“I’ll explain when we get there.”
“Okay, cool. It’ll be good to see you.”
“You, too. Hey,” he hurried on. “Is John there? I tried to call him earlier and got voice mail.”
“He and Jeannine had an offsite meeting this morning. He’s here now, though. Hang on.”
Sam pulled up to a red light and checked that Riley was still following. She was, but so was the car that had been behind her when they left the impound lot. It had a discreet rental agency sticker on the windshield.
“Hey, Sam! Just the man I wanted to talk to.”
Surprised, Sam refocused on his call and the traffic in front of him. “I am?” He hadn’t talked to John in months.
“Yeah, I want to get your take on something. Marley says you’re coming up here?”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know yet. What’s going on?”
“I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.”
“Well, listen, I met a kind-of-new goddess down here in Connecticut, Riley Kordek. She’s had some people following her and needs a protector. You have anyone nearby who can meet her and take her up to Boston to get registered with the Society?”
John chuckled. “Yeah. You.”
“Ha ha. I mean a real protector.”
“You are a real protector. I don’t care if you haven’t done it in a while. I wouldn’t trust anyone more. ’Specially since I’m stretched thin right now. My closest guy is in D.C.”
That wouldn’t work. Sam checked the cars again. The same one was behind Riley. He took a right turn off the main route. Riley followed, and a few seconds later, so did the rental. Sam’s heart rate picked up. No, they couldn’t wait for someone to get up here from D.C.
“All right, I’ve got it covered. Hey, by the way, you ever hear of a company called Millinger?” The silence made his brow furrow. “John?”
“Where did you hear that name?”
“The people who attacked Riley.”
Another delay before John responded, his tone so carefully dismissive Sam knew he was lying. “Never heard of ’em. So, get your ass up here tout de suite, yeah? Jeannine’s dying to cook you dinner.”
“Uh, yeah, probably be a few hours. Thanks, John.” Sam hung up quickly and yanked the earbud out of his ear. Dammit. Jeannine didn’t cook for him—they didn’t even like each other. So get your ass up here was about Riley, but about more than that, too, because his code meant he thought the phones were compromised. What the hell was going on?
Sam sped up, watching carefully for kids and cars in the residential neighborhood, and took the corner too fast. Riley didn’t follow as quickly. She probably thought he was crazy, but add Vern and Sharla to the rental car and his cryptic conversation with John, and every protective instinct Sam had was on high alert.
Information was power, so Sam wasn’t willing to cancel their trip to the library. He wanted to know what Millinger was before they got on the road. But what had been important was now urgent.
The rental didn’t show up again for the rest of the ride. Either the driver knew he’d been made, or he hadn’t been following them. No way Riley had lost him with the way she was driving. Sam took the last few turns toward the library and pulled into the parking lot with a screech.
Riley parked next to him and threw herself out of her car with a scowl. “What was that all about?” she demanded, but apparently noticed Sam scanning the lot and the street around them. She shifted closer to him and looked around too. “Were we followed?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. But I talked to—” Crap. He wasn’t going to admit that, but she turned betrayed eyes on him. Not angry ones. That would have been easier. “I’m sorry. I called the Society and the Protectorate to let them know we were coming. I don’t know what’s going on, but something is, and it sounds like it’s bigger than only you.”
Riley bit her lip and didn’t move away when he instinctively smoothed his hand down her back. She glanced at the library, then back to the street. “I don’t like not knowing anything.”
“Neither do I. That’s why we’re here. Let’s go inside.” He pulled his laptop bag out of the back seat, and they went in. Sam picked a large, empty table near the back and set up the computer with his back against the wall, giving him as clear a view as possible of the main entrance and putting space—and the table—between them should anyone come their way.
A few minutes later, Sam wished he’d considered more practically what huddling over a laptop in a quiet corner of the library meant. Or at least taken the surge of attraction he’d felt at the impound lot more seriously.
The wide wooden chairs at the library table should have provided a comfortable distance. But Riley had dragged her chair up against his, and as he struggled to remember the simple task of logging on to the free WiFi and connecting to the Internet, she positioned herself to see everything he did. Which meant thighs touching and her arm draped across the back of his chair. He sat up straight to maintain a buffer space, but every time she leaned to read something on the screen, her breasts brushed his upper arm. Despite the thickly woven cotton of his jacket sleeve, he could tell exactly how perfect they were, just the right level of firm softness.
He cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly, staring unseeing at the Millinger website. Lust had never been his driving force. When attraction wasn’t fleeting, it heralded a connection beyond the superficial. So even though he’d just met Riley, he doubted this awareness of her would just disappear. Which put a new spin on his reluctance to take her to Boston.
Was he really afraid of falling into a role he didn’t want anymore? Or was he actually afraid of getting romantically involved with another goddess when it had gone so wrong the first time?
It didn’t help that Riley’s voice turned husky when she tried to whisper, or that her long, wavy blond hair smelled like honeysuckle.
Honeysuckle. He didn’t even know what the fuck honeysuckle smelled like.
Riley snorted derisively, snapping Sam out of his self-disgusted trance. “‘We’ll bring you to your brightest world’? What kind of vague crap is that? What are they supposed to do there?”
Sam shrugged to cover a subtle shift away from her. The half inch let him focus on the corporate website in front of him. “Consulting, I guess.” He clicked a couple of links, but Millinger was very cagy about their business. The recruitment page sounded like a pyramid marketing scam, without making any real promises. That page linked to a word association quiz and a questionnaire inquiring about special skills.
“It sounds like they’re looking for something, not offering something. Look at this.” He waved a finger at the contact page. “Lots of pretty stock photography, but no photo of their building—or buildings, since they claim offices in twenty states.” He opened a new tab and did a search for the state website for Georgia. “They list headquarters in Atlanta, so let’s look for their registered business information.”
He found it after a few minutes of clicking and typing—and getting drunk on Riley’s faint sweetness.
“There it is.” Millinger’s tax certification status showed the business registration date…less than a year ago.
“How can a company be that big but only a year old?” Riley asked.
“Good question. Makes the whole thing suspicious.”
Riley laughed, and the sound slid over Sam’s nerve endings. “I don’t know. I think the whole chasing-me-down thing is pretty suspicious already.”
Sam managed a crooked smile. “This is a different kind of suspicious. Assuming Millinger is even connected. The company might not have anything to do with them following you.” John had recognized the name, though, and it niggled at the back of Sam’s brain, too. But he couldn’t figure out why. Their public front was innocuous, but the face of evil often was.