For Chris it was a toss-up between weeping with relief and shooting him in the head. “Did Mom happen to mention who is my biological father?”
“It was some French guy she met a couple months before me, when she went to the Riviera with her folks. By the time we met, she was already a month gone with you.” He got to his feet. “So, okay, you need anything? Money? A place to stay?”
“I need you to get away from me, Frankie,” she said honestly. “Right this minute.”
“Yeah, sure.” He gave her one last guilty look. “I’m sorry, kid. I just can’t . . . sorry.” He edged around the table and hurried through the back door.
Chris sat there and stared at nothing in particular until she smelled the sour citrus blend of hand cleaner and Budweiser. “You know about this, Bug?”
“He stayed with me right after he left Addie.” He parked a fresh beer in front of her before he sat down. “He’s not a bad guy, you know. Only reason he stayed with your mother long as he did was ’cause of you.”
“Until he found out I wasn’t his kid,” she tacked on. “Then he couldn’t get out fast enough.”
“Yeah, well, that was a real kick to the dick. If it helps, he stayed plastered for close to a year after.” He beckoned to Cody and Loot, who came in and took their seats. “You deal, Christi.” He shoved a new deck to her.
“Another time.” She pushed it back. “Where is Stryker?”
Cody made a ticking sound with his tongue. “That pussy has shark teeth, little girl.”
“Do you need the cop to leave the room before you tell me, is that it?” As Bug choked on his beer, Cody’s bottle slid out of his hand, and Chris looked at Loot. “Would you mind giving us a minute?”
“How do you know I’m a cop?” he countered.
“There’s an unmarked unit parked at the curb. You’ve got a standard-issue thirty-two in that ankle holster you think I haven’t noticed. Your haircut is regulation. There’s no money on the table because outside the rezes gambling is illegal in Florida, and occasionally you have to take a random department polygraph.” Chris offered him a polite smile. “And, of course, Loot isn’t your name because you’re loaded. It’s biker shorthand for Lieutenant.”
He smiled slowly. “You do know cops.”
“My best friend works homicide in Fort Lauderdale.” She eyed Bug. “Stryker.”
“He bounces around Sundown Estates on the east side of the island,” Bug said. “Worked out the deal with a Realtor who’s into whips and chains.” He removed a slip of paper from his bib, wrote on it, and handed it to her. “Entry code for the gate.”
She slipped the note in her purse as she watched Loot’s face. “You’re not interested in pursuing justice here, Officer?”
“I’m not KWPD.” His smile was serene. “I fly copters for the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department. Aviation Division, Undercover Operations.”
“A black-ops chopper copper.” She whistled a single descending note. “Glad I’m not smuggling anything past our borders.” Something occurred to her, and she turned her gaze on Bug. “No wonder you’re so damn antsy. You’re helping him, you narc.”
“Confidential informant,” Bug corrected, and gave her a wary look. “I don’t need that advertised, either.”
“My lips are Superglued.” She handed him the beer and got to her feet. “Nice seeing you again, Bug. Gentlemen, have a lovely evening.”
“Hey,” Loot called after her. “You never told us what the B-U-G means.”
She glanced back at Bug, who squirmed a little. “Only exactly what he is. Big ugly guy.”
* * *
Jamys diverted from the course Chris had set long enough to sail by Paradise, the boat owner’s private island. Photosensor lights illuminated one small pier that led from a cover into a dense thatch of palm and pine trees. Nestled in the center he spotted the tin roof of a large structure; that was likely the house. No vessels were moored to the pier, and the island appeared deserted. If Christian had been with him, he would have persuaded her to spend the coming day there with him, but she was waiting in Key West.
Would she be there waiting, or was it all a ruse?
Jamys had known something had changed the moment Chris had found the strange symbols on the journal’s bookplate. He thought at first she had been frightened, but then he detected the complexity of the dark change in her scent. She felt fear, yes, but there was more to it than that. He knew only too well how mortals smelled when they felt despair, and rage, and disgust. She had felt all those things, and winding through them an abysmal amount of regret.Whoever this Stryker was, Christian despised him. He could hear it in her voice each and every time she uttered his name.
Jamys returned to the Golden Horde’s mapped course and reached the marina rendezvous point at Key West some two hours later, and saw Christian waving to him. He guided the boat to the empty slip she indicated, securing the sails and mooring lines before he climbed out onto the pier.
“You made it.” She hurled herself at him. “I was beginning to worry.”
“I took a slight detour.” When she began to pull away, he wrapped his arms around her and kept her close. “I think we should stop our search for the night. There is a place I want to take you. Come on board, and we can go there now.”
She looked up at him. “Someone else might find the jewels, and you’d miss the chance to rule Ireland. Isn’t that everything you want?”
“I know what I want tonight.” He caressed her cheek. “It is not Ireland.”
Her smile slipped. “I get it. You figured out that I didn’t tell you everything about Stryker.” She bumped her forehead into his shoulder three times. “Okay. He hired me to work at some of his parties. I didn’t have sex with anyone, at least, not . . .” She made a frustrated sound. “Look, everything I did, I did by myself, with people watching me. I’m not proud of it, but I was fifteen and alone and no one else would give me a job.”
“Was there no one to help you?” he asked. “Your family?”
“My family.” She made a bitter sound. “My father—the man I thought was my father—was a drunk and a beach bum. He didn’t like finding out I wasn’t his kid, so he left me and my mom. That drove my mother crazy, and she killed herself two years later. My grandparents blamed me for all of it and turned me over to the state. I don’t know who my biological father is, and everyone who knew his name is dead or won’t speak to me, so he’s out of the picture.” She made a dismissive gesture. “That pretty much covers my family.”
Now he understood so many things about her. “You cannot blame yourself for their actions.”
“Jamys, I’m the only reason my parents got married, my father left, my mother committed suicide, and my grandparents disowned me.” She blinked a few times. “I didn’t do it on purpose, but yeah, I destroyed my entire family.”
“Christian.”
“I’ve learned to live with it,” she assured him. “I didn’t ask to be born. I loved my dad and my mom. I tried to love my grandparents. I was a good kid—at least, I think I was—until I met Stryker.”
This was her secret shame? “Christian, you were a desperate child, alone in the world. You did what you had to in order to survive.”
She shook her head. “I was old enough to know better. I could have stayed in foster care after my mom died.” Her hand went to the cross hidden under her shirt.
“The cross you wear,” he said, startling her, “it belonged to your mother?”
She nodded. “She gave it to me the night before she killed herself. Took it off her neck and put it around mine, and said I’d have to carry it now. I thought she was just being crazy again.” She pulled the cross out from her shirt to look at it. “She never took it off, not even when she went swimming or showered. I don’t know why; she wasn’t religious.”
“Do you wear it to remember her?”
She shrugged. “I kept it to spite my grandmother; she wouldn’t let me take anything with me when she dumped me in foster care.” Her eyes met his. “I hate what my mom did, but I loved her, too. It’s all I have left of her. And it’s all I have to remind me not to be her.” She sighed. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I know what it is to love someone you hate.” He thought of all the nights he had spent alone in his tower chambers and, before that, locked inside his silence. “I knew what my mother had done, and I didn’t tell my father. I let him think she had been tortured to death in Dublin.” He met her gaze. “It drove him mad, Christian. I let my father become an animal because I could not face what my mother had done to us. Because for all the horror she had brought upon us, I loved her still. So yes, I do understand.”
“I hope you still feel that way after we do this.” She climbed onto the deck and went below.
Jamys followed. “You know where Stryker is.”
“His operation is about a mile from here.” She wouldn’t look at him. “I need to shower and change, and then we’ll have to put together an outfit for you.”
Sensing she needed some time alone, Jamys went up on deck, and waited until she called his name.
As soon as Jamys entered the cabin, he saw a glittering dark column. It was Christian, standing with her back to him, her slender body wrapped in shimmering black ribbons. She had woven her hair into an intricate braid, and a spray of long, gold-tipped scarlet feathers hugged the right side of her head.
She turned, an altar goddess carved from jet and ivory, and the dusky allure of her darkened eyes dueled with the luscious red pout of her lips. Both won his soul.
“Say something.”
Speak? Jamys could barely think. He lifted his hand to touch an inch of silken skin bared by the bewitching material. Naked, in his bed, covered by nothing but moonlight and shadows, she would look like this. “Magic.”