Sara wiped at her tears with an edge of the blanket. “And where was Robert during all this? He’s supposed to take care of him!”
“He says he got a phone call from Parkland that his daughter had been in a car accident. The professor told him to go.”
“Let me guess. The hospital never called?” Lucas’s face was grim.
“No.” Michael said and then narrowed his eyes. “You said you think you know who ordered this?”
“He goes by the name of Adam Baylor. On the surface, he runs a brokerage house in London.”
“London?” Sara asked. “Do you think he was at Sotheby’s? Is that how he knew about the document?”
“He knew. He doesn’t like to be seen. He probably sent one of his henchmen to bid on it.”
Sara thought back. “There was a nervous young man there who bid on it. He kept looking back, but there wasn’t anyone there. Or at least not for long. I thought I saw a swarthy-looking person with a patch over one eye—” She stopped as Lucas hand stilled on her shoulder and then dropped. “What?”
“So he was there, then.”
Her eyes widened. “That was the man responsible for the professor’s murder?”
“You need to call the police,” Michael interjected.
Lucas sighed. “It won’t do any good. He cloaks himself in layers of protection. Whoever the hit man was, he wouldn’t know who really hired him.”
“How about Caldwell?” Michael asked. “I find it suspicious thatbothof you happened to show up so conveniently.”
“I asked Scotland Yard to run an Interpol check on him,” Lucas answered and smiled at Michael’s look of surprise. “Nothing definitive came back. He’s been involved in a few questionable disputes regarding some angry husbands, but nothing criminal. Anyway, Balor would never use someone who could be so directly identified. He’s far too clever to use mass communication, also, when he has other sources he can use.”
“What sources?” Sara asked.
Lucas grimaced. “The brokerage is set up to launder money and provide funds to terrorists. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran…the civil unrest in Lebanon and Nigeria…the pending oil problem with Venezuela…the drug cartels in Mexico…you name it.”
“But if you know this, why can’t the British arrest him?”
“Don’t think they haven’t tried. The open set of books he keeps is legitimate. He never deals directly with the funneling of the funds. Again, layers of protection. Even those who were arrested could only give the partial names of who had hired them.”
“But why does he do it?” Sara asked. “And why kill an innocent old man who didn’t have what they were looking for?”
“Because he can, Sara. Because he can. He likes inflicting pain and misery.” A hard, predatory look came into Lucas’ eyes and, again, she thought she saw the angles of his face change and narrow slightly and then the image was gone. “Some men are Satan’s own spawn.”
He didn’t have to tell her what would happen if the Hallows fell into this Baylor’s hands. She shuddered. He hadn’t been exaggerating. Civilization really would be destroyed.
From her perch on the mantel, Nim began to keen softly.
Chapter Six—The Search Begins
Lucas paced the floor of the bedroom in his host’s home, feeling as confined as the wolf would be in a cage. He hadn’t wanted to leave Sara alone, but her friend, Michael, had insisted on driving him back here. Damned honorable of him. Lucas hadn’t missed the guy’s attraction to her. He’d found Sara’s car keys in his pocket and he’d gone back to return them. At least the guy wasn’t there.
Not that he could blame McCain. It had taken every bit of centuries-old will power to convince himself that he was just being supportive, massaging her neck. What he really wanted to do was slide his hands down her arms and around her waist and pull her up against him. He’d cup and knead her breasts while he nuzzled her neck and kissed that vulnerable spot just below and behind the earlobe and then let his hands slide down her ribs to her belly and press her back… The wolf growled menacingly and he shook his head in agitation. Better not to think about Sara. The beast wanted out, hungry for the blood of the person who’d murdered the old man. Enraged, the wolf could easily mistake the powerful emotion of lust for something else.
And lust is what he felt, he told himself. Nothing else. Certainly not anything like love. There was no room in his long life for love, not when he had to recreate himself every fifty years and his lover grew old and withered away. Besides, he had allowed himself to love once—in only a worshipful way as a knight to his sworn lady—but the results had been disastrous on a whole fledgling nation. He became a hermit for a long time after that. And then he found the Templars.
Still, Sara was powerfully alluring. Her body was soft curves that he wanted pressed against him while he ran his hands through the cloud of silken hair. With the wolf’s keen nose, he could pick up her unique womanly scent from across the room.And yesterday had been nearly overpowering. Grief did that, he supposed. Her shields had been down.
And that surprised him too. He’d blocked McCain’s mind probe, but it had channeled through her. There was something a little bit mysterious about Sara. The herbs he’d found—he hadn’t seen crushed mistletoe since the Druids worshipped in oak groves. The symbols of the Sacred Feminine—as the goddess Brighid was referred to in these times—scattered around her apartment suggested something that ran deep below the surface of personality and beautiful looks. He’d known the faerie, Nimue, since Arthur’s time. She didn’t attach herself to anyone unless they had a Gift.
He paused in his pacing and thought of his sister, Brighid, the bestower of Avalon’s Gifts. The painting on Sara’s wall had startled him, for it was a rendering of Avalon, a place he didn’t know if he would ever see again. He had lost his own sun-god divinity when he came to Earth, so only Brighid could part the mists for him now. And with the Christians, Muslims and Jews at each other’s throats around the world, the gentler teachings of the Goddess path were receding deeper into shrouded veils of secrecy.
It was a bloodthirsty world, this twenty-first century. The Mongols, Romans, Huns, and Saxons had been brutal. The World Wars and Vietnam had taken lives, but this… This was Balor’s triumph. He had finally gotten the perfect combination. Suicidal terrorists in countries that had the capabilities for weapons of mass destruction.
