she didn’t let a couple of things she didn’t like potentially ruin her experience.
They got up to the counter and each ordered the two-slice and a drink option. Taking them to a stand up table, he got to enjoy her eyes light up with enjoyment as the deliciousness that was Joe’s played like a violin in her mouth.
He bit down on his pepperoni slice. God, he thought, it was so good to be back home.
He smiled. He was thinking “Hey Ma, look what I brought back from Romania. Can I keep her?” His mom had passed away many years back, but he thought she would approve.
They finished their pizzas and just spent some time walking around. Finally, he called a cab and gave the driver the address for where he was going to meet Gerry.
It took too long and didn’t take long enough to get to Gerry’s building. He got out and held the door for Ecaterina to get out, closing it behind her. He had paid for the cab with his credit card en route.
They walked into the building and up to the security podium. The security guard took one look at Nathan and did a quick bob of his head to let him know he was good to go on up. The security guard then took two looks at Ecaterina.
Nathan decided she deserved two looks. If he took a third he would box his ears in, though.
They got onto the elevator. It wasn’t the speediest elevator in New York and certainly not the slowest. That might go to the elevator in the Prada store. He smiled thinking that he should get Bethany Anne over to the Prada store if she hadn’t been there yet. She would be loving the fashion and then become so impatient when the elevator seemed like it was going nowhere fast, because it wasn’t. They even have curved benches for people to look through the glass to view the merchandise as the elevator ever so slowly went from floor to floor.
The elevator binged and they got out. He waved to Stacey at the receptionist desk who waved back and then suddenly stopped as she realized the gorgeous lady coming off the elevator was following Nathan. Then, he stopped and made sure she caught up. Stacy was suddenly in a funk and wasn’t sure what caused it.
Nathan knocked politely on Gerry’s door before opening it. Gerry would have scented him coming down the hallway. Gerry had the air vents specifically directed to point the air flow down the hall and into his office.
Sneaky bastard.
It had taken Nathan a couple of weeks to realize what Gerry had designed as a passive friend / foe detection system. He loved it. When one entered Gerry’s office, you could walk up to his desk, but it was twenty feet away. On your right were a couch, coffee table and two chairs that slightly faced the opposite wall. On your left was a large screen TV system and underneath the TV system some built-in cabinets. Behind the couch on the right was a little space to let someone get to the bar. It was pretty well stocked with different liqueurs. The liquors were presented with lights pointed up through them as you would see at a fancier bar and were really pretty. His desk had two chairs facing it and a small round coffee table between them.
Gerry got up from behind his desk and came around to give Nathan a huge hug and a couple slaps on the back. “It is so damned good to see you again. Do you have any idea what a pain in the ass those people under you are?”
Nathan just looked at him, deadpan.
Gerry smiled, “Never mind, of course you do!” He turned to Ecaterina. “My sincerest apologies my lady. I didn’t notice you when I saw my good friend show up. My name is Gerry.”
Ecaterina reached to shake his hand and returned the introduction in her, very, sexy Romanian accent. “Hello Gerry, it is nice to meet you. My name is Ecaterina Romanov.”
Gerry looked over at Nathan, perplexed. Nathan thought maybe he was expecting someone else? Ah!
Nathan spoke up, “Gerry, Ecaterina is Bethany Anne’s close friend and in her circle of trust. I brought her here to America when Bethany Anne wanted to have a ‘conversation’ with Michael’s child, Stephen. She is staying with me.”
When Nathan put the emphasis on ’staying with me’, he realized that Nathan was really putting a claim on her. The guys in the pack had better treat her gently or there was going to be hell to pay. That was just from Nathan. Gerry figured if Nathan didn’t get enough of a pound of flesh (without blood), then Bethany Anne would forgo the no-blood requirement.
Since she knew Bethany Anne, Gerry had to ask, “Ecaterina. Are you aware of Nathan’s, uh, peculiarities?”
“You mean that he turns into, what you call, friendly pooch?” Gerry noticed Nathan wincing at this description. Oh, Gerry was keeping this description alive.
“Why yes, that he turns into a ‘friendly pooch’ is exactly what I mean.” Yup, Gerry could officially call it. Nathan was taken.
There were going to be ladies all over America not happy with this relationship. Gerry had been shown a bulletin board where some women had been sharing everything they knew about Nathan to try and figure out a way to hook Nathan and reel him in. Gerry wondered how this lady had done it so fast? Well, that would be a story for another time.
“Let’s sit, would you care for anything to drink Ecaterina? Oh, yeah, you too Nathan?” Nathan didn’t miss Gerry’s huge smile. Oh well, it wasn’t like he had seriously expected to hide his affection for Ecaterina.
But now she had called his wolf a ‘friendly pooch’. He wasn’t sure if that was due to her English skills, her deft handling of payback for the sleepy-head comment this morning or something else.
CHAPTER TWELVE
New York City, NY USA
Nathan got along great with Gerry. Together, they had a working system. Gerry would stay in the top spot playing politics with everyone and Nathan would make sure that the pain in the asses in his personal pack didn’t constantly annoy him. The fact that working with Vampires was his main occupation had now turned around and bitten him in the ass.
He looked over at Ecaterina shaking Gerry’s hand. Ok, so working with this vampire had benefits.
Then, she replied that he was a ‘friendly pooch’. His carefully neutral face slipped a little. ‘Oh my god, did she just say that?’
He went through the horrible scenarios in his head. Just how many assholes was he going to have to deal with before he got through this mess? He wanted to wipe his face in frustration, but Gerry was looking at him with a huge smile on his face. He decided not to give the guy another reason to gloat. Gerry asked him if he wanted something to drink.
What he wanted was two fingers of whiskey followed by three more, but he realized that was the frustration talking, again. “Yeah, how about some water?”
Grabbing two waters, Gerry gave one to Ecaterina and the other to Nathan and while they sat in the chairs in front of his desk, he walked back around the huge thing and sat down. He looked over at Nathan, “You have no idea how my life has sucked since you were gone, my friend.”
Nathan smiled. It was nice to feel the appreciation. “Yeah, actually I can.” Ok, now he knew the negotiation edge to make sure Ecaterina’s little comment didn’t go any further. Maybe the problems with the comment could be mitigated. “However; to get down to business without hearing your ‘woe is Gerry’ vent for the next thirty minutes, what about the troublemakers? Have the council any ideas?”
“Sadly, few. Half of them want to wring their necks, the other half is just saying that the young need to vent their spleen and to give them some time. The
ir comments have been focused on the fact there is no Michael, so what are they going to do, kill their own?”
Nathan considered that comment. It was true that the Pack Council had handed out death sentences from time to time for heinous crimes against humanity. But not for just talking smack. The vampires always handled that issue if they heard it in person. It was only when the pack started talking outside the UnknownWorld and it got back to Michaels Family it was a problem. Of course, it almost always got back to Michael when Carl or someone filling Carl’s role was involved. Then a vampire would start executions and the first the Council would know about it was when they received frightened phone calls. Often, they got the calls in the middle of the night from the spouses or significant others of the suddenly non-communicative werewolves who had lost their heads. Occasionally right next to them in bed. Scary as hell.
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