“You shall find out soon enough.”
Blay nodded, but it was with that vital distraction that he had had since the very beginning. Except then he said, “I’m glad you’re here.”
Saxton’s brows rose. “Indeed…?”
“Wrath should have a really good lawyer at his side.”
Ah.
Saxton pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “Yes. How true.”
It was with a strange feeling of fragility that he gathered his reams of papers. It certainly seemed, in this tense, sad moment, as though they were all that sustained him, these flimsy, yet powerful sheets with their countless words, each handwritten and crafted with care, contained neatly in their lines of text.
He did not know what he would do without them on a night like this.
He cleared his throat. “What plans have you for what little remains of the eve?”
As he waited for the reply, his heart pounded within his rib cage, because he, and he alone, seemed to realize that the assignment from the king wasn’t the only thing that was ending tonight. Indeed, the baseless optimism that had sustained him in the initial stages of this love affair had decayed into a kind of desperation that had had him grasping at straws in an uncharacteristic way…but now, even that was gone.
It was ironic, really. Sex was but a transient physical connection—and there were many times in his life when that had been all he’d been looking for. Even with Blaylock, in the beginning, such had been the case. Over time, however, the heart had gotten involved, and that had left him where he was tonight.
At the end of the road.
“…work out.”
Saxton shook himself. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m going to work out for a while.”
After you’ve had a decanter of port? Saxton thought.
For a moment, he was tempted to push for precise details on the night, the minute whos and whats and wheres—as if they might unlock some sort of relief. But he knew better. Blay was a compassionate, kind soul, and torture was something he did only as part of his job when it was necessary.
There would be no relief coming, not from any combination of sex, conversing, or silence.
Feeling as though he were bracing himself, Saxton buttoned his double-breasted blazer up and checked that his cravat was in place. A passby of his pectoral revealed his pocket square was precisely arranged, but the French cuffs of his shirt need a sharp tug, and he took care of that promptly.
“I must needs take a break before I prepare to speak with the king. My shoulders are killing me from having been at that desk all night.”
“Have a bath. It might loosen things up?”
“Yes. A bath.”
“I’ll see you later, then,” Blay said as he poured himself another and came over.
Their mouths met in a brief kiss, after which Blay turned and strode out into the foyer, disappearing up the stairs to go change.
Saxton watched him depart. Even moved forward a couple of steps so that he could see those shitkickers, as the Brothers called them, ascend the grand staircase one step at a time.
Part of him was screaming to follow the male up into their bedroom and help him out of those clothes. Emotions aside, the physical sizzle between the two of them had always been strong, and he felt like he wanted to exploit that now.
Except even that Band-Aid was fraying.
Going over and pouring himself a sherry, he sipped it and went to sit before the fire. Fritz had refreshed the wood not long ago, and the flames were bright and active over the stack of logs.
This was going to hurt, Saxton thought. But it wasn’t going to break him.
He would eventually get over this. Heal. Move on.
Hearts were broken all the time….
Wasn’t there a song about that?
The question was, of course, when did he talk to Blaylock about it.
NINE
The sound of cross-country skis traveling over snow was a rhythmic rush, repeated at a quick clip.
The storm that had drifted down from the north had cleared after dawn, and the rising sun that shone beneath the lip of the departing cloud cover sliced through the forest to the sparkling ground.
To Sola Morte, the shafts of gold looked like blades.
Up ahead, her target presented itself like a Fabergé egg sitting on a stand: The house on the Hudson River was an architectural showpiece, a cage of seemingly fragile girders holding stack upon stack of countless panels of glass. On all sides, reflections of the water and the nascent sun were like photographs captured by a true artist, the images frozen in the very construction of the home itself.
You couldn’t pay me to live like that, Sola thought.
Unless it was all bulletproof? But who had the money for that.
According to the Caldwell public records department, the land had been purchased by a Vincent DiPietro two years before, and developed by the man’s real estate company. No expense had been spared on the construction—at least, given the valuation on the tax rolls, which was north of eight million dollars. Just after building was completed, the property changed hands, but not to a person: to a real estate trust—with only a lawyer in London listed as trustee.
She knew who lived here, however.
He was the reason she’d come.
He was also the reason she had armed herself so thoroughly. Sola had lots of weapons in easy-to-reach places: a knife in a holster at the small of her back, a gun on her right hip, a switch hidden in the collar of her white-on-white camo parka.
Men like her target did not appreciate being spied on—even though she came only in search of information, and not to kill him, she had no doubt that if she were found on the property, things would get tense. Quick.
As she took her binocs out of an inside pocket, she kept still and listened hard. No sounds of anything approaching from the back or the sides, and in front, she had a clear visual shot at the rear of the house.
Ordinarily, when she was hired for one of these kinds of assignments, she operated at night. Not with this target.
Masters of the drug trade conducted their business from nine to five, but that would be p.m. to a.m., not the other way around. Daytime was when they slept and fucked, so that was when you wanted to case their houses, learn their habits, get a read on their staff and how they protected themselves during their downtime.
Bringing the house into close focus, she made her assessment. Garage doors. Back door. Half windows that she guessed looked out of the kitchen. And then the full floor-to-ceiling glass sliders started up, running down the rear flank and around the corner that turned to the river’s shoreline.
Three stories up.
Nothing moving inside that she could see.
Man, that was a lot of glass. And depending on the angle of the light, she could actually see into some of the rooms, especially the big open space that appeared to take up at least half of the first floor. Furniture was sparse and modern, as if the owner didn’t welcome people loitering.
Bet the view was unbelievable. Especially now, with the partial cloud cover and the sun.
Training the binocs on the eaves under the roofline, she looked for security cameras, expecting one every twenty feet.
Yup.
Okay, that made sense. From what she’d been told, the homeowner was cagey as hell—and that kind of relentless mistrust tended to be accessorized with a good dose of security-conscious behavior, including but not limited to personal guards, bulletproof cars, and most certainly, constant monitoring of any environment the individual spent any amount of time in.
The man who’d hired her had all those and more, for example.
“What the…” she whispered, refocusing the binoculars.