Crave (Fallen Angels 2)

What do you want to bet it was a signal that he was--

As her cell phone went off, she yelped and nearly blew out of her shoes. When she checked who it was, she answered and didn't waste time.

"Dad . . . we need to talk."

There was a silence and then Alistair Childe's patrician voice came over the connection. "Are you all right? Shall I come over?"

Cradling the phone in the crook of her shoulder, she picked up the Life Alert by the chain and watched it dangle. Clearly, she was under surveillance --so it wasn't like there was any hiding who she saw or where she went. And besides, having her father show was probably a good idea. She'd always sensed that he had serious power in high elevations, because politicians and military men alike treated him with something more than just respect: They were vaguely afraid of him, in spite the fact that he was an Ivy League-educated gentleman.

Might not hurt to throw him in the mix, and besides, there was no one else she would have gone to with this situation.

"Yes," she said. "Come now."

In the house on Pinckney Street, Isaac stared out from behind his sheet of particleboard with an urge to kill. And that burning drive wasn't in the civilian sense that he was frustrated and wanted to let that shit out in the hypothetical.

He wanted to slit Matthias open from throat to scrotum and gut him like a pig.

Motherfucker was not going after his woman.

It didn't matter what Isaac had to do or sacrifice: Grier Childe, with her good heart and her smart eyes, was not going to become a notch on Matthias's belt.

Clearly, however, she was in the guy's crosshairs. She'd taken off well over two hours ago, and she'd had the cash with her. Which should have been Isaac's cue to leave as well . . . except the black sedan that had driven by at dawn had rematerialized from an alley off Willow Street and gotten right on her bumper.

With no wheels of his own, he'd had to let them both drive away, his goddamn heart pounding with impotent rage. His first instinct was to call Jim Heron --but he still wasn't sure he could trust the guy.

The only thing he'd been able to do was replace the signal he'd tied to her lantern. Picking up a painter's hat that had been left behind, he'd put it on to cover his face and slipped out briefly to tie another piece of that muscle shirt around the iron fixture--just in case whoever was in that car hadn't seen the first one before she'd taken it away. Although that was unlikely. The question was whether the XOps method of marking a situation as clear would matter: In the field, when an assignment was finished and the team member had taken off, he always left a white mark somewhere on the premises or the vehicle or the scene.

Isaac was hoping that it would get his past and his present redirected away from Grier. But, yeah, whatever: When she'd come back home, she'd been sporting a frown so deep it was as if she were squinting, and she'd had something in her hand that she was carrying with a tissue.

Like she didn't want to get her handprints on it or smudge the ones that were there.

Then she'd removed the second mark he'd left on her lantern.

And . . . now the black sedan returned, oozing past her house, going up the street. Coming back. Parking.

"Fuck. Fuck . . ."

He wanted to break cover, march across the street, and knock on the window of that unmarked with the muzzle of his gun. Then he wanted to stare into the eyes of whoever it was while he pulled the trigger and turned the bastard's frontal lobe into a milk shake.

He had a feeling who it was, too.

He hoped that bastard's arm was feeling better.

Man, to hell with leaving Boston now; he wasn't going anywhere until he was sure Grier was out of the line of fire . . . and yet, shit, he was the one who'd put the target on her chest.

He was chewing on that little slice of happiness when a Mercedes the size of a small house drove up to her front door. No nosing around and looking for a parking spot for that bad boy; the thing stopped at the curb and stayed there, the only concession to the illegality being its flashers.

The man who got out was over six feet tall and soldier trim. His gray hair was full and combed back from a side part, and even in the fleece and workout gear, he oozed money. And what do you know, he strode up and used the lion's-head door knocker like he owned the place.

Grier's father. Had to be.

The instant she opened up, he stepped inside, and then just like that, they were shut in together and he couldn't see anything more.

Generally speaking, in a stakeout situation, you wanted to find a single perch and keep still. Moving around increased the likelihood of being spotted --especially in broad daylight in an area you weren't familiar with, when people were already looking for you.

And in his case, it wasn't just bad form to get eyeballed--it was suicide.

So as much as his body was screaming for him to get a move on, close in, change locales, he had to stay put.

Nightfall. He had to wait until nightfall, and even then, he needed to be careful. That security system of hers was a no-break sitch: His specialty was killing people, not disarming state-of-the-art wiring, so the chances of his getting in without triggering it were nil.

Assuming he even wanted inside where she lived. The issue was how to best protect her, and it was hard to know what was worse--her in there alone with him on the perimeter. Or him in there with her.

Dimly, he heard his stomach growl and the sound made him feel keenly the number of hours that had passed since he'd eaten last. But he shrugged that off, just as he had countless times in the field.

Mind over matter, mind over body . . . mind over everything.

He just wished like hell he knew what Grier and her pops were talking about.

Standing in her kitchen and staring at her father as he looked at her little lineup of what-the-hells, Grier had so many questions she didn't know where to start.

One thing was certain: When her father reached out to pick up the business card, his hand was trembling ever so slightly. Which in anybody else was the equivalent of a full-blown epileptic seizure.

Alistair Childe was a warm man with a good soul, but he rarely showed emotion of any kind. Especially if it was an upset kind of thing. The only time she'd ever seen him cry had been at her brother's funeral--which had been bizarre not just for the rarity of his tears but because the two hadn't really gotten along.

"Who gave this to you?" he asked in a voice so thin it didn't sound like him in the slightest.

Grier sat down on one of the stools at the island and wondered where to start. "I was assigned a public-defender case yesterday. . . ."

The story was a quick tell, but it got a big reaction: "You let that man come over here?"

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Yes, I did."

"Into the house."

"He's a human, Dad. Not an animal."

Her father all but fell onto the other stool and then he struggled to unzip the neck of his fleece. "Dear God . . ."

"I've resigned from the case, but I went to Isaac's apartment just now--"

"What in the world made you go there?"

Okay, she was going to ignore that outraged tone. "And that was when I was given the card and told to call if I saw Isaac again. And I also got that Life Alert thing." She shook her head. "I'd seen the man before. I swear . . . a long time ago."

If her father had been pale before, now he turned the color of fog, not just blanching, but going opaque gray. "What did he look like?"

"He had a patch over his eye and he--"

She didn't finish the description. Her father bolted up off the stool and then abruptly had to catch his balance on the counter.

"Father?" She grabbed his arm in alarm. "Are you all--"

She was not surprised when he just shook his head.

"Talk to me, please," she said. "What is going on here?"

"I can't . . . discuss it with you."

Grier dropped her hold and stepped back. "Wrong answer," she bit out. "Totally wrong answer."

As she glared at him and all his resolute silence, she realized why she'd felt so oddly comfortable around Isaac: Her father was a ghost as well. Always had been. She'd literally grown up and now lived under the fear that at any moment he could disappear forever.

And her client had given off that exact same vibe.

"You've got to talk to me," she said grimly.

"I can't." The eyes that looked at her were those of a stranger in familiar garb--as if someone had taken a mask of her father's features and stepped in behind the surface dressing to stare outward. "Even if I could . . . I couldn't bear to contaminate you with . . ."