J Ward - Crave

She ripped herself out of his hold. “Don’t threaten me,” she snapped.

As Matthias stared into those beautiful eyes of hers, he felt ancient. Ancient and broken and trapped. But as he had learned two years ago, he couldn’t stop the trajectory of his life. It was like putting your palms up to an avalanche: You got crushed and the rush of snow and ice didn’t even notice.

“I am not afraid of you,” she said.

“You should be,” he replied grimly, thinking of the twelve different ways he could make it so she didn’t come down for breakfast tomorrow morning. “You should be very afraid.”

He let her go, and she took off like a rocket, her blond hair flowing out behind her as she raced down the stairs.

Going back to that window over the sink, he watched her head around the house and go out to the street.

She was going to be so very useful in this situation, he thought.

On a number of levels.

As Grier walked up to her Audi, she had the key remote in her hand and her heart in her throat. She’d seen that man before; there was some kind of flicker in the back of her mind, some memory of him. He hadn’t had the eye patch or the cane-she would have remembered those. But she had definitely seen him.

Approaching the car, she stood beside it, every muscle in her body braced as if at any moment the thing was going to go Sopranos on her and blow sky-high. And just as she finally raised her key to unlock it, a black sedan with darkened windows eased by her on Tremont. Looking into the glass… she got nothing. All of it was impenetrable, and the sunlight glinted off the windshield so she couldn’t see who was driving.

She knew damn well who was inside, however. And she’d bet that he was lifting a hand in a little wave.

The sedan didn’t even have a license plate.

As the thing took off, all kinds of smart ideas went through her head, including the ever-present 911 call or doing a dial to her friends at the Boston Police Department or getting her father to come over. But she didn’t think whatever was in the trunk was going to kill her. That man had already had his shot at her, so to speak: He could have easily drugged her and dragged her out the back or killed her outright with a silencer.

Letting her fingers do the walking would only lead to complications-and although the first thing she was going to do when she got home was get in touch with her father about this card, she wasn’t sure she needed him to come screaming over here in a panic.

Shit, her cell phone might be tapped, too.

Hitting the remote, she released the trunk latch and slowly lifted…

Frowning, she bent down and wondered if she was seeing things right. Sitting on the dark gray felt of the trunk’s interior was… well, it appeared to be one of those Life Alert buttons that old people used, nothing but a cream-colored plastic transmitter in the shape of a triangle with the logo across the front in red. The chain it was on was silver, and long enough so that if you put it around your neck it would dangle below your heart.

She got a tissue out of her bag and picked the thing up for closer inspection; then she went around, got behind the wheel, and laid it out on the seat next to her. When she hit the ignition, she did flinch-in the event the Audi burst into flames-except her heart rate settled fast. But come on, she was an innocent bystander when it came to whatever was going on with Isaac, and she had to imagine that an American civilian on American soil was not the kind of collateral damage the U.S. government wanted to deal with.

As she drove over to Beacon Hill, she put a call in to her father, and when she got voice mail, she tried to leave a message, but what could she say given that she didn’t know who was listening? She ended up deleting the fits and starts and figured he’d see the missed alert on his phone and get back in touch with her.

At home on Louisburg Square, she parked in her spot against the fence and looked around through the car windows. Who was watching her? And from where?

No wonder Isaac had been twitchy. The idea of getting from her Audi to her front door made her wish she had a Kevlar vest on.

Grabbing her purse and palming the Life Alert with the tissue, she got out and hurried over-except as she got closer to her house, she slowed. On the lantern, wrapped tightly around the base, was another strip of white cloth.

Pivoting fast, she stared up at all the brick buildings and wished she could see inside them.

She was not alone anywhere she went, was she.

As her heart got back on the Pony Express and her blood rushed through her veins and her brain, she ducked into her front door, disengaged the big alarm, and put the Life Alert on the breakfront. Dropping her bag, she quickly shut up the ADT’s beeping, and then leaned out of the house only long enough to pull the cloth free.

One, two, three: she shut herself in, locked the door and reengaged the monster system-something that she never did in the daytime when she was at home.

With grim purpose, she went into the kitchen with her bag and put everything on the counter: the business card, the pieces of cloth, and the transistor. All of which she was careful to handle with a tissue.

The two sections of fabric were identical and had clearly been ripped off the same source-and she had a feeling where they were from. Isaac’s muscle shirt.

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.