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Reyes shifted his attention back to Engles. He’d be meeting with Sweet Dove soon. I think we’ve been summoned.
We’ll head in his direction.
But as they began to move, Angelica squeezed his arm. Reyes, I’m getting one of those visions again. What did you call them?
A revisiting vision. You mean about this place?
Nearby, in fact very close.
Reyes’s heart rate started to climb. Every time Angelica had experienced a vision, he’d learned something important.
Tell me which way to go. Engles will just have to wait.
Here to the left.
Reyes touched the wall, but the smooth crystal was a solid panel all the way across. I’m not seeing a door anywhere along here.
Reyes, my head is practically spinning. Can you shift to altered flight and pass through? What I need to see is on the other side of the wall.
I’ll take it slow. Even though Engles would probably come after them, Reyes moved slowly and passed into a series of rooms, a long hallway between. This looks like an accounting setup. Shit, Angelica, I think this is the Starlin Group’s main offices.
I think you’re right. Do you see the arched doorway at the end? We need to go there. Now.
Reyes followed Angelica’s directions, moving faster now. He felt it as well, a profound sense of urgency.
The archway led to a room with a long conference table and tall padded chairs. A wall of bookshelves opposite and a waterfall at the far left end told Reyes exactly where he was.
I’ve seen pictures of this place on the Starlin Web site. This is where the Board of Governors meets. He remained in altered flight, hovering at the end of the table.
This was the hub of the organization, in the outer offices and here in this conference room.
Reyes, I can’t explain it, but I think we’re close to Sweet Dove’s office. I have a strong sense of her, that the vision is about her but that we need to be in her space to see it.
Just tell me which way to go.
He felt Angelica grow very still. Pass through the waterfall.
Reyes’s heart pounded now as he put them both in motion. He approached the water, then passed through the solid rock wall behind it. When he reached the other side he knew he’d arrived at the end point of his mission.
Angelica confirmed his suspicion. This is Sweet Dove’s office. I can feel it with every bone in my body.
He set them both down on what proved to be an antique Turkish carpet over a gray-and-cream marble floor. His eye was drawn upward first, to a long, dangerous fissure in the carved rock ceiling above. If that kind of breach in the rock had been in any of his properties, he would have brought in an engineer to look it over.
But it wasn’t the tall ceiling that held his attention. Suspended from the rock, over the center of the space, was a large metal chandelier, made up of antique swords hanging free in places and welded together in others. A large antique desk with scrolled legs sat to the side, another waterfall adjacent. To the right of the desk was a chaise longue and a pair of black leather chairs.
This was a woman’s room.
He could feel that Sweet Dove had been here, even recently.
Angelica trembled in his arms. The vision was coming to her. “Reyes,” she said softly. “Why were we able to get into this room? Wouldn’t Sweet Dove have set up all kinds of security measures to keep people from flying in here?”
“Yes, I suppose she would.” He felt uneasy suddenly.
Angelica’s sudden swift intake of breath told him the vision had arrived. As soon as it ended, he’d get her out of the office.
Then his gaze landed on the very thing he’d been after all this time.
In the center of Sweet Dove’s desk sat a large laptop. He knew with every fiber of his being that the files in this computer held the information he’d need to destroy Starlin.
Chapter Three
Caught in the vision, Angelica saw Sweet Dove reclining on the chaise longue, fingering the curls at the top of her head. She wore a white linen dress of some kind and chatted with Engles.
He rocked the tumbler in his hand. “And all this time you were Scorpion. I’m dumbfounded, yet in a way, not surprised. You’ve always had a clever mind. But why have you told me now?”
“Because I’m drawing Reyes into my net once more, but he won’t be satisfied just being my slave. He insists on being my lover, and you were right, his ambitions are even larger than your own. You’ve done well, Engles, and I want to reward you properly.”
“Then make me a partner.”
Sweet Dove shook her head. “Not yet, but I may in time. Just keep serving me as you have been. And don’t pout. You’ll get your reward, the one you’ve been craving for three weeks now. Reyes has hardly touched her, you know. You would have loved seeing how masterful she was on my table.”
“I’ve enjoyed your retelling of the moment again and again. The images are very real in my mind.” Engles sipped his drink. “But how did you restrain yourself with Angelica? A slave, speaking to you in that manner? Addressing you as an equal?”
“I was thinking of you, of course. I wanted to kill her with my bare hands for standing up to me, but she’ll suffer infinitely worse in your care. That’s how I resisted the impulse to lay waste to her then and there.” Her small bow lips curved. “You’ll enjoy her immensely, Engles, and she will fight you to the very end, to her rasping, dying breath.”
Engles’s hand trembled and the ice cubes rattled.
It was hard for Angelica to stay connected to the vision when one of the principal players lusted to torture and kill her and the other clearly wanted her dead. But she stayed put, knowing that she would learn something vital.
Engles’s nostrils flared. “So you intend to make him your partner in Starlin, don’t you?”
“We’ll be partners in everything … eventually.”
Engles glanced at the desk. “I can’t believe you leave your laptop just sitting there.”
“No one can get into my office without my allowing it.”
“But it contains everything about our organization.”
Sweet Dove smiled. “Every particle of space surrounding my office is preternaturally charged. I repeat, no one can get in unless I will it so.”
Angelica didn’t understand. She knew that Sweet Dove had tremendous Ancestral power, and that if she said the space was secured through her power, then it was.
So how had Reyes managed to invade this room?
Then it all made sense: the revisiting vision had become the trap.
