She flinched at the truth in his words. No one had ordered her to throw herself at Seth Mackey today, and with such enthusiasm that he had mistaken her for a professional sex worker.
The thought was so ludicrous that she started to giggle. She swallowed back the convulsions in her throat with a strangled cough.
“Are you all right, my dear? Shall I get you a glass of cognac?”
“No, thank you, I'm fine.” Oh, there it was again. The pirate queen would not say “I'm fine” while being forced to walk the plank.
Victor crossed his leg over his knee and swung his foot in front of him. “Forgive me if I startled you. I came here for a reason.” She stiffened. “And that would be?”
“I am interested in your opinion of Seth Mackey. He is a relative unknown, and personally, I find him rather opaque. I am entrusting him with an extremely sensitive project, you see. I thought perhaps that your, ah, unique point of view might yield some other insights.”
Raine tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry “No,” she croaked. “No insights. Not a one.”
He tapped a long, slim cigarette out of a silver case. “None?”
She shook her head so emphatically that the makeshift knot of hair bobbed and slid down to the nape of her neck. She pulled out the sticks. The bun unraveled down her back. “None,” she repeated.
Victor's eyes flicked down, observing her white-knuckled hand He lit his cigarette. “You should be more observant, my dear.”
“Should I?” Her fingers tightened around the stick until the faceted crystal beads dug painfully into her palm.
He blew out a long, thin, stream of smoke, his eyes pale, glittering slits. “The poet William Meredith once said... 'the worst that could be said of any man was that he did not pay attention.'“
An image of her dreamy, inattentive father superimposed itself upon Victor's face. A buried ember of old anger began to glow inside her. “I can think of worse things that could be said,” she said flatly.
Victor's eyes flashed. He tapped his cigarette into the heavy crystal ashtray on the telephone table. “Can you?”
Raine struggled to keep her face composed.
He stared straight into her eyes for what seemed like forever. “I expect you to exert yourself a bit more on the next occasion.”
His offhand tone fanned the ember inside her into a white-hot glow. “Are you ordering me to have sex with Seth Mackey, spy on him, and report back to you?” she demanded.
Distaste flitted across Victor's face. “I detest crass overstatement.”
“I have not even begun the crass overstatements,” she hissed. “You listen carefully, Mr. Lazar. One, there will be no other occasion, because I do not want to see Seth Mackey ever again. And two, I would never spy on a person I was intimate with. Never.”
Victor took a final draw on his cigarette and crushed it out briskly. “I love the conviction with which young people use the word 'never.'“
Her fists clenched at his patronizing tone. “It's very late. I'm afraid I have to ask you to leave. Right now.”
Her voice broke, spoiling the effect. She held her breath, half hoping he would fire her. She would be off the hook—at least until the tombstone dream started burning holes in her sanity again.
But this time, when it did, she would be out of ideas.
Victor stood up and pulled his overcoat out of the closet.
It had worked. He was leaving. Giddy triumph emboldened her. She decided to push her luck. “And Mr. Lazar?”
“Yes?” He paused, eyebrows raised.
“I would appreciate it if you would not make yourself at home in my private space. I want to be the only person in possession of a house key.” She held out her hand.
His eyes glittered with fierce amusement “Let me give you some advice, Raine. Don't waste your time and energy clinging to an illusion of control. You'll only exhaust yourself.”
She kept her hand out. “It's my illusion, and I'm clinging to it.”
Victor chuckled. He pulled a key out of the pocket of his overcoat and held it out on the palm of his hand.
She plucked it off his palm with the tips of her fingers, and yelped as his fingers snapped around her hand, like a sprung trap.
Dream memories of Victor's heavy arm squeezing the air out of her lungs thundered through her mind. She pulled on her throbbing hand, trying not to panic. Out of nowhere, Seth's voice echoed in her mind. It's all about power in the end, angel And if you don't know that by now, it's time you learned. She seized onto those harsh words as if they would save her life. Maybe Seth was right. Those were the rules of this nightmare world. She had to master them. Until she did, all she could do was command her own small, frightened self as well as she was able. The roaring in her ears subsided, and her vision cleared. Her trapped hand still hurt, but it was bearable.
She looked into his eyes without blinking. “Good night, Victor.”
To her surprise, he let her go, and nodded at her with what looked almost like approval. “Excellent,” he said softly. “Good night, Raine.”
The door thudded shut behind him, and she lunged for the door, slamming in the deadbolt. She slid down against the ornately carved mahogany door until she was crumpled on the floor and gave way to deep, wrenching sobs. Seventeen years of saying no-really-I'm-fine until it was automatic, and it took a day like today to show her how foolish and vain all her efforts had been.
Don't cling to an illusion of control, Victor had said. It's all about power in the end, angel. Their mocking voices echoed in her head as the pitiless reality bore down on her. She had no power, no control, no illusions. She was over her head in wild white water and sinking fast. She controlled nothing; not her mind, her heart, her dreams, not even her own body. Seth had demonstrated that to her this afternoon, ruthlessly, over and over again.
Her sobs quieted to a numb silence. She pressed her face against her knees, and began to pray; she wasn't sure to whom. She wasn't at all positive there was a God, but she definitely believed in the opposing forces of good and evil. She might not have power, or control, or even a plan, but she was here in search of the truth, for her father's sake.
She was here for love. That had to count for something. In any case, it was all she had, and she was clinging to it with all ten fingernails.
The security on Lazar's town house was considerably tighter since Seth and the McCloud brothers had burgled it four months before. The increased security wasn't much of a challenge, though, considering how he and his team had rigged the data retrieval. It was almost too easy.
Seth thought about that first burglary raid as he slid through the bushes like a shadow, far out of range of the infrared motion detectors. He shouldn't have been thinking at all; he should be in the zone of pure focus, but anything was better than thinking about Raine.
He'd been surprised at how smoothly the four of them had worked together to coordinate the electronic assault upon Victor Lazar; the planting of the vidcams, phone transmitters, laser gulpers, and wall resonator mikes, all while staging a simulated burglary. They'd worked like swift, silent parts of the same machine, no ego in the way, thoughts running on the same groove. Quick learners, too, even though they weren't trained gearheads like him. A good team. They saved their annoying personality quirks for their leisure time.
He fumbled in the darkness as he set the microwave frequency he needed to activate the resonant bug in Lazar's office. He tuned the receiver for the return broadcast, cursed behind his teeth when he got it wrong, and entered it again. He was going to have to hurry to finish inside the time frame he had set himself. He hated hurrying.
He'd run through the routine, visualizing every move in advance, but he needn't have bothered. His concentration was blasted to shards. A nighttime data sweep was a sneaky, ninja-type job that usually chilled him, but it wasn't working tonight. His brainwaves weren't smoothing into undulating alpha curves; they were as jagged as the teeth of a broken pocket comb. Every muscle in his body was rigid; his head and neck and balls all ached, and every time he started to calm down another phalanx of sexual images would roll over him, leaving him breathless and flattened.