I wasn't entirely surprised that we ended up in Toorak. That's where Quinn was, and he sure as hell seemed to know more about this whole situation than the rest of us. And he was going to let me in on the secret, or I was going to get really angry. Just how much good that would do was anyone's guess.
Though zilch was an odds-on bet.
Jin pulled into the driveway of a gated residence. I stopped well up the street, and got out once the gates had opened and he'd driven in.
The cool breezed swirled around me, carrying with it a familiar scent. But not the one I was expecting.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and scanned the night behind me. "Gautier, one of these days you'll actually bathe and I'll be in deep shit."
His soft chuckle slid across the darkness as uneasily as oil across water. Chills skittered across my skin. There'd always been something particularly nasty about Gautier's laugh, but tonight it seemed ten times worse.
"And one of these days, I'm going to enjoy smacking that smart mouth from your face." He shook free of the shadows and strolled toward me. "Interesting that we both turn up at this place."
Tension rippled through my limbs. I shifted my stance a little but still felt like a sprinter at the starting block. All edgy and ready to run. "The only thing interesting about it is the fact I doubt it's coincidental."
He stopped well short of laser range. Not that I actually had a laser to use, but I wasn't about to let him in on that little secret.
"Coincidence doesn't play a huge role in my actions," he admitted, "but I am curious as to what you're doing here."
I raised an eyebrow. "You don't know? I thought you knew everything."
"Oh, I know more than you could ever guess."
His smile was all teeth. Too much teeth, in fact. But it was his gaze that sent another chill down my spine.
There was something not quite right about his eyes.
Something almost inhuman.
Not vampire inhuman, but something more. Something alien and old.
And it reminded me of the coldness I'd seen lurking in Jin's eyes.
Gautier was the death head of the dragon.
Sexual or not, he was definitely one of them.
I flared my nostrils, drawing in his scents, tasting the nuances and differences. It had changed - the differences were slight, but nevertheless there. But I couldn't say for sure that it was scent I'd smelled emanating from room two at the health club. Maybe the night, the cold, and my fear was somehow distorting sensory information.
Or maybe something else was. Someone else.
I resisted the urge to retreat and shifted one pocketed hand, as if clenching a nonexistent weapon tighter. His gaze flickered down and his toothy smile grew. I had a bad feeling he wasn't fooled by the ruse.
Either that, or he wasn't worried about being shot by a laser. Which was probably more likely. He was the type to think getting shot might be a good price to pay for the fruition of his aims. And it's what those aims were when it came to the immediate future and me that had me worried.
And he knew it, damn him. The quick glimmer of amusement firing his cold eyes was easy to see, even at night.
"Riley, keep him talking," Rhoan said into my ear, through my still-open link. "I'm armed and on my way."
Good, I wanted to say. Hurry.
But Rhoan was mind-blind, and I dared not use the com-link because it would only warn Gautier. I forced a smile and said, "So if you know it all, tell me why you killed Dunleavy and his girlfriend."
He raised a mocking eyebrow. "What makes you think I did that?"
"It's that smell thing I keep warning you about. It lingers, you know?"
"They died during daylight. You know I can't move around in daylight."