Dreamveil (13 page)

“That girl is not my daughter,” King told him. “She is remembering the wrong person. Go back and question her again.”

“The girl she served matches Alana’s physical description—”

“So does every blond, blue-eyed girl in the city,” the old man snapped. “Alana is not living on the street. Nor would she go out or wander around the streets during the day.”

“Why? Is she a werewolf?”

King produced a dry, hacking laugh. “No, Mr. Meriden, she is most certainly not. Didn’t you read the file I provided for you? Wherever she is, Alana will need constant access to food. Check the grocery stores, the delis, the hot dog stands, and anywhere one can buy food cheaply and quickly.”

He frowned. “You didn’t tell me your daughter has an eating disorder.”

“She doesn’t. Alana has an unusual metabolism combined with a digestive problem,” King said. “She has to eat many times a day or she begins rapidly losing weight.”

This might be the lead he needed. “Is she on any medication for it?”

“No. Her condition is untreatable.” King covered a cough before he added, “Is there anything else?”

“I need to interview the man who called in the sighting,” Meriden told him. “He may have noticed more than he told you.”

“The transcripts from his interview are also in the file,” King said. “He told me everything he remembered.”

“I’d rather interview him again and be sure.”

The old man sighed. “Alas, that is no longer possible. Mr. Sengali is deceased.”

“You killed him?” Meriden’s skin crawled. “Are you crazy? He was the only person who’s seen your daughter in a year.”

“Mr. Sengali neglected to tell me that he had a weak heart. After questioning, he had a heart attack and died of natural causes.” King’s tone hardened. “That needn’t concern you, Mr. Meriden. You have a young, strong heart, and three weeks to ensure that it will keep beating long after our business is concluded.” He hung up.

Meriden slammed the receiver down, cracking the plastic earpiece in the process. “You stupid shit son of a bitch.”

The last rays of the sun filtered through the maze of Manhattan’s skyscrapers and glittered on the icy waters of the Hudson. He should have gone back to his apartment, but Meriden drove instead to a new building, and swiped a plastic security card at the gate to the underground garage. He parked his car in the empty space marked PH-1 and used a key to enter the elevator.

The condominium had been built to provide accommodations for the city’s up-and-coming power brokers, and was as high-tech and sterile as their offices in the financial district. As the lift whisked him up to the top floor, he clenched his keys in his fist, not feeling the sharp edges cutting into his palm.

King was being too open and unguarded; he’d already given him enough information to destroy the old man’s life. At first Meriden thought it was because King was dying, but now he wasn’t so sure. Whatever happened to King in three weeks, whether Meriden found Alana or not, the old man now couldn’t afford to let him live.

Dansant owned the top two floors of the building, but only used the apartment with the best view of the Upper West Side. Meriden used another key to let himself in. Dansant knew Meriden had duped all of his keys and cards without asking, but he had never altered his codes or changed the locks. As he walked into the spacious front room, he felt a surge of envy and hatred that hadn’t diminished since the first time he’d seen the place.

Rather than compartmentalize the three-thousand-square-foot apartment into separate rooms, Dansant’s army of interior designers had knocked down most of the walls and replaced them with floor-to-ceiling panels of clear and translucent glass. The effect allowed anyone standing in any corner of the apartment to see most of the interior simply by turning their head. Enormous sheets of smooth, camel-colored limestone covered the floors, and the twelve- foot exterior walls were painted a matte cream that had been faintly textured to absorb light rather than reflect it. The effect was something like standing in a cloud.

Unconventional furnishings and fabrics graced each room, from the imported ivory silk carpets from China to the low-slung sofas and chairs designed to flow like ribbons fluttering in the wind. The only colors used were muted earth and sky tones, which faded away into the cloudlike walls as if they were in the process of disappearing into them.

Meriden despised clutter, and he might have warmed to the place himself if not for the dozens of portraits hung on the walls, each one a slam of color to the eye.

He had no idea who the people were that Dansant painted, but they pissed him off every time he looked at one of their faces. The oil paintings, which showed both men and women standing surrounded by mists or shadows, were dark and composed of thousands of short, broad strokes, more like sketches than paintings. Framed in precious woods and polished steel, each one was illuminated by an incandescent spotlight in the ceiling, which emphasized the rich jewellike colors and compelling movements of the brushstrokes.

The men were handsome and the women gorgeous, but there was something wrong with all of them.

Despite the heavy hand Dansant used with his paint, he managed to draw out disturbing details from each portrait: lethal chrome eyes, a twisted angelic smile, a slash of scar. One of the youngest subjects in the paintings, a tall, dark-haired kid with glowing purple eyes, looked at times like a feminine boy and at others a boyish girl. Another portrait showed a man whose hair and skin were covered with green shadows that echoed the eerie color of his emerald eyes.

The one he really hated most was the one he’d christened the Bitch Madonna, a portrait of a woman dressed in white, the only one of his subjects that Dansant had painted in profile. She stood half-turned toward something, the shape of another figure cloaked in the shadows around her, but instead of looking at her mystery companion she eyed Meriden like he was a swatch of slime under a microscope. Her nose was too beaky and her eyes too sharp for her to be called pretty, but the colors the Frenchman had used for her made her shimmer with life, from the red lights spiraling through her long chestnut curls to the golden warmth of her skin.

She radiated light like high noon on a summer day, but something about her made him think of thunderstorms at midnight.

D’Anges’s executive chef rarely spent more than a few hours in the place, and didn’t stock anything for himself in the brushed-steel fridge or glass- fronted cabinets. Meriden never knew when he was going to end up here, so he kept a stock of his own supplies. He took out a cold beer before he pulled back the silver drapes and stepped out onto the teak floor of the narrow balcony that wrapped around the entire floor. From the west side he could watch the sky, which he often did, counting the minutes until the night crept over the city.

Meriden lifted his beer in the direction of King’s mansion.
Cheers, you evil motherfucker.

The Frenchman would be late to the restaurant tonight, Meriden thought with some satisfaction, so by the time he got there that long, cool woman he’d hired would be too busy working to flirt with him. He guessed Rowan Dietrich was already half in love with Dansant; there wasn’t a woman alive who could resist him. Let Dansant have her, too. Meriden wasn’t interested in a skinny kid with eyes like permanent bruises and a subconscious death wish.

All right, he admitted to himself, she was something to see, all long legs and racing curves. Meriden usually preferred his ladies blond and built, with bodies he could really sink into and play with, but the slinky little black cat had the kind of speed and grace that aroused something else in him.

If a man had an itch, she’d definitely scratch.

When she’d run downstairs, he’d wanted to follow, to chase her down. He scowled at his own thoughts, not sure why he’d felt that. She thought she was tough, you could see it in the set of her shoulders and the curl of her hands. The way she had of tilting her head to bring up her chin and look down her nose when she was pissed, should have annoyed him. Instead, it tickled the shit out of him. So did her sense of humor, so sharp it came equipped with teeth and claws.

He shouldn’t have walked back into the bathroom earlier; he’d known from the sound of the shower she was in there washing up. And if he was going to be honest, that was exactly why he’d gone back in. She’d never know how close he’d come to yanking back the curtain and joining her. He’d have been happy to scrub her back, her front, and any other parts that needed some close, personal attention.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten laid; maybe that was why he’d gotten a hard-on that still hadn’t subsided. There were half a dozen women he could call for something easy and quick, and still he didn’t want a damn one of them.

Talking to Rowan had been a mistake. He could have found out what her deal was through Dansant. Now he was screwed. He wasn’t living ten feet away from her without touching her. Not now that he knew what she smelled like when she stripped down to her skin.

Sure, break into her apartment tonight and wake her up by fucking her brains out. Of course she’ll come to thinking that you’re her dream prince.

Meriden felt the last glimmer of sunlight touch his face before he drank the rest of his beer and went back inside. He looked at all the silent fixtures, the understated elegance and clean lines, knowing that—like Rowan—it would never be his. He threw the bottle across the room, watching it smash against the frame around the Bitch Madonna.

The last dregs of his beer ran down the portrait’s face like amber tears. Another of Dansant’s victims, no doubt, not that Meriden would ever know for sure. The Frenchman kept his secrets. Still, after all these years together, he had a pretty good idea of how it would go.

Dansant hadn’t hired Rowan or given her the apartment out of the goodness of his heart. He wanted her, and he intended to keep her where he could have her and make regular use of her. When he got bored, he’d employ his mojo, wipe her memory and send her on her way.

He went into the bedroom to stand beside the bed. “You can have any woman in Manhattan,” he muttered as the light from outside disappeared. “Any woman in the fucking world. Just leave this one alone. She didn’t ask for this shit. She didn’t ask for you. You hear me?”

No one answered.

What has gone wrong now?

He tracked the scent from his bedroom through the empty apartment to one of his paintings, beneath which lay scattered broken brown glass. A chip in the frame and the splatter of beer across the canvas testified to what had happened.

He knelt and collected the glass in his hand, disposing of it in the kitchen before he went back to carefully clean the surface of the portrait. The narrow, clever face of the chestnut-haired woman seemed to soften with sympathy.

Would you feel sorry for me,
chérie
?
he wondered as he blotted dry her features.
Or would you side yourself with him?

He despised the circumstances that had brought him and Meriden together, and forced their dependence on each other, but when it came to a resolution, he was as helpless to change it as his partner was. Perhaps more so, for he had done nothing by design to harm Sean or intrude on his life, and had in fact been dragged into this uncomfortable partnership with no choice at all. Yet he had never blamed Nathan for what he had done, not when he had come to understand the reasons behind it. Without the terrible choice Nathan had made, Dansant would be nothing but a collection of tubes and samples in a laboratory; where what remained of his body would have been used to change others into becoming something like what he had been.

But without Dansant’s intervention, Sean Meriden might never have had a life, either. Then Nathan’s heroic act would have resulted in nothing more than a nameless corpse rotting in a potter’s grave.

A pity Sean never remembered that.

Dansant didn’t know why Meriden had come to the apartment, but the hour was late, and he had to move quickly to prepare for the night’s work. He showered and dressed before he called down for a taxi.

Downstairs the doorman, a silent but watchful ex-Marine who had lost an arm in Afghanistan, greeted him with a smile. “Evening, Mr. Dansant. Your cab’s waiting.”

“
Merci
, Jason.” As he put on his coat, he glanced outside. “No new snowfalls?”

“No, sir. Should stay clear and cold until midnight, and then some snow flurries are coming in from the east.” Jason opened the door and escorted him to the curb. “My fiancée went crazy when I told her you invited us to your next chef’s table. We couldn’t even get reservations at your restaurant until next summer or fall, I think.”

Dansant’s chef’s table, a private, invitation-only free dinner he held once a week at D’Anges, had become legend among the city’s fine dining patrons. Many food critics, famous gourmands, and several chefs from competing restaurants had tried repeatedly to angle for an invitation, only to be summarily turned down. None of them was aware that Dansant had very specific criteria for who joined him at his table.

“She’s been shopping for a dress all week.” The doorman sounded proud and embarrassed. “Any hints I should drop on what she should wear so she doesn’t, ah, look out of place?”

“I am sure anything she chooses will be charming.” Dansant had seen the young woman in question, who was a pretty redhead with milk-white skin, who often picked up Jason after work. “If she cannot decide, there is in her closet perhaps the little black dress,
oui
?”

“Oh, yeah, about twenty of them,” Jason said drily. “With matching shoes.”

“I will tell you a secret,” Dansant said as Jason opened the taxi door for him. “All American women love the little black dress because it is the classic, and they all look good in it. And they know this.”

The younger man frowned. “So why is she always asking me what she should wear?”

Dansant grinned. “Because,
mon ami
, she does not wear for her sake.”

At the restaurant, he found his brigade at work prep-ping their equipment and stations for opening. Lonzo had posted the menu he had left with him last night, and the wait staff were already arriving. The only person he didn’t see in the kitchen was Rowan, although he smelled her scent in several places.

“We got a beautiful shipment of mussels in,” his
garde-manger
told him as he chopped garlic into impossibly thin slices before scooping them into a bowl of parsley and tarragon. “I thought we’d add
moules farcies gratinées
to the appetizers tonight.”

Lonzo never altered the menu without speaking to him, but Dansant had learned to trust his choices. The herbed garlic would complement the freshness of the mussels. “
Très bien
. Where is Rowan?”

“She’s in the storeroom, chopping figs for the duck breast.” Lonzo glanced quickly at Vince, who was giving his roasting racks painstaking attention. “Thought that would keep her outta everyone’s hair while we prep.” He lowered his voice. “She’s still getting her line legs. I figured she could use a break.”

“
Merci
, Lonzo.” Dansant went on to inspect the other stations and speak with his cooks about the menu. Only after he made his rounds of the brigade did he go back to the storeroom and step inside.

Lonzo had set up one of the rolling chopping blocks, beside which Rowan sat on a high stool. She had a sack of purple-red figs wedged between her thighs and she was chopping them lengthwise with slightly more force than the fruit required while she muttered under her breath.

He caught the words “ass” and “Boston.” “Are you ready to leave me so soon?”

Rowan glanced at him. “That’s not a question you want to ask me right now, Chef.”

“I see.” He thought of how oddly Lonzo and Vince had behaved. “Someone put a move on you.” Then he saw the strip of rag wrapped around her left hand and seized her wrist, neatly avoiding the blade in her other hand as she jerked. “What is this?”

“Nothing. Just a little accident.” She tried to pull her hand back, but he kept a firm hold and untied the make-shift bandage.

Several thin, dark pink burns ran diagonally across her palm. “Who did this?”

“I did.”

She was a very good liar. “How, please?”

“It was an accident. I picked up the wrong roasting rack.” She put down the knife, drew her hand away, and rewrapped the burn. “I’ll be fine.”

Dansant swung around, intent on finding his
rôtisseur
and introducing Vince’s face to several other wrong racks.

“Oh, no.” Rowan caught his arm. “You go out there and rumble with Vince, and the rest of the crew will serve me for dinner.”

He gripped her wrist. “He did this deliberately.”

“Of course he did. He’s a nasty man with a big ego and a small dick. Unfortunately I brought this to his attention, and I paid for it.” She shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Lonzo already balanced the books. He took care of it,” she added when he frowned over the unfamiliar expression.

“Did he.” Dansant knew his burly
garde-manger
ruled the kitchen like Napoleon had France, but he had seen Vince looking remarkably well with no burns on any visible part of his body. “Perhaps
I
do not consider them balanced yet.”

“You will when you see Vince get started on cleaning the new delivery of squid.” She folded her arms. “Something I’m planning on enjoying immensely, so please, don’t fuck that up for me.”

He didn’t want to let it end there, but the satisfaction in her tone told him she considered the matter settled. “You are very forgiving.”

“I’m a woman working with seven men,” she countered. “This is a fraternity, not a sorority. I have to do this their way, or every one of them will shut me out and consider it their God-given duty to make my life hell for the next couple weeks.”

A couple of weeks. She was already thinking of when she would leave him. “I will think of something else for you to do.”

“I suck at waiting tables,” she advised him. “The cleaning crew aren’t going to share their turf. Enrique might let me scrape dishes and scrub pots for him, but he doesn’t even let Lonzo near the washer.”

She had a point. “You can work in the office.”

“The phone rings—maybe—once every four hours. I’ve seen your files. The CIA isn’t that color-coded or organized. Lonzo has to interview all the applicants for Bernard’s job.” She watched his eyes. “I’m not a wimp, Jean-Marc. I didn’t break down and cry over a little burn, and I didn’t say a word to anyone. If Lonzo hadn’t been watching me so close no one would have even known what happened. The guys will remember stuff like that.”

“I didn’t bring you here for you to be hurt,” he muttered.

“You didn’t bring me here,” she said softly. “I crashed the party, remember?”

He put his hand to her cheek. She looked thinner under the harsh fluorescent lights, and there were shadowed crescents under her eyes. “You wouldn’t tell me what you were thinking last night.” He drew her closer, bringing her under his influence as easily as he had unwrapped her hand. “Tell me now.”

“I was thinking about you.”

“You were.” She made a low affirmative sound in reply. “Is it too much for you? Working in the kitchen?”

“No. I’m learning a lot.” She yawned a little. “Just tired. Too much sleep. Didn’t get my coffee. I love watching you work.”

He felt a little better, and bent his head until only a breath separated their mouths. “Are you afraid of me?”

“No.”

He knew better than to ask while she was like this, but he couldn’t resist. “What were you thinking about me last night?”

“I was thinking I wanted to kiss you.” Her expression turned to confusion. “But I can’t do that.”

If only she knew how much she affected him, how delicious the heat of her body was against his, the way her scent intoxicated him. In the state he was in, he feared at any moment he would go down on his knees and beg her to have him. “Why not?”

“Because . . . you don’t want me to.” She exhaled the words.

He couldn’t stop himself then, not with the taste of her breath in his mouth. He kissed first her top lip and then the bottom before coaxing them apart with the tip of his tongue. She must have tasted one of the figs earlier; a faint sweetness of it lingered in her mouth. No, it wasn’t fruit, it was . . . chocolate? He sucked on the tip of her tongue, and she did the same to his. The show of desire loosened something inside him. He slid his hands under her arms and lifted her up onto the chopping block.

Rowan made a low sound in her throat as he stepped between her thighs and wrapped an arm around her hips. He couldn’t get enough of her mouth, and he would have had a lot more of her if the storeroom door had been locked.

“Chef?” he heard Lonzo call.

Dansant wrenched his mouth from Rowan’s to answer, “Just a moment.”
Mon Dieu
. His hands were shaking; he could hardly speak. “Rowan. You will forget we did this—you will forget everything that has troubled you.”

“Forget.” Her pupils, dilated almost to the rims of her irises, contracted slightly. “Yes.”

“Good.” He closed his eyes and held her head against his for a moment. “Are you afraid of Vince?”

“That scumbag?” She made a contemptuous sound. “No.”

He held her close for another moment. “You will come to me if you are afraid, or if you need anything. Only to me. Do you understand me?”

“I understand.”

He hated to release her, but he couldn’t keep her like this, not when Lonzo or one of the others could walk in at any moment. “You will come back to yourself now.”

She stepped back and blinked several times. “Whoa. Déjà vu.” She looked up at him. “I didn’t faint again, did I?”

“No. You were a little dizzy. You will take the rest of the night off.” She shook her head. “Rowan.” She appeared unmoved. “Tomorrow, then.”

“I work five nights on, and have one night off,” she said. “Just like the rest of the crew.”

Her resistance puzzled him. A moment ago she would have stripped naked and lay at his feet if he had asked it of her. Now she was behaving as if he had. “I want to do something for you. To make up for what Vince did.”