Lover Avenged (73 page)

She hesitated when she got to the big drawer on the bottom left, not wanting to see what she’d stored there. But it wasn’t as though the locksmith could see through the damn thing.

Muttering a quick curse, she pulled on the brass handle and did not look at all the sections she’d kept from the Caldwell Courier Journal, each folded in on itself to hide the articles she’d read and saved even though she didn’t want to read them yet again.

She put that drawer as far away as she could. “Well, that’s the last one.”

With the male’s head wedged under the desk, his voice echoed. “I believe there’s a…I need my tape measure from my tool-”

“Here, I’ll get it.”

When she passed the thing over, he seemed astonished that she was helping. “Thank you, madam.”

She knelt down beside him as he ducked backed under. “Is something off?”

“There appears to be…Yes, this is more shallow than the others. Let me just…” There was a squeak and the male’s arm jerked. “Got it.”

As he sat up, he had a rough-cut box in his workworn hands. “I believe the lid flips open, but I’ll let you do it.”

“Wow, I feel like Indiana Jones, just without the bullwhip.” Ehlena lifted the top panel off and…“Well, no combination. Just a key.” She took the slip of steel out, looked it over, then replaced it. “Might as well leave it where we found it.”

“Let me show you how to put the hidden drawer back.”

The male left twenty minutes later, after the two of them had knocked on all the walls and shelving and molding in the room and found nothing. Ehlena figured she’d search around one last time, and if she still ended up empty-handed, she’d have him come back with his big guns to bust the safe open.

Returning to the desk, she put the drawers into their slots, pausing when she got to the one that held all the newspaper articles.

Maybe it was the fact that she didn’t have her father to worry about. Maybe it was the fact that she had some free time.

More likely, she was just having a weak moment in fighting back the need to know.

Ehlena took all the papers out, opening the folds and spreading them across the desk. All of the articles were about Rehvenge and the ZeroSum bombing, and no doubt when she cracked today’s edition, she would find another to add to the collection. The reporters were fascinated by the story, and there had been a ton of coverage on it in the last month-not just in print, but on the evening news as well.

No suspects. No arrests. Skeleton of a male found in the rubble of the club. Other businesses he’d owned now run by his associates. Drug trade in Caldwell brought to a halt. No more murders of dealers.

Ehlena picked up an article off the top. It wasn’t among the more recent ones, but she’d looked at it so much, she’d smudged the newsprint. Next to the text was a blurry picture of Rehvenge, snapped by an undercover police officer two years ago. Rehvenge’s face was in shadow, but the sable coat and the cane and a Bentley were all clear.

The past four weeks had distilled her memories of Rehvenge, from the times they’d been together to the way things had ended with that trip she’d taken to ZeroSum. Instead of time dissolving the images in her head, what she remembered was becoming even clearer, like whiskey strengthening over time. And it was strange. Oddly enough, of all the things that had been said, good and bad, what came back to her most often was something that female security guard had barked at her as Ehlena had been on her way out of the club.

…that male has put himself in a rat-hole situation for me, his mother, and his sister. And you think you’re too good for him? Nice. Where the hell do you come from that’s so perfect?

His mother. His sister. Herself.

As the words banged around her head yet again, Ehlena let her gaze wander around the study until it reached the door. The house was quiet, her father busy with Lusie and the crossword puzzle, the staff working happily.

For the first time in a month, she was by herself.

All things considered, she should take a hot bath and cozy up to a good book…but instead, she took her laptop out, cracked the screen open, and fired the thing up. She had the sense that if she followed through with what she wanted to do, she was going to end up going down into a deep, dark hole.

But she couldn’t help herself.

She’d saved the clinical record searches she’d done on Rehv and his mother, and as both of them had been declared dead, the documents were technically part of public record-so she felt less as if she were invading their privacy as she called both files up.

She studied his mother’s records first, seeing some familiar things from having previously scanned it, when she’d been curious about the female who had birthed him. Now, though, she took her time, searching for something specific. Although God knew what it was.

The recent notes that had been entered were nothing remarkable, just Havers’s comments on the female’s yearly checkups or her treatment for the occasional virus. Scrolling through page after page, she began to wonder why she was wasting time-until she got to a knee operation that had been performed on Madalina five years ago. In the pre-op notes, Havers had mentioned something about the degradation in the joint being a result of chronic-impact injury.

Chronic impact? On a female of worth from the glymera? That sounded more like what you’d get on a football player, for chrissakes, not Rehvenge’s high-bred chatelaine mother.

Made no sense.

Ehlena went back farther and farther through more nothing-specials…and then starting twenty-three years from the present she started to see the entries. One after the other. Broken bones. Bruises. Concussions.

If Ehlena didn’t know better…she’d swear it was domestic violence.

Each time, Rehv was the one who brought his mother in. Brought her in and stayed with her.

Ehlena went back to the last of the entries that seemed to indicate a female who was being abused by her hellren. Madalina had been accompanied by her daughter, Bella. Not Rehv.

Ehlena stared at the date as if some sudden breakthrough were about to come from the line of numbers. When she was still fixated five minutes later, she felt like shadows of her father’s illness were once again moving across the floors and walls of her mind. Why the hell was she obsessing over this?

And yet even with that thought, she followed an impulse that would only make her obsession worse. She cracked open the search on Rehv.

Back, back, back through the entries…He’d started needing dopamine right around the time his mother had stopped coming in injured.

Maybe it was just a coincidence.

Feeling half-crazy, Ehlena shifted over to the Internet and went into the race’s public-records database. Typing in Madalina’s name, she found the registry of the female’s passing, then hopped over to that of her hellren, Rempoon-

Ehlena leaned forward in the chair, her breath leaving on a hiss. Not willing to believe it, she went back to the record on Madalina.

Her hellren had died on the night of the last time she’d come in hurt to the clinic.

With a sense that she was on the verge of answers, Ehlena considered the matching dates in light of what the female security guard had said about Rehvenge. What if he’d killed the male to protect his mother? What if that security guard knew that? What if…

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the picture of Rehvenge from the CCJ, his face in shadow, his fancy car and his pimp cane so very obvious.

With a curse, she slapped the laptop shut, put it back in the drawer, and got to her feet. She might not be able to control her subconscious, but she could take charge of her waking hours and not encourage this craziness.

Instead of driving herself more nuts, she was going to go up to the master bedroom Montrag had slept in and poke around trying to find the combination to the safe. Later, she would have Last Meal with her father and Lusie.

And then she needed to figure out what she was going to do with the rest of her life.

“‘…suggests that the recent killings of area drug dealers might have come to an end with the likely death of club owner and suspected drug kingpin Richard Reynolds.’” There was a rustle as Beth put the CCJ on the desk. “That’s the end of the article.”

Wrath shifted his legs around to more comfortably support his queen’s weight in his lap. He’d been to see Payne about two hours ago, and his body was beat to shit, which felt really nice.

“Thanks for reading it to me.”

“My pleasure. Now let me go tend the fire for a second. We’ve got a log that’s about to roll out onto the carpet.” Beth kissed him and stood up, the pansy chair creaking with relief. As she went across the study toward the fireplace, the grandfather clock started to chime.

“Oh, this is good,” Beth said. “Listen, Mary should be coming in a minute. She’s bringing you something.”

Wrath nodded and reached forward, running his fingertips across the desk’s top until he got to the glass of red wine he’d been drinking. By its weight, he knew that he’d almost finished it, and given his mood, he was going to want more. The shit about Rehv had been bothering him. Badly.

After he polished off his Bordeaux, he put the glass down and rubbed his eyes under the wraparounds he still wore. It might be weird to keep the sunglasses on, but whatever-he didn’t like the idea that other people could look at his unfocused pupils and he couldn’t see them staring at him.

“Wrath?” Beth came over to his side, and he could tell by her tense tone that she was trying to keep the fear out of her voice. “Are you all right? Does your head hurt?”

“No.” Wrath tugged his queen back into his lap, the little chair creaking once again, its spindly legs wobbling. “I’m okay.”

Her hands brushed his hair from his face. “You don’t seem that way.”

“I just…” He found one of her hands and took it into his own. “Shit, I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

He frowned hard and tight. “It’s not about me. At least, not really.”

There was a long pause, and then they both spoke at once:

“What is it?”

“How’s Bella?”

Beth cleared her throat as if she were surprised by his question. “Bella’s…doing the best she can. We don’t leave her alone much, and it’s good that Zsadist has taken some time off. It’s just so hard that she lost both of them within days of each other. I mean her mother and her brother…”

“That shit about Rehv was a lie.”

“I don’t understand.”

He reached around for the Caldwell Courier Journal she’d been reading him, and tapped the article she’d just finished. “I find it hard to believe that someone blew his ass up. Rehv was no dummy, and those Moors who guarded him? That head of security? No fucking way they’d let some cocksucker with a bomb anywhere near that club. Plus, Rhage said that he and V went to the Iron Mask the other night to drag John home, and the three of them are working there-iAm, Trez, and Xhex are still together. Usually people scatter after tragedy. Except that bunch is right where they always were, like they’re waiting for him to come back.”

“But there was a skeleton in the ruins, wasn’t there?”

“Could be anyone’s. Sure, it was male, but what else do the police know? Nothing. If I wanted to disappear from the human world-hell, even the vampire one-I’d plant a body and blow up my building.” He shook his head, thinking of Rehv lying in his bed up at the Great Camp, so fucking ill…and yet well enough to have his assassin take care of the guy who’d wanted to kill Wrath. “Man, that SOB was there for me. He had every chance in the world to fuck me when Montrag met with him. I owe him.”

“Wait…why in the world would he fake his own death? He loved Bella and her young so much. Hell, he practically raised his sister, and I can’t believe he would ever hurt her like that. Plus, where would he go?”

The colony, Wrath thought.

Wrath wanted to tell his queen everything that was on his mind, but he hesitated, because he’d been flirting with a decision that was going to complicate the shit out of things. Bottom line was, that e-mail about Rehv? Wrath’s intuition was telling him the guy had lied about it. It was just too coincidental that the thing came in and the next night Rehv “dies.” It had to have been legit. But with Montrag dead, who could have-

There was a sharp crack and a free fall and a hard-ass landing.

As Beth shrieked, Wrath cursed. “What the fuck?”

He patted around, feeling splinters of old, delicate French wood all around them.

“Are you okay, leelan?” he said sharply.

Beth laughed and got up to her feet. “Oh, my God…we broke the chair.”

“Pulverized it might be more accurate-”

The knock on the door had Wrath struggling up to his feet with grunts of pain. Which he was getting used to. Payne always went for the shins, and his left leg was killing him. But it wasn’t like he didn’t return the favor. After this last session, it was quite possible that she was nursing a concussion.

“Come in,” he called out.

The instant the door opened, he knew who it was…and that she was not alone.

“Who is with you, Mary?” he demanded, reaching for the knife he wore on his hip. The scent wasn’t human…but it wasn’t a vampire.

There was a subtle clinking and a long, lovely sigh from his shellan, as if she were looking at something that pleased her greatly.

“This is George,” Mary said. “Please put your weapon away. He won’t hurt you.”

Wrath kept his dagger in the palm of his hand and flared his nostrils. The scent was…“Is that a dog?”

“Yes. He’s trained to assist the blind.”

Wrath recoiled slightly at the b-word, still struggling to accept that classification as pertaining to him.

“I would like to bring him over to you,” Mary said in that level voice of hers. “But not until you put the weapon away.”