We drove to a very nice subdivision in a part of St. Louis where the yards are large, the houses larger. Some of the smaller yards had the biggest houses, as if the owners felt insecure and had to compensate for something. The driveway we finally pulled into was long and swept gracefully from the road to a house that was as big as any and had one of the largest yards I’d seen. From house to professionally landscaped yard the place breathed money and care, and didn’t seem to feel it needed to compensate for anything. The whole image was so perfect you knew the architect had worked with the landscaper to make the visuals, as if a magazine photographer should pop out of the shrubbery and put it all on the cover.
“You don’t smell surprised,” Nicky said, as we all got out of their rental.
I just shrugged.
Jacob blocked my way up the driveway. He studied my face. “Did you know the client’s address before we drove you here?”
“No.”
“Are you lying?” he asked.
I frowned at him. “No, I don’t know who your client is, and I didn’t know you’d bring me to one of our nicer new-money neighborhoods. But I did know it had to be someone with enough money to afford your kind of help.” The moment I said it, I was betting on Natalie Zell. Any woman who wanted to raise her own husband from the dead so she could chop him up with an axe then bury the pieces “alive” wouldn’t blink at a little kidnapping and the deaths of men she didn’t even know.
I heard Nicky close behind me and fought not to move out from between them. I never liked for my kidnappers to flank me, and really didn’t like shapeshifters this close when they meant me harm. “You’re crowding me, Nicky.”
“She smells like the truth,” he said, but was still too close.
Jacob nodded, but said, “Give her some room, Nicky; we don’t want to accidentally touch each other.”
He backed up a few steps, so that I followed Jacob’s broad back with Nicky trailing us. There was no talking, no questions; we just went for the front door. Nice that the client didn’t make us use the servants’ entrance. Did mansions have servants’ entrances these days?
“No questions,” Nicky said.
“No,” I said.
“Most people would have questions, especially women. They always talk too much.”
Jacob rang a doorbell that made a rich, melodious sound deep inside the house.
“You make a habit of kidnapping women?”
“Work is work,” he said.
“Sure,” I said. We waited to the tune of birdsong and someone’s lawn service in the distance using a large mower.
“They talk because they’re nervous,” he said.
“The only one talking is you, Nicky,” I said.
“I’m not nervous,” he said, but it was too quick a denial, and there was a tone in his voice.
“Liar,” I said, softly.
“Drop it, Nicky,” Jacob said. He straightened his shoulders just a bit, and I knew he’d heard something I hadn’t. A moment later the door opened and I was left staring at Tony Bennington.
Now I was surprised. “Son of a bitch,” I said. He’d seemed so much more sane than Natalie Zell. Just another grief-stricken husband trying to bargain with God to get his wife back, but I guess when God didn’t listen he’d bargained with someone else, something a little lower than heaven. When God ignores you, the devil starts looking good.
“That’s better,” Nicky said. “You really didn’t know.” But he said it soft from behind me and I’m not sure that the “client” heard him. I didn’t give a damn if he did.
“Welcome to my home, Ms. Blake.” He actually did that arm-sweeping gesture to invite us all inside. I fought a really serious urge to punch him in the jaw.
Nicky grabbed my right arm; my jacket and his gloves kept us from touching bare skin, but his grip was firm. He leaned in and whispered, “Hitting the client won’t help.”
“You saw me tense,” I whispered back.
“Yep.”
I started to protest that I wasn’t really going to hit Bennington, but I wasn’t sure it was the truth. I wanted to hurt him; I really did. Apparently all the nerves and fear that I wasn’t letting myself feel were going to translate into violence. Goody, that fucking worked for me.
Of course, with my anger the lioness started to creep forward in the metaphorical grass she was crouched in. I had to close my eyes and concentrate on my breathing. In, out, slow, steady; control the breathing and you control the emotion. When I thought I could look at Bennington without wanting to hit him, I opened my eyes.
He was looking at me, his gray eyes uncertain, like someone who had purchased a dog but hadn’t done their research, and now the dog was trying to eat the cat.
“I understand your anger with me, Ms. Blake. I am truly sorry it had to come to this.”
It was an echo of what I’d told him in my office. I was truly sorry for his loss; truly sorry I couldn’t help him. The echo didn’t help me keep the anger down; it flared again, and I felt Nicky’s hand tighten on my arm again. It helped remind me that my control was all that stood between my lovers and a sniper’s bullet. I had to hold it together for them.
“You want me to raise your wife as a zombie,” I said, and my voice was utterly empty. I’d started to fold away inside myself, going to that quiet place I went to when I killed someone not in a firefight, but when I stared down the barrel of a gun and pulled the trigger with thought and time to change my mind. It was the quiet inside my head when I had decided to take a life even if there was opportunity to save it. When I had decided that someone deserved to die, and my conscience was clear. I had one of those moments now, and it helped chase back the heat of the lions. It was a cold place, the place I went when I killed.
I pictured Bennington dead with my bullet in his forehead and it gave me comfort. It helped me smile and be calm.
Nicky let go of me. “She’s calm.”
“Yeah,” Jacob said, “calm the way Silas gets.” He was studying my face, and it wasn’t metaphysical abilities that let him understand my expression and the peacefulness in my eyes.
“You’re comparing her to Silas,” Nicky said. “Shit.”
I didn’t know who Silas was, and I didn’t care. I probably should have, but I didn’t. I forced myself to see the room beyond Bennington ’s face. When in danger, exits and entryways become important. The room was white: white carpet, white leather furniture, a slightly different shade of white wall. It was like they hadn’t been able to decide on a color so they didn’t choose one. The only color in that white room was a life-size portrait of Bennington ’s wife. She was still blond and beautiful, but the photograph showed that she was model thin, which meant too thin for my tastes, but no one had asked me. She was wearing a bright blue ankle-length dress that made her eyes a brilliant blue. She lounged on a rattan couch that was surrounded by lush tropical plants, some of them in crimson and pink blooms. It was the only color in all that whiteness. It loomed over the room like some kind of goddess on high, or maybe a shrine. Jesus.
As for the exits, there were huge glass doors on one side of the fireplace, and more of them scattered throughout the bottom half of the open great room. There was one hallway that led deeper into the downstairs, and a huge-ass staircase leading up.