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"You got a cell phone?" he asked the reporter sitting mutely near him. When she shook her head, Rio snatched the desk phone and typed in the hotel's landline. "What room number is this? The number, damn it!"
"Uh, it's 310," she replied. "Why? Who are you calling? Are you going to tell me what's going on?"
"Damage control," he said, about a second before the telephone started ringing.
He picked up the receiver, knowing it was Gideon even before he heard the slight English accent on the other end. "I'm calling on a scrambled signal, Rio, so speak freely. What's up? More importantly, where the fuck have you been all this time? For crissake, it's been five months since you went off grid. You don't write, you don't call...don't you love me no more?"
God, it was good to hear a familiar voice. Rio might have smiled at the thought but things were too far south on his end. "I've got a situation here - it's not good, my friend."
Gideon's humor vanished and the warrior was all business. "Talk to me."
"I'm in Prague. There's a reporter here with me - a female. American. She's got pictures from the mountain, Gideon. Pictures of the hibernation chamber and the glyphs on the walls."
"Jesus. How did she get in there to take pictures? And when? That cave's been sealed up since you guys were there in February."
Ah, hell. No getting around it. He had to just spit the truth out. "The cave wasn't sealed. There were some delays...I didn't secure the damn thing until today. After the pictures were taken."
Gideon blew out a curse. "All right. I'm assuming you've scrubbed her, but what about the photos? Do you have them?"
"Yeah, I have them, but here's where it gets worse, Gid. She's not the only one who's seen them. They've already gone out via e-mail to the paper she works for and several other inpiduals. If I could've contained this by scrubbing her, I would have. Unfortunately, it's bigger than that, my friend."
Gideon was quiet for a long moment, no doubt calculating the endless ramifications of Rio's fuckup, even though he was too much of a diplomat to list them off. "First thing we need to do is get you out of there and somewhere secure. The woman too. Think you can hold her until I can arrange a pickup?"
"Anything you say. This is my mess, I'm sure as hell going to do whatever I need to in order to clean it up."
Rio heard the vague clatter of a keyboard in the background. "I'm contacting Andreas Reichen in Berlin." There was a few seconds' pause, then Gideon started talking on another phone line back in Boston. He came back to Rio in no time. "I've got pickup for you and transport to Reichen's Darkhaven, but it might take up to an hour for his contact to reach you."
"That's no problem."
"Confirming now," Gideon replied, deftly handling the logistics like hauling Rio's ass out of trouble was nothing but cake. "Okay, you're all set. I'll call again when the transport is in place."
"I'll be ready. Hey, Gideon...thank you."
"No problem at all. Good to have you back, Rio. We need you, man. Things don't feel right around here without you."
"I'll report in from Berlin," he said, thinking that now probably wasn't the time to tell Gideon that he wasn't coming back into the fold.
His date with death had been postponed, but as soon as he had this current situation under control, he was checking out for good.
Chapter Seven
Dylan sat quietly on the bed and watched as the dark stranger confiscated her computer and camera, then rifled through the rest of her belongings. She had little choice but to stay out of his way. Her slightest movement drew his attention every time, and after the mind-boggling, warp-speed maneuver he'd pulled when he blocked her from reaching the hotel room door, she hadn't found the nerve to attempt another escape.
She had no idea what to think of him.
He was dangerous, no question. Probably deadly when he wanted to be, although she didn't think murder was foremost on his mind at the moment. If he wanted to harm her, he'd had plenty of opportunity already. Like when she'd been trapped underneath him on the floor, very attuned to the fact that she'd had more than two hundred pounds of hard, muscular male on top of her and little to no hope of throwing him off. He could have wrapped those big hands around her throat and strangled her, right there on her hotel room floor.
But he hadn't.
He hadn't acted on the other impulse that had so obviously occurred to him either. Dylan hadn't missed the way he'd looked at her, his eyes fixed intensely on her mouth. The very male response of his body as he'd straddled her had been swift, unmistakable, yet he hadn't laid a finger on her. In fact, he'd seemed about as alarmed by his arousal as she'd been. So, he apparently wasn't a cold-blooded psychopath or a rapist, regardless of the fact he'd stalked her all the way from Jicin to Prague.
So, what did that make him?
He moved too fast, was far too precise and agile, to be some kind of crazed survivalist or a garden variety vagrant. No, he wasn't either of those things. He might be filthy and ragged, one side of his face scarred from some horrific event she could only speculate on, but underneath all the grime he was something...else.
This man, whoever he truly was, was huge and strong, and dangerously alert. His keen eyes and ears missed nothing. His senses seemed to be tuned to a higher frequency than was humanly possible. Even if he was half insane, he carried himself like he was well aware of his own power and knew just how to use it.
"Are you military or something?" she asked, guessing aloud. "You talk like you could be. Act like it too. What are you, some kind of special forces? Ex-military, maybe. What were you doing on that mountain near Jicin?"
