CHAPTER SEVEN
NICK FORRESTER WAS PISSED.
It had been a really, really bad day.
He stared at his computer screen intently.
The entry hall of Maclean’s fancy Park Avenue town house was vacant.
He scrolled through the rooms, which were all as dead as doorknobs, until he found the butler in the kitchen.
Now that was an interesting fellow. Maclean was out.
Nick knew that because of his video feeds and stakeouts.
He had a huge home, with state-of-the-art everything. The stolen page could be there. However, Nick’s gut told him he’d stashed it elsewhere.
He smiled coldly to himself. Maclean was now in deep shit. He had the page; Nick wanted it. That put him on Nick’s radar 24/7.
And Nick always got his man.
Well, almost always.
“Nick, are you working?”
He was already speed dialing one of the two agents assigned to Maclean. Maclean would have his people on him like flies to flypaper. But he’d forgotten he had company, and he was briefly startled.
Nick turned, not even trying to recall her name.
He was renowned for one-night stands, but the rumors were all wrong.
He liked three-, four- and five-night stands—it was so much more convenient, so much less work.
He could manage to stay interested for about a week.
His problem was that he could not afford any mental or emotional involvements, because mental and emotional involvement was deadly. He’d learned that long ago.
Beauty without brains, that was his motto. But a great rack could only hold his attention for so long. And the moment he lost interest, it was over.
Nick faced the woman he’d picked up a night or so ago at some local club, and he forgot about being annoyed.
She was built like a playmate, and clad only in a sparkly G-string, superhigh heels and a very tight, tiny T-shirt, obviously with no bra beneath.
He felt his motor ignite. He’d only spent a single night with her, so on a scale of one to ten, his interest was about seven or eight.
As soon as he finished working, he could probably move up to a nine or ten.
“Just for a moment, baby,” he said. Work always came first. Not that he didn’t love sex. Sex empowered him. His senses were always sharper afterward, and he was always stronger, faster, more telepathic. He had decided long ago that it was some kind of quirky gift from the old gods.
She sauntered over. “What did you say you do?”
“I run a hedge fund.” He cupped her silky ass and picked up his cell. When his agent answered, he barked, “Where the fuck is Maclean?”
“He just left Rose’s. We’re in traffic downtown.”
“Do not lose him,” Nick warned. He ended the call abruptly. He hated the idea, but with Maclean acting all social, he’d have to wire Sam’s loft, and maybe put in a camera or two.
The woman was wide-eyed. “Are you sure you’re not a cop or something?” she asked.
He sent her a smile. “Hey, I’m positive. Money’s my gig, babe.” Never mind that his apartment was a piece of crap. “I’ll be right in. Can you warm up the sheets for me?”
She wrapped her arms around him, fluttering her fingers across his distended groin, oblivious to the contradiction. “Hurry,” she murmured. “And while I’m waiting, I’ll warm up more than the sheets.”
Before she’d even released him, a thought had occurred to him, and he was searching through HCU’s immense database.
His gut told him he’d seen something recently that could be helpful in locating the missing page.
He gave Big Mama some clues: Rupert Hemmer, Ian Maclean, Aidan of Awe, the Duisean and Manhattan.
Then, for good measure, he added the Highlands, the Masters of Time.
Sometimes the supercomputer could find the missing piece of a really complicated puzzle.
Just then, he felt like he was casting in the dark, but so what?
Nick had wired Maclean’s Park Avenue town house within an hour of learning that he was on Rupert Hemmer’s guest list, which had been early yesterday morning.
Running HCU meant that nothing and no one slipped his attention.
His life was the war on evil, his agents—whom he considered his kids—and HCU, in that order.
He made a point of poring over the vast streams of data Big Mama continually sent him, to consider all her flags, which were in the hundreds on a daily basis, all in the context of his agents’ field assignments and reports, as well as those of the rest of CDA, the Bureau, the NYPD and the CIA—when those agencies were in a cooperative mood.
Basically, that meant that he almost never slept. But sleep was a waste of time anyway.
Nick knew he was notorious within the agency. His agents feared and respected him, which was a good thing. He was both god and king at HCU, and his word was the law. Agents who understood that would retire one day with a damn good pension plan.
If they made it to retirement age.
And he instantly felt a headache coming on.
He rubbed his temples. He couldn’t afford a headache now—or worse, one of those damned flashbacks.
They’d started up six months ago, when Macleod had appeared in the city.
Out of the blue, as clear as if it were decades ago.
No good could come from remembering the past. He’d buried everything—everyone—a long, long time ago.
But some memories served him well. Some memories burned in his gut and gave him the kind of fuel no mortal should ever have.
In the several decades he’d been at HCU, running it, fifty-three agents had been murdered in the line of duty.
Over a hundred had been seriously injured. Twelve had been lost in time.
And he did not want to think of the collateral damage—the families who’d suffered directly or indirectly, because of the war.
He considered every fatality, every injury, and every one of the twelve his personal fault. Which was why he attended every funeral, gave every eulogy, visited each hospital room, and always went after those classified as MIT.
He hated funerals and hospitals. He dreaded them. But nothing was as bad as an agent missing in time. It was the not knowing…
He started seeing their faces, male and female, eyes accusatory, and he had to work hard to breathe properly. The last agent who’d gone missing had been Brie Rose, but he’d found her. Even though her file had MIT stamped on it, he knew she was alive and well and living with Aidan of Awe.
He hadn’t had to think very long or hard about putting Sam Rose on Aidan’s son, Maclean.
Maclean might be the son of a powerful Master, but he wasn’t one of them.
His file was two inches thick. It was all flags—suspicious and ambivalent behavior.
He played for himself. He hadn’t gone over to Rupert Hemmer’s for tea.
Nick tried to respect people’s privacy. It was no easy task when he could read minds easily and fluently, no matter the time or the language.
But work was a different story. At HCU, he read whatever he felt like, when he felt like it, because winning the war came first. No one at HCU had any rights to privacy, just like no one there had any right to a personal life.
Because they were losing the war, big time.
But Nick didn’t want to think about the stats. He didn’t want to think about the fact that evil was a race, and this was truly a war. Evil had infiltrated every terrorist organization on the globe. Those terrorists who weren’t demonic were either mixed blood or the possessed.
But it was worse than that and Nick knew it.
Evil had infiltrated governments. Some of the world’s most ruthless dictators were demons or subs.
Iran really would use the nuke once it had it.
Evil meant to destroy the world, step-by-step.
There were demons in intelligence agencies, in defense departments, in local police forces—in the lowest levels and the highest. Nick happened to know that there was an internal investigation going on right now in the Pentagon, because CDA had determined that one of the head honchos at State was demonic.
The problem was, just which official was he—or she?
It had become clear that the official was so high up, he or she had the ear of the President.
The day was coming, Nick thought, when the President of the United States would be one of them. It was a terrifying thought.
The war was so huge that it almost seemed silly to be playing these little games, day after day, killing one demon here, another there, taking out this gang of subs or that one.
But evil had to be contained on each and every local front, as well as on the world stage.
And right now, Nick knew the power the page from the Duisean contained. It could not fall into the wrong hands.
Which was why Maclean was going to lose.
Sam Rose was one of his best agents ever. He hadn’t trained her—hell, he hadn’t even had her for very long. But it was her destiny to slay. He knew that. The moment he’d met her, he’d had to have her. And there were no regrets.
But he was sorry he’d put her on Maclean now.
He knew she found Maclean attractive, thanks to his telepathy.
But he also knew Maclean infuriated her—and he knew why.
He was fully aware of her little jaunt to Scotland a few months ago.
She’d wanted Maclean to send her back in time to her sister; he’d refused. That was okay. It had pissed her off.
She wasn’t just the best agent he’d ever had, she was also the kind of woman to lead a man around by his dick.
He’d put her on Maclean because he was one hundred and ten percent certain that she could manage Maclean and defeat him.
But now, he was having second thoughts. Maclean was playing her.
He seemed to be in control. And he did not want one of his kids winding up dead.