Raintree: Inferno (Raintree 1)

Then her survival instinct kicked into high gear and her hair all but stood on end as she realized the man standing so silent and still in front of the huge windows was a far greater threat to her than was the gorilla.

Her throat closed, a fist of fear tightening around her neck. She couldn’t have said what it was about him that so alarmed her, but she had felt this way only once

before, in a back alley in Chicago. She was accustomed to taking care of herself on the streets and had normally used the alley as a shortcut to her place—a shabby single room in a run-down building—but one night when she had started down the alley, alarm had prickled her scalp and she’d frozen, unable to take another step. She couldn’t see anything suspicious, couldn’t hear anything, but she could not move forward. Her heart had been hammering so hard in her chest she could barely breathe, and she had abruptly been sick with fear. Slowly she had backed out of the alley’s entrance and fled down the street to take the long way home.

The next morning a prostitute’s body had been found in the alley, brutally raped and mutilated. Lorna knew the dead woman could have been her, if not for the sudden hair-raising panic that had warned her away.

This was the same, like being body-slammed by a sense of danger. The man in front of her, whoever he was, was a threat to her. She doubted—at least on a rational level—that he would murder and mutilate her, but there were other dangers, other destructions she could suffer.

She felt as if she were smothering, her throat so tight very little air could get past the constriction. Pinpricks of light flared at the edges of her vision, and in silent horror she realized she might faint. She didn’t dare lose consciousness; she would be completely helpless if she did.

“Miss Clay,” he said in a calm, smooth-as-cream voice, as if her panic were completely invisible to him and no one else in the room knew she was on the verge of screaming. “Sit down, please.”

The prosaic invitation/command had the blessed effect of snapping her out of the trap of panic. Somehow she managed to take a breath without audibly gasping, then another. Nothing was going to happen. She didn’t need to panic. Yes, this was mildly alarming and she probably wouldn’t be coming back to the Inferno to gamble, but she hadn’t broken any laws or casino rules. She was safe.

Those pinpricks of light flared again. What…? Puzzled, she turned her head and found herself staring at two huge pillar candles, each of them easily two and a half feet tall, one on the floor and the other perched on a slab of white marble that served as a hearth. Flames danced around the candles’ multiple wicks.

Candles. She hadn’t been about to faint. The flickers of light at the edge of her vision had come from those candles. She hadn’t noticed them when she’d been literally dragged into the room, but that was understandable.

The candlelights were dancing and swaying, as if they stood in a draft. That too was understandable. She didn’t feel any noticeable movement of air, but this was summertime in Reno, and the air-conditioning would be running full blast. She always wore long sleeves when she went to a casino anyway; otherwise she was too cold.

With a start she realized she was staring at the candles and had neither moved nor replied to the invitation to sit. She jerked her attention back to the man standing at the window, trying to recall what the gorilla had called him. “Who are you?” she demanded sharply. Once more she jerked her arm, but the gorilla merely sighed as he held her. “Let go!”

“You can let her go,” the man said, sounding faintly amused. “Thank you for bringing her here.”

The gorilla instantly released her, said, “I’ll be in the security center,” and quietly let himself out of the office.

Instantly Lorna began assessing her chance of making a run for it, but for now she stood her ground. She didn’t want to run; the casino had her name, her description. If she ran, she would be blacklisted—not just in the Inferno, but in every casino in Nevada.

“I’m Dante Raintree,” the man said, then waited a beat to see if she gave any reaction to the name. It meant nothing to her, so she merely gave a slight, questioning lift of her brows. “I own the Inferno.”

Crap! An owner carried serious weight with the gaming commission. She would have to tread very carefully, but she had the advantage. He couldn’t prove she’d been cheating, because the simple fact was, she hadn’t been.

“Dante. Inferno. I get it,” she replied with a little edge of so what? in her tone. He was probably so rich he thought everyone should be awed in his presence. If he wanted to awe her, he would have to find something other than his wealth to do the job. She appreciated money as much as anyone; it certainly made life easier. Now that she had a little financial cushion, she was amazed at how much better she slept—what a relief it was not to worry where her next bite was coming from, or when. At the same time, she despised people who thought their wealth entitled them to special treatment.

Not only that, his name was ridiculous. Maybe his last name really was Raintree, but he’d probably chosen his first name for the drama and to fit the name of the casino. His real first name was probably something like Melvin or Fred.

“Please have a seat,” he invited again, indicating the cream-colored leather sofa to her right. A jade coffee table sat between the sofa and two cushy-looking club chairs. She tried not to stare at the table as she took a seat in one of the chairs, which was just as cushy as it looked. Surely the table was just the color of jade and not actually made of the real stone, but it looked real, as if it were faintly translucent. Surely it was just glass. If so, the craftsmanship was superb.

Lorna didn’t have a lot of experience with luxury items, but she did have a sort of sixth sense about her surroundings. She began to feel overwhelmed by the things around her. No, not overwhelmed; that wasn’t the right word. She tried to nail down what she was feeling, but there was an alien, unknown quality to the very air around her that she couldn’t describe. This was unfamiliar, and it definitely carried the edge of danger that had so alarmed her when she’d first become aware of it.

As Dante Raintree strolled closer, she realized that everything she was sensing centered on him. She’d been right; he was the danger.

He moved with indolent grace, but there was nothing slow or lazy about him. He was a tall man, about eight or nine inches taller than her own five foot five, and though his excellently tailored clothing gave him a lean look, there was no tailor skilled enough to completely disguise the power of the muscles beneath the fabric. Not a cheetah, then, but a tiger.

She realized she had avoided looking him full in the face, as if not having that knowledge would give her a small measure of safety. She knew better; ignorance was never a good defense, and Lorna had learned a long time ago not to hide her head in the sand and hope for the best.

He sat down across from her, and with an inward bracing she met his gaze full-on.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach.

She had a faint, dizzying sensation of falling; she barely restrained herself from gripping the arms of the chair to steady herself.

His hair was black. His eyes were green. Common colors, and yet nothing about him was common. His hair was sleek and glossy, falling to his shoulders. She didn’t like long hair on men, but his looked clean and soft, and she wanted to bury her hands in it. She shoved that idea away and promptly became snagged by his gaze. His eyes weren’t just green, they were green, so remarkably green that her first thought was that he was wearing colored contacts. A color that darkly rich and pure couldn’t be real. They were just very realistic contacts, with tiny black striations in them like real eyes. She had seen ads for those in magazines. The only thing was, when the candles flared and his pupils briefly contracted, the color of his irises seemed to expand. Could contacts give that appearance?

He wasn’t wearing contacts. Instinctively she knew that everything she saw, from the sleek blackness of his hair to that intense eye color, was real.

He was drawing her in. Some power she couldn’t understand was tugging at her with an almost physical sensation. The candle flames were dancing wildly, brighter now that the sun had set and twilight was deepening outside the window. The candles were the only light in the now gloomy office, sending shadows slashing across the hard angles of his face, and yet his eyes seemed to glow brighter with color than they had only a few moments before.