CHAPTER FIVE #4
“We’re not. We’re talking about you and Ian Maclean, a near-immortal with a two-inch-thick agency file, filled with flags.
A near-immortal who, I might add, is a suspect in the thefts of art worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
A near-immortal who spent decades in demonic captivity.
He should be one of us—but he’s not. But he’s not one of them, either.
I think it’s worth talking about how you’re dealing with him.
And if you have feelings, I think that’s worth looking at, too.
And that is why I’m here.” She flushed. “I’m worried about you. ”
Sam’s first reaction was to laugh. Kit was a rookie, and compared to her, as innocent as a civilian when it came to evil.
But then she recalled Maclean’s attack on John and his reaction afterward.
“You don’t have to worry about me.” But she hesitated, her gaze locked with Kit’s.
“I won’t allow myself to wonder about him, to worry or feel compassion. ”
“But are you?”
“I don’t know!” Sam stood and started to pace, but her ankle remained sore and she paused, wincing. “I will never become involved with Maclean. That would be suicide.”
Kit stood, too. “Wow, that was an extreme answer. How could becoming involved equal suicide?”
Sam couldn’t believe she’d spoken as she had; she never got involved. “I might jump in the sack with him sometime, on my terms, but that would be it.”
“Can you tell Forrester you want out and let someone else hunt the page? It might be best, Sam. I mean, that car chase was nuts. Even if you caught up to him, then what? He has more power than you—he can leap. How were you going to get the page in the end?”
So many images flashed, all of Maclean in the last twenty-four hours. In half of those memories, she was in his arms.
Kit had made an irrefutable point. Chasing him had been bad judgment. She never had bad judgment, but she hadn’t thought it through. Unless he’d died in the car chase, there’d been no possible way for her to accomplish her mission and retrieve the page.
Kit was right. She should bow out. Maclean was a challenge she didn’t need.
Except she never refused a challenge and he intrigued her as no one ever had. “I’m not bowing out,” she said. “I’m in until this is done. What’s in his file? What did they do to him?” Her heart slammed as she spoke.
Kit sighed. “I didn’t think you’d back down. I don’t know what they did to him. That’s not in the file. No one knows. What I do know is that he was abducted in 1436 and released in 1502. Do the math. He was held prisoner for sixty-six years.”
Her gut churned violently. “Only a near-immortal could survive that. No wonder he’s so scarred—and not just physically. No wonder he has no social skills.”
“So you are feeling sorry for him?” Kit’s eyes widened.
Sam stared at her. Was she going down that road to disaster?
“There’s a damned temptation to feel sorry for him.
How couldn’t there be? He was probably tortured to within an inch of his life.
Demons love pain. And he was just a child, wasn’t he, when they first grabbed him?
” The churning in her abdomen increased.
“He was nine years old. They kept him under a spell, Sam. He stayed nine years old the entire sixty-six years.”
God, it was even worse than she’d thought. Sam rubbed her forehead, which ached. Or was it her heart that ached now? “If I allow myself to feel sorry for him, I’m screwed. He’ll figure it out and use it against me, then laugh in my face.” But she had a bad feeling that it was too late.
Kit stood up and walked around the coffee table to stand beside her. “You’re so cool and detached about evil. I think it’s admirable. But how can you not feel sorry for him? I felt like crying just reading the bare facts about him. He’s been messed up. He was dealt a really bad hand.”
Sam winced. Kit was right. No one should have had to go through what he had. “What else is in the file?”
“It’s weird. Big Mama started building his file the moment we got her, in 2002. His file goes back exactly twenty-five years. And then there’s nothing, nada, zilch. It’s as if he appeared out of nowhere.”
“Maybe that was when he was released.”
“Maybe. If so, I do believe he’s supposed to be living in 1527, not 2009. That would make him a medieval man, not a modern one.”
“He can time travel. He can live in whatever time he wants.” But Sam tossed this new idea around. Maclean acted as contemporary as anyone.
“There are rules, Sam. The Masters are supposed to live in their time, not in someone else’s. They can leap time to save the Innocent, but then they need to go back to where they belong. It makes sense. Otherwise they’d encounter their own lives in the future, wouldn’t they?”
Sam had already surmised that. That would explain why Brie hadn’t dragged Aidan to the twenty-first century, and why Tabby had decided to stay in the past, too. “But he isn’t a Master. He clearly doesn’t play by their rules.”
Sam had barely gotten the words out when she felt him. She tensed, surprised. Maclean’s distinctive heat and power were nearby. Her buzzer sounded, and she knew he was downstairs.
Startled, she went to answer it. What did he want?
“Can I come up?” Ian Maclean said.
Sam found her composure, except that her heart seemed to be racing. “Only if you’re bringing me a check for fifty thousand dollars.”