“I know it’s early, but it’s 5:00 somewhere. Isn’t that what they say? I think I need a drink. Either of you care to join me?”
“Normally, I’d decline, but right now I think I could use one too,” Carter admitted. He ran a hand roughly down his face. “I’m sorry, Sean. I don’t know what to say.”
There was silence except for the sounds of amber liquid being poured into crystal cups, of clinking ice and the lid being placed back on the decanter. Sean offered first Carter, then James a drink before he poured himself one and reseated himself in his arm chair.
“Neither do I,” he finally admitted. He stared at the cup as if it held the answers he sought. In an abrupt motion, he raised it, tossing back half his drink. Then sighed, repeated, “Neither do I.”
Next to Carter, James took a cautious sip. He wasn’t much of a drinker. When the burning liquid hit his throat, Carter saw him grimace then bend to set the cup aside. As for himself, Carter downed his in one swallow, relishing the fire that spread through his body, his senses. It both numbed and invigorated, soothed and enflamed. Braced, he dared to stare his employer in the face.
“How long have you known?”
He chose directness now. No longer any point in beating around the bush. This was the here and now. This was all of their futures. This could be life and death—not only for them, personally, but anyone in the Costas Empire and associated with it.
“The realization has been dawning for the past few years,” Sean admitted slowly. “Possibly—possibly since Jackson was born, or shortly thereafter. Ciara always pined for the sea. She made no secret of it. But after the birth of our son, she started to change. Dramatically. I thought at first it was simple hormonal changes from pregnancy and childbirth—that type of thing. We saw doctors, therapists; did all the right things. She grew increasingly forlorn, in spite of it all, but she managed to keep it under wraps except for around me.
“In truth,” Sean said, finishing his first drink and rising to pour himself another, “our marriage hasn’t been good since…”
He stopped, chuckled bitterly. “Why am I telling you these things? Either of you? Perhaps I’ve kept quiet for so long that it’s actually a relief to have it out in the open.” He shook his head. “I thought if I gave her everything, I could make her happy. I was wrong. I couldn’t give her enough because what she wanted wasn’t me, or our son, or our life here.
“She’s a Merrow. She loves the sea. She loves freedom. She couldn’t help it. It was born and bred into her; a part of her, like the blood in her veins. It didn’t matter how much she’d loved me once, or how much she loved Jackson. The call in her was stronger than any other bond here on Earth. She wanted her red cap; she wanted her freedom. I thought by keeping it hidden from her, like the old stories say, I’d help her forget. I could keep her here. Keep her satisfied.”
“But it didn’t work,” Carter supplied when his boss stopped, seemed to fumble for words.
Sean exhaled a heavy breath and locked his hands behind his neck. “No, it didn’t work. As I came to that realization, I came to understand her longings were overtaking her judgment. Her philosophies were changing. It started small. It was subtle. We argued about it, then mutually chose not to discuss it. I never dreamed she’d actually do anything about it, didn’t think she’d truly betray me until that night...”
“What night?”
“The night your young lady visited us for the first time.” Sean turned to look at Carter. “You see, that attack—you didn’t know, and neither did I at first, but the more I considered it, the more I questioned how could that have occurred without an insider’s aid? And were Nosizwe’s shifters really after Ciara, or was that simply a pretense to throw us off? It looked like they were attacking Ciara, when what they really wanted was to eliminate me, you, and even that girl. It was never about Ciara—that was a sham. It was all about eliminating me. And you, as well, I’m sure,” Sean said to Carter. “They never even tried to turn you, did they?”
“No.”
“They wouldn’t have.” Sean’s smile was grim. “Out of everyone in my employ, you’re the sole person I knew I could completely trust. You’re the Talos, the bodyguard. You can’t betray your loyalties.”
“You make it sound like I don’t have any free will,” Carter said gruffly.
“Do you? After I told you to protect Ellie, was there ever a time you were truly through with the job? A time when you knew without a doubt that you could walk away from her?”
Carter kept silent. He wasn’t prepared to argue the point. Months ago, he’d thought he had walked away from Ellie forever—sent her away, more like, into a new life under an assumed identity. Instead, he’d found his way back to her, in the Pacific Northwest. Had the in-person meeting truly been necessary, or was he led there by an instinct he couldn’t get rid of, couldn’t deny any more than Ciara Costas could deny hers?
In the end, as shapeshifters, they were captive to their alters exactly like normal humans were captive to their bloodlines. Some things were ingrained. Some things couldn’t be changed. Some things simply were. But that didn’t mean free will didn’t exist or they couldn’t make their own choices.
Did it?
“In fact, Ellie, was what confirmed it for me. Do you recall how they sent the Nakki after her? How it knew exactly where to go? How it spoke her name? We knew Nosizwe had spies everywhere, but that confirmed for me precisely how close they were. She was a witness. They wanted her eliminated. Ciara wanted her eliminated. It was all one big massive plot to undermine me, destroy my life’s work, and gain possession of the Stones. Everything, everything she’d done over the past few years points back to it, now that I’m forced to reckon with it. I’ve tried—oh, how I’ve tried. But there comes a point where I can’t. And I suspect your disappearance and Ciara’s story are going to cement that.”
Sean massaged the back of his neck for a few moments, his face screwed up as if in pain. The silence was tense. James shifted, drawing Carter’s gaze. His co-worker shook his head, as if in sympathy. He didn’t know what to say. Neither did Carter. Carter had never seen his boss this vulnerable. However, he wasn’t truly surprised. Sean Costas was a ruthless, brutal man, but if he had a weak point, it was his wife. Carter could understand that. If he had one weakness, it was Ellie, as he’d learned over the past several months. Now Sean was facing the undeniable facts of his wife’s betrayal, and he didn’t know how to deal with it. Carter had no words of comfort, no advice to give.
“Tell me what to do,” he said instead.
Sean looked at him. “What would you do?”
Carter was caught off guard by the question. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re a married man. I’m supposing you’ve decided to stick with Ellie, against the odds, since your union has yet to be dissolved. If you were me, if you found out she had betrayed you, everything you’ve stood for, everything you’ve worked for, and the people you’ve tried your entire life to protect, what would you do?”
Carter kept silent, wrestling in his brain. At last, he said, “I don’t—have an answer for that.”
“That’s not true. You have the exact same answer I do. You simply don’t want to say it.”
No, he didn’t want to say it. He couldn’t say it and wasn’t going to. But the practical implications were there. Ugly. Real. Unspoken, until Sean uttered them aloud.
“She has to die.”
Carter didn’t consider himself a weak man or somebody who quailed at the unpleasant side of life, but even he flinched at hearing a man say that about his wife.
“You’re talking about the mother of your child,” James put in quietly.
“I know.”
“And your wife.”
“I know, dammit, I know!” Sean roared, slamming one fist against another. “Ciara was and has been the best thing in my life since I first laid eyes on her. I would have given anything for her, done anything for her…except the one thing I can’t do, can’t
give.
“Power,” he added. “Control over the Stones. The chance to destroy the fate and fortunes of every single one of us. If it were anyone else, it wouldn’t even be a question. We’ve taken out people for far less who threatened the family or threatened our shifters. Even threatened our business dealings.
You,” he said to Carter, who hid a wince at the last line, thinking of Ellie and her accusations of Sean as a mafia don, a mob boss, who would destroy those who stood in his way. “And you,” he added to James. “We’re vulnerable. We always will be. If Ciara and Nosizwe get the Stones, get Carter’s blood, obtain the power they seek, they’re going to start a war with humans that will rain down hell on all of us.”
“They did have the Stones. And they did have my blood,” Carter put in quietly.
That stopped his employer in his tracks. Some of the anguish melted off his features, replaced by curiosity.
“They did?”
“Last night. Two nights ago. However long ago it was. That night at the Chesterfield Country Club. Ciara said I’d gone rogue? Not true. Ciara and Nosizwe had me. They had the Stones.”
Quickly, he filled in the rest of the story, including sacrificing himself for Ellie, the doorway of fire the Stones had opened, and Ellie’s reaction, shoving him into the flames and through the portal. He told the rest of it too, of the alien world, of the strange sword with its hidden writing, of the living beings in the city that he could sense but not see, and even of the prophetic sounding title, Repairer of the Breach. He finished with the tale of the fight, he and Detective Ewing’s scrape to escape the warehouse.
James was quiet. Sean was dumbfounded. Carter didn’t blame them. It sounded like something out of a fairytale—and he knew lots of shifters who actually embodied fairytale creatures.
“What do you think it means?” he inquired once he’d laid out the entire story. He was curious for their opinions.
His boss had gone from looking pained over the decision to kill his wife to contemplative after hearing the tale.
“Shoot. I wouldn’t want to be you,” James muttered. A twinkle of his old humor was back. “Of course, I never wanted to be you anyway,” he went on. “Since I’m the good-looking one. The good-looking one with all the personality.”
“The looks and personality of a horses’s as—” Carter started to say, but Sean broke in.
“Alright, James. Jokes aside, this is a conundrum. They had the Stones, they had the blood, and the blood did something, but not what they expected.”
“They didn’t have all the Stones,” James pointed out, serious now.
“True. Did you think to search for the other Stones while you were there?” Sean inquired. “Two are still missing and have never been found. Maybe you were in Atlantis and the Stones are still there.”
“I didn’t look,” Carter admitted. “I didn’t think about it. All I was thinking about was surviving and getting Ellie home.”
“Understandable,” Sean nodded. “The Talos will protect her. But what if you went back—alone? Or not alone, possibly with backup, just not with her. What if you could search for the Stones? What if you could find them? What if we could have all of them under our control?”
“You’re forgetting Nosizwe has the other four right now,” James pointed out.
“Yes. Thanks to Ciara and those who sided with her. Which brings us back to the original quandary.”
His steely gaze fell on his two subordinates. “There’s no choice, is there? She’s a traitor. She and my enemy have the Stones. They must die, along with everyone who supported them and betrayed me.”
“And if we do take Ciara out, along with her accomplices, what then? That still leaves Nosizwe. We’ve been trying for years to kill her. Now she has the Stones, and she has your wife,” Carter said.
“No, she doesn’t.”
“Beg pardon?”
“She has Ciara’s loyalties, but she doesn’t have Ciara bodily. Ciara cannot physically leave me. Not yet. I have our son. More than that, I have her cap. Without it, her Merrow self can’t return to the sea. She won’t leave me until she has it in her possession.”
“Which means she’s got to come back to the mansion,” James stated.
“Yes.” Sean gave him an approving nod. “Moreover, she doesn’t know Carter is back.”
“I’m sure she does by now,” Carter argued grimly. “There was no mistaking who I was last night, breaking the detective out of the warehouse where the Stones were kept.”
“Well, yes, I’m certain she knows from Nosizwe that you’re alive, but she doesn’t know that you’re here. With me.”
“Won’t she guess that’s the first place Carter would go?”
“Likely. But guessing and knowing are two different things. Were you seen, coming in here?”
Carter and James exchanged glances. “By Dave, and a few others in the hallway. I guess we’ll know soon if they’re playing for the other side.”
“Then we wait,” Sean said, rising, walking to the window to look out at the lawn. We wait for Ciara to return. We hold her—use her to get Nosizwe to come to us.”
“Do you think she’ll come?”
“She’ll come,” Sean said. “I’ll have Ciara.” He swiveled to glance over his shoulder at Carter. “I’ll have you. She’ll come. We simply have to wait. When we have the upper hand, we take her out. We regain possession of the Stones.”
“And then?”
Sean shrugged. “We go from there. Decide if Carter should go back, seek the other Stones. Having them all in our possession certainly might be useful.”
Carter didn’t argue, but a growing sense of unease spread though his body. Much as he hated to admit it, Sean was using him. Using him to gain the Stones and reach his own ends, exactly like Nosizwe had done. Nosizwe had used Ellie as bait to draw him out. Now Sean was using him as bait to draw Nosizwe out. Sean wasn’t demanding his death or blood. Yet. But when the chips were down…
No. He couldn’t think like that.
Sean wouldn’t destroy him. Would he?
Burning in the back of his mind was the notion that a man who could so easily order the death of the wife he’d seemed to love all these years, was a man who could calmly, practically demand his death, as well, so long as he’d convinced himself it was for the greater good. The best for the family. The best for shifters in general. The best for their world.
Carter thought of Ellie, back with the two police detectives, and the sword he’d left there. He hoped the cops could fulfill their promise to keep her safe, because he might have walked into a situation where he wouldn’t be able to.
Chapter Sixteen
Pulling up outside the gates of the Costas compound brought back a flood of memories. Not a flood, a tidal wave. The first night I’d visited. Smoothing my skirt nervously in the back seat of the car, out of place and uneasy being driven around by Tracy as the chauffeur. Then, a day later, returning to get married to Carter. Every single time I’d come here it had signaled a momentous change in my life, including arriving with Carter being injured, only, soon after, to be kidnapped and mauled by Nosizwe in her mistaken pursuit of Carter’s offspring’s blood. I couldn’t help fearing what kind of change I’d be facing now, returning again, as we drew up at the guard shack and Detective Tozzi put the car in park.
A young man with blonde hair and narrow eyes stepped out. Detective Tozzi rolled down his window as the guard approached.
“Good morning,” the young man said. “May I ask who you are and why you’re here?”
“Yes. I’m Detective Gary Tozzi and this is Detective Ewing,” the cop answered, flashing his badge and then gesturing towards his partner, who also flashed her badge. He didn’t mention me in the back seat. The guard seemed so surprised to see a couple of police detectives that he didn’t even notice me. “We’re here on official business to have a word with Mr. Costas. Would you mind letting us in?”
The guard’s eyebrows raised. He wasn’t doing a g
ood job of hiding his curiosity, but he maintained a professional tone as he said, “Wait, please. I’ll have to check with the house.”
He stepped back into the guard shack to make the call. With his attention diverted, I moved on to the next part of the plan—easing the door on the opposite side of the car open enough for me to slip out. I was hoping he would be so preoccupied with his call that he wouldn’t notice. Apparently he didn’t—or else he was distracted by Detective Tozzi opening his door and stepping out, leaning against the car to light a cigarette, casually attempting to block the guard’s view of me creeping out of the vehicle and into the hedges that lined the fence.
The hood of the car, pulled up next to the bushes, helped conceal my movements as I slipped past the gate and into the Costas compound. I could only hope I hadn’t been caught on a security camera. Even if I had been, I knew James or Carter would be the first ones reported to. Carter was probably out of the loop, so if it was James by default, I wasn’t too worried. I didn’t think James had any reason to hurt me.
That was the thing, though. I honestly didn’t know who might have cause to hurt or imprison me. I was taking a risk sneaking onto the property, but it wasn’t like I was going unarmed. I had a Beretta concealed under my jacket and pepper spray in my pocket. Both detectives had argued mightily against my plan, but, in the end, it had been my decision.
“Carter wouldn’t leave me in there alone,” I’d protested. “I’m not doing it to him.”
“Isn’t your Carter a lot better, uh, equipped to handle himself in dangerous spots than you are?” Detective Ewing had inquired with raised eyebrows.
I didn’t usually get stubborn, but I felt my spine stiffen and I folded my arms across my chest. “Carter’s a shifter, yes, but I’ve faced down shifters several times already. I’m not afraid. I know what I’m doing.”
Repairer of the Breach (Stones of Fire Book 4) Page 11
