Rapture's Edge

33

All we know for sure is that she saw the three of us standing over her dead father who was lying on the floor with a bullet in his head.” He paused, gazing at them with a new intent. “And the male she may or may not have been in love with had a gun in his hand. How do you think that would change you?”

They didn’t answer. They didn’t have to. Each one of them knew they’d be changed by that experience, and not for the better.

“Is he planning on trying to bring her back here?” Lix asked Constantine, who just shook his head.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say. I’m not sure if he even had a plan, other than getting her away from the police.”

“Okay.” Celian took his seat at the table. “Any ideas where he might take her once he did that? Assuming they’re not coming back here?”“He’d need shelter, food,” Constantine said slowly, thinking. “And if Eliana is injured, somewhere with medical supplies. Somewhere he could lay low until he figured out a plan.”

“Somewhere like a safe house. Probably one not too far from the prison,” said Lix, and they both turned to him. He looked back at them, a lock of black hair obscuring one eye, and suddenly Celian had an idea where D might have gone.

He said, “I’m going to need another phone.”

A subtle hum in his blood, a thrill along the nerves in his spine; D felt it the instant Eliana awoke.

He froze, an oiled chamois cloth in one hand, the muzzle of his Glock in the other, taken completely by surprise.

That she was awake so soon, that is. The sedatives he’d given her should have been strong enough to knock out a male twice her size, for twice as long. He’d given her an extra dosage because he had to be certain she didn’t wake up during the surgery to remove the bullet from her hip and sew her up, but—

A loud thump from below. Then another. D glanced at the floor beneath his feet. In one of the bedrooms one level below Eliana was awake, and judging by the sound—another ominous thump, this one accompanied by a shiver in the floorboards and the unmistakable crash of breaking glass—she was less than happy.

Damn. He really shouldn’t have left that crystal vase in her room.

He’d picked flowers from the garden outside, had thought it might please her to see the pretty bouquet when she awoke, but now it seemed like a very stupid, obvious mistake. That heavy crystal vase would make an effective weapon if applied with force against the side of his head. He preferred to keep his skull intact, but if the noise coming from downstairs was any indication, she might have other plans.

He made a quick mental inventory of her room: two more vases, desk, chair, flat-screen television…all could definitely be bad for the future state of his head.

He set the gun and the cleaning cloth on the table and wiped his fingers carefully on a dish towel to rid them of the oil, trying to ignore the very slight, sudden shaking in his hands. His heartbeat had picked up, too, irregular spikes that almost painfully pounded against his ribcage. He breathed in slowly, trying to calm himself.

He’d been awaiting this moment for three years, and now that it was here, he felt like a schoolgirl—dry mouth and trembling knees and a stomach full of dancing butterflies.

“Get a grip on yourself, soldier,” he muttered, throwing the towel on the table with a flick of his hand. He rose and made his way through the kitchen, the living room, the media room, everything done in masculine shades of charcoal and black and brown, Spartan as the assassins who’d previously owned this safe house liked it. They kept one just like it in every major city across the globe, for occasions such as this, and today he was thankful for it.