Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed (6 page)

Subterfuge was
certainly
not
in
her nature!

They attracted attention, something
Laurie had never been particularly fond of. Of course mostly the
attention was focused on the matching bookends on either side of
her. The men looked them over assessingly—probably felt threatened
by the testosterone cloud surrounding them. And the women looked
dazed and confused. They got several double-takes.

It was enough of a distraction that
Laurie’s stomach wasn’t tied in knots when she reached the DA’s
office. She was sure it would have been otherwise, because the
thought of driving to Atlanta to give a deposition had tied her in
knots for weeks before she left to do it and she tensed as soon as
she entered the office and sat down to wait in the waiting area.
Lucien and Damien each grabbed a magazine, sprawled in a chair,
stretching their long legs out, and seemed to become immediately
engrossed in the contents.

Laurie thought that was deceptive.
They weren’t so engrossed they didn’t notice everyone around them.
Each time someone passed in or out of the door, they scanned them
from the tops of their heads to their toes, assessed them, and then
returned their attention to the magazine.

That was her impression
anyway and she was attuned enough to
them
to feel like she didn’t miss a
lot.

They came to attention when she was
called back to talk to the DA, dragging their long legs in and
sitting up straighter. Neither of them actually got up, however,
since the receptionist directed them to wait there.

The deposition wasn’t the nightmare
she’d expected, never having experienced one before. It was still
grueling. The DA put her through her paces, asking her the same
questions, each phrased a little differently, over and over until
she began to think of him as the ‘enemy’. He kept reminding her
that the defense was bound to ‘batter’ her once she got on the
stand in an effort to rattle her so that he could discredit her
testimony and obviously the DA was hell bent on testing her medal
himself.

She had a headache by the time they
broke for lunch and not much appetite. The guys escorted her to a
sandwich shop nearby and settled around her, giving everyone that
came anywhere near them such cold, assessing looks that most of the
traffic simply took a different route to and from the ordering
counter. “Like Moses and the Red Sea,” Laurie murmured. “Where are
you guys from? Originally, I mean?”

That caught their attention, riveting
it firmly on her. All four of them stared at her as if she’d asked
them to strip naked in the middle of the restaurant—suspiciously,
with speculation, as if it was an interrogation. Irritated, Laurie
shook her head. “Never mind. I was just trying to make
conversation.”

“
In our line of work, it
isn’t a good idea to get too personal,” Damien volunteered after a
few moments, earning a deadly look from his twin.

He grimaced and shrugged. “No sense in
being impolite,” he muttered, this time in response to the look his
brother had given him.

“
And that comment was so
polite,” Basil responded dryly, blushing when Laurie glanced at
him.

“
Like I said—never mind,”
Laurie said a little stiffly. “It hadn’t occurred to me that you
might want to keep your distance, emotionally speaking, since I
have a target painted on my forehead. That was just downright
inconsiderate.”

“
We’re from Wyoming,”
Lucien said tightly.

Laurie held up her hand. “No! Don’t
tell me! Obviously divulging deep dark secrets like where you were
born is giving me dangerous information. I don’t want to get bumped
off for asking questions that are too personal!”

They finished their lunch in
uncomfortable silence and headed back to the courthouse complex for
a cheerful afternoon of rehashing the murder. The DA finally
released her into the custody of the four horsemen around five and
she was escorted back to the hotel to collapse. Exhausted, more
emotionally, she thought, than physically, Laurie literally
collapsed on the wide king sized bed and dropped off the face of
the earth. She felt drunk when she woke some time later and
completely disoriented. It was dusk-ish outside but she couldn’t
decide if it was morning and she’d slept through the evening and
night or if it was evening and she’d only slept a little while. The
clock beside the bed was no help. The display showed 8:00 but it
could’ve been AM or PM and looked pretty much the same light-wise
outside. She finally decided that it must be PM and she’d only
slept a little while.

She was starving. She’d barely touched
her sandwich at lunch because of her headache and the tension of
the guys that had made her own tension that much worse. Turning the
TV on, she sat down with the local attractions books the hotel had
provided, trying to decide whether she wanted to go out to eat or
stay in. It was bound to be expensive either way. This was the big
city, after all, and although it offered way more than the small
town, it was pricey. Beyond that, she’d had to take off from work
to come, as badly as she’d hated using vacation time for court. She
needed to watch her expenses. She was supposed to be compensated
for her time, but she doubted it would be much and there was no
telling when she’d get it if ever.

On the other hand, she’d had to use
her vacation time to come, and she wouldn’t be getting another one
for a whole year. She might as well wring what little enjoyment she
could out of the trip.

That still left her with the decision
of whether to go out or stay in, but she finally decided she was
just too hungry to hunt a restaurant and then wait on ordering
food. She picked up the phone and dialed room service.

Since they told her it would be forty
five minutes for the delivery, she decided to take a bath rather
than stare at the TV and try not to think about her
stomach.

The nice thing about taking a shower
at a hotel was that she could use all the hot water she wanted. She
took a leisurely shower, washed her hair and shaved everything—a
long, drawn out process at any time even though she had short
legs.

Actually, she only managed to get one
leg shaved before some bastard decided to beat on her door. She
yelled from the shower that she was busy, but either they didn’t
hear her or they had no damned consideration! The imperious,
demanding knock sounded again.

It sounded like a cop
summons.

A little unnerved by the thought,
Laurie got out of the shower, threw the thick robe on that the
hotel provided and hurried to the door, leaving trails of soapy
water behind her. Leaving the security latch on, she opened the
door and peered out. Lucien stood on the other side. Well, she
assumed it was Lucien. It could’ve been Damien.

“
What did I tell you about
opening the door without checking?” Lucien growled, instantly
identifying himself by his demeanor.

“
Is it me?” Laurie
snapped. “Or are you always this damned cheerful? I was in the
middle of a bath. Is this important, because if it isn’t I still
have one leg to shave!”

His gaze dropped and then his
jaw—which was when Laurie discovered she hadn’t actually closed the
robe that well. The belt was tied alright, but the two front halves
gaped, exposing pretty much everything from the neck down. She
slammed the door in his face.

Torn between the hysterical urge to
giggle like a maniac at the look on his face and the desire to weep
with embarrassment, Laurie headed back to the shower on autopilot.
After standing under the spray for a few minutes, she finally
remembered she’d gone back to finish what she started. She was
halfway through shaving the same leg for the second time when
someone beat on the door again. Sticking her head out of the
shower, she snarled, “I’m in the fucking shower! Don’t get your
panties in a wad!”

Shutting the shower off, she grabbed a
towel to dry off as quickly as she could, put the robe on again in
spite of the fact that it was now wet and cold, closed and tied it
very carefully, and then went to the door. That time when she
opened the door to peer out she discovered someone had brought the
food she’d ordered. Apparently after her greeting they decided to
just leave it outside the door. Shrugging, trying to ignore the
heat creeping into her face, she closed the door long enough to
take off the security lock, opened it again and grabbed the cart,
dragging it inside the room with her. When she’d locked the door
again, she went to her suitcase to find clothing. Opting to just
get ready for bed, she pulled out panties and one of her favorite
sleeping shirts—a sloppy big, thread bare affair that had started
out as uncomfortable but was now, after a zillion washes, like
being wrapped in cloud nine.

When she’d flipped through the channels until
she found a forensic show, she settled down to watch it while she
ate. The image of Lucien at her door kept playing in her head,
though, making it nearly impossible to figure out ‘who done it’
when she couldn’t concentrate worth a flip.

Laurie wasn’t the only one having trouble
focusing on something besides the encounter at the door. Lucien
returned to his room like a sleepwalker and dropped into the easy
chair next to the window. Damien had been flipping through stations
on the TV, but he noticed something seemed just a hair off about
Lucien’s demeanor. “Problems?”

The question penetrated Lucien’s abstraction
and he glanced at his brother. “Why would you ask that?” he
barked.

Damien was taken aback and looked it. “You
went to check on the client. I was just asking about the status,”
he said slowly, turning Lucien’s response and behavior over in his
mind and trying to decide just what it was that they pointed
to—beyond the fact that something had happened that Lucien hadn’t
been expecting.

Lucien felt his face heating with discomfort.
“Oh. Yeah. She’s tucked in for the night. Still doesn’t have the
sense of self-preservation of a bird.” He frowned at the comment.
“It’s almost like she’s the complete opposite of her counterpart on
our side, you know?”

Damien was beginning to feel a vague sense of
‘something’s not quite right’ about the situation. “What happened
when you went to check on her?”

Lucien managed a credible expression of
surprise. He shrugged. “Nothing really. I knocked. She opened the
door. I reminded her that she could be in danger as the only eye
witness to the murder and not to open the door without checking to
see who it was first and then came back here.”

“
That’s all there was to it?”
Damien demanded suspiciously.

“
Yeah. Why?”

Damien stared at him. “You mean aside from the
fact that you went over there to check the room security and came
back without, apparently, checking a damned thing? You came back in
here like a … zombie and flopped in that chair without saying a
damned thing. What the fuck is going on with you?”

That time Lucien felt more than just a faint
heating of discomfort. The blood flooded his face and he could feel
each heartbeat as a pulse in his cheeks like a flashing neon sign.
He cleared his throat. “You questioning my judgment?”

“
I’m wondering if I should go
check on Laurie myself, yeah,” Damien responded tightly.

Lucien surged out of his seat. “Just when the
hell did you start calling her Laurie? You’re referring to a client
by their first name and questioning my professionalism?”

Damien gaped at him for a split second but
that was all the time it took to bring his own anger to the
forefront. He slid off the bed and straightened as Lucien got out
of his chair and approached the bed where he’d been sitting.
“You’ve been fucking referring to her as Laurie since we got the
job,” he growled. “I
hadn’t
questioned your professionalism.
We all agreed that it would probably be best to keep our distance
as much as possible from the people on this side—and it was
you
that suggested it—that it could make things miserable at
the very least if and when we go back and could be dangerous in
ways we haven’t even thought of.

“
Now I’m starting to wonder what
the hell’s going on, though. You’re sounding damned possessive to
me, and I’m thinking I don’t like the reasons for that that occur
to me.”

“
Like what?” Lucien snarled,
almost nose to nose with his brother by that time.

“
Like you’re fucking her or you’re
seriously considering it!”

“
And you have a problem with
that?” Lucien growled.

The question rocked Damien back on his heels
for a split second before rage rushed in to fill the void shock had
left. “You’re god damned right I’ve got a problem with
that!”

They’d just seized one another by the throat
when the door swung open. Instantly focused on the possibility of
attack, both men swung toward the door and crouched to
spring.

“
What the hell is going on in
here?” Basil demanded. “You two trying to get us thrown out of the
frigging hotel?”

Chapter Five

Damien supposed Lucien’s theory might make
sense in a weird sort of way, maybe scientifically, but he was
beginning to wonder if there were holes in it that they should
explore.