The roses on the hall stand weren’t dead, but they were seriously drooping. Probably something symbolic there, but I didn’t want to examine it too closely.
I left my bag in the hall and took the roses to the kitchen, trying on the way to decide if they could be saved or if I should go ahead and toss them. In the end, I left them on the counter and went upstairs, unable to tend to them without crying—which I refused to do—but equally unable to throw them out. When in doubt, put it off.
Seeing my bed didn’t help my mood any. Stray rose petals, dried and crushed, littered the sheets. (The way broken dreams littered my soul … I, um, might have thought if, you know, it hadn’t been so nauseatingly trite.) I yanked the sheets off the bed and stuffed them into the hamper, petals and all. I’d shake them off before I washed them. In the meantime, I didn’t need the reminder of how giddily happy I’d been to see Billy here in my bed.
Getting fresh sheets out of the linen closet and making the bed seemed like too much trouble, so I went across the hall to the guest room. But then I remembered the night not long ago I’d spent there with Billy, and couldn’t bring myself to crawl into that bed either.
Get a fucking grip, Ciel. What are you going to do, go to a hotel?
Hmm. Not a bad idea …
The more I thought about it, the less crazy it seemed. I might actually be able to sleep in a hotel, someplace impersonal, someplace I’d never been with Billy. My bank account was, for once, healthy enough. Mark had made sure I received a hefty bonus for tacking those extra days on to the NASA job, so I might as well make use of the windfall.
I called a taxi, repacked my bag with a clean change of clothes, and got the hell out of Dodge.
* * *
The pounding on my hotel room door was my first clue upon waking that something was amiss. I looked at the bedside clock. Jesus, I’d been asleep for, what, twelve hours?
Thomas’s voice was even louder than his incessant pounding. “Ciel! Sis, are you all right? Open the door!” Honest to God, with a voice like his, he could fill in for Metatron.
“One second!” I hollered. He’d obviously escaped Mom’s grip up in New York. I wondered if Laura had been lucky enough to get away with him.
My mouth gaped into a yawn. Why was I naked? Oh, yeah. Forgot to pack pj’s. I grabbed a terrycloth hotel robe, belting it tightly as I tried to clear my head. What the hell was Thomas doing here? I hadn’t told anyone where I was going.
The pounding kept up a steady rhythm until I finally opened the door. Thomas pushed his way in and pulled me into a bear hug. When he let go, I saw Laura was behind him, looking much less perturbed. Guess she’d managed to elude Mom, too. I waved at her, and smiled at both of them. Laura waved and smiled back, giving me an apologetic shrug.
“What’s up, guys?” I said, trying to sound a lot more chipper than I felt.
“Damn it, Ciel, you can’t just disappear. You have to tell somebody where you are,” Thomas said.
“My cell phone is charged. You could have called.”
Thomas made what I think of fondly as his “apoplectic eyes.” Laura patted his arm (or else she was trying to keep him from throttling me with it, one or the other) and said, “Well, sugar, that only works if you answer your phone.”
I peeked behind me at the nightstand. Saw the light on my phone indicating a missed call. Checked the log. Okay, fourteen missed calls (none of them Billy, not that I was searching for his name), seven of which were from either Thomas or Laura.
“Sorry. I guess I was really tired. Um, do I want to listen to any of your voice mails?”
Laura glanced at Thomas and suppressed a smile. “Well, the first few are perfectly polite. Then I’m afraid they get”—she glanced at her husband, holding back a smile—“repetitive.”
Thomas quelled her with a look. “Sis, why are you staying in a hotel when we live in town? When Mark called looking for you after your condo was broken into, I was terrified you’d been taken. And if you think I ever want to explain to Mom and Dad—”
“Wait … what? Broken into? When?” I said. Shit. What was going on? I needed coffee. Which, I belatedly remembered, I wasn’t going to get.
“Last night.” He looked at me closely, no doubt noting my shock with his super-lawyer observational skills. “After you left, I presume.”
“How did Mark know?” I said, defaulting to the trivial because it was easier than dealing with the fact that my condo had fucking been broken into. “Did he have someone watching me?”
“After what he told me happened in Houston? Of course he did. The problem was, the guy he had watching you took ill—violently—and there was a space of time before his replacement was there. It must have happened then. And, yes, that makes the whole thing even more suspicious—Mark thinks his guy might’ve been poisoned somehow.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Is he going to be all right?”
“He won’t be running any races for a while, but he’ll recover.”
Thank God. “So, if the guy didn’t tell him, how did Mark find out?”
“The security system routes directly to the Agency. And before you get all huffy about being monitored, it’s been that way since Mark was my roommate there. I’m the one who asked him to keep it when you moved in.”
“It’s the same at our house,” Laura added quickly, in case I thought I was being singled out.
“But how did you find me here? I haven’t been microchipped, have I?” I said, only half joking.
“Tempting,” Thomas said under his breath.
Laura shrugged. “I tracked your last credit card transaction—here, at this hotel, strangely enough. Oh, and your phone. GPS is a wonderful thing. Don’t be mad, hon. I had to do it to calm your brother down.”
I glared at Thomas. It had no effect. “Fine. You found me. Now you can take me to my condo so I can see if anything is missing.”
Thomas and Laura looked at each other, doing that annoying nonverbal communication thing couples do.
“What?” I said.
Thomas sighed. He’s not normally a big sigher. “Not a good idea right now, sis.”
“Why not? Look, I get it. You’re trying to shield me from the trauma. But my place has been broken into before—I know what to expect.”
“Ciel, hon, they torched it after they broke in,” Laura said gently. “There’s not a lot left to go through.”
I froze. Stared at her for a second, then looked to Thomas for confirmation. He nodded, a grim look on his face. “You can see why we were concerned when we couldn’t reach you.”
I nodded numbly. There had to be questions I should be asking, but I couldn’t think of them. “I don’t have any pets,” was all I could think to say. “That’s good, right? It’s the only thing that really matters. I mean, I’ve thought about getting a dog, or maybe a cat would be better—I love animals—but it wouldn’t really be fair, would it? Since I’m gone”—damn, why couldn’t I stop babbling? The clinical part of my brain knew it was the shock, but I still couldn’t shut up—“so much for work and all. Of course, I could always get a turtle. They probably don’t care much if you’re not there all the time. But they’re not good cuddlers, and I think if I had a pet I’d really like one I could cuddle…”
Laura put an arm around my shoulder and gently herded me toward the bathroom. “Come on, sugar, let’s get you dressed. Tom, why don’t you wait in the lobby? We’ll be down in a bit.”
“Yeah. Right. I’ll give Mark a call and let him know Ciel is okay. Sis, do you want me to call Billy?”
“No!” I said, stopping. God, not Billy. I couldn’t deal with him right now. I pulled myself up straight, shrugging off Laura’s arm. “He’s, um, busy with something … one of his … he can’t be reached. I’ll take care of it later. Laura, go on down with Tom. I’ll throw some clothes on and meet you in the lobby. And then I’m going straight to my condo.”
“Can’t. Mark wants you kept out of sight for now,” Thomas said.
“What the hell? Why?”
“I’m sure he has a good reason, sugar,” Laura said. “And I’m sure he’ll tell us what it is when we see him later,” she added when I was about to protest again. I recognized the spook stubbornness in her eyes and dropped it. For the moment.
* * *
It didn’t look too bad from the outside, only some broken windows and water-streaked soot stains. And, of course, the crime scene tape. Because arson. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that somebody had intentionally set my home on fire.
The fire had apparently been contained by strong firewalls, so my neighbors’ homes had suffered only minor damage, thank God. At least I didn’t have to add guilt to the host of emotions I was feeling.
I had convinced Thomas and Laura I’d never be able to relax until I’d seen it for myself. I was wearing the aura of one of my old high school teachers—Mrs. Denton, a young first-year teacher I’d had when I was a senior, who now lived overseas—so technically “I” was out of sight.
Thomas returned to where Laura and I were standing on the sidewalk in front of the building. At one time it had been a huge single-family home—a mansion, really—but some enterprising owner along the way had converted it into four two-story units, the front right of which was owned by Thomas and rented by me. (He was planning to buy up the other units as they became available—Thomas collects real estate the way I collect Spiderman comic books.)
“I spoke with someone from the firehouse. There’s fire damage both up- and downstairs, and all up the stairwell, but the floor joists seem to be sound. There’s a lot of smoke and water damage throughout. Once we get clearance from a structural engineer, I’ll have the place gutted and redone. Sis, you can stay with us in the meantime.”
And watch you two brimming over with joy as Laura’s belly grows? Yeah, no thanks.
“Are the stairs still there?” I asked.
“I assume so. Why?”
“Good. I’ll be back in a minute.” I took off, slipping under the crime scene tape and through the door that was no longer capable of closing all the way.
“Ciel, wait—we can’t go in!” Thomas came after me, but not until after he admonished Laura to stay where she was, so I got a pretty good head start.
It was the smell more than anything. Smoke, acrid and biting, mixed with the chemical fumes from burnt paint and synthetic carpet, overlaid with a dank, wet smell that made me want to gag. That, or the fact that if I hadn’t been running away from my memories of Billy I would be dead right now, as charred as all my belongings. Somebody wanted me dead, and I didn’t even know why. The very randomness of the act made me feel more vulnerable.
Holding one hand over my nose and mouth, I hurried up the stairs and into my room.
“Hey!” Thomas hollered from the front hall.
“Up here!” I ignored the scorched, sodden mess that was my bed and went straight for my burnt-up dresser. Yanked open the top drawer—the front of it splintered in my hands—and started riffling through wet underwear and bras.
Thomas came to a halt at the door to my room. “Sis, don’t be ridiculous. We’ll go shopping, get you some new clothes. You can’t save those.”
My hand finally hit wet velvet. I squeezed the small jewel box tightly, sending up a wordless prayer before I opened it. I held back a sob of relief when I saw it there, unharmed.
The pin, made of white gold and diamonds and shaped like an open parachute, had been a gift from Billy after my first terrifying ride on his airplane. It was his way of telling me he’d always be there, providing security for me as I faced my fears and tried new things. Shutting the case and enclosing it in both hands, I held it to my waist, as if it could magically shelter the new life growing there.
I felt Thomas’s hands on my shoulders. “Stupid risk, sis, sentiment or not. He could have always gotten you another one.”
Somehow I didn’t think so. “Come on. Let’s get out of here,” I said.
* * *
“This is the surveillance footage from the gas station three blocks from Ciel’s condo,” Mark said.
We were at my office, on the third floor of the building that housed my brother’s law firm (he owned it, of course), staring intently at my laptop screen. Thomas and Laura were with us. Thomas had tried to assure me his security system would have alerted him if anything were amiss, but I’d insisted on going there to see for myself it was okay. It wasn’t until I was seated behind my antique wooden desk that I stopped shaking on the inside. I drew comfort from its solidness, its age, its aura of permanence. Not everything had been ripped away from me. Something of mine was left, a small cave I could crawl into, where I could lick my wounds.
While we’d waited for Mark, I’d asked Thomas to put my pin in his office safe, fairly sure there was no place more secure in the whole city. If he and Laura thought it odd for me to put it away, they didn’t say anything. Maybe they figured wanting to protect it was an aftereffect of the shock of seeing the rest of my possessions ruined by fire, smoke, and water. Hell, maybe it was. All I knew was, I couldn’t wear it anymore, and I couldn’t let it go.
We all leaned closer to my laptop. I squinted at the grainy, black-and-white image. The camera was focused on the area in front of the cashier, but in the background you could see two of the pumps.
“There,” Mark said when a man approached one of the pumps on foot. He filled a gas can, using a credit card at the pump to pay.
“Is that…?” I said.
The man turned his head enough to catch his profile.
“Keep watching,” Mark said. The man glanced toward the camera, affording us a brief view of his whole face.
“Loughlin torched my condo?” I said. “But why?”
“Don’t know, Howdy. We can’t find any connection between him and you, other than your client. We’ve already put extra people on Dr. Carson, of course, but when we add Mason and Jenny together with Aunt Helen, it’s starting to seem more like it might be some sort of vendetta against adaptors. I don’t know if he has something particular against you, or if you’re just next on his list.” He looked me right in the eye. “I want somebody on you at all times. I don’t want you out in public without armed protection.”
I thought about protesting—it was almost a reflex at this point to argue my ability to take care of myself—but frankly, after seeing my condo, I was feeling a tad vulnerable. And, you know, not stupid. Plus, as much as I wanted to hyperventilate whenever I thought about it, there was the little bun in my oven to consider. So I nodded my agreement.
“What about Thomas and Laura?” I said.
“I’ve put people on everyone in your extended family, as well as everyone who attended the service. As for Tom and Laura…” He looked at Laura with a small smile.
Laura cleared her throat. “I’m actually pretty good at taking care of myself. I was trained by the best, you know.” She grinned at Mark, and glanced at Thomas.
“But you’re…” I said. “I mean, didn’t the doctor tell you not to, um, kick people’s asses?”
Laura laughed. “She said I was in great shape, and that unless I experienced any unusual difficulties, it was fine to continue my usual physical regimen for the time being.”
Huh. Good to know. I was going to assume I’d get much the same advice when I got around to seeing a doctor. Which I supposed I’d have to do soon, but frankly right now catching a killer was a little more pressing.
Laura patted Thomas’s arm. “And I promise I’ll watch out for this guy.”
Kudos to my big brother for not wincing at the idea of his pregnant wife guarding him. Clenched his teeth a little, but didn’t full-on wince. “Mark, remember when you said you could get me a gun and a permit and I told you not to be ridiculous? I changed my mind,” he said.
Mark nodded. “Done. Howdy, you still have yours, or was it lost in the fire?”
“I left it with Billy when I went to Houston.” I didn’t even trip over Billy’s name. I couldn’t stop my heart from beating faster, but my high collar probably covered the pulse in my neck.
“I’ll get you one for D.C.”
“No need,” I said. “I’m going back to New York tonight.” Because if I remained in D.C., Thomas would expect me to stay with him and Laura, and I couldn’t. I would adjust to being around their happy family unit eventually, but I wasn’t there yet.
“What have you found out from John Smith?” I said. “I’m assuming that isn’t his real name.”
“You can’t assume anything in this business, Howdy,” Mark said, his tone seasoned with a touch of teacher, which he then softened with a smile. “Though in this case you’re right. Ivan Petrovich is a second generation Russian American whose family never quite assimilated. If they’re as tied to the Russian mafia—Bratva—as we suspect, there isn’t much hope we can scare him into talking. Nothing we can do to him would be worse than what Bratva would do if he gives away anything.”
“Great. So he’s useless.”
Mark shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. If I can manage a moment alone with him—unofficially—he might be more forthcoming. In the meantime, I’m heading back to New York myself. You can come with me on the company plane. That way I won’t have to put another man on you until we’re there. Maybe Billy, if he’s finished with his business. Do you know if he will be?”
“I, uh, don’t know for sure. His business sounded pretty open-ended.” Ha. Totally true. I only hoped I didn’t look as uncomfortable saying it as I felt.
Mark cocked his head, a question in his eyes. I ignored it.
“You’re with me, then,” he said at last. “We’ll leave as soon as you’re packed.”
I quirked my mouth. “Ready when you are. Everything I have is in my carry-on in Thomas’s trunk.” An awful thought occurred to me. “Shit!”
Three sets of alarmed eyes drilled into me.
“What?” Mark said. “Tell me.”
I sank back into my cushy leather desk chair and let the misery engulf me. “I have to go shopping.”