32. Wren

CHAPTER 32

Wren

W hat in the world was I doing here?

The walls were ten feet high and topped with spikes. The lots on either side were empty, and I crept all the way around the perimeter of the sprawling estate, but the only way in was through the ridiculously ornate front gates. Which were guarded by a swarthy man in a small stucco building. Every so often, he looked up from the TV he was watching and glanced around, presumably checking whether there were any idiots he needed to shoot.

Even if I got inside, how would I find Caria? There were so many buildings. A huge main house, plus a detached garage, a pool complex, and what looked like a second, smaller home to the rear. She’d told me Laurent liked his space, but when I saw the residence for myself, my stomach sank. I could search there for a week and still not find her. While I considered my options, I huddled under the branches of a small, shrubby tree next to the gates, one that Laurent undoubtedly paid a fortune to keep alive. His priorities were whacked .

Stay or go? Stay or go?

I’d spent the drive over here trying to come up with a better solution, one that didn’t end in tragedy. But there was none. People had died already tonight—Lola, all those people in Blane’s apartment, probably Zion too—and the man I’d fallen for had scared me half to death. Was what he said true? That souls didn’t die, they got reincarnated? Because if it was, maybe death wouldn’t be so bad. Perhaps I’d have better luck the next time around?

A vehicle sounded in the distance, and I stilled. This road was quiet, with the home opposite Laurent’s in darkness—empty, judging by the foreclosure notice attached to the gates—and just a handful of properties farther into the desert. Was this why he’d chosen the place? For its isolation? So his dastardly deeds would go unnoticed and therefore unpunished?

Headlights hit me full in the face, and I screwed my eyes shut, praying the driver hadn’t seen me through the curtain of green. Please carry on, please carry on…

The sleek black car slowed.

Stopped.

The door opened, and my heart hammered so hard that I thought my ribcage would crumble.

Why?

Why was the driver getting out?

Oh hell.

Oh hell, oh hell, oh hell.

He was walking in my direction, backlit by the glow from the guard building. A tall white man with slicked-back dark hair, dressed in dark jeans and a fine knit sweater that might have been cashmere and probably cost more than my rent. He stopped right in front of me, his bearing confident.

“Are you okay in there, chérie ?”

Shit!

“Uh, yes?” I squeaked.

He tilted his head to one side, questioning, and as I tended to do in these situations, I began babbling. So much for marching through the gates to put a bullet through Laurent’s head.

“Okay, so I was on my way to visit a friend, and now that I got here, I’m not certain I have the right address. I was just trying to, you know, check? On my phone, I mean. The internet.”

“You walked here?” he asked, and he wasn’t American. French, maybe?

“No, my car, uh, broke down.” I jerked a thumb along the road, toward the centre of the city. “Back there.”

“I see. Well, it’s not safe to be out here on your own at night.”

No freaking kidding. And now I was kicking myself for not saying that a friend had dropped me off. A witness to my whereabouts.

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I should leave.”

Or at least pretend to. I couldn’t get cold feet. For Caria’s sake, I couldn’t .

“You’re one of Laurent’s girls?”

This man knew Laurent? Double shit. And also, girls? Plural? Several months ago, Caria had found a smear of red on his collar that she thought was lipstick, and he’d sworn blind that she was the only woman for him. Plus he’d claimed that the smear was blood, which now that I thought about it, was entirely possible. But from a shaving cut? Yeah, right. More likely he’d murdered someone, another poor, innocent woman who’d fallen for his dubious charms. But at the time, Caria had believed him, mainly because his facial hair grew weirdly fast and he always shaved twice a day.

“Laurent’s girls?” I asked.

The stranger smiled, and if he thought it was strange that I was skulking around in the undergrowth, he didn’t show it. If anything, he was looking at me as if I were lunch. He clearly thought I was here for one reason and one reason only, and although my heart ached all over again for Caria, at this moment, I had to be grateful that Laurent liked to stick his dick in things he shouldn’t. It gave me a plausible excuse.

“Come on—I’ll take you up to the house,” the stranger offered. “It’s only natural to be nervous on your first visit.”

Wait, he was offering to take me inside? All the way to Laurent?

Instinct screamed at me to run, but logic overrode my fears. I had to do this. Nobody else was going to save Caria.

“Really? I’d appreciate that.”

The gun weighed heavy in my pocket as I climbed into the shiny black Mercedes. It had Nevada vanity plates—ALPHA–so he lived locally and no doubt had an overinflated sense of self-importance. Classical music played softly, and the heavy scent of cologne accompanied the stranger as he slid back behind the wheel. Eight bullets. I was no hero, but I had eight bullets to end this, and no matter how friendly this man seemed, I’d shoot him too if he stood between me and Caria.

He gave a delicate sniff. “What’s that smell?”

“What smell?”

“That smoky, meaty aroma.” He glanced around. “Is one of the neighbours having a barbecue?”

Hell, it was me, wasn’t it? “Uh, I burned dinner before I left. Honestly, I didn’t realise the smell was clinging.”

And now I felt sick. I’d wiped the worst of the soot off my face with a handkerchief I found in the glove compartment, and my ripped clothes would hopefully pass as fashion, but there was nothing I could do about the stink .

“It’s making me hungry,” he said. Gross. “What’s your name?”

“Uh…” Dammit! This scenario hadn’t figured in my thoughts at all when I was brainstorming on the drive over. “Renata.”

He leaned over and took my hand, and my stomach flipped when he brought my knuckles to his lips. Why did hot men always have to act so sleazy? Okay, Blane hadn’t overstepped, but he didn’t count. He’d just lied about everything instead.

“Call me Rick. How long have you known Laurent?”

“Barely any time at all.”

“Where did you meet him?”

A hysterical giggle burst out of me because this was terrifying.

“Through a friend.” I mean, it wasn’t a total lie. In an effort to avoid an interrogation, I turned the tables back on my chauffeur. “Where did you meet him?”

“In Paris. We moved in the same circles there.”

“That’s where you’re from?”

“Did the accent give it away?”

“Uh, maybe? Are you here on vacation?”

“It’s more of a business trip. I’m diversifying my investments.”

Investments? This guy was definitely rich, not that I hadn’t already worked that out from the clothes and the car. And the fact that he was hanging out with Laurent. So, a wealthy, handsome psycho, then.

“Like, you’re buying companies?”

“Exactly.”

“What’s the last company you bought?” I asked, desperate to keep the conversation from turning toward me.

“The last company? A hotel in Italy, but now I’m planning to purchase a casino and a spa in California. ”

“I thought California only had Native American casinos?”

“The casino is here. The spa is in California,” he said. A moment later, the car drew to a stop outside the main residence, and my stomach lurched as Rick came to open my door. A gentleman psycho. “After you.”

The house was dark. Not literally dark—Laurent obviously didn’t care about his electricity bill—but the pale grey facade turned to graphite inside. The chandelier hanging in the entrance hall was a gothic monstrosity of twisted iron, and the light spilling from its fake candles glinted off the silver snakes writhing from the rails of the grand staircase ahead of me. They were made from metal, thank goodness, but still creepy as hell.

Rick waved me ahead of him and shepherded me into the bowels of the house, through a vast living room with a grand piano on a platform at one end. The macabre theme continued—a feature wall was painted blood red, the face of a horned beast hung above the giant TV, and a skull-shaped vase on the coffee table held half a dozen long-stemmed silver roses, their metal petals gleaming under another ornate chandelier. Caria had told me Laurent’s home was “a bit weird,” and that had to be the understatement of the century.

“Laurent likes the creepy stuff, huh?” I said to Rick. Anything to break the tension that threatened to seize up my lungs.

“His sister chose the decor.”

Delphine? I shuddered, both at the decor and at the memory of her soul being sucked out of her body. This place came straight out of a nightmare. I mean, Blane was the literal Lord of Hell, and he preferred peonies and paintings of dramatic sunsets.

“She lives here too? ”

“Laurent and Delphine are very close.”

“Don’t you need to call Laurent? We just kind of walked right in.”

“No need. He’s expecting you, isn’t he?”

“Uh, yes? Yes, absolutely.”

As we neared the rear of the house, I heard a familiar metallic clunk —a stack of weights falling into place on one of those machines you find in gyms. Dom always used to drop the weights like that—he said it gave him a sense of satisfaction, but his red-faced grimace gave the game away. He kept trying to bite off more than he could chew, and he just couldn’t hold the stack any longer.

I wrapped my hand around the butt of the gun in my pocket, ready, but what was I meant to do about Rick? I’d hoped to be alone with Laurent for the next part. What if Rick hung around? He seemed like a nice guy, and could I really shoot him in cold blood when all he’d done was give me a ride to the house?

And where was Caria? Okay, so I hadn’t expected to see her shackled to a couch, but there was no sign of her whatsoever in this immaculate monstrosity of a home. Was she in one of the outbuildings? Google had given me a rough layout of the property, and I’d glimpsed roofs over the wall when I did my circuit of the property earlier.

“Raph, I found this evening’s entertainment lurking outside. You should tell the girls to buzz the intercom.”

Laurent’s gaze landed on me, and it felt like a physical thud. Oof. His brows knit in confusion, and I nearly pulled the gun then and there. All I had to do was demand answers, and if he refused to give them, send him to meet his maker. Wait, was that Blane’s father? He’d been hazy about that part.

I inched the gun out of my pocket, then froze when a sickening thought hit me. Did this gun have a safety? If so, was it on or off?

I edged away from Rick, trying to put space between us, and someone up there must have granted a miracle because he helped me out.

“You’ve left sweat all over the leg press again.” Rick strode toward a stack of fluffy white towels sitting on top of a glass-fronted refrigerator in the far corner, and I realised Laurent had been lifting nearly the whole weight stack. Uh-oh. “Is it really too difficult to use a towel?”

“It’s my damn house. If I don’t want to use a towel, I won’t.”

Rick threw a towel in Laurent’s direction, but the hairy little sleazebag just batted it out of the way.

“What do you care?” he grumbled. “You don’t even?—”

I saw the moment of recognition. Caria must have shown him a photo. His head swivelled back to me, and he did a double take.

“ You. ”

I drew the gun in an instant, beyond relieved when it didn’t catch on the edge of my pocket. Where was the safety? I glanced quickly, but there was no obvious button, and I couldn’t afford to take my eyes off Laurent for too long.

“Where’s Caria?”

“How the fuck did you get here?”

“Wait, which one is Caria?” Rick asked. “The blonde with the attitude problem? Or the brunette with the big?—”

“The brunette is Carla,” Laurent snapped.

“Tell me where she is!” Hell, my hand was shaking, and the tremors ran all the way down my arm when his mouth curved into a sickening grin.

“ Mais oui , this evening is going to be very entertaining,” Rick said, chuckling .

Laurent took a step toward me, and I jerked the gun. “Don’t! Don’t come any closer!”

“Or what? You’re going to shoot me?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“That won’t happen.”

“You think? You kidnapped Caria, and you tried to kidnap me, so why wouldn’t I put a bullet in your head?”

“Because the safety is on.”

Shit.

I finally spotted the button and clicked it, but Laurent used my distraction to close the gap between us. When I looked up, he was barely three feet away.

I panicked.

Adrenaline took over, I panicked, and I fired.

Blood blossomed on Laurent’s chest, and he stared down in shock. “You shot me.”

“Like I said I would.”

“You little bitch.”

Then suddenly, I didn’t have the gun anymore. One blink, and it was gone. My hand was still out in front of me, but it was empty.

“That wasn’t very friendly, chérie ,” Rick said, and I realised he had the gun now. He was on the other side of the room, and I hadn’t even seen him move, but the gun was in his hand. How was the gun in his hand?

“Shoot her,” Laurent instructed.

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Why wasn’t Laurent on the floor? I’d shot him in the chest, but he was still standing. He’d barely even stumbled. He was bleeding, but I was the one whose knees were threatening to give way.

“Fine, I’ll—” Bad rap music interrupted him, and he angrily fished his phone out of his pocket and stabbed at the screen. The music stopped. “Fine, I’ll deal with her myself. ”

He reached for my throat, hairy hands outstretched, short stubby fingers ready to choke the life out of me. He was grinning. The sick bastard was actually grinning. Grinning and breathing rather than groaning in agony.

I…I didn’t understand.

And then with a sickening realisation, I did.

Blane wasn’t the only non-human who’d decided to make Vegas his home.

Who was Laurent?

What was Laurent?

The only thing I knew for sure was that I was going to die if I didn’t come up with a plan fast. Did Blane know Laurent’s secret? Had they come from the same place? And more importantly, could Blane kill him?

“We have Delphine,” I blurted. It was the only card I had left to play.

And for an all-too-brief moment, I thought it might have worked. Laurent froze.

But only for a second.

“Nice try, but you’re lying. Your nightclub boyfriend might be able to knock out an arrogant fool like Zion with a lucky punch, but Delphine has a team of armed men. Did you get lucky this time? What did you do, sneak down the fire escape?”

I couldn’t even recall seeing a fire escape, not from Blane’s apartment. Guess he didn’t consider it a priority when he could control fire.

“If I’m lying, then where is she?”

That gave him pause, and I could almost hear the cogs turning. Slowly, because although he had the ability to heal from a bullet wound, intelligence perhaps wasn’t his superpower. He appeared to rely on brute force instead of finesse.

But Rick… Rick seemed more ca lculating. I’d seen men like him at the blackjack table a thousand times over, and while they took risks, they also knew when to cut their losses. And while Rick might have been here with Laurent, the slick Frenchman didn’t seem to have much respect for his friend. No, he looked more amused by the situation than anything, and apart from taking my gun, he’d done little to help.

“Call her,” Laurent ordered him.

Was that an eye roll? I thought it was, but Rick still obeyed and held his phone to his ear. Nobody answered. From the length of time we waited, the phone was ringing rather than dead, and I pictured the scene in Blane’s apartment. The Hellions were probably still standing around, bickering over whether or not they should answer.

Rick hung up and shrugged.

“You don’t have Delphine,” Laurent said, but he didn’t sound quite so certain this time. “She didn’t go alone.”

“Is that you admitting you sent an armed team to my boss’s home to abduct me?” Dammit, I should have thought to record this conversation.

“They came to talk to you.”

“The only thing she said was ‘You should have kept your mouth shut,’ and then she ordered her men to grab me. Which clearly didn’t play out the way she hoped.” Wow, I sounded strangely confident, possibly because I had nothing left to lose. “Maybe next time, you shouldn’t send someone else to do your dirty work.”

“Delphine enjoys her job. And she’s good at it,” he added, and a little more confidence had ebbed away. “You’re just a whore who made a big mistake.”

More than one, if we were counting, but I couldn’t turn back the clock.

“You can call me all the names you want, but unless I walk out of here with Caria, you won’t be seeing Delphine again.”

“You’re bluffing.”

At Tilt, I’d occasionally helped out serving drinks when a shift needed filling—I’d had plenty of experience of bar work back in Cheyenne—and one evening, a slightly drunk high-roller had begun talking to me. Mostly about his marriage woes, but he’d also been celebrating a big win at the poker table, a game where he’d come back from the dead. When I’d congratulated him, he told me that when a man had little left to lose, fear took a back seat.

Now, I realised that applied to women too.

I met Laurent’s hard stare with one of my own. “Bluffing? Am I?”

Delphine was never going to answer her phone. Or if she did, she’d probably ask for crayons and a cookie.

“Call Delphine again,” Laurent told Rick.

But before Rick could dial, his phone rang, and a smug smile spread over Laurent’s face. He thought his sister was calling. Guess again.

“Yes… No, he’s tied up at the moment. … Uh-huh. … Okay, I’ll tell him.” Rick hung up. “You have a visitor at the gates.”

“That wasn’t Delphine?”

“Would I describe Delphine as a visitor?”

“Then who the fuck is at the gates?”

“He says his name is Lucian Blane, and he wants his girlfriend back.”

Oh. Shit.