Jackson was planning just that, I suspected. Or, at the very least, wanted to be able to should the need arise. So I watched him quietly, sensing we’d moved through the city and out the other side. Not too far, but somewhere close to the ocean. The distant call of seagulls ran under the night’s stronger sounds.
St Kilda, I thought. There was a major police hub there, but I wouldn’t have thought it’d be a suitable location for a specialized task force. But maybe that was the whole idea.
Eventually, the van dipped downward, then stopped. Doors slammed, and then the rear doors opened. Adam motioned us out and, with two other men, escorted us through a series of tunnels that were cold and bleak. PIT, it seemed, didn’t believe in making their guests feel welcome.
Jackson was placed in one room, me in another. It was little more than a concrete box and was sparsely furnished—just a couple of long benches divided by a table, all of which were concrete. They obviously didn’t believe in comfort, either.
I scanned the walls, looking for mics and cameras and finding none. That one fact chilled me more than my bare surroundings, simply because it meant they kept no formal record of what went on in these rooms. They really weren’t tied to the rules of the regular police force.
I shivered and began to pace, half wishing Sam would hurry up and get here, but fearing what would happen if he did. Outwardly, at least, he wasn’t the person I’d known—that darkness . . . Another shiver ran through me, and I rubbed my arms. Something had happened to him—something bad enough to change his very essence.
It was more than an hour before he did arrive, by which time I was practically climbing the walls. But as my gaze met the blue of his, I realized that was precisely what he wanted. Me on edge, desperate to get out. Bastard.
He stepped into the room, a paper coffee cup in each hand and what looked to be a BlackBerry tablet tucked under one arm. The darkness—or whatever it was I’d sensed earlier—had retreated. How far, I had no idea, but in its absence, he seemed a whole lot more . . . human. Which seemed the wrong word to use, given that was what he actually was, and yet it oddly fit.
“Thought you might like some tea.” He slid one cup across the table and kept hold of the other. His voice held none of the cold abruptness that had been a constant in most of his dealings with me, instead hinting at warmth.
But it was a warmth I couldn’t afford to believe. I made a short, somewhat humorless sound. “Last time I had a drink in your vicinity, I ended up drugged.”
“Oh, for god’s sake, Em.” He picked the cup back up and took a drink. “Happy?”
I somewhat gingerly picked up the cup and sniffed the contents. It smelled like ordinary, everyday green tea. There was no weird scent that I could detect, but that didn’t really mean anything—these days they had all sorts of drugs that were odorless and tasteless. I cautiously took a sip. It did taste like ordinary, everyday green tea.
“Now that we have that little drama over with,” he said, voice a weird mix of annoyance and amusement, “will you please sit down?”
“Sorry. I prefer to stand.” Besides, sitting would bring me far too close to him. I had a hard enough time resisting his presence when he was being a bastard—there was no way I’d cope being near this less-frosty version.
Don’t let him hurt you again, Rory had said. It was a warning that was very much uppermost in my mind at the moment.
Sam shook his head and made a sharp “whatever” motion with his free hand. “Fine. Your choice. Tell me about Lee Rawlings.”
“Why? It’s not like you haven’t found out all you need the same way we did—via Sherman Jones.”
“Adam is interviewing Jones, but I haven’t received the report yet.”
I took a drink of tea, then said, “And you’d also like to cross-check information, just to make sure we didn’t get anything extra.”
“That, too.”
I snorted softly. “Why am I here, Sam? We’ve done nothing illegal.”
“You’re interfering with an ongoing case. That in itself is enough to confine your ass in jail if I so desire it.”
“And do you? Desire it, that is?”
His gaze swept me. The twin fires of need and fear stirred in its wake. The desire was echoed in his eyes. “That depends.”
“On what?”
He slammed the BlackBerry on the table, then sat down on the concrete bench. “Your answers. And you staying away from this case as ordered.”
“Jackson is a legal private investigator, and he’s been employed by Rosen Pharmaceuticals to uncover who murdered James Wilson.” Which wasn’t exactly the truth, given what they wanted was his research rather than his killer. But Sam probably knew that. “You can’t legally prevent him from doing his job.”
“I can if he gets in the way, and he is.” Just for a moment, the darkness resurfaced, staining his eyes and expression, making me wonder yet again just what had happened to him. What was still happening to him. But it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Fierce self-control, or had something else happened in the hour or so since I’d last seen him? “But that doesn’t explain why you’re involved—other than the fact that you’ve always been bloody stubborn.”
“These people killed my boss. They’ve also made several attempts at snatching me, one of them successfully—”
“None of which would have happened if you’d just done as you were told,” he cut in.
“You don’t believe that any more than I do,” I retorted. “So can we just cut the shit and get down to the questions? I want to get out of here.”
He studied me for several seconds, and my heart began to beat just that little bit faster. Because there was hunger in his eyes—a hunger that had nothing to do with the deeper darkness within him and everything to do with desire. He still wanted me. After all that he’d said, after all the anger and hurt and sense of betrayal—a betrayal both us felt, for very different reasons—he still wanted me.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Because if there was one certainty in this life, it was that he and I would never end happily.
I turned away to break the spell of his gaze and took a gulp of tea. It didn’t do a whole lot to ease the fires that had begun to burn low down in my belly.
“Fine,” he said abruptly. “What, exactly, did you get out of Lee Rawlings?”
I looked at him sharply. “Nothing. He wasn’t there. You guys turned up and no doubt scared him away.”
He gave me a long look. “We both know that’s not the truth. Adam picked up the resonance of another life as we approached. Someone else was there.”
“Adam was wrong.” I started pacing again. The coldness in the room was beginning to get to me—it crawled across my skin like a live thing and made me shiver.
“Adam is a vampire. He’s never wrong when it comes to the resonance of life.”
“Well, I guess that naturally means I’m lying, then, doesn’t it?”
“I guess it does. The question is, why? We’re both after the same thing—we want the people behind these murders brought down.”
“I want answers, Sam, and I’m not likely to get them from you, am I?” I downed the rest of the tea and tossed the cup toward the table. He caught it reflexively, his actions so fast they were almost a blur. I frowned. “What is going on with you? You’ve changed, and I don’t just mean emotionally—”
“We’re not here to talk about me,” he said, voice still surprisingly mild despite the flicker of annoyance in his eyes. “Stop changing the subject and start answering questions.”