Black On Black (Quentin Black Mystery #3) (41 page)

“Oh, and by the way...
 
don’t ever threaten me or any member of our shared race with exposure to the human authorities again.” Those cold eyes met mine. “Miri, dearest. I love you more than life itself, but trust me when I say these words...
 
I will go to lengths you would not fucking
believe
to keep that exposure from happening. Do not test me on that particular point again. Ever.”

I opened my mouth to answer, but he disappeared into the van.

The sliding door slammed shut.

The seer who had been spraying that chemical on the stone courtyard climbed into the shotgun seat up front, slamming the door behind him, too.

Then they pulled away from the curb.

Nick, Angel, Black and I just stood there, watching them go.

Eighteen

NOT GOING TO TALK

THE FLIGHT HOME was relatively uneventful.

Black managed to procure seats in first class for all four of us.

Angel slept most of the way there, leaning on Nick’s shoulder with the unhurt side of her face. I sat on Nick’s other side, only with an aisle between us. Black slept on me...
 
in fact, he fell asleep within minutes of the fasten seat belts light going off and more or less in my lap.

I was a little blown away at how fast he went down, even with what my uncle said about how long it had been since he’d slept. He didn’t even ask. The light went out and he unbuckled his belt, stretched out his legs and slid his upper body onto my thighs. Wrapping an arm around my leg, he used it as a cushion for his face and basically passed out.

I practically felt him lose consciousness as I stroked his hair.

When I glanced up I saw Nick staring down at his face, a scowl touching his full lips.

“Nick.” I shook my head in warning when he glanced up. “Don’t. Just don’t, okay?” Pausing, I changed the subject. “What did Jean say? Your friend?”

Nick shrugged, his face expressionless as he stared straight ahead.

“Not much.” His expression grew flat. “You were right. He had no memory at all of either of the guys they had in custody. He remembered me saying we’d be in town looking for someone we suspected had been taken against his will...
 
possibly due to some form of blackmail. He wanted to know if we’d found our guy.”

“What did you tell him?”

Nick let out a disbelieving snort, meeting my gaze.

“I said we found him. What else could I say? I said he was okay. I also said I’d share any relevant information when we got back to the States, after we’d debriefed Black...
 
but there isn’t going to be any relevant information, is there, Miri?” At my silence, he exhaled, shrugging. “Anyway, he knew he was getting the brush off. I’m pretty sure he thought it was an administrative thing...
 
nothing to do with me, or Black himself.” He jerked a chin in Black’s direction, his mouth pursed. “What about him? He say anything?”

“Nothing I can share here,” I muttered.

Nick’s gaze sharpened, right before he leaned towards me across the aisle, speaking in a low murmur. “You’re going to tell us though, right, doc?” He gauged my expression, his dark eyes serious. “Angel and me, we’re not going to magically ‘forget’ the last few weeks too, are we? Or our little vacation to Paris? You’re not going to let Black ‘clean up’ with us?”

I gave him a flat look.

Seeing the answer in my face, Nick exhaled in a frustrated sigh that also held some relief, right before he combed his fingers through his hair. That time, he looked directly at Black’s face. I saw anger in his expression, along with a look of near powerlessness.

“You saw what he did?” Nick said, his voice accusing.

I frowned, looking down at Black.

He’d still been covered in blood when we got him into the van.

Ian’s blood.

We’d had to clean both of us up on the way to the hotel and then on the way to the airport. He borrowed a clean shirt from Nick’s suitcase, which hadn’t thrilled Nick. As for Black himself, he hadn’t said much about why he did it.

Then again, he didn’t need to. I knew why he’d done it.

Moreover, I honestly wasn’t sure if I disagreed with him.

“Unarmed,” Nick said. “Shackled. Fucker didn’t hesitate.”

“I saw.” My fingers massaged Black’s shoulder.

I felt him soften the longer I touched him, sinking into me further, opening himself to me more. Everything about him exuded contentment. The feeling was so tangible I swallowed, fighting back an emotional reaction, and not only because most of that contentment felt directly related to me. I knew he’d recently murdered someone with his bare hands. I knew that, and I knew it should trouble me...
 
but the reality of what he’d done contrasted so much with the man now curled up in my lap, I had trouble reconciling the two things.

After a few more seconds, I stopped trying.

I looked back at Nick.

“You don’t know what he went through.” I heard the defensiveness in my own voice, but shoved that aside, too. “You don’t know what my uncle put him through these past few months. What Ian put both of us through. Not just here. In Bangkok, too. You didn’t see...” I glanced up and down the aisle, then looked at Nick. “Kids, Nick. In Bangkok. He went after
children
, all to leave some kind of twisted message for Black...”

Seeing Nick frown, I swallowed, shrugging again.

“There’s no way Ian would have been stopped in the usual ways,” I said, softer. “There’s no way we could have trusted my uncle to take care of it, either. He probably would have just set him loose again...
 
maybe even to go after Black. He obviously isn’t happy Black and I are together. He would have used Ian against us again. Black knew that.”

Nick nodded. I could tell from his eyes he wasn’t convinced.

I could also distinctly feel that he wasn’t about to share his real thoughts on the subject. Not here at least, in the middle of a quasi-public airplane cabin.

“It could be that,” he said cagily.

I gave him a flat look. “What else would it be?”

Nick gave a shrug, his eyes flat. “From the outside, it looked like it might be something else. In addition to that, I mean. Like maybe the elimination of a rival.”

“A rival?” Glancing down at Black, I let out a disbelieving snort. “You’re kidding, right?”

“You were engaged to him.”

“A bit’s changed since then, wouldn’t you say, Naoko?”

“You sure Black knows that?”

I stared at him in disbelief. “Considering he was around when our wedding plans got broken off, I’m going to have to go with yes. Seriously. Nick. Are you listening to yourself?”

He looked away, a deeper scowl touching his full lips.

For a long moment, he seemed to be staring at the monitor in front of him without seeing it. That same monitor showed the flightpath of our plane heading west.

“You sure you know what you’re doing with him, Miri?” he said only.

I could feel what he meant. He didn’t only mean Black anymore, in the sense of Quentin Black, P.I., the guy Nick didn’t like or trust. He didn’t mean the Quentin Black he’d originally picked up for murder either, who he’d pegged as a psychopath and serial killer. He didn’t even mean Black, the errant boyfriend Nick thought was yanking my chain, who was probably cheating on me, who wasn’t good enough for me, maybe for a lot of reasons.

He meant the fact that Black wasn’t human.

At the irony of the thought, I let out a low chuckle. I couldn’t help it.

Wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, I glanced down at Black’s head in my lap before I looked back at Nick.

“No,” I said. “No, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Remembering what my uncle said about the two of us, about whatever had been happening to us over the past few months, I swallowed thickly.

“But I think it’s probably too late for me to worry about that, Nick.”

When I glanced up at him next, his frown had deepened again.

Even so, I saw the understanding in his eyes.

I saw the sadness there too, even though I wished I didn’t.

EVERYTHING SEEMED TO take too long at the airport, too.

I didn’t sleep on the plane, which didn’t help.

Neither did Nick. When I said goodbye to him and Angel at the curb outside baggage claim, giving them each a half-hug before they climbed into a taxi to share, Nick looked like he was barely standing. He nodded to Black, not offering his hand, but I was startled to see Angel give Black a hug too, in addition to giving one to me.

When they climbed into the cab after the driver had their bags loaded, I glanced at Black, only to find him watching my face.

We still hadn’t talked.

Now that we were alone, for the first time since we’d last been in this city together, the weight of that silence seemed to fall on both of us. I studied his flecked gold irises, watching him do the same to me.

Then he motioned with his head towards the curb.

“Let’s go home,” he said simply.

We didn’t talk on the drive from the airport.

He hadn’t called anyone, so we rode in a cab just like Nick and Angel. That cab dropped us off in front of the building on California Street, and I honestly couldn’t remember either of us saying a word until Black thanked the driver, paying him in cash and giving him a big tip.

We entered the building to several greetings from his staff, most of them security since it was the weekend and still the early hours of the morning.

If they were surprised to see him, I couldn’t tell that either.

Then again, they were used to Black being gone for months at a time. It was likely more strange to them that I was with him.

Either way, two of them came forward at once and took our bags. Black told them to do the usual with them. I had no idea what the usual meant, particularly in relation to me and my stuff, but I didn’t care enough to ask.

We rode the elevator in silence.

I walked with him down the hall and through the door of his penthouse apartment. Only once we’d gotten inside and Black shut the door behind us did he look at me directly again. He averted his gaze a few seconds after he had, though.

“Are you...” He glanced around the sunken living room, then cleared his throat. He met my gaze, holding it that time. “I need a shower.”