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As if she’d asked to find him two years after she’d wanted to forget him.“I stopped a van of trained killers from coming after you.So pardon me if I don’t join in your pity-Perry party right now.”
“Can you at least tell me where we’re going?”
“Back to LA.”
“Where the Revelare is?Where at least three witch Senators are?”
“Where better to hide you than in a city of a thousand witches?Think of it as a layover before your final destination.”Which wouldn’t be Kradnovtl at this rate.A hard jolt shook her as the Hummer hit asphalt instead of packed sand.“First, we find you a shower and clean clothes.”His stomach growled loud over the smooth whir of the tires on the pavement.“And food.”
“Steak would be nice.A medium-rare Wagyu rib eye with a good bottle of wine.”He curved those lips into a smile.Not the mocking one he’d given her before.No, he flashed the same sexy-on-steroids smile he’d given her when she’d told him to stay put the night they’d met.Right before he’d ghosted her.Ugh.“It’s been forever since I’ve had a decent cabernet sauvignon.Maybe some mushroom risotto and truffle butter.”
On the run, and the man demanded five-star treatment.Not happening.“One fast-food burger coming right up.”
He closed his eyes.“Sounds great.”
His smart-ass agreement made her happy no matter how crazy that had to be.Mr.Big Shot Lawyer who seemed to have forgotten his escaped criminal status was a pain in the ass and judgmental as hell.Yet, they might work something out.Or at least not have her cousins burying him in the desert.
Two hours later, she showed Perry into his temporary home at the warehouse, bypassing the armed guards and warded security.It was an old industrial warehouse near the port, across the marina from the scorched earth that had been the prison a few days earlier.Drafty and creaky, the building was inferior in every way to the life he had known, yet the man had stared at the studio apartment like it was the Ritz.
Outside the room, Alys brought a stack of jeans, shirts, and underclothes.“Those Senate prison jumpsuits were the worst.So itchy.I pilfered these from Alexei’s they’re-not-stolen stash.Most look to be about the right size.”
“Thanks.”Balancing a sack of food and supersize soda from a twenty-four-hour drive-thru in one arm, Vori hugged the clothes to her.
“Good luck.”Her cousin headed toward the elevator, the dodgy one that worked sometimes and not others.
Fumbling with the food and drink and clothes, Vori knocked.
No answer.
“Perry?”She pressed her ear against the wood.There was no noise from inside, only the whine of the elevator and crash of the surf.
What if something had happened to him?He’d been fighting off the effects of heavy drugs, exhaustion, and possible dehydration and starvation when she’d found him.Fully capable of being difficult, but that wasn’t saying much for a man who could probably argue in his sleep.
She called his name again.“Is everything okay?”
She should’ve left a guard posted.Instead, she’d shown him into the room and left him in a strange place where he knew no one and had no way to contact the outside world.With powers he had trouble controlling.
Putting the drink and food on the concrete at her feet, she pounded on the door.“Perry?”
Silence.
She slid her fingers over the lock-picking tools hidden in her jacket.She shouldn’t.Except worry bloomed to fear because she’d brought him here.Granted, he could’ve been murdered if she’d left him in his cell, but he was a survivor.He’d told her that.He might’ve served an extra helping of electrical voltage to the kill squad.Or escaped on his own.What if she’d dragged him into her problems for purely selfish reasons?
“Hello?”Slipping her fingers to the knob, she twisted.It opened.He hadn’t locked it despite his suspicions of Alexei’s criminal association and the gun-toting thugs roaming the warehouse.True, she adored those thugs like family.But an outsider wouldn’t know that.
“Perry?”She pushed open the door, sure she would find him on the floor passed out from the drugs.Or worse.
She should’ve taken anything sharp or potentially dangerous out of the room before leaving him.He hadn’t broadcast suicidal intentions with his actions so far, but he also hadn’t made the wisest choice in following her.His time in prison, his apparent forced cooperation with the Revelare, his fall from what he’d been—those would send anyone plummeting into depression.
The bathroom door swung open, the light from within spilling into the darkness of the room.Steam billowed out.He stood there in nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist.The man might be all screwed up with his twisted past of colossal failures that overshadowed stratospheric success, but he was beautiful when cleaned up and backlit to perfection.
He had broad shoulders that must’ve filled out those lawyer suits like a male model, washboard abs that would’ve envied on photoshoots, and hair that apparently had been stylishly tousled in the photos of his past.Now, it was damp and mussed, like someone had run fingers through it during shower sex.
“Vori.”He tensed, those muscles bunching as though he would take flight or maybe toss her on the bed and act out some of the sexual fantasies speeding through her brain like the blinding flashes of overeager paparazzi.“What’s wrong?”
Words tangled on her tongue.She couldn’t react to him like this.He was a means to an unwanted end.Maybe not even that.“I knocked.You didn’t answer.I was…” What could she say?Worried his body couldn’t handle the drugs they’d pumped in him?Or that he’d hurt himself because he couldn’t face escape with a goblin?“You were…”
“In the shower.”
