Lure of the Wicked (9 page)

“Screw the world,” Gemma said smartly, and Lillian laughed. “Everything will be fine, love.” Smoothing one hand over Lillian’s long, slender back, Gemma nuzzled her hair. “We’re safe here. Phin is strong and capable—”

“He takes after his mother.”

“Both of them.” Gemma captured the other woman’s chin in her fingers, tilted Lillian’s face up, and smiled with everything that was so classically Gemma. Adoration. Warmth. Love.

The light of the world.

“Timeless will stand long after we’re gone, Lily.” Gemma touched her mouth to hers, a kiss as sweet and gentle as summer sunshine. Lillian’s skin warmed. Her heart swelled.

It almost drowned the worries feasting at her soul. Almost.

“Will Timeless matter?” Lillian reached up, threaded her fingers tightly with Gemma’s. “When you’re gone, will it matter?”

“I don’t know.” Her grip tight in Lillian’s, Gemma’s smile widened. “But I’m in no hurry to find out.”

“Thank God. I don’t know what we’d do without you, anyway.”

Chapter Eight

B
zzzt!

Blood faded to moonlight, dreams to wide-eyed consciousness as the comm unit buzzed a warning in her slack hand. Naomi braced herself on one arm, already fumbling with the earpiece before her brain kicked in.

“What?” she growled, her voice thick and heavy with sleep. “What the hell time is it?”

There was a pause. A muffled cough. “It’s only ten.”

“Fuck.” She dropped face-first back into the pillow, inhaled lavender and detergent, and threw herself off the mattress. She landed on her feet, barely, but she had to catch herself on the nightstand. It rattled, its lone lamp teetering dangerously. “Fuck! What? Do you want?”

“Grumpy.”

“Jonas,” Naomi snapped, catching the porcelain lamp with one splayed hand. “I will kill you. Do you hear me? I will break your skull like a—” She frowned. “Where’s Eckhart?”

“Hunting down leads.”

“For me?”

“No, unrelated. Different case entirely. Or it’s a lie to visit some chick,” he added with brief, clipped amusement. Over a comm line, Jonas Stone’s voice was impossible to mistake. Nobody else pulled as clear a tenor.

Or as lighthearted a check-in.

She rubbed the sleep grit from her eyes, rough gouges that did nothing to pull the remnants of nightmares from her mind. “Great,” she muttered, knowing she sounded bitchy and unable to care. “Why are you calling me?”

“Why are you sleeping?”

Because she was a goddamn coward. Naomi’s mouth curled. “Because I spent all day being
pretty
.”

“Uh.” The line hummed with a short, charged silence. “What?”

“Never mind.” Naomi turned, studying the dimly lit room through slitted, burning eyes. “I came up here to change and must have passed out. I was tired.”

“Hey?” A cautious question. Gentle. “Are you all right in there?”

Damn.

Of all the people at the Mission, of the missionaries who spent more time going than coming, Jonas Stone saw more than he needed to. Knew more than he should have.

It pissed her the hell off. She’d always felt as if he . . .
handled
her. He was the one confined to crutches for life, and he handled her.

“I’m fine,” she said, assurance clipped. “I was just tired. Now that you’ve gotten me up, I can get back to work.”

“How about a report, then?”

Naomi fought the urge to drop her face into the nearest pillow and stay there. A week sounded good. “Fine,” she muttered, and told him about Alexandra Applegate.

Amid the clatter of Jonas’s quick typing, he whistled. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

“Care to explain why no one told me the bishop’s grandmother was in here?” she growled. “Pertinent fucking information, don’t you think?”

“I’m sorry, that was my fault.” The remorse in his voice effectively stomped on her roiling temper. She grimaced. “But I swear to God, Nai, I didn’t know she was there. I can’t get to the guest files.”

“Why?”

Jonas sighed. “The whole block is on its own closed loop. Nothing in, nothing out. Timeless doesn’t even tap into the city feeds.”

“Fuck, really?” She jammed a thumb into her left eye and rubbed until the ache in her head faded to a dull roar. “This operation is the shittiest . . .” She paused. A glint of light pierced the bedroom window, the faintest flicker. “Hang on.”

“What’s going on?”

“Shut it.” Naomi approached the window quietly, well aware that she was a few hundred feet above anything that could see her through reflective glass. Still, she sidled in at an angle, her shoulders pressed back against the wall as she bent to scan the ground seventeen stories below.

She squinted. “The city elevator is moving.”

Computer keys tapped rapidly over the line. “Which one?”

“Main line. It’s the showy one that links the place to the city streets.” She leaned close to the glass and hissed out a curse.

“What?”

“I can’t see worth shit up here. Jonas, damn it, tell me someone packed me some binoculars.”

“I’ll do you one better.” Pride licked through the comm. “Check the patchwork purse.”

“What?”

“Your bags, Nai. Look for a multicolored purse in your luggage.”

“The rainbow one,” she said, and grimaced when he hummed assent.

Naomi backtracked quickly, stumbling over clothes and discarded shoes she hadn’t gotten around to putting away yet. Neither had anyone else. Aside from one overly competent witch, Timeless took privacy seriously.

She skidded on something silky, slipped and caught herself on one hand and both knees. She grunted.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” She searched through piles of useless shit for the big, chunky purse that she’d sworn she wasn’t taking anywhere. The thing practically glowed, bright patches of gleaming, metallic material. Easy to find in the dark, too.

Naomi swiped it up from its nest of carelessly discarded luggage, yanked open the snap, and searched the inside.

Wallet of some kind, silk scarves, sunglasses— Jesus, how many sunglasses did one woman need? And underneath it all, a small, solid case. “What, this?”

Amusement colored his tone as he replied, “Given I’m not with you, Naomi, I’m going to assume you know what binoculars are.”

Naomi snapped the case open and frowned. “They’re tiny.”

“They’re interchangeable between light and night vision,” he retorted, “and they’re reticule-sized.”

“They’re
what
-sized?”

“Hell on toast, woman, just try them.”

She hurried back to the window. Praying she wasn’t too late, Naomi lifted the binoculars to her eyes. The world slammed into sudden, razor-sharp clarity. “No shit!”

“Great, aren’t they?”

Naomi couldn’t help but grin fiercely as she picked out every last detail on the ground beneath her. Visual cues flashed; stark green contours that shifted around each identifiable object as she changed targets. Text scrolled past the bottom of her vision, each shape and focal point neatly cataloged within the lenses.

“Its processing is fairly limited, but the onboard chip’ll recognize most basic shapes,” Jonas explained smugly. “Who loves you, babe?”

“Everyone.” His snort echoed in Naomi’s earpiece as she trained the lenses on the ground. The elevator doors slid open, easing wide as the locking panels lifted.

“What are you seeing?”

Her grin faded. A skinny figure clambered out of the elevator, two heavy bags over his shoulders.

“Naomi?”

“The boy that runs the elevator,” she said slowly. “Nice kid. He’s carrying bags.”

Jonas clicked his tongue. “Sounds like a late-night guest.”

“Looks like it.” Naomi watched, adjusting the piece in her ear with one finger. “Listen, this op is a hell of a lot more complicated than we thought.”

“Why? What happened?”

Anger sizzled over her skin as she muttered, “Witches.”

On the ground, another figure left the elevator. A woman, Naomi realized, with a scarf around her head and sunglasses as large as her face perched on her nose, even in the dark. She swept down the walk, and Naomi grimaced as she recognized the attitude that swept right beside her.

A guest, all right. One of the so important elite.

“Wait a second,” Jonas was saying in her ear. “Witches? Are you serious?”

“Yeah.” The word edged out of her chest, a disgusted sigh. “Someone was waiting for me when I got here. Sneaked in behind me and laid in with magic before I’d even settled.”

“Carson?”

“Nope. Different guy,” Naomi said, raising the binoculars again, “He should have killed me.”

“Man, don’t say that.”

“Mmm.” Naomi’s eyes narrowed as she tracked the woman’s attendants. Four more men stepped out of the elevator, three of them carrying two or more bags.

And they thought Naomi had baggage.

“So you got him?” Jonas prodded.

“No,” she replied. “I had him dead to rights and he pretty much went balls out. By the time I got off the floor, he’d made a clean getaway.”

He sucked in a breath.

Her smile clipped, Naomi redirected the binoculars to the end of the path, aiming them toward the wide doors that welcomed guests to the lobby. The light spilling out of the building formed a corona of neon radiance, but she picked out the silhouette of someone waiting. A concierge, maybe. Another woman.

“How do you zoom in on this thing?” she asked, ignoring the strangled sound of Jonas’s impatience. “I need to see who’s at the door.”

“Holy crow, Naomi,” he said tightly. “There’s a witch in there and you let him get away?”

She hesitated. “For now,” she admitted. “He caught me off guard, but he won’t stay hidden for long. Zoom?”

“There’s a toggle on the top. Seriously,” he urged quietly. “No shitting me, here. Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Under her searching forefinger, a bit of metal shifted. The device thrummed soundlessly, and in the space of a heartbeat, the concierge’s face filled the lenses. Naomi committed her to memory. Blond, tall, elegantly suited, and smiling.

She rolled her shoulder, but it didn’t ease the pinch of tension in her neck. “The seal did its thing, but he got in close enough to almost lay me out. It’s just a knot on the back of my head. Sloppy as hell. So, did Eckhart tell you about my gun?”

Jonas’s teeth clicked together; all too familiar a sound on the end of her comm feed. “Naomi—”

She jerked her head, glaring at the comm she’d left on the bed. “I’m
still
a missionary, Stone,” she said tersely.

Over the earpiece, he took a breath. Then, sighing, he gave in. “Yeah, Alan told me. I’ll see what we can do. We can’t get in there, so you’ll have to get out to retrieve it.”

“I can get you in.”

“Nope. We’ve got our orders.”

“Shitfuck,” she muttered. Politics. “Fine, I’ll manage something.” Below, as the woman stepped into the light pouring from the open door, she watched the concierge greet her warmly, take both her hands, and kiss the air beside each cheek.

She hated that fucking affectation. It was the first thing she’d ever learned from a mother too petrified a dirty child would smear her makeup.

“You’re so ladylike,” Jonas drawled. “Have you made any other progress?”

“No.” She wasn’t going to go into detail about the ghost in the locker room. Not until she had details to give. Distracted, she watched as neon green lines traced each figure below. Like a constantly shifting computer screen, visual patterns flared and vanished from her sight. Lowering the device shut off the processor.

She raised the binoculars again and blinked at the terminology suddenly flashing in the lower right of her vision. “Couldn’t you come up with a better term than
life form
?”

“It seemed only right.”

“Christ, you’re a nerd. Jonas, why the hell am I—
Shit
.” Amusement leached out of her as a fist of sudden adrenaline spiked through her chest. “Where did he go?”

“Who?”

“Three porters.” Naomi straightened, bracing one hand on the glass as she swung the binoculars back along the lit walkway. “Three, god damn it, where’s the fourth?”

“Naomi? What are you talking about?”

A flicker of movement at the northeast corner of the rocky courtyard had her swearing as a door she’d never noticed before eased shut, sealing in a thin seam of light. “This place,” she gritted out between clenched teeth. “I hate this fucking place. There’s hidden doors built into the goddamn wall.”

“Did the guest use one?”

“No.” She swung the binoculars back to the woman and her entourage of Timeless staff. “She probably didn’t even notice one of the help disappear. I’m going to go locate this sneaky bastard and see what he knows.”

“Sure,” Jonas said. “Be careful.”

Seventeen floors below, the woman removed her sunglasses, sliding them into her purse as she turned the full force of a megawatt smile on the concierge.

“Get me those blueprints before— Oh, God.” Naomi’s voice cracked.

Green light caught on the woman’s white scarf, flared, and Naomi snatched the binoculars away. Threw them as if she could erase the face lovingly shaped by the light of the resort lobby.

“Naomi?” Jonas’s voice, tense in her ear. “Naomi, what’s going on? What’s happening?”

“I—” Her lungs seized. Wrenched.

“Naomi!”

Shit. Shit, she couldn’t breathe. “I’ll be in touch for the gun,” she managed. She dropped the line, cut him off mid-question as she struggled to pull oxygen into her chest. She raised one shaking hand to the glass.

The lobby’s golden glow turned into a streamlined seam of light as the doors slid closed on the last of Abigail Ishikawa’s entourage.

The comm vibrated on the mattress behind her. She ignored it. Jerked the earpiece from her ear and tossed it to the bedspread beside it. Shaking, every muscle taut, Naomi sank to the floor under the window and struggled to inhale. She hugged her knees tightly to her chest.

She was here. Abigail Ishikawa, in the flesh. Twenty-four years of nothing but locked-down memories, and now her mother had come to Timeless. To her.

But not for her.

Never
for
her.

And God only knew what name the woman used now.

City lights streamed through the glass, a faded glow that picked out the pretty, rumpled covers over the bed. The mess of clothes and accessories on the floor at the foot of it.

But she didn’t see any of that. Not here, as her eyes burned with fury, with the memories she’d never wanted to keep.

A crackling fire, cheerfully blazing from within a polished mahogany mantel. No pictures lined the gleaming wood. She’d always remembered that. No happy childhood photos. No signs that any of them had ever existed.

The orange glow filled every inch of the cozy, book-lined study. Katsu Ishikawa wasn’t a reading man, but the books lent him an air of intelligent sophistication. He enjoyed feeling the age of the text around him, knowing they held words to civilizations long since buried.

To a five-year-old, he was the smartest man in the world. The only person who truly loved her. Who understood her.

The only parent of two who had wanted her.