Lover At Last (Black Dagger Brotherhood 11)

As Layla was led into the clinic, her heart was pounding and her legs were shaking. Fortunately, Phury and Qhuinn had no problem supporting her weight.

However, her experience was completely different this time through - thanks to the Primale's presence. When the facility's exterior entry panel slid aside, one of the nurses was there to meet them, and they were immediately rushed back to a different part of the clinic from where she had been the night before.

As they were let into an examination room, Layla glanced around and hesitated. What...was this? The walls were covered in pale silk, and paintings in gold frames hung at regular intervals. No clinical examination table, such as the one she had been on the night before - here, there was a bed that was covered with an elegant duvet and layered with stacks of fat pillows. And then, instead of a stainless-steel sink and plain white cabinets, a painted screen obscured one whole corner of the room - behind which, she had to assume, the clinical tools of Havers's trade were kept.

Unless their group had been sent to the physician's personal quarters?

"He'll be right with you," the nurse said, smiling up at Phury and bowing. "May I get you anything? Coffee or tea?"

"Just the doctor," the Primale answered.

"Right away, Your Excellency."

She bowed again and rushed off.

"Let's get you up on this, okay?" Phury said over by the bed.

Layla shook her head. "Are you sure we're in the right place?"

"Yup." The Primale came and helped her walk across the room. "This is one of their VIP suites."

Layla looked over her shoulder. Qhuinn had settled into the corner opposite the screen, his black-clad body like a shadow thrown by a menace. He stayed preternaturally still, his eyes focused on the floor, his breathing steady, his hands behind his back. Yet he was not at ease. No, he appeared ready and able to kill, and for a moment, a spear of fear went through her. She had never been frightened of him before, but then again, she'd never seen him in such a potentially aggressive state.

But at least the banked violence didn't seem directed toward her, or even the Primale. Certainly not at Doc Jane as the female sat down in a silk-covered chair.

"Come on," Phury said gently. "Up you go."

Layla tried to lift herself, but the mattress was too far off the floor and her upper body was as weak as her legs.

"I've got you." Phury carefully slipped his arms around her back and ran them under her knees; then he lifted with care. "Here we go."

Settling on the bed, she grunted, a sharp cramp gripping her pelvic area. As every eye in the room locked on her, she tried to cover her grimace up with a smile. No succeeding there: although the bleeding remained steady, the waves of pain were intensifying, the duration of their grip growing longer, the spaces between them getting shorter.

At this point, it was soon going to be one steady agony.

"I'm fine - "

The knock on the door cut her off. "May I come in?"

The mere sound of Havers's voice was enough to make her want to bolt. "Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe," she said as she gathered her strength.

"Yeah," Phury said darkly. "Enter - "

What happened next was so fast and furious, the only way of describing it was with a colloquialism she had learned from Qhuinn.

All hell broke loose.

Havers opened the door, stepped inside - and Qhuinn attacked the doctor, springing forward from that corner, leading with a dagger.

Layla shouted in alarm - but he didn't kill the male.

He did, however, close that door with the physician's body - or mayhap it was the male's face. And it was hard to know whether the clap that resounded was the portal meeting the jambs, or the impact of the healer getting thrown against the panels. Probably a combination of both.

The terrifyingly sharp blade was pressed against a pale throat. "Guess what you're going to do first, asshole?" Qhuinn growled. "You're going to apologize for treating her like a goddamn incubator."

Qhuinn yanked the male around. Havers's tortoiseshell glasses were shattered, one lens spiderwebbed with cracks, the earpiece on the other side sticking out at a wonky angle.

Layla shot a look at Phury. The Primale didn't seem particularly bothered: He just crossed his arms over his huge chest and leaned back against the wall beside her, evidently completely at ease with this playing out as it did. Over in the chair across the way, Doc Jane was the same, her forest green stare calm as she regarded the drama.

"Look her in the eye," Qhuinn spat, "and apologize."

When the fighter jangled the healer as if Havers were naught but a rag doll, some jumble of words came out of the doctor.

Shoot. Layla supposed she should be a lady and not enjoy this, but there was satisfaction to be had at the vengeance.

Sadness, too, however, because it should never have come to this.

"Do you accept his apology," Qhuinn demanded in an evil tone. "Or would you like him to grovel? I'm perfectly fucking happy to turn him into a rug at your feet."

"That was sufficient. Thank you."

"Now you're going to tell her" - Qhuinn pulled that shake move again, Havers's arms flopping in their sockets, his loose white coat waving like a flag - "and only her, what the fuck is going on with her body."

"I need...the chart - "

Qhuinn bared his fangs and put them right against Havers's ear - as if he were considering biting the thing off. "Bullshit. And if you are telling the truth? That lapse of memory is going to cause you to lose your life. Right now."

Havers was already pale, but that made him go completely white.

"Start talking, Doctor. And if the Primale, who you're so fucking impressed by, would be kind enough to tell me if you look away from her, that would be great."

"My pleasure," Phury said.

"I'm not hearing anything, Doc. And I'm really not a patient guy."

"You are..." From behind those broken glasses, the male's eyes met her own. "Your young is..."

She almost wished Qhuinn would stop forcing the contact. This was hard enough to hear without having to face the doctor who'd treated her so badly.

Then again, Havers was the one who had to look, not her.

Qhuinn's eyes were what she stared into as Havers said, "You're losing the pregnancy."

Things got wavy at that point, which she took to mean she had teared up. She couldn't feel anything, though. It was as if her soul had been flushed out of her body, everything that had animated her and connected her to the world gone as if it had never been.

Qhuinn showed no reaction at all. He didn't blink. Didn't alter his stance or his dagger hand.

"Is there anything that can be done medically?" Doc Jane asked.

Havers went to shake his head, but froze as the sharp point of the knife cut into the skin of his neck. As blood leaked out and ran into the starched collar of his formal shirt, the red matched his bow tie.

"Nothing of which I am aware," the physician said roughly. "Not on the earth, at any rate."

"Tell her it's not her fault," Qhuinn demanded. "Tell her she did nothing wrong."

Layla closed her eyes. "Assuming that's true - "

"In humans that's usually the case, provided there's no trauma," Doc Jane interjected.

"Tell her," Qhuinn snapped, his arm starting to vibrate ever so slightly, as if he were a heartbeat away from dispatching his own violence.

"'Tis true," Havers croaked.

Layla looked at the doctor, searching out the stare behind the ruined glasses. "Nothing?"

Havers spoke quickly. "The incidence of spontaneous miscarriage is presented in approximately one in three pregnancies. I believe, as with humans, it is caused by a self-regulation system that ensures defects of various kinds are not carried to term."

"But I am definitely pregnant," she said in a hollow tone.

"Yes. Your blood tests proved that."

"Is there any risk to her health," Qhuinn asked, "as this continues?"

"Are you her whard?" Havers blurted.

Phury interjected. "He's the father of her child. So you treat him with the same respect you would me."

That had the physician's eyes bulging, those brows surfacing above the busted tortoiseshell frames. And it was funny; that was when Qhuinn showed a modicum of reaction - just a flicker in his face before the fierce features resettled into aggression.

"Answer me," Qhuinn snapped. "Is she in any danger?"

"I-I - " Havers swallowed hard. "There are no guarantees in medicine. Generally speaking, I would say no - she is healthy on all other accounts, and the miscarriage appears to be following the generic course. Further..."

As the doctor continued to speak, his educated, refined tone so much more uneven than it had been the night before, Layla checked out.

Everything receded, her hearing disappearing, along with any sense of the temperature in the room, the bed beneath her, the other bodies standing around. The only thing she saw was Qhuinn's mismatched eyes.

Her sole thought as he held that knife against the other male's throat?

Even though they were not in love, he was exactly what she would have wanted as a father for her young. Ever since she had made the decision to participate in the real world, she had learned how rough life was, how others could conspire against you - and how sometimes principled force was all that got you through the night.

Qhuinn had the latter in spades.

He was a great, fearsome protector, and that was precisely what a female needed when she was pregnant, nursing, or caring for a young.

That and his innate kindness made him noble to her.

No matter the color of his eyes.

Nearly fifty miles to the south from where Havers was piss-pants terrified in his own clinic, Assail was behind the wheel of his Range Rover, and shaking his head in disbelief.

Things just kept getting more interesting with this woman.

Thanks to GPS, he had tracked her Audi from afar as she had decisively passed out of her neighborhood and gotten on the Northway. At each suburban exit, he expected her to get off, but as they'd left Caldwell well in the dust, he'd begun to think she might be heading all the way down into Manhattan.

Not so.

West Point, home of the venerable human military school, was about halfway between New York City and Caldwell, and as she exited the highway at that point, he was relieved. A lot happened down in the land of zip codes that started with 100, and he didn't want to get too far from home base for two reasons: One, he still hadn't heard from the twins about whether those minor-league dealers had showed up, and two, dawn was coming at some point, and he didn't like the idea of abandoning his heavily modified and reinforced Range Rover at the side of the road somewhere because he needed to dematerialize back to safety.

Once off the highway, the woman proceeded at precisely forty-five miles an hour through the township's preamble of gas stations, tourist hotels, and fast-food joints. Then on the far side of all that quick, cheap, and easy, things started to get expensive. Grand houses, the kind that were set back on lawns that looked like carpets, began to crop up, their low, loose stone walls quaintly crumbling at the sides of the road. She bypassed all of the estates, however, finally pulling over into the parking lot of a little park that had a river view.

Just as she got out, he drove right by her, his head turning in her direction, measuring her.

A hundred yards later, out of sight from where she was, Assail stopped his car on the shoulder of the road, emerged into the biting wind, and did up the buttons on his double-breasted coat. His loafers were not ideal for tracking through the snow, but he didn't care. His feet would put up with the cold and the wet, and he had a dozen more pairs waiting for him in his closet at home.

As her vehicle, not her body, had the tracking device on it, he kept his eyes on her. Sure enough, she was putting those cross-countries on, and then, with a white ski mask over her head and the pale camos covering her lithe body, she all but disappeared into the blue-washed winter landscape.

He stayed right with her.

Flashing out ahead at clips of fifteen to twenty yards, he found pines to shield himself behind as she progressed back toward the mansions, her skis eating up the snow-covered ground.

She was going to go to one of those big houses, he thought as he kept pace with her, anticipating her direction and, for the most part, guessing correctly.

Every time she went by him without knowing he was there, his body wanted to jump out at her. Take her down. Bite her.

For some reason, this human made him hungry.

And cat and mouse was very erotic, especially if only the cat knew the game was afoot.

The property she eventually infiltrated was nearly a mile away, but in spite of the distance, her blistering pace on those skis didn't lag in the slightest. She entered at the front right corner of the lawn, stepping up on the perennial low wall, and then resuming her course.

This made no sense. If she were compromised, she was an extra distance away from her car. Surely the nearer edge would have made more sense? After all, and in either case, she was exposed now, no trees to offer cover, no possible defense against trespassing available to her if she were sighted.

Unless she knew the owner. In which case, why hide yourself and sneak up at night?

The seven- or eight-acre lawn gradually rose toward a fifteen- to twenty-thousand-square-foot stone house, modernist sculptures sitting like blind, shiny sentries on the approach, the gardens sprawling out in the back. The whole time, she stuck close to that wall, and watching her from seventy-five feet up ahead, he found himself feeling impressed by her. Against the snow, she moved as a breeze would, invisible and quick, her shadow thrown against the gray stone wall such that it seemed to disappear -

Ahhhhhhh.

She'd chosen the route specifically for that, hadn't she.

Yes, indeed, the angle of the moonlight placed her shadow exactly on the stones, effectively creating further camouflage.

An odd tingle went through him.

Smart.

Assail flashed forward, finding a hiding place in and among the plantings at the side of the house. Up close, he saw that the grand manse was not new, although not ancient, either - then again, in the New World, it was rare to run into anything constructed earlier than the eighteenth century. Lots of lead-paned windows. And porches. And terraces.

All in all? Wealth and distinction.

That was no doubt protected by plenty of alarms.

It seemed unlikely she was simply going to spy on the property as she had on his own. For one, there was a ring of forested growth on the far side of that stone wall she'd traversed. She could have jettisoned the skis, negotiated that stretch of ten- to twenty-foot-high bramble, and gotten plenty of view shed to the house. For another? In that case, she wouldn't need whatever was in the backpack she'd slung onto her shoulders.

The thing was nearly big enough to carry a body in, and it was full.

As if on cue, she stopped, got out her binoculars and surveyed the property, staying stock-still, only her head subtly moving. And then she started across the lawn proper, moving even faster than she had before, to the point where she was literally racing toward the house.

Toward him.

Indeed, she headed directly for Assail, for this juncture between the bushes that marked the front of the mansion, and the tall hedge that ran around to the rear garden.

Clearly, she knew the property.

Clearly, he had chosen the perfect spot.

And upon her approach, he stepped back only a little...because he wouldn't have minded getting caught spying.

The woman skied right up to within five feet of where he was, getting so close he could catch her scent not only in his nose, but down the back of his throat.

He had to stop himself from purring.

After the effort of covering that stretch of lawn so quickly, she was breathing heavily, but her cardiovascular system recovered fast - a sign of her overall health and strength. And the speed with which she now moved was likewise erotic. Off with the skis. Off with the pack. Open the pack. Extract...

She was going onto the roof, he thought, as she assembled what appeared to be a speargun, aimed the thing high, and pulled the trigger on a grappling hook. A moment later, there was a distant metal clang from above.

Glancing upward, he realized that she had picked one of the few stretches of stone that had no windows in it...and it was shielded by the very long wall of tall shrubs that he himself was obstructed by.

She was going inside.

At that point, Assail frowned...and disappeared from where he'd been watching her.

Re-forming around the back of the house at ground level, he peered into a number of windows, cupping his hands on the cold glass and leaning in. The interior was mostly dark, but not completely so: Here and there, lamps had been left on, the bulbs casting a glow on furnishings that were a combination of old antiques and modern art. Fancy, fancy: In its peaceful slumber, the place looked like a museum, or something that had been photographed for a magazine, everything arranged with such precision that one wondered if rulers hadn't been used to arrange the furniture and the objets d'art.

No clutter anywhere, no casually thrown newspapers, bills, letters, receipts. No coats cast over the back of a chair or pair of shoes kicked off by a sofa.

Each and every ashtray was clean as a whistle.

One and only one person came to his mind.

"Benloise," he whispered to himself.

yla was led into the clinic, her heart was pounding and her legs were shaking. Fortunately, Phury and Qhuinn had no problem supporting her weight.

However, her experience was completely different this time through - thanks to the Primale's presence. When the facility's exterior entry panel slid aside, one of the nurses was there to meet them, and they were immediately rushed back to a different part of the clinic from where she had been the night before.

As they were let into an examination room, Layla glanced around and hesitated. What...was this? The walls were covered in pale silk, and paintings in gold frames hung at regular intervals. No clinical examination table, such as the one she had been on the night before - here, there was a bed that was covered with an elegant duvet and layered with stacks of fat pillows. And then, instead of a stainless-steel sink and plain white cabinets, a painted screen obscured one whole corner of the room - behind which, she had to assume, the clinical tools of Havers's trade were kept.

Unless their group had been sent to the physician's personal quarters?

"He'll be right with you," the nurse said, smiling up at Phury and bowing. "May I get you anything? Coffee or tea?"

"Just the doctor," the Primale answered.

"Right away, Your Excellency."

She bowed again and rushed off.

"Let's get you up on this, okay?" Phury said over by the bed.

Layla shook her head. "Are you sure we're in the right place?"

"Yup." The Primale came and helped her walk across the room. "This is one of their VIP suites."

Layla looked over her shoulder. Qhuinn had settled into the corner opposite the screen, his black-clad body like a shadow thrown by a menace. He stayed preternaturally still, his eyes focused on the floor, his breathing steady, his hands behind his back. Yet he was not at ease. No, he appeared ready and able to kill, and for a moment, a spear of fear went through her. She had never been frightened of him before, but then again, she'd never seen him in such a potentially aggressive state.

But at least the banked violence didn't seem directed toward her, or even the Primale. Certainly not at Doc Jane as the female sat down in a silk-covered chair.

"Come on," Phury said gently. "Up you go."

Layla tried to lift herself, but the mattress was too far off the floor and her upper body was as weak as her legs.

"I've got you." Phury carefully slipped his arms around her back and ran them under her knees; then he lifted with care. "Here we go."

Settling on the bed, she grunted, a sharp cramp gripping her pelvic area. As every eye in the room locked on her, she tried to cover her grimace up with a smile. No succeeding there: although the bleeding remained steady, the waves of pain were intensifying, the duration of their grip growing longer, the spaces between them getting shorter.

At this point, it was soon going to be one steady agony.

"I'm fine - "

The knock on the door cut her off. "May I come in?"

The mere sound of Havers's voice was enough to make her want to bolt. "Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe," she said as she gathered her strength.

"Yeah," Phury said darkly. "Enter - "

What happened next was so fast and furious, the only way of describing it was with a colloquialism she had learned from Qhuinn.

All hell broke loose.

Havers opened the door, stepped inside - and Qhuinn attacked the doctor, springing forward from that corner, leading with a dagger.

Layla shouted in alarm - but he didn't kill the male.

He did, however, close that door with the physician's body - or mayhap it was the male's face. And it was hard to know whether the clap that resounded was the portal meeting the jambs, or the impact of the healer getting thrown against the panels. Probably a combination of both.

The terrifyingly sharp blade was pressed against a pale throat. "Guess what you're going to do first, asshole?" Qhuinn growled. "You're going to apologize for treating her like a goddamn incubator."

Qhuinn yanked the male around. Havers's tortoiseshell glasses were shattered, one lens spiderwebbed with cracks, the earpiece on the other side sticking out at a wonky angle.

Layla shot a look at Phury. The Primale didn't seem particularly bothered: He just crossed his arms over his huge chest and leaned back against the wall beside her, evidently completely at ease with this playing out as it did. Over in the chair across the way, Doc Jane was the same, her forest green stare calm as she regarded the drama.

"Look her in the eye," Qhuinn spat, "and apologize."

When the fighter jangled the healer as if Havers were naught but a rag doll, some jumble of words came out of the doctor.

Shoot. Layla supposed she should be a lady and not enjoy this, but there was satisfaction to be had at the vengeance.

Sadness, too, however, because it should never have come to this.

"Do you accept his apology," Qhuinn demanded in an evil tone. "Or would you like him to grovel? I'm perfectly fucking happy to turn him into a rug at your feet."

"That was sufficient. Thank you."

"Now you're going to tell her" - Qhuinn pulled that shake move again, Havers's arms flopping in their sockets, his loose white coat waving like a flag - "and only her, what the fuck is going on with her body."

"I need...the chart - "

Qhuinn bared his fangs and put them right against Havers's ear - as if he were considering biting the thing off. "Bullshit. And if you are telling the truth? That lapse of memory is going to cause you to lose your life. Right now."

Havers was already pale, but that made him go completely white.

"Start talking, Doctor. And if the Primale, who you're so fucking impressed by, would be kind enough to tell me if you look away from her, that would be great."

"My pleasure," Phury said.

"I'm not hearing anything, Doc. And I'm really not a patient guy."

"You are..." From behind those broken glasses, the male's eyes met her own. "Your young is..."

She almost wished Qhuinn would stop forcing the contact. This was hard enough to hear without having to face the doctor who'd treated her so badly.

Then again, Havers was the one who had to look, not her.

Qhuinn's eyes were what she stared into as Havers said, "You're losing the pregnancy."

Things got wavy at that point, which she took to mean she had teared up. She couldn't feel anything, though. It was as if her soul had been flushed out of her body, everything that had animated her and connected her to the world gone as if it had never been.

Qhuinn showed no reaction at all. He didn't blink. Didn't alter his stance or his dagger hand.

"Is there anything that can be done medically?" Doc Jane asked.

Havers went to shake his head, but froze as the sharp point of the knife cut into the skin of his neck. As blood leaked out and ran into the starched collar of his formal shirt, the red matched his bow tie.

"Nothing of which I am aware," the physician said roughly. "Not on the earth, at any rate."

"Tell her it's not her fault," Qhuinn demanded. "Tell her she did nothing wrong."

Layla closed her eyes. "Assuming that's true - "

"In humans that's usually the case, provided there's no trauma," Doc Jane interjected.

"Tell her," Qhuinn snapped, his arm starting to vibrate ever so slightly, as if he were a heartbeat away from dispatching his own violence.

"'Tis true," Havers croaked.

Layla looked at the doctor, searching out the stare behind the ruined glasses. "Nothing?"

Havers spoke quickly. "The incidence of spontaneous miscarriage is presented in approximately one in three pregnancies. I believe, as with humans, it is caused by a self-regulation system that ensures defects of various kinds are not carried to term."

"But I am definitely pregnant," she said in a hollow tone.

"Yes. Your blood tests proved that."

"Is there any risk to her health," Qhuinn asked, "as this continues?"

"Are you her whard?" Havers blurted.

Phury interjected. "He's the father of her child. So you treat him with the same respect you would me."

That had the physician's eyes bulging, those brows surfacing above the busted tortoiseshell frames. And it was funny; that was when Qhuinn showed a modicum of reaction - just a flicker in his face before the fierce features resettled into aggression.

"Answer me," Qhuinn snapped. "Is she in any danger?"

"I-I - " Havers swallowed hard. "There are no guarantees in medicine. Generally speaking, I would say no - she is healthy on all other accounts, and the miscarriage appears to be following the generic course. Further..."

As the doctor continued to speak, his educated, refined tone so much more uneven than it had been the night before, Layla checked out.

Everything receded, her hearing disappearing, along with any sense of the temperature in the room, the bed beneath her, the other bodies standing around. The only thing she saw was Qhuinn's mismatched eyes.

Her sole thought as he held that knife against the other male's throat?

Even though they were not in love, he was exactly what she would have wanted as a father for her young. Ever since she had made the decision to participate in the real world, she had learned how rough life was, how others could conspire against you - and how sometimes principled force was all that got you through the night.

Qhuinn had the latter in spades.

He was a great, fearsome protector, and that was precisely what a female needed when she was pregnant, nursing, or caring for a young.

That and his innate kindness made him noble to her.

No matter the color of his eyes.

Nearly fifty miles to the south from where Havers was piss-pants terrified in his own clinic, Assail was behind the wheel of his Range Rover, and shaking his head in disbelief.

Things just kept getting more interesting with this woman.

Thanks to GPS, he had tracked her Audi from afar as she had decisively passed out of her neighborhood and gotten on the Northway. At each suburban exit, he expected her to get off, but as they'd left Caldwell well in the dust, he'd begun to think she might be heading all the way down into Manhattan.

Not so.

West Point, home of the venerable human military school, was about halfway between New York City and Caldwell, and as she exited the highway at that point, he was relieved. A lot happened down in the land of zip codes that started with 100, and he didn't want to get too far from home base for two reasons: One, he still hadn't heard from the twins about whether those minor-league dealers had showed up, and two, dawn was coming at some point, and he didn't like the idea of abandoning his heavily modified and reinforced Range Rover at the side of the road somewhere because he needed to dematerialize back to safety.

Once off the highway, the woman proceeded at precisely forty-five miles an hour through the township's preamble of gas stations, tourist hotels, and fast-food joints. Then on the far side of all that quick, cheap, and easy, things started to get expensive. Grand houses, the kind that were set back on lawns that looked like carpets, began to crop up, their low, loose stone walls quaintly crumbling at the sides of the road. She bypassed all of the estates, however, finally pulling over into the parking lot of a little park that had a river view.

Just as she got out, he drove right by her, his head turning in her direction, measuring her.

A hundred yards later, out of sight from where she was, Assail stopped his car on the shoulder of the road, emerged into the biting wind, and did up the buttons on his double-breasted coat. His loafers were not ideal for tracking through the snow, but he didn't care. His feet would put up with the cold and the wet, and he had a dozen more pairs waiting for him in his closet at home.

As her vehicle, not her body, had the tracking device on it, he kept his eyes on her. Sure enough, she was putting those cross-countries on, and then, with a white ski mask over her head and the pale camos covering her lithe body, she all but disappeared into the blue-washed winter landscape.

He stayed right with her.

Flashing out ahead at clips of fifteen to twenty yards, he found pines to shield himself behind as she progressed back toward the mansions, her skis eating up the snow-covered ground.

She was going to go to one of those big houses, he thought as he kept pace with her, anticipating her direction and, for the most part, guessing correctly.

Every time she went by him without knowing he was there, his body wanted to jump out at her. Take her down. Bite her.

For some reason, this human made him hungry.

And cat and mouse was very erotic, especially if only the cat knew the game was afoot.

The property she eventually infiltrated was nearly a mile away, but in spite of the distance, her blistering pace on those skis didn't lag in the slightest. She entered at the front right corner of the lawn, stepping up on the perennial low wall, and then resuming her course.

This made no sense. If she were compromised, she was an extra distance away from her car. Surely the nearer edge would have made more sense? After all, and in either case, she was exposed now, no trees to offer cover, no possible defense against trespassing available to her if she were sighted.

Unless she knew the owner. In which case, why hide yourself and sneak up at night?

The seven- or eight-acre lawn gradually rose toward a fifteen- to twenty-thousand-square-foot stone house, modernist sculptures sitting like blind, shiny sentries on the approach, the gardens sprawling out in the back. The whole time, she stuck close to that wall, and watching her from seventy-five feet up ahead, he found himself feeling impressed by her. Against the snow, she moved as a breeze would, invisible and quick, her shadow thrown against the gray stone wall such that it seemed to disappear -

Ahhhhhhh.

She'd chosen the route specifically for that, hadn't she.

Yes, indeed, the angle of the moonlight placed her shadow exactly on the stones, effectively creating further camouflage.

An odd tingle went through him.

Smart.

Assail flashed forward, finding a hiding place in and among the plantings at the side of the house. Up close, he saw that the grand manse was not new, although not ancient, either - then again, in the New World, it was rare to run into anything constructed earlier than the eighteenth century. Lots of lead-paned windows. And porches. And terraces.

All in all? Wealth and distinction.

That was no doubt protected by plenty of alarms.

It seemed unlikely she was simply going to spy on the property as she had on his own. For one, there was a ring of forested growth on the far side of that stone wall she'd traversed. She could have jettisoned the skis, negotiated that stretch of ten- to twenty-foot-high bramble, and gotten plenty of view shed to the house. For another? In that case, she wouldn't need whatever was in the backpack she'd slung onto her shoulders.

The thing was nearly big enough to carry a body in, and it was full.

As if on cue, she stopped, got out her binoculars and surveyed the property, staying stock-still, only her head subtly moving. And then she started across the lawn proper, moving even faster than she had before, to the point where she was literally racing toward the house.

Toward him.

Indeed, she headed directly for Assail, for this juncture between the bushes that marked the front of the mansion, and the tall hedge that ran around to the rear garden.

Clearly, she knew the property.

Clearly, he had chosen the perfect spot.

And upon her approach, he stepped back only a little...because he wouldn't have minded getting caught spying.

The woman skied right up to within five feet of where he was, getting so close he could catch her scent not only in his nose, but down the back of his throat.

He had to stop himself from purring.

After the effort of covering that stretch of lawn so quickly, she was breathing heavily, but her cardiovascular system recovered fast - a sign of her overall health and strength. And the speed with which she now moved was likewise erotic. Off with the skis. Off with the pack. Open the pack. Extract...

She was going onto the roof, he thought, as she assembled what appeared to be a speargun, aimed the thing high, and pulled the trigger on a grappling hook. A moment later, there was a distant metal clang from above.

Glancing upward, he realized that she had picked one of the few stretches of stone that had no windows in it...and it was shielded by the very long wall of tall shrubs that he himself was obstructed by.

She was going inside.

At that point, Assail frowned...and disappeared from where he'd been watching her.

Re-forming around the back of the house at ground level, he peered into a number of windows, cupping his hands on the cold glass and leaning in. The interior was mostly dark, but not completely so: Here and there, lamps had been left on, the bulbs casting a glow on furnishings that were a combination of old antiques and modern art. Fancy, fancy: In its peaceful slumber, the place looked like a museum, or something that had been photographed for a magazine, everything arranged with such precision that one wondered if rulers hadn't been used to arrange the furniture and the objets d'art.

No clutter anywhere, no casually thrown newspapers, bills, letters, receipts. No coats cast over the back of a chair or pair of shoes kicked off by a sofa.

Each and every ashtray was clean as a whistle.

One and only one person came to his mind.

"Benloise," he whispered to himself.