“Thank you, Fritz, but I’m just going to sightsee. I have no destination.”
In truth, she was stir-crazy from being holed up in the house, and after the further good news from Doc Jane’s most recent blood test, she’d decided she needed to get out. Dematerializing wasn’t an option, but Qhuinn had taught her to drive—and the idea of sitting in a toasty car, going nowhere in particular…being free and by herself…sounded like absolute heaven.
“Mayhap I shall just call—”
She cut him off. “The keys. Thank you.”
As she put out her hand, she leveled her eyes on the butler’s and kept her stare in place, making the demand as graciously but as firmly as she could. Funny, there was a time, before the pregnancy, when she would have caved and given in to the doggen’s discomfort. No longer. She was getting quite used to standing up for herself, her young, and her young’s sire, thank you very much.
Going through the hell of nearly losing that which she wanted so badly had redefined her in ways she was still getting in touch with.
“The keys,” she repeated.
“Yes, of course. Right away.” Fritz scurried over to the built-in desk in the rear of the kitchen. “Here they are.”
As he came back and presented them with a tense smile, she put her hand on his shoulder, even though no doubt that would fluster him more—and, in fact, did. “Worry not. I shan’t go far.”
“Have you your phone?”
“Yes, indeed.” She took it out of the central pocket of her pullover fleece. “See?”
After waving a good-bye, she went out into the dining room and nodded at the staff who were already setting up for Last Meal. Crossing through the foyer, she found herself walking faster as she approached the vestibule.
And then she was free of the house entirely.
Outside, standing on the front steps, her deep breath of frosty air was a benediction, and as she looked up at the starry night sky, she felt a burst of energy.
Much as she wanted to leap off the front steps, however, she was cautious going down them, and also careful striding across the courtyard. As she rounded the fountain, she hit the button on the key fob, and the lights of that gigantic black car winked at her.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, let her please not wreck the thing.
Getting in behind the wheel, she had to move the seat back, because clearly the butler had been the last one to drive the vehicle. And then, as she put the key fob in the cup holder and hit the start button, she had a moment’s pause.
Especially as the engine flared and settled into a purr.
Was she really doing this? What if…
Stopping that spiral, she flicked the right-hand toggle upward and looked to the screen on the dashboard, making sure there was nothing close behind her.
“This is going to be fine,” she told herself.
She eased off the brake, and the car smoothly moved back, which was good. Unfortunately, it went in the opposite direction than she wanted and she had to wrench the wheel over.
“Shoot.”
Some to’ing and fro’ing happened next, with her piloting the car into a series of stop-and-gos that eventually had the circular hood ornament pointed at the road that went down the mountain.
One last glance at the mansion and she was off at a snail’s pace, descending the hill, keeping to the right as she’d been taught. All around, the landscape was blurry, thanks to the mhis, and she was ready to get rid of that. Visibility was something she was desperate for.
When she got to the main road, she went left, coordinating the turn of the wheel and the acceleration so that she pulled out with some semblance of order. And then, surprise, surprise, it was smooth sailing: The Mercedes, she believed it was called, was so steady and sure that it was nearly like sitting in a chair, and watching a movie of the landscape going by.
Of course, she was going only five miles an hour.
The dial went up to one hundred and sixty.
Silly humans and their speed. Then again, if that was the only way one could travel, she could see the value of haste.
With every mile she went, she gathered confidence. Using the dashboard screen’s map to orient herself, she stayed very far from downtown and the highways, and even the suburban parts of the city. Farmland was good—lots of room to pull over and not a lot of people, although from time to time a car would come out of the night, its headlights flaring and passing on her left.
It was a while before she realized where she was going. And when she did, she told herself to turn around.
She did not.
In fact, she was surprised to discover that she knew where she was going at all: Her memory should have dimmed since the fall, the passage of the intervening days, but even more so, events, obscuring the location she was seeking. There was no such buffering. Even the awkwardness of being in a car and having to be restricted to roads didn’t mitigate what she saw in her mind’s eye…or where her recollections were taking her.
She found the meadow she sought many miles away from the compound.
Pulling over at the field’s base, she stared up at the gradual ascent. The great maple was precisely where it had been, its stout main trunk and smaller arterial branches bare of the leaves that had once offered a colorful canopy.
Between one blink and the next, she pictured the fallen soldier who had been stretched out on the ground at its roots, recalling everything about him, from his heavy limbs to his navy blue eyes to the way he had wanted to refuse her.
Bending forward, she put her head on the steering wheel. Banged it once. Did that a second time.
It was not simply unwise to find any gallantry in that denial, but downright dangerous.
Besides, sympathizing with a traitor was a violation of every standard she’d ever had for herself.
And yet…alone in the car, with naught but her inner thoughts to contend with, she found her heart was still with a male who by all rights and morals, she should have hated with a passion.
It was a sad state of affairs, it truly was.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
Trez won the lottery at around ten-thirty that night.
He and iAm had been given front-facing rooms on the third floor of the mansion, opposite the restricted-access suite that housed the First Family. The digs were super-sweet, with en suite baths and huge soft beds, and enough antiques and royalty-worthy accoutrements to give a museum a case of the oh-mans.
But what made the accommodations truly outstanding was the roof they were under.
And not because there was a quarry’s worth of slate keeping the elements out overhead.
Leaning into the mirror over the sink, Trez checked his black silk shirt. Smoothed his cheeks to make sure his careful shave job had been meticulous enough. Jacked up his black slacks.
Relatively satisfied, he resumed the dressing ritual. His holster was next. Black, so it wouldn’t show. And the pair of forties he wore under both arms were well hidden.
Usually he was a leather-jacket kind of guy, but for the last week he’d been breaking out the wool double-breasted overcoat iAm had given him years ago. Slipping it onto his shoulders, he tugged the sleeves sharply, and shook his shoulders back and forth so the folds of black settled correctly.
Stepping back, he regarded himself. No signs of the weapons. And in his fancy-ass dress, there were no clues that his business was booze and prostitutes, either.
Meeting his own eyes in the mirror, he wished he was in a better field. Something classier, like…political analyst or college professor or…nuclear physicist.
Of course, that was all human shit he didn’t give a crap about. But it sure beat what he actually did for a living.
Checking his Piaget watch—which was not the one he usually wore—he knew he couldn’t wait any longer. He walked out into his bloodred room, with its heavy velvet drapery and its damask silk walls, his footfalls making no sound across the Bukhara that covered the floor.