She still wanted him. And he'd made his point. They did fit together - at least like that.
r /> Holy hell, did they fit together.
Shit, what to do now?
Well, one idea. . . would be to text him to come back, lock them in together, and break in her new office improperly.
She even reached for her phone.
In the end, however, she texted something altogether different.
We'll figure this out. Promise.
Putting the phone down, she knew it was up to her and John to find their own future - work it out of the unforgiving, rocky shoals of passing time in a way that fit what they both needed.
She'd assumed that would be fighting side by side with him and the Brotherhood, and so had he.
Maybe that was still the way. Maybe it wasn't.
As she looked around her office, she wasn't sure how long she would be here -
The knock that interrupted her was a single strong one.
"Yeah," she called out.
Big Rob and Silent Tom walked in, looking as they always did - like they were about to drop some hotshot on his head for behaving badly. And as much as she was still focused on John, it was good to have some business-as-usual up in her face. She had spent a lot of nights making sure a club ran smoothly.
This she could do.
"Talk to me," she said.
Naturally, Big Rob did the obliging. "There's a new player in town. "
"In what line of business?"
The guy tapped the side of his nose.
Drugs. Wonderful - but hardly a surprise. Rehv had been the kingpin for a decade, and now that he'd departed the scene? Opportunity, like nature, hated a vacuum - and money was a great motivator.
Frickin' great. The underworld of Caldwell was already a three-legged table from hell; more instability they did not need.
"Who is it?"
"No one knows. He's come out of, like, nowhere, and just bought half a million in powder from Benloise, in cash. "
She frowned. It wasn't like she doubted her bouncer's sources, but that was a lot of product. "Doesn't mean it's going to be sold in Caldwell. "
"We just picked up this from a disorderly in the men's bathroom. "
Big Tom tossed a cellophane packet on the desk. The thing was your standard-issue quarter-ounce serve-up, except for one little detail. It was stamped with a red ink seal.
Fuck. . .
"I got no idea what that writing thingy is. "
Of course he didn't. It was a character in the Old Language, one that didn't have an equivalent in English. Typically it was stamped on official documents, and it represented death.
The question was. . . who was trying to take Rehv's place - who happened to be of the race?