Edge Of Darkness

60

Asher considered her in silence. Then he stood from the couch, crossed to the kitchen and laid the knife on the countertop. Looking down at it gleaming wickedly in the light, he said quietly, “There are a million ways someone can hurt another person, Ember, many of them unintentional.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “But something tells me this guy knows a lot of very nasty ways to hurt someone, all of them intentional.”

“Ash—”

“He’s beautiful, I’ll give you that. He might even be the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, and honey, that’s saying something. But he’s dangerous, too. All I had to do is look into his eyes when he was standing there in your bedroom and I could see it. I could feel it. He was ready to tear me limb from limb. All that beauty is worth diddly-squat when you’re dealing with someone dangerous. In fact, it makes him even more dangerous because you’re too busy ogling all the pretty to notice the poison he’s slipping in your drink.”

“Ash—”

“You’re a big girl and I’m not your father, but I am your friend, and I’m worried about you. I’ll let it go because I know you want me to, but remember I told you this, Ember; this guy has secrets. Secrets have a cost, they’re not for free. And whatever you do, don’t let him give you any s**t just because he looks like a supermodel. To paraphrase the great Violet Weingarten, life is too short to take s**t, or to be minding it. So be smart. Keep your eyes open. Keep your eyes wide open, you hear? And if you need me, you know where to find me.” He tipped his jaw to the front door. “I’m only a phone call away.”

Then he turned, made his way silently to the front door and disappeared through it, leaving her alone in the empty living room wondering exactly when everything had gone so insane.

Oh yeah: the night Christian walked out of the rain and into my life.

She sighed and scraped her hair off her heated face, holding her hands against her head for a moment while she mentally prepared herself to walk back into the bedroom.

But when she did, Christian was nowhere to be found. Only a small pile of ivory linen crumpled below the cracked open window was evidence he was ever there at all.

That and the note he’d left on the pillow. The note read, I’ll wait as long as you need. But time is precious. And so are you. Please hurry.

Time is precious. Again, that reference to time running out.

When Ember turned on her computer and began to do more research on this character Caesar, she got the first, faint inklings of what he might mean.

Caesar was thoroughly unimpressed with the drawing Marcell presented him with.

It wasn’t the quality of the work he found lacking, it was the subject itself. Shoulder-length brown hair, brown eyes, heart-shaped face, symmetrical but average features, the woman staring back at him from the drawing could have been one of a billion different women, all of them boring. A crust of white bread had more interesting things to offer.

“That’s her?” he asked, sorely disappointed. “She looks so ordinary.” He’d have thought a male of his kind would have better taste in human women, especially considering they were off-limits, on pain of death. Why risk his hide for that?

He shifted his gaze to Nico, who stood humbly beside Marcell with his eyes lowered, his hands clasped behind his back. “Does she have big breasts, at least?”

“No, sire,” replied Nico regretfully.

Caesar gave an exasperated sigh. “Great ass, great legs, statuesque as a runway model—anything?”

“She was just…normal, sire. About five foot four, average weight, average everything.”

Average. How depressing. Who was this rogue who’d killed two of his best men and had average taste in women? He handed the drawing back to Marcell. “Well. Just one more reason to kill the son of a bitch.” He dusted off his hands as if the paper had soiled them and instructed, “Get copies of that to everyone. I want to know who this girl is. If we can find her, we can find him. And she’ll undoubtedly be much easier to find than our rogue friend.” He smiled. “And might make him a little more inclined to comply with our demands.”

He sat back in his chair—really, it was more of a throne, high-backed and elaborately carved, cushioned in red velvet—and looked around the room in satisfaction. In spite of the problem with the rogue male, everything was going so well.

The place he’d settled after leaving Rome was a stroke of pure genius, if he did say so himself. With unobstructed views of the sprawling city below and the forested mountain range behind, the abandoned bunkers, remnants of the Spanish Civil War, were situated at the crest of a jutting outcropping of rock. The steel-reinforced concrete structures were crumbling in many places, graffitied by long-ago vandals as well, but afforded an excellent point of ingress and egress, easily defended.