Cyrus glanced at his watch and then looked at Brock Prescott. “You’ve got five minutes. What do you want?”
“I want to know why you’re hanging around my wife,” Brock said.
“Two points. First, she’s not your wife, not anymore. Second, regarding my relationship with her—I don’t owe you any explanations.”
Prescott had shown up just as Cyrus was finishing a briefing with his lieutenants. Cyrus had considered ignoring him, but in the end he had concluded it made more sense to try to get a handle on what Prescott wanted. Once you knew an opponent’s priorities, you could usually predict his actions with a fair degree of accuracy. Motive was all.
Brock’s face tightened with an expression of Serious Concern. “I’m sure you’re aware that my wife is believed to have suffered a bad psi-burn in the course of her last Guild job. She is probably in a very fragile condition.”
“She’s not your wife,” Cyrus repeated. “You filed the papers, remember?”
“Damn it, I thought I had no choice. The Gold Creek Guild authorities informed me she was missing and presumed dead.” Brock shoved his fingers through his hair and went to stand at the window. “It seemed clear that she was not coming back. What the hell was I supposed to do?”
“Look for her,” Cyrus said.
Brock spun around. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re a Guild exec. And you’re a Jones. You could afford to mount a private search-and-rescue operation.”
“You’re the head of Prescott Industries. You could have paid for your own private search-and-rescue op.”
“They told me she had been lost in an energy river. No one comes out of a river.”
“Almost no one,” Cyrus said. There was a loud, protesting squeak when he leaned back in the old office chair. “You still haven’t explained why you’re here on the island.”
“Isn’t it obvious? I care about her. She’s my wife, damn it.”
“She was your wife. And it was just an MC. What’s more, you had every intention of keeping it that way, didn’t you?”
“Our relationship started out as an MC,” Brock said through his teeth. “But after she disappeared, I realized that what I felt for her was something much deeper and more profound.”
“So deep and profound that you decided to start sleeping with your administrative assistant?”
Brock’s face creased in grim lines. “It was all a misunderstanding. Sedona never gave me a chance to explain.”
Cyrus raised his brows. “Now you’re thinking Covenant Marriage?”
“Absolutely.” Brock walked forward and planted both hands, palms down, on the surface of the desk. “Not that my relationship with Sedona is any of your damn business.”
“Actually it is my business. She has agreed to take gatekeeping contracts with the Rainshadow Guild on an ad hoc basis. As far as I’m concerned, that makes her a member of my team. I have every right to look out for her welfare.”
“Is that so? Do you make a habit of sleeping with all your female team members?”
Cyrus stood and confronted Brock across the depth of the old desk. “If you make one move to take Sedona away from this island without her clear, informed consent, I will make sure that Prescott Industries never gets access to the Underworld again.”
“That’s bullshit.” Fury came and went in Brock’s eyes. “You can’t threaten me like that. You may be a Jones, but we both know you’re just a low-rent Guild boss with a small, unimportant territory on an island in the middle of the Amber Sea. It’s not like you’re the head of one of the big city-state Guilds.”
“This may not be Crystal City or Resonance City. But the Underworld here on Rainshadow is my territory.”
Brock’s eyes narrowed. “Is that a threat?”
“If you know anything about the members of the Chamber, you know they don’t assign any territory, large or small, to someone unless they think he can control it. Believe me when I tell you that I can and will protect what’s mine. We’re done here, Prescott. It’s true, I don’t have the power to order you off the island—just out of the Underworld. But if you aren’t very careful I will make sure that you disappear from Rainshadow, one way or another. Now get out of here. I’ve got work to do.”
Prescott looked as if he was going to refuse to be hustled out of the office. But in the end, he evidently concluded that there was no benefit to pushing the issue.
He yanked open the door and strode outside as if it were his idea to leave. On the sidewalk he paused briefly to look back at Cyrus.
“Who the hell do you think you are, Jones?”
“The man they sent to take care of the monsters on Rainshadow,” Cyrus said.