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“No, I can get us home. Back to Phalen’s, I mean.” She pushed the start button for the engine. “And then… who the hell knows.”
THIRTY-ONE
WAITING WAS ITSown special kind of torture, Daniel decided as he paced around Phalen’s sleek, anonymous mansion.
Following an afternoon of toe-tapping and twitching, and a dinner that had been made with care but tasted like something that had come out of a truck stop vending machine, he’d started making rounds of the house. The route he established took him from the kitchen and private eating room, down by the library that was all closed up, past Phalen’s study, and into the bedroom, where Lydia was sleeping.
And back. And again. And again.
He told himself that at least he was getting a little exercise.
He told himself that the improvement in his stamina was a good sign.
He also ignored the shortness of breath, the way his right leg dragged, and how his stomach couldn’t decide whether it was hungry or nauseous.
His mindless gerbil activity had persisted even after Lydia had gone off for a snooze, and the kitchen had been shut down for the night. After Phalen’s obnoxious chef and his skeleton crew had left, it was just the guards and him. He had no idea where Gus and their hostess were. They hadn’t shown up to eat.
He hoped like hell the good doctor had stayed on the premises. There were three exits the guards let people in and out of: the front one of the mansion, the one that went out to the parking area for the lab, and the subterranean tunnel that headed out to the garage. Everything else was barricaded. So if he’d left, someone had to have let him go.
And driven him away.
Not an Uber, either.
Gus wasn’t the only one with departure on his mind. After dinner, Lydia had talked about going out to run the mountain. Daniel had sensed her restlessness as if it were his own, and he knew that she needed to let her wolf free. More than that, maybe she was safer there on the elevation. She was certainly faster on her feet—paws—than those robotic soldiers.
Not that she could out-bolt a bullet.
In the end, though, she had decided to stay put, probably because she was worried about him. And he decided it was okay because at least he knew where she was, currently lying down on their bed.
She was exhausted, and he hated that.
Maybe he’d been wrong to say what he had about Eastwind and the mountain… and her.
As he arrived at the foyer he looked at the sculptures set with a museum curator’s eye on the black-and-white-tiled floor.
“So much money wasted,” he muttered as he went over to one of the blobs.
Putting his palm on the abstract form’s bulges, he smacked it like a horse’s rump—because God knew the thing was big as a Clydesdale. The smooth marble was cold, and he supposed he had to give the artist credit. Lot of work to get rough stone to look like it was melted cheese.
On that note, he kept going across the checkerboard floor, and as he came up to the next major piece in the open space, he pulled another ass-smacker. This time, the sinuous form was painted with some kind of sealer that was so thick, there was no way of judging what the underlying structure was made of, and so shiny, he could see his own reflection.
“Helluva mirror,” he murmured as he cleared his throat and ran a hand over the new growth on his head.
Continuing on, and ignoring a sudden exhaustion, he nodded to the guard in the alcove, got no response at all—and thought about Candy the Receptionist’s nutcrackers. All this guy needed wassome gold piping on his uniform and a funky hat, and he was a prime candidate to bust some nuts.
In a figurative sense.
Bored of his established route, Daniel went to one of the library’s French doors and popped it open. On the far side, there was nothing but darkness, a shaft of light piercing in and carving a visual slice down onto the—wait for it—black carpet.
’Cuz the shit could only be that or white in this house.
As he entered the long, narrow room, he could smell the old books, even though he could only see the shadows of the shelves that ran up the walls. Considering how antiseptic the rest of the house was, he wondered why C.P. had the collection of first editions, given that they seemed to fly in the face of her shiny-and-new vibe. Then again, they were probably good investments?
Man, he was really getting tired. Maybe he needed to head to bed.
Closing himself in, he kept the lights off because the big plate glass windows that marked the far wall became portals for monitoring the back meadow. As he went to the view, he searched for shadows moving around the winterized pool. Then wondered what exactly he would do if an attack occurred.
Other than call for the guards.
