Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Colum: Can you find someone attractive and terrifying at the same time?
Franco: …
Franco: You’ve met my wife, right?
U nsurprisingly, the ride from the museum to the hotel was made in silence, as Colum and Xavier each stared into the distance, trying to come to grips with what had just happened.
Annie didn’t expect that silence to last. As they stepped onto the elevator, Xavier began muttering curses in French under his breath, while Colum ran his hand through his hair, shaking his head in disbelief, speaking a lot of half-finished sentences. “I just… I can’t… I don’t… Sweet suffering Jaysus, that was…”
Yep. The shock was wearing off.
Colum had held it together better in the moment, but now that they were safe, he was devolving. Annie sighed and leaned back against the elevator wall. They needed to get it out of their systems.
Once the elevator reached their floor, they stepped off, walking toward their rooms. When they reached her door, Annie turned to face them. “So,” she began.
“Don’t say good night.” Xavier was still looking a little wild-eyed. “We’re not going to bed without talking about…” He pointed emphatically at his own eyeball.
It hadn’t been her intention to stay good night. It wasn’t a good idea to leave either of them alone in their present state. She could see they were freaking out. “I was going to ask if you wanted to come in. I have another bottle of Chardonnay.”
“I don’t think wine is going to touch the edge of this,” Colum said.
“Even so.” Annie unlocked the door to her room, gesturing for them to enter. Once they were all inside, she closed the door, leaning against it, suddenly weary from too many days of bouncing across the Atlantic. Her body was screwed up timewise, and all she wanted was to sleep for the next twelve hours. Unfortunately, that much-needed sleep was nowhere on the horizon.
The instant the door was closed, Xavier let out a string of rapid-fire French while pointing and gesticulating for emphasis. He was clearly talking to her—he was looking right at her—but she had no idea what he was saying.
Colum put a hand on Xavier’s shoulder. “You’re speaking French.”
Xavier sputtered to a stop, and for the first time, he looked younger, almost boyish. Most of the time, she’d describe him as sexy in a dangerous, smoldering way, but right now, he was flustered, and it was seriously cute.
Xavier heaved a sigh as he looked over at Colum, then closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, it was the sharp, dark stare she was used to. “You murdered someone.”
Annie scoffed. “Jesus. Is that what you’ve been thinking? I didn’t kill him. It was a small knife. The blade wasn’t long enough to pierce his brain. Or if it did, it wasn’t long enough to do any serious damage. But the shock and pain would have dropped him for a minute. He was moving when we left.”
“It wasn’t…” Xavier threw his hands in the air as he began pacing. He took two circuits before looking at Colum. “You saw it, yes? The knife in his eyeball .”
Colum glanced from Xavier to Annie. “That was a fecking lucky throw.”
Annie crossed her arms and waited.
“Unless…” Colum tilted his head, swallowing hard. “It wasn’t lucky.”
She wished this conversation wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t as if she was trying to hide her past. Most of her close friends knew about her former career. It was simply that, while she considered herself an open and friendly person, she didn’t spill her guts to every stranger she met. Plus, she loved her life, loved the person she’d become. There were times when she looked back on her past as if she was watching someone else.
Regardless, it didn’t look like she had much of a choice tonight. The heated looks Xavier and Colum had been giving her earlier in the evening were gone as they stared at her like she was a stranger, and not one they were particularly happy to meet.
“Why did you have a knife?” Xavier asked. “ Two knives.”
She lifted one shoulder casually. “I didn’t think we should go in there without a weapon.”
“We must go back.” Xavier stopped pacing right in front of her, face etched with alarm. “The knife. It’s still there! It’ll have your fingerprints on it. The police can trace?—”
“I’m not an idiot,” Annie interjected. “I didn’t leave the knife.” Reaching into her pocket, she pulled the blade out. It was still covered in bodily fluids.
Colum and Xavier stared for a minute, then both started gagging, and if Annie wasn’t trying to be sensitive to their current mental states, she probably would have laughed her ass off.
“It’s okay,” she tried to reassure them.
“You pulled that out of his…” Colum swallowed heavily, clearly beating back bile as he covered his mouth with his hand, while Xavier rubbed his eye like he’d been the one stabbed.
“Even if you have that,” Xavier said, gesturing toward the knife without looking at it. “The man is still there, and if you’re right, alive. He could identify us.”
“How?” Annie asked. “We were wearing masks.”
“He could describe us or…” Xavier threw his hands in the air. “Maybe he won’t tell the authorities. Maybe he’ll simply hunt us down and stab us all in the eye in revenge.”
“Jaysus. This is bad.” Colum reached for his phone. “I need to call Franco.”
“Again with this Franco,” Annie said, attempting to make a joke, hoping to set the men at ease. Xavier didn’t laugh, only shot her a wild-eyed look.
Colum ignored her as he placed the call. She listened, somewhat impressed, as Colum managed to relate the events of the past hour succinctly, even if he did have to stop and start over a few times in his attempt to get the timeline accurate. However, she wasn’t thrilled about him relating every detail to this man.
After a few minutes, he hung up.
“Who is Franco?” Annie asked.
“My best friend.”
Annie shook her head. “Colum, is he a part of this? Has he been read in on?—”
“He’s married to the Grand Master,” Colum interjected. “He’s aware of this mission. As I said back at the archive, he was involved in the early parts of our search.”
Annie’s eyes widened. “You know who the Grand Master is?”
Colum nodded, looking slightly panicked. “Aye.”
Annie wasn’t sure if he was being deliberately secretive or if this was another instance of Colum being Colum, simply answering the question that was asked.
Because Annie was more curious than a cat, she went for broke. “Who is it?”
“Is that really important right now?” Xavier asked. “What did Franco say?”
“They’re calling someone who can help,” Colum replied.
“What do we do?” Xavier asked.
“Stay here,” Colum replied. “Leave it with them.”
Xavier stalked over to the window, drawing the curtain back and looking outside. Annie didn’t get the sense he was enjoying the view, rather too keyed up to relax.
Colum, however, was calmer after talking to Franco. He sat down on the couch, then looked up at her expectantly. She joined him, sinking down heavily.
Colum ran his hand through his hair. “Since we have some time, perhaps you could tell us who you really are.”
“Anastasia Ward,” she replied, half joking as she answered his question with just the information requested.
“That’s a pretty name, but I think Xavier and I would prefer it if you’d be telling us how you learned to throw a knife like that. Spent a bit of time with the circus, did you?” Colum asked, offering his own brand of humor.
Annie laughed. “Not the circus you’re thinking of, though I suppose it’s a good comparison some days. I used to work for the CIA.”
That announcement dropped into the center of the suite like a bomb.
“CIA,” Xavier repeated, turning his back on the window to look at her.
“Come sit down, Xavier,” Colum demanded. “Nothing worse than someone hovering.”
Xavier started for the chair, but Colum shook his head, pointing to the opposite side of the couch. It wasn’t a particularly large one, so the three of them would be close. Annie wasn’t sure if that would make it easier or harder for her to tell her story, as her body tended to short-circuit her brain whenever they were in close proximity.
Somewhat to her surprise, Xavier obeyed Colum’s silent command, doing so without a cutting comment. He sat next to her, sideways on the couch, so that he was looking right at her, his arm looped behind her, resting on the cushions. It reminded her of this afternoon, and her gaze drifted down to the small bruise that had formed on his cheek, barely visible given his beard. Both of her guys were sporting bruised faces.
Her guys. She was suddenly wishing that was real. The initial attraction she’d felt toward them was morphing into fondness as well. Part of her hoped they found the rest of the manuscript quickly; otherwise, saying goodbye to them at the end of this would be painful.
“I went to work for the agency right out of college. Got my bachelors in poli-sci and completed the training. I was actually recruited to join the Trinity Masters by one of my superiors at the agency.” Annie could still recall the day Devon Asher called her into his office and opened her eyes to a whole new world. She’d been thrilled and honored by the invitation to become a part of the secret society. “I was assigned to some of the agency’s most high-profile counterterrorism operations because of my skills in cyber intelligence and psychological operations,” she explained.
“Sounds dangerous.” Colum reached out, taking her hand. She relished the warmth and the concern behind it.
Annie shrugged. “It was, at times. During one particularly difficult mission, I was assigned to infiltrate a dangerous arms network that was linked to a terrorist cell.”
“Jaysus,” Colum whispered under his breath.
“One night, the situation became volatile. The extraction team had been misinformed about the situation on the ground, so they launched a tactical strike. Several innocent civilians were killed, including…” Annie swallowed deeply, struggling as always to say the next part.
Colum squeezed her hand. “Go on, missis.”
She gave him a sad smile. “A young family I’d grown close to was killed. Mehdi and Farah had been married five years, but they still acted like newlyweds. They were so in love. Their daughter, Friya.” Annie’s voice broke. “She was only two when…” She couldn’t finish the story, tears stinging the back of her eyes.
“Annie,” Xavier said, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
“The worst part was the agency considered the mission successful because we’d gotten the intel we were seeking. Meanwhile, Mehdi and his family were classified as collateral damage. No two-year-old is collateral damage,” she said hotly. “After that, I grew disillusioned with my career and disgusted by all the ugliness in the world. I slipped into a dark place.”
Xavier’s finger brushed her hair in a featherlight touch. “Without darkness, we take the light for granted.”
“I’ve spent some time in that dark place as well. I’m glad you found your way out.” Colum sighed, running his hand over her hair, looking at her with something she could only describe as adoration. “You’re always so happy and smiling, just like Jo—” Colum stopped abruptly.
Annie waited for him to continue, but when it became apparent he didn’t intend to, she asked, “Just like who?”
“That’s not important right now. Go on with your story. How did you find your way out of the dark place?” Colum asked.
Annie glanced at Xavier, bumping her shoulder into his chest.
“Art?” he guessed.
She nodded. “I continued to work at the agency, but it didn’t bring me joy. I’d lost my passion for it. One day, while I was taking a walk, I passed an art museum. I’ve always loved art. My mother got me one of those huge art books for Christmas one year when I was a teenager. It was filled with pictures of famous works, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve flipped through the pages of that thing over the years. It might shock you to hear this, but I was pretty high-strung when I was younger. The kid who always put too much pressure on herself to get straight A’s, to hold an office in all the clubs, to be captain of the volleyball team. Whenever I was stressed out about a test or feeling overwhelmed by my extracurriculars, I’d pull out the book and lose myself in the beauty.”
Xavier clearly understood. “Anyone who hasn’t seen true ugliness cannot comprehend the beauty of a soul made material in a piece of art.”
Annie smiled. “On a whim, I bought a ticket and went into the museum. I walked around for hours, feeling lighter than I had in months. There was a bench in front of one of the larger paintings. I’d been drawn back to it several times during my tour, so I sat down, wanting to spend more time with it.
“A man approached me and made an interesting comment about the composition. We spent the next hour discussing every aspect of the work, from the brushstrokes used, to the colors and shading, the history of the painting, the life of the artist, and the emotions it evoked. At the end of our conversation, we finally introduced ourselves, and I learned that Rafe was the director of the museum. I left that day feeling a million pounds lighter…until I returned to work.”
“So you kept working at the agency?” Colum asked.
She nodded. “Of course. For better or worse, it was the career I’d chosen, the one that was paying the bills. But I also kept going back to the museum. On my second visit, I bought an annual pass, and within fifteen minutes of arriving, I ran into Rafe again. We walked together for a little while, then chose another work to discuss. Talking to him about art became my therapy. Whenever I felt myself being sucked down into the muck of my everyday life, I went back to the museum.
“On our fourth ‘chance run-in’,” she finger-quoted the words, “Rafe admitted he’d asked his staff to call him whenever I showed up. Said he enjoyed our talks and was enthralled by my insights. He was the first to suggest I’d missed my calling, that I should have pursued a career in the art field.”
“It would have been better had he encouraged you to create your own art,” Xavier said haughtily. “Not be part of the commodification machine.”
“Don’t let him distract you,” Colum jumped in. “Finish the story.”
“I went back to the museum whenever I was home. It became a priority for me, so I typically managed to visit once or twice a month. That went on for nearly a year. Unfortunately, my last mission with the agency kept me out of the country for two months. When I returned to the States, my first stop was the museum. I asked to see Rafe.” Annie paused. This was why she didn’t look back. Telling this story reopened wounds that were too hard to close again.
“What happened?” Colum asked, shifting closer, his grip on her hand firm, unrelenting, comforting.
“The woman at the front desk told me he’d passed away. Pancreatic cancer. Then she asked if I’d wait a moment. She called the new museum director, who met me in the lobby. The director handed me a letter, said Rafe had asked her to deliver it to me upon my return.”
“What did the letter say?” Xavier asked.
“So many things. He confessed that the day we met was the day he’d learned he had cancer. He’d returned to work after his trip to the oncologist, intending to spend a little time sitting in front of that same painting that had called to me. He said our conversation that day provided him a much-needed distraction. The thing is,” Annie admitted, “I thought that was what he’d done for me.”
“Ye both found each other at just the right time,” Colum said.
Annie gave him a sad smile, recalling his story about Eric, about the ways he’d impacted Colum’s life for the better. “When I looked back over our conversations that year, I realized neither of us had ever shared what was going on in our personal lives, yet I felt as if Rafe knew me better than I knew myself. We opened up about ourselves, shared tiny, secret parts of our souls through our feelings about the art.”
Xavier nodded, clearly understanding.
“Rafe told me not to be sad about his passing. He said that he’d lived a life worth living, one with no regrets.”
Colum swallowed heavily, a grief she didn’t understand rife in his eyes. “A life worth living,” he murmured.
“I realized if I died, I would have all the regrets,” Annie admitted. “So the next day, I turned in my letter of resignation. Due to the long hours I pulled at the agency, I’d had very little social life, which meant I had enough money in my bank account to go back to school. And the rest, as they say, is history.”
They sat together in silence for a few minutes, then Colum, God bless him, found a way to lighten the heaviness of the moment.
“You tell a fair story, Anastasia,” Colum said, shifting closer. “And I have to confess to a fair bit more wanting you, now that I know you’re dangerous.”
Annie laughed, and then, because she couldn’t resist, she gave Colum a quick kiss on the cheek before narrowing her eyes. “Only a fair bit turned on?”
Colum chuckled before he turned his attention to Xavier, gesturing to the other man. “Er…you were more than capable of handling Xavier earlier, weren’t you? When he had you, er, bent over.”
Annie laughed. “Oh yeah. If I wanted, he would have been dead twice before he hit the floor. And he wouldn’t have seen it coming.”
“ Merde ,” Xavier whispered.
“But that doesn’t mean you stepping in to defend me wasn’t hot as hell,” she added, her libido overriding her exhaustion because sitting between these two men, with both of them looking at her with… God, with hunger in their eyes, was the world’s strongest aphrodisiac.
“Maybe…” she started. Before she could finish her suggestion that they move this conversation to the bedroom, her cell phone rang. She frowned, confused when she saw the name on the screen. “I need to take this.”
She walked into the bedroom for some privacy before answering.
“Vincent,” she said, connecting the call. “This is a surprise.”
Vincent Clayton was a member of the Trinity Masters. Annie had met him and his spouses, Christian and Charlotte, at one of the society’s galas several years earlier, the four of them becoming good friends. Since they all worked in New York and were foodies, they started their own little supper club, meeting up for dinner once a month to try out a new-to-them restaurant.
“I received a call from the Grand Master a little while ago,” Vincent said.
“Ah. Of course.” Annie wasn’t surprised the Grand Master had reached out to Vincent. She’d actually considered doing so herself but thought it best not to involve anyone else unless directed to by the Grand Master. Vincent was an extremely well-connected billionaire with strong ties in New York. Which was basically a nice way of saying he had more government officials and cops in his pocket than the godfather of the Mafia.
“The man you stabbed is alive, in the hospital, and refusing to talk. The security cameras seem to have failed and, unfortunately, any forensic evidence taken from the scene was, or will be, contaminated.”
“What a shame,” she replied sarcastically. “Who was he?”
“A local thug. He has prior theft convictions but is most known for his willingness to violently assault people. Most likely he was hired to follow you. He’s under arrest, so a police officer is stationed by his door. The Grand Master is sending a couple of Warrior Scholars from Boston. It may take a few days, but they’ll slip in and conduct their own interrogation. The cops know there was an accomplice, since he didn’t try to lobotomize himself.”
“It was a short blade,” she insisted again. “You need an icepick for a lobotomy.”
“What a disturbing sentence,” Vincent mused.
“They’re going to do an inventory,” she added. “And once they do, the museum director will point the investigation at me, since I was in there asking to buy one of the pieces that was stolen.”
“I thought you’d also like to know that Charlotte and I had a wonderful time with you and your partners in the VIP section of my club, Elite, tonight.”
Vincent was apparently also providing their alibi.
“I appreciate you covering our tracks. I owe you one.”
“It was no problem, but just the same…you can buy dinner next time we go out,” Vincent joked.
“Deal.”
“How are you holding up?” Vincent and his spouses knew about her past with the agency because she’d still been working there when they met. In addition to Rafe, they’d been instrumental in encouraging Annie to follow her heart, serving as a huge support system for her when she finally walked away from the agency.
She grimaced. “I’m doing okay, but my partners in this investigation are struggling. The knife-in-the-eye thing freaked them out a little.”
“I can imagine it would. Do you need anything?” he asked.
“Actually, yeah. I need to drug them. Edibles? I don’t want to leave them alone to go get some.”
Vincent chuckled. “Christian will be there in a little while.”
“Can he pretend to be room service?”
She could practically hear Vincent’s eyes rolling when he said, “Can my Broadway star husband play the role of a waiter? I don’t think you have to worry. Knowing him, he’ll come in costume with a full face of stage makeup.”
He and Annie said their goodbyes, and she took a moment to compose herself. Walking to the bathroom, she splashed some water on her face to cool off. Initiating sex tonight when the guys were still slightly rattled, not to mention the fact they were knee-deep in their investigation, was a bad idea.
Drying her face, she took a few deep breaths, until she felt steady enough to return to the sitting area.
Neither man noticed when she opened the door and stepped out of the bedroom. They’d shifted closer to each other on the couch, their faces mere inches apart as they talked to each other in soft voices.
For a split second, she felt the tiniest pang of jealousy—and maybe anger—as she wondered if they’d shared a kiss while she was gone. She wasn’t sure why the idea that they would do that without her made her feel so ragey, but there was no other way to explain her rising temper.
“Comfortable?”
Xavier and Colum glanced up as she approached. Xavier smirked, and she wondered what she was giving away with her expression and tone. Rather than stretch her already too-thin self-control, she claimed the chair opposite them, pleased when neither man seemed happy with her putting distance between them.
“You’re too far away,” Xavier purred.
Dammit. Like her, Xavier’s thoughts had moved past the night’s adventure and were focused on how they could keep the party going.
Mercifully, Colum was managing to keep a steadier head. “Who was on the phone?”
“Someone from the Trinity Masters.” She told them about Vincent’s call, taking time to share snippets about their friendship and their food explorations around the city, the conversation meant to help her kill time until Christian arrived. The information about how the investigation was being handled—and by that, she meant steered in the wrong direction—calmed them, especially Xavier.
No more than half an hour later, Xavier glanced at the time on his phone and stroked his beard. “I know I should be tired, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep. My thoughts are chaos right now.”
Colum nodded in silent agreement.
Annie had assumed as much, which was why she was relieved when there was a knock on the door. Christian’s deep voice called out “room service” with enough dramatic inflection that she nearly laughed. She rose quickly before the guys could. “I ordered some dessert while I was in the bedroom. Sugar cures all,” she lied, aware that in this case, it would be the pot doing the heavy lifting.
Opening the door, she grinned when she saw Christian standing there in a white server’s jacket, with an actual room service cart from the hotel. God only knew where he’d hijacked that from. On the cart were three small plates with brownies wrapped in plastic wrap.
She opened the door wider, and Christian pushed the cart inside.
“You can just put them on the coffee table,” she said as he made a big production of serving their dessert.
The nosy bastard took a moment to check out Colum and Xavier, mouthing the word “wow” over their heads as they eagerly reached for the special delivery brownies.
Annie followed him as he left, offering her thanks when he stepped back into the hall. Christian gave her a friendly wink, then leaned closer to whisper, “I hope you plan to take advantage of that windfall.”
She covered her mouth to muffle her giggle. Christian had been working overtime to help end her dry spell, setting her up on a ridiculous number of blind dates. “I’ll call you later,” she mouthed. Christian nodded then pushed the cart back in the direction of the elevator.
By the time she’d returned to the room, Xavier and Colum had both devoured their brownies and were eyeballing hers.
“I think I’ll save mine for later,” she said, and their conversation turned to more mundane topics, like what Broadway shows were Annie’s favorites, and Annie and Xavier’s favorite cities around the world. Colum admitted to not traveling much, though he had spent a fair amount of time in Boston when the Trinity Masters “kidnapped” him.
Sadly, it seemed to belatedly occur to him that probably wasn’t a story he should tell. Annie wanted to push for more details, but the brownies were working too well. Colum kept yawning and Xavier had actually dozed off, his chin resting on his chest.
She suggested Colum climb in her bed “just to rest for a little while,” claiming she was going to stay up to do some more research. Colum—who loved research dearly—didn’t insist on joining her. “I’ll just close me eyes for a second or two,” he said, as he crawled on top of the covers.
She followed him, encouraging him to kick off his shoes, take off his shirt and pants, and climb under the duvet. Annie didn’t even pretend not to look, enjoying the view as he did so without making a fuss.
He was sound asleep when she returned with a groggy Xavier a few minutes later. Xavier required no prodding as he stripped completely before joining Colum in her bed, sleep claiming him within seconds.
Annie studied them for a moment, enjoying this chance to see both men at peace. They looked good lying together like that, and she was genuinely tempted to strip off her own clothes and crawl in the middle.
She shut down that idea instantly. After all, she’d drugged them, so seducing them was out of the question. The first time the three of them slept together— please God, let there be a first time —she wanted it to be something they’d all remember.
“No rest for the wicked,” she muttered, as she returned to the sitting room, closing the bedroom door behind her.